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Editor’s Note

Facing Cancer

Still Looking For The Key

I am involved in a process that is most similar to my experience of giving birth. Whether I live or die, I am in a transition. I want competent professional helpers, who do not lose sight of me as a person. I want to be respected as an intelligent participant in my own process. Time will eventually pass and the results of transition will be evident. Until then, patience and trust are required.

Facing Cancer

Do Doctors Do More Harm Than Good?

It angers me that he can share that ambivalence about the value of treatment with a surgeon and get enraged when I, not only a patient but also a woman, question his recommendation.

Facing The Struggle

Fear

Fear need not be enemy, a means of control and manipulation, but rather an integral part of being human to be experienced and even enjoyed.

Facing The Struggle

(Part Two)

Fear of annihilation, I’ve tripped over you for years and now I see you clear. I had not realized before the grip and subtlety of your tentacles.

Facing The Struggle

(Part One)

I find myself angry and determined. I do want to know why so much money is poured into trying to discover the cause of cancer and so little into experimentation with other forms of treatment which give more responsibility to the patient, and which help the patient to believe in her own ability to mend disease.

Editor’s Note

Cartoon By David Terrenoire

The cartoon in this selection is available as a PDF only. Click here to download.

Temple Sweeper

Eight years ago I decided to become a vegetarian. This decision corresponded roughly with a hazily conceptual political activism and very clearly with an infatuation with a male vegetarian. Since then . . . concern for my diet has moved from the realm of “proof of lifestyle” to a central place in my efforts toward well being.

1977

New Year’s Day. No television, or newspaper, to remind me of the world outside. No news-of-the year in review. I can tell myself better lies than that. Nineteen seventy-seven. Seven years to 1984.