Jonathan Alter: Living with Cancer in America

[question everything]

This was the cover story of last week Newsweek that I finally finished reading.

There are several paragraphs that go beyond cancer that I think are worth sharing:

A was for attitude. Studies show no connection between a good attitude and reducing tumor size and I can't stand the way our therapeutic society makes people feel that cancer is their own fault because they weren't more chipper. But mind-set is important. By chance, I was already at work on a book about Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the writing offered a useful distraction from cancer. His upbeat attitude after being stricken with polio was inspirational for me, and made me wonder, What Would Franklin Do?

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Most cancer doctors are awe-inspiring in their humanity and dedication. They make, say, hedge-fund billionaires (not to mention journalists) look puny and insignificant. But I also found oncology full of the same mammoth egos and petty jealousies that plague any high-powered field. Doctors from competing institutions are often so competitive that they talk to each other only a couple of times a year at conferences. They do lab work on parallel tracks instead of collaborating. And under pressure from hospital lawyers, they frequently even refuse to share cell lines with other qualified researchers, which retards progress toward cures and is clearly unethical. Thanks to a wealthy mantle cell lymphoma survivor, ours is one of the first subsets of cancer to establish a consortium to get top experts in the field to exchange ideas regularly. Every cancer should have a consortium.

And every cancer doctor would do well to recalibrate on occasion the balance he or she strikes between science and hope. While the survival odds they offer might be technically accurate (X percentage with Y cancer will survive five years), they are often misleading and sometimes unnecessarily cruel. Patients and families obsess over these survival-rate statistics, but they reduce the countless variables of a person's genetic makeup and environmental exposure to a number, which is cold and often phony. Depending on the individual (whose age is usually not even factored into the statistics), a 50 percent chance of survival could easily be 80 percent—or 20 percent. Moreover, few patients understand the meaning of the term "median survival." That simply means half live less time and half live more—perhaps much more.

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During my annus horribilis, NEWSWEEK let me work at home and helped me navigate the insanity of the American health-care system. The claims forms are impenetrable and accompanied by pseudo-sympathetic bill collectors. How do other patients with life-threatening illnesses even begin to handle it? Cancer is seriously expensive, and no insurance company covers all of it. I met a lymphoma survivor whose wife left him after he sold the house to pay for his transplant. Now he's clinically depressed, too. But at least he's not uninsured or bankrupt. The majority of personal bankruptcies in the United States come from medical expenses, not sloth. In its hideous 2005 bankruptcy "reform," Congress sided with credit-card companies and kicked cancer survivors when they were down.

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End of quotes.

It is the last sentence that got me thinking about reversing that rule. Starting with Reagan and continuing with the Bushes, the Republicans set a goal to reverse as much of the New Deal and the Great Society that they could. Well, now, and more so if we increase our majority in the Senate, we need to reverse that "bankruptcy reform law."

Forgot the URL

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17888476/site/newsweek/

[question everything]

1. Self kick, in case it got lost in the Imus

crowd.

[bling bling]

2. My husbands mom was diagnosed with breast cancer today.

It's funny, I keep seeing/noticing things that have to do with cancer today all of a sudden.

All my magazine subscriptions have been just piling up on my bookshelf. I didn't even realize that last weeks issue dealt with cancer. I think I'll go root through the pile for it and go read it in bed.

Thanks for posting this...