<p>Doctors are still not trained in nutrition, I guess. This was true when I was in nursing school at Cornell in the mid-70’s and they were training us in nutrition and saying the doctors next door weren’t being trained. And hospital food is often horrible. I can’t think of any good reason for this.</p>
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<p>Most rabbis I know are on their emails constantly. If you were to let him/her know how helpful it was, in just 5 words, it will surprise and motivate him. Lots of times the clergy have no idea they’re getting through, so they do these visits but don’t know if it’s helping any. They make rounds but rarely get feedback (other than negative when they miss someone at bedside !) If you found it productive to be in communication with a clergy, an email saying just that, and that you’re hopeful to have repeat visitation, is perfectly appropriate. Clergy more often than not get criticized on their hospital visitations; you’ll surprise him if you say it was helpful!</p>
<p>LTS-
Did you know that the National Society of Healthcare Foodservice Management’s culinary competition in Florida last month featured such exotic- sounding entrees as Mojito Chicken Cubanos and Porcini-Powder Dusted Chicken Breast? Here are several articles on the new Iron Chef cookoff of the hospital chefs:
<a href=“http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20061004/ai_n16759789[/url]”>http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20061004/ai_n16759789</a>
<a href=“http://onlineathens.com/stories/092507/living_20070925001.shtml[/url]”>http://onlineathens.com/stories/092507/living_20070925001.shtml</a>
<a href=“North County”>North County;
<a href=“http://www.explorernews.com/article/show/19661[/url]”>http://www.explorernews.com/article/show/19661</a>
Much better reading than the depressing medical journals you are reading! Maybe, if attitude and nutrition are such a big part of your recovery, you should take this hosptial food cook-off into consideration in your final decision re: treatment facilities. Any of the winners on your list (or do they deliver? 
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<p>LTS:</p>
<p>While I was reading your post mentioning nutrition earlier and had ABC News on at the same time, the news coincidentally had a segment on cancer and how a nutritionist is now often a core component along with the oncologist, surgeon, etc. I got curious so checked the website of the local UCSD Med Center cancer center and noticed they have a nutrition plan specific to cancer. I imagine other centers must as well.</p>
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<p><a href=“http://health.ucsd.edu/cancer/prevention/healthyeating/[/url]”>http://health.ucsd.edu/cancer/prevention/healthyeating/</a></p>
<p>“We believe that food nourishes the body, nurtures the spirit”</p>
<p>Interesting to read this philosophy on a thread that’s touched on the support of a rabbi…although I have never kept kosher at all, one of the theological ideas behind the kosher laws is that following a careful, sacred system of rules in preparing food imbues it with holiness, so that it provides spiritual as well as physical nourishment.</p>
<p>I’ll tell you one thing I learned at my Jewish grandmothers’ knees: I am rock-solid serious about the healing powers of chicken soup. I’m talking about the genuine article: a whole, organic, free-range bird in a big pot with carrots, onions, celery, parsnips, a bay leaf, sea salt. Let it simmer away for a few hours and strain off the golden nectar. Perhaps when a friend asks what he can do to help, you can hand him a recipe. A hot mug of this broth will go down easy when nothing else will. After that, you may have a surprising appetite for the meat and vegetables. I’ve seen this panacea cure everything from food poisoning to a broken heart. Maybe it’s time to add cancer to the list.</p>
<p><a href=“A Nonprofit Hospital in Los Angeles | Cedars-Sinai”>A Nonprofit Hospital in Los Angeles | Cedars-Sinai;
<p>From my favorite health website, RealAge.com.</p>
<p>LTS - just found this thread…love, hugs, prayers, and thanks that you have good friends, family and support…will be sending what I can in good karma your way…mm</p>
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<p>LTS, you continue to be inspiring and just plain amazing - I am SO impressed. Granted, you are not nearly an average person, but still… Even reading through 17000 pubmed abstracts alone blows up my mind. Thank you for posting updates so often this support thread is a two-way street, you have no idea how much we gain from it.</p>
<p>Yes, the tears let all the poisons out. I like that imagery. That’s just wonderful. I’m so glad it helped.</p>
