Being Number One Isn’t What It’s Cracked Up to Be
BEING A PIONEER has never held any allure for me. I prefer the tried and true, but I’d never before encountered a medical problem without a known solution. It was time to try the untried.
MY APPOINTMENT WAS with a man with a formidable international reputation and a very responsible position who seemed uncomfortable indoors. His rugged physique was restrained by a pristine lab jacket. His steel-gray hair looked to be the tool by which he pulled ideas out of head. His explanations flew over me like starlings before a storm. Seemingly lost in the joy of his hopes for melanoma patients, he energetically tapped a puzzling microbiology rendering on the flip chart behind him with his pen, resumed his seat at the tiny conference table in a room that his entrance had made seem even smaller, and gave me yet another outpouring of vernacular. When he finished, he fixed intense coffee-colored eyes on me.
I NODDED MY ENCOURAGEMENT but understood almost nothing he said. I was certain I was dealing with an intelligent being from another planet. Someone understood what this dedicated scientist was saying but, unfortunately, that wasn’t me. “Let me see if I understand you, I said. “This is an experiment designed to awaken my own immune system to the presence of the tumors I have. If awakened, my own immune system is capable of consuming these tumors and possibly making my body free from cancer for the rest of my life. Is that it?”
HIS HEAD BOBBED up and down. His student was grasping the idea. He attempted to refine my understanding and to warn me of the unlikely but potential dangers: vitiligo, lupus, auto-immune disorder. He sobered. I would be the first to undergo these vaccinations. There might be other problems that he had no way of predicting.
HE HANDED ME A SHEAF of papers with frightening disclosures, but in the last few weeks I’d signed so many similar difficult-to-contemplate pieces of paper that I did not hesitate. I followed Yogi Berra’s advice. When faced with a fork in the road, I took it.
SOME PEOPLE ARE OPPOSED to clinical trials. They turn, they point out, an already ill person into a guinea pig. I don’t feel that way. I’m careful, of course, about choosing what I’m willing to undergo, but the standard treatment for what I have is just that. Standard. And in my case, the it didn’t have a good track record. Initial remission rates were sometimes good, but recurrence rates were not.
OUR MINISTER WOULD BE PLEASED to know how far his advice had taken me. I had become equally comfortable with living and with dying.
I DIDN’T HAVE TO BE BRAVE to sign on the dotted line because I wasn’t afraid.
You’re blessed. Be a blessing!
MY APPOINTMENT WAS with a man with a formidable international reputation and a very responsible position who seemed uncomfortable indoors. His rugged physique was restrained by a pristine lab jacket. His steel-gray hair looked to be the tool by which he pulled ideas out of head. His explanations flew over me like starlings before a storm. Seemingly lost in the joy of his hopes for melanoma patients, he energetically tapped a puzzling microbiology rendering on the flip chart behind him with his pen, resumed his seat at the tiny conference table in a room that his entrance had made seem even smaller, and gave me yet another outpouring of vernacular. When he finished, he fixed intense coffee-colored eyes on me.
I NODDED MY ENCOURAGEMENT but understood almost nothing he said. I was certain I was dealing with an intelligent being from another planet. Someone understood what this dedicated scientist was saying but, unfortunately, that wasn’t me. “Let me see if I understand you, I said. “This is an experiment designed to awaken my own immune system to the presence of the tumors I have. If awakened, my own immune system is capable of consuming these tumors and possibly making my body free from cancer for the rest of my life. Is that it?”
HIS HEAD BOBBED up and down. His student was grasping the idea. He attempted to refine my understanding and to warn me of the unlikely but potential dangers: vitiligo, lupus, auto-immune disorder. He sobered. I would be the first to undergo these vaccinations. There might be other problems that he had no way of predicting.
HE HANDED ME A SHEAF of papers with frightening disclosures, but in the last few weeks I’d signed so many similar difficult-to-contemplate pieces of paper that I did not hesitate. I followed Yogi Berra’s advice. When faced with a fork in the road, I took it.SOME PEOPLE ARE OPPOSED to clinical trials. They turn, they point out, an already ill person into a guinea pig. I don’t feel that way. I’m careful, of course, about choosing what I’m willing to undergo, but the standard treatment for what I have is just that. Standard. And in my case, the it didn’t have a good track record. Initial remission rates were sometimes good, but recurrence rates were not.
OUR MINISTER WOULD BE PLEASED to know how far his advice had taken me. I had become equally comfortable with living and with dying.
I DIDN’T HAVE TO BE BRAVE to sign on the dotted line because I wasn’t afraid.
You’re blessed. Be a blessing!
posted by Chronic Hope at 6:30 AM
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