Oh, my gosh. I noticed this thread, and thought I would post something that I've mentioned in passing on SI before. I'll do that later, but have to tell you that I had a strange, sick feeling when I read this: "I remember that one of the things she tried was a tar-like substance which she was told the Indians had used for centuries to treat all types of cancer. I believe it was taken orally, mixed with hot water."
I had a friend who died a few years ago of metastasized lung cancer. (Never smoked in her life.) She was a believer in alternative medicine, and one of the things she did while I was visiting her was to take a black tarry substance dissolved in hot water. She was very secretive about what it was and where she got it, except that it was from an unidentified "shaman" she'd been put in touch with, probably in California. I was rather dismayed by her secrecy, not because I wanted to know what it was, as I didn't believe it would cure cancer, but by the strangeness of her both believing she had the cure for cancer and keeping it a secret from her friends.
This was a highly educated woman, a published writer, a published poet, a PhD and Professor of English Literature. She spoke of the shaman in reverential tones, and said that the Indians had cured all types of cancer with it for centuries. She believed it was going to cure her.
Nothing did, unfortunately. When she realized that the cancer reached her brain, she gathered some friends around, and took enough morphine so that she would die "before I lose my self," as she put it. I had switched my week to visit (she lived in Boston, I in NY) and wasn't there for her death.
Another strange memory was that when she was shockingly emaciated, she said, "This is the first time in my adult life I've been my ideal weight, and I had to get cancer to accomplish it."
I never saw her when she wasn't slender and beautiful, except when she was dying. She was a runner, and pumped iron. (That's what she called weightlifting.) But she had always seen herself as fat.
|
