Spokesblogging

Just when I was starting my Ph.D. work at Vanderbilt, my best friend was diagnosed with breast cancer. Susan wasa fellow student simultaneously pursuing her late-career doctorate, and I was originally drawn to her because of her sense of humor, upbeat spirit and inquisitive mind.

As it turns out, these were the very qualities that transformed her journey through life-threatening illness into a grand, if unwelcome, adventure. But additionally, Susan's attitude not only taught me something about illness, but about living.

While breast cancer is no laughing matter, Susan's sense of humor served her well. For instance, upon hearing that she would be having a mastectomy, she began doing sketches of bionic breast replacements, with inserts for holding cell phones and bus tokens. She also refused to be spooked by the notion of chemotherapy. "Taking aspirin is chemotherapy, too, for heaven's sake. It's just a matter of degree."

In terms of spirit, she taught me to celebrate the present moment on our many walks together. I vividly recall standing at the base of a tree with low-hanging edible flowers, stretching our necks like giraffes to suck the nectar. We laughed, we cried and allowed her diagnosis to enrich our friendship and lives.

But where Susan really distinguished herself was in her attitude about seeking and receiving information related to her illness, open to whatever she might find out. While others put off their mammograms, take their doctor's word without doing independent research or quake in their boots while awaiting test results, Susan welcomed information as if it were her greatest ally.

"Whatever it is already exists. The information doesn't give us the issue — it gives us power," she used to say. "When you know what you're really dealing with, you can make better decisions. Don't ever be afraid of more knowledge!"

I thought of Susan's vibrant attitude about information the other day, after being introduced to one of Vibrant Nation's marketing supporters, Genomic Health.  In one example shared by Genomic Health, one patient, Susan, was told by her doctor that she didn't need chemo.,  After her best friend Maureen gold her about genomic testing, she asked the doctor if she was eligible for the test. She was, and her results showed that she had a high likelihood of her cancer returning and would, indeed, benefit from having chemo.

To help get the word out, trusting that there are many others who share Susan's healthy attitude about information as power, Genomic Health has launched the "Pass it On" campaign, encouraging women to tell other women about the existence of this test, Oncotype DX, of which this blog is a part.

Back to Susan. Around the same time Susan was diagnosed, when it came time for me to take some "scary" medical tests of my own, she shared another story with me. This one was about the Native American Indian Ishi. Ishi was the last member of his tribe, who through starvation and illness had been decimated by the encroachment of modern civilization. As the great anthropologist Alfred Kroeber tells it, he was called to Oroville, California at the turn of the century to bring Ishi by train to the University of California, where he was to take up residence in the anthropology museum.

Ishi knew about the train's existence, but his tribe thought it was a great, fire-breathing demon. When the train roared into the station, Ishi hid behind a cottonwood tree. But when Kroeber motioned to him, Ishi followed him on board.

Years later, once Kroeber knew Ishi's language, he asked him why, if he thought of the train as something so terrible, he didn't skip a beat getting on the train.

"Because," replied Ishi, "I have learned in my life to be more curious than afraid."

Thanks Ishi, Susan and Genomic Health, for reminding us that information is not the problem — it's the empowerment.


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From Humana, www.HumanaRealForMe.com during open enrollment.

Can You Trust Your Gut:  Sometimes 

            The situation was critical.   I had a big medical decision to make and I was confused.  Then suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, I knew just what to do.  But could I trust my gut?

            I went to a friend to ask her advice.

            “Tell me everything,” she said.

            I told the story from the beginning—about what the doctor said, how I’d done independent research, how I’d made lists and taken long walks in the woods thinking things through and how when the answer came to me, I’d actually felt goose bumps rise on my arms.

            “Ah,” she said, taking it all in thoughtfully.  “Goose bumps are a good sign.”

            To make a long story short, paying heed to my gut in this particular circumstance was the right choice for me.  But I haven’t always been so fortunate.  There are those times when I tune into my feelings, thinking I’m really onto something, only to discover later that I what I’ve actually tapped into is something far more mundane than divine inspiration.  For example, fear, wishful thinking, or even indigestion.

            Happily, my doctoral studies gave me some pointers.  Specifically, I was led to the work of scientist Roland Fischer who described the relationship between rational and intuitive processing in the right and left hemispheres of our brains resulting in what neurological researchers refer to as “ergotropic arousal.”  In other words, it turns out that what often seems to be breakthrough realizations that drop in on us out of the blue are, in truth, the final stage of rational decision-making processes that are going on beneath the surface of our conscious thoughts over time.

            In the story I told earlier, for instance, my friend would have been better advised to have cited the amount of time I’d spent researching my choices than the goose bumps on my arms.  As neurologists view it, breakthroughs occur when a critical mass of information has been taken in and digested, consciously and unconsciously.  Until the breakthrough occurs, it may look like nothing is going on—then Eureka!  With one last megabit of input, there is a massive and organic reconfiguring of your cognitive system into a new hierarchy of understanding.   You not only know what to do, you know that you know what to do.

            The difference between gut feel that is worth heeding versus making a decision based on fear or wishful thinking is this.  Gut-feel you can trust is based on having processed a critical mass of information.  On the other hand, fear-based feelings and wishful thinking suffer from a lack of data and/or insufficient or inadequate processing.  For instance, if you want to test a particular decision to see if it’s truly gut-feel worth heeding, or rather a fear-based half-truth, ask yourself:  “Am I dwelling only on negative factors and outcomes?”  On the flipside, if you are guilty of wishful thinking, it is possible that you are dwelling only on the positive possibilities.  In either case, a half-truth is only half the truth.  Your data and processing are insufficient. 

If you recognize that this is the case, whether or not you managed to give yourself goose bumps, raise the hairs on the back of your neck, or have gone through several packages of Tums, go back to the drawing board and allow both your rational and unconscious processes more time to build towards a level of discernment you can trust.   When you know you know:  that’s the sign you’re truly waiting for.