Quick Notice to the PRWR 7900 Class

Hello fellow students!

Please excuse the blog postings from 2009. They are not related to this class but this Blogger account was most the most painless way of getting a blog up for our class. I do not ask for you to read them.

Thanks,
-Brian

Ted Kennedy

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/26/obit.ted.kennedy/index.html

Early this morning, Ted Kennedy died of brain cancer at 77. He had anaplastic astrocytoma; the same type of cancer that I had..

I have not been too good at updating on this blog even though very interesting things are going in on the world right now. Specifically, the health bill. I have not read the entire bill, but the most important thing to me is the checks that would be imposed on health insurance companies that they currently do not have.

I'll do my best to get this blog updated more often.

"Should I take Chemotherapy?"

Recently a friend of mine related to me that her sister had found out she had cancer but refused to take chemotherapy.

Chemo is a very grueling, humiliating, and taxing thing. There are different types of chemo, but all of them have essentially the same purpose: poison the cancer while also, unfortunately, poisoning the "healthy" cells around it.

This makes you feel sick during chemo and make you feel sick while your body is trying to recover from the chemo that you just took. And that cycles for however many months you're supposed to be taking chemo for. By the past couple months of my treatment, I dreaded chemo more than anything else I've ever dreaded in my life. It sucks.

However, while some people may say that chemo (and radiation) are bad for you, that's not the case. Those are the people who can't stand the process and so they justify their unwillingness to take chemo by saying it doesn't work. The survival rate between someone who does not take chemo is,depending on the chemo, either bigger or substantially bigger than someone who does take chemo. That's really just how it is.

Depending on the cancer involved and what chemotherapy is being used, survival rates can increase by 30% to 50%. Don't willingly gamble your life on these odds. (Archie Bleyer, paraphrasing, Cancer in Adolescents and Young Adults)

A Death Precedes a Rebirth

One of the most important things that I have found as a cancer survivor is to remember that stories can often serve as guides to new perspectives. A perspective that I like to take on when struggling through remission is the concept of “death and rebirth” in a person, which is introduced by Mr. Joseph Campbell. Campbell, most famous for his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, signifies the basic structure of a hero’s journey found in essentially every story that we have.

Basically, it begins with a character living in a world of order. The order is disrupted by some act of chaos, such as a murder. The hero must leave that world of chaos in order to find a way to bring order back to his home. But before he can go back home, he must undergo a death and resurrection spiritually. By this, I mean that a part of the hero, whether plagued by some sort of flaw or immaturity, must shed an undesirable part of himself in order to be tempered and become a stronger person.

The Lion King, a film that I’m sure most of us have watched, is an example of this journey. To focus on “death and rebirth,” I want to discuss Simba’s banishment after Mufasa’s death. That world’s order was disrupted (Scar killed Mufasa) and the hero, Simba, had to leave the Pride Lands.

Simba at the time is dealing with immaturity problems. He takes the excuse that he was responsible for his father’s death to never return to the Pride Lands and take up responsibility as king. He wants to just live his life peacefully and not fulfill his role. It isn’t until Nala and the ghost of Mufasa speak to Simba about his responsibilities that Simba sheds, or “kills,” his immaturity and is “reborn” as a responsible king.

Exactly four years ago, I was struck with cancer on Independence Day. That date signifies a death and rebirth. Americans killed their statuses as British citizens and were reborn as Americans. Similarly, I had to undergo a death through surgery and be reborn as the man I turned out to be as a result of my cancer.

The same journey can be found within all cancer patients. We are thrown into chaos cancer striking us and, in order to find peace, we must find a bliss for us to follow. Though the journey may appear bleak at times, we can all struggle through a heroic journey and find a new perspective of life. We all must search inside ourselves for a way to shed and kill the negative aspects of cancer from our lives and be reborn as strong survivors.

Stay strong.