Lerner discusses options available to cancer patients
By BRIGID SWEENEY
News Writer
When Michael Lerner's father was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in the late 1970s, he began his research into alternative cancer therapies.
More than 20 years later, he is the president and founder of Commonweal, a health and environmental research institute in Bolinas, Calif., as well as the author of "Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Approaches to Cancer."
During a presentation of the same title Thursday evening in McKenna Hall, Lerner outlined the five areas of choice available to cancer patients, including healing, conventional therapy, complementary therapy, pain and suffering and death and dying.
Lerner focused heavily on the healing aspect of the cancer experience, relating the experience he has gained from leading weeklong Cancer Help Programs composed of meditation, massage, poetry and other mind-body techniques.
"While curing essentially seeks to offer treatment after which you will live as long as you would have if you had never had the illness, healing comes from within and encompasses the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects," he said. "Healing takes place in both living and dying."
Healing, Lerner said, consists of imagery, creativity and meaning, which can combine to create a transformational experience for cancer patients.
Imagery, often stereotyped among seriously ill as picturing healthy cells gobbling up cancer cells, really covers a much broader scope, according to Lerner.
"Imagery is the language of the unconscious," he said. "It seeks to communicate with us only if we give it space to."
At his Cancer Help Programs, patients participate in yoga, meditation and massage in order to step away from hectic everyday life and the stress of fighting serious diseases.
"We have people who have been battling with cancer for years — from treatment to treatment, always in a hurry — and we bring them to a nourishing, quiet place," Lerner said. "Things come bubbling up, and we give them different ways to express those things — fear, concern, sadness, regret. It really has incredible impact."
Similarly, Lerner's patients get in touch with their creative side through such activities as art therapy and evening poetry writing.
"As we grow up, we are separated from our creativity," he said. "To reconnect an adult in America with creativity is powerful. Creative power is healing."
Finding meaning constitutes the final aspect of healing, Lerner said.
He noted that patients with strong religious, spiritual or other meaningful belief systems are able to carry their disease with serenity rarely found in those without a sense of meaning.
Lerner went on to discuss conventional and complementary approaches to treating cancer.
"Conventional therapy is the logical starting point as it provides the only proven cure," he said. "However, many people view modern medicine as a monolith. How can you argue with a doctor, when it is actually incredibly pluralistic?"
He emphasized the aggressive nature of cancer treatment in the U.S., noting the cultural differences in treatments from country to country and encouraged patients to find doctors in tune with their unique and intuitive preferences.
"Every patient has their own style of risk," Lerner said. "If they can find a treatment team that accommodates their style of risk, from conservative to aggressive, the patients' intuitions can be brought into the heart of mainstream medicine without compromising the treatment or the patients' ideas."
On the issue of complementary therapy, Lerner was quick to point out that he has seen no clear-cut cure for cancer among unconventional approaches.
However, he said that "intuitively, the best oncologists are moving towards integration of conventional and complementary cancer treatments."
Especially significant in complementary treatment are what he termed the "vital quartet," consisting of spiritual, psychological, nutritional and physical healing. These "intrinsically health-promoting" aspects lead to better quality of life and better functional status, which in turn are predictors of enhanced survival.
"It isn't rocket science to understand that people begin to feel better when they are spiritually and psychologically healthy, eating a good vegetarian diet and physically active," Lerner said. "We can view complementary treatment as `mental hygiene' — in the future, lack of such treatment may be seen as just as primitive as lack of physical hygiene during surgery."
Moving on to discuss the patient choice areas of pain, suffering and death, Lerner emphasized that these aspects of cancer, so often considered negative, need not be viewed in such a dismal light.
While noting that many patients do not receive adequate pharmacological pain control and mentioning acupuncture and other unconventional pain treatments, Lerner also focused on the yoga ideal of "acceptance of pain as an aid to purification."
"If you run from pain it pursues you," he said. "If you step towards it, it steps back."
Similarly, he said that many patients refuse to think about death and dying in a desperate attempt to keep a positive attitude. This way of thinking, he claims, is brittle and inhumane.
"Allow yourself to experience and express whatever comes up," he said. "The depths of peace and joy that come from acknowledging feelings is far more truly positive than attempting to keep up a cheerful exterior."
In reference to his Cancer Help Program and complementary treatment in general, Lerner focused on the emotional and psychological benefits above all else.
"We make no claims about whether the Help Program extends life or not," he said. "But it does play a powerful role in expanding life with cancer, and that is no trivial thing."
All News Stories for Friday, February 25, 2000