<p>I’m also flummoxed by the hospital nutrition angle. When my husband was doing in patient chemo he would get a menu everyday, and no where on the menu was vegetables. He asked, he tried to write them in. Nope, no vegetables. What was with that? So we finally asked. It seems that fresh vegetables can have bacteria on them. (Remember the e-coli scares…) Some chemo patients are nutrapenic (I’m sure I’m misspelling that…) which means their immune system can no longer fight off anything so a food borne bacteria could kill them. To help with this they need to cook anything within an inch of it’s life, so your fresh veggies turn to mush, and lose all their nutritional value anyway. So for the cancer patients, they just stay away from this. They also found chemo patients are often low on pottasium and sodium, so the extra salt is good for them, and they often are losing too much weight, so packing fats in helps. However, all this holds true for your generic cancer patient, not for you in particular. Our outpatient cancer center allows you to bring in food, you might check if that is possible. Then you could bring in cut up veggies and dip, or your own tea bags, or whatever else would make you feel good and help you get better.</p>
<p>You’ve got the whole of CC behind you…never lose hope!</p>
<p>The weath of information available in this community never ceases to astound me. I have nothing of substance to say, so I am not posting often, but I am here thinking of you and pulling for you, and once in awhile, pulling from you as well - you are very inspiring. Thanks for the updates.</p>
<p>Hanna, thank you for the information on the theological underpinnings of kosher diets. I had the vague idea that kosher rules had their basis in food safety issues from ancient times, and were kept today by tradition. I love the idea of imbuing food with holiness. A few years ago, I had a nanny from Guatemala who was an incredible cook. She threw things together and they were wonderful. Chicken soup was a specialty of hers, and I often wondered why her chicken soup, made from the same ingredients as mine, was so much better. She would say that she always added a little love to everything she made. Maybe mine would be better if I didn’t think of cooking as a burdensome chore?</p>
<p>LTS, it is awful that you were presented with that disgusting breakfast. What would be easier for them to do than oatmeal? </p>
<p>Nutritional information is very difficult to sort out, but it seems clear that transfats and high-fructose corn syrup should be avoided at all costs by everyone. And foods like tea, sweet potatoes, blueberries, pomegranate juice, tomatoes, broccoli, etc., have disease-fighting properties. </p>
<p>Another thought on Hanna’s chicken broth. I’m sure I read years ago that doctors at a major hospital were using a certain kind of collagen extracted from chicken bones against autoimmune diseases.</p>
<p>Just one thing to add to that great chicken soup recipe: Parsley, and lots of it! A handful of springs to cook with the broth, then a generous dusting of fresh chopped parsley in the bowl.</p>
<p>There are many different recipes for chicken soup. If you want to vary, you could try chicken pho (a Vietnamese soup). There are also Chinese soups that feature chicken. Japanese udon soups are also great.</p>
<p>Pho. Pronounced Fuh.</p>
<p>Perhaps one of the most delicious foods known to mankind. Breakfast in Vietnam.</p>
<p>Seattle now has nearly as many Pho joints as Teriyaki–and that’s alot. Best thing for a head cold.</p>
<p>My accupuncturist believes that walnuts are the be all food. He also says that he tries to eat vegetable products grown in Japanese soil. He says that the Japanese are so much healthier than the rest of the world–even though their diet is somewhat similar to the Chinese and Korean diet. He believes they have some special nutrient in the soil.</p>
<p>In addition to Hanna’s chicken soup ingredients, I add lots of fresh dill, whole peppercorns, some beef soup bones, and some flanken (boneless beef ribs). I guess it’s not technically chicken soup, but there’s nothing like it. Curative of all ills!</p>
<p>So this was Thursday. Am wondering and hoping it was a better day or at least had a good moment or three.</p>
<p>LTS, your mind moves so fast that I almost hesitate to bring up something that was troubling to you a few days ago, in case you’re beyond it. Still, it stuck with me that you felt upset that your cancer involved the lungs. You never smoked. You also said lung cancer doesn’t have a campaign with a pink ribbon like breast cancer. </p>
<p>So I was just thinking: it doesn’t matter which organ of the body it is in terms of sympathy and emotional support. Every organ is part of a symbiosis of one body. If any part of your body is in trouble, how could ANYONE possibly care or judge which organ it is? Who cares the difference if it’s lung, breast, cervix, prostate…it’s all part of the person as a whole, and that personhood inspires the love and care from yourself and others to get well again. </p>
<p>I tried to think of an analogy and the best I could summon was that even though breast cancer in men is below l0 percent of all cases, do you or I feel any less sympathy for a man who gets breast cancer than a woman? Surely not. He’s no better or worse off if he’s in that lower l0 percent category, no less worthy of attention and support. </p>
<p>Perhaps what you meant is research money, applied among the various organs. But then wouldn’t lungs be a beneficiary since it IS so prevalent among men and women? </p>
<p>The frustrating thing is, you never smoked. That leads one to the thoughts about " Why bad things happen to good people." Not that smokers are bad people, but I feel like you: since you did take the most important precaution against lung cancer, it gets us back to this: what;s happening to you is NOT fair. But did you ever really look at disease as punishment for anyone’s prior wrongdoing? Probably not; you’re a very modern person. So your current engaged struggle with cancer is not a punishment, but it must be awfully awfully hard to do. </p>
<p>With the help of others, especially your medical team and loving daughter, and the caring thoughts of friends and strangers, I just want to say again what you already know: you’re not alone. The more others can share the burden, the less burden for you. </p>
<p>Regarding other peoples’ PM’s piling up, remember that in any large community there’s NO expectation of replying to every card or phone call. It would be a gift to everyone if you’d just let yourself take in the messages and not worry we’re adding to your workload. I can’t imagine anyone expects an individual reply, so I wish you could at least let that one expectation go out the window. </p>
<p>And how truly kind of you that you mentioned others on CC also working towards their own health and not just you. CountingDown is one; aren’t there others… this only shows your good community spirit to have mentioned them too. </p>
<p>Everyone’s best wishes go to all who struggle forward today.</p>
<p>paying3tuitions, thanks for that and for bringing some of the issue back to the surface; it’s worth drilling into because if I make a decision to go transfer my care to Lombardi next week, I’m going to do advocacy work on this in Washington, wherever I can fit it in and however I can be effective. I have already called and talked to the volunteer coordinators at ACC and other orgs that do this work. </p>
<p>Yesterday I learned of someone even younger than me who has also never smoked, vegan, run marathons, excellent health, he has lung cancer too suddenly. And he has small children.</p>
<p>I haven’t yet descended into an “it’s not fair” frame of mind, but, I am angry. Very, very intensely angry. I was just at the beginning of what was supposed to be the final third of my life. The first third was a terrible struggle - lost both parents, had to deal with survival of a different sort. The second third was total sacrifice to raising my daughter, which I consider an honor and a priviledge. But once she graduated, my plans were to literally revel in my work that I love so much, do what I wanted to do, paint, go to college, work out, swim, spend money on a very expensive home remodeling project (the contract arrived the day after I was diagnosed; this was already in progress - now it sits on my desk unsigned because I cannot figure out what to do with it), I even had lots and lots of international travel on my radar screen over the next 20 years. I planned to work for a few months in UAE, then Rome, etc. And I really truly believed I would see my daughter marry, and perhaps have grandchildren. I had just so many happy, wonderful, interesting plans; things I had been putting off until after my daughter graduated from college. </p>
<p>And now the doctors come and say that by the numbers I will not have this these things. The problem (for me) with support groups is that the other participants have cancers where there are actual “cure” rates and the survival percentages at five and 10 years are like 50% or so. When a support group meeting ends, they can go home and take some comfort in that there are real, genuine, live survivors of their cancers who are five, ten and even 15 or 20 years out and many of these people they can actually meet face to face. </p>
<p>By comparison my numbers are 1% - 6% AND fully 95% of those persons who get to a remission position of any sort have recurrances that are highly resistant to any more treatment, AND nothing new is being developed because 90% of the people who get this particular cancer smoke cigarettes. Even some of the newer trials that are coming out - the experimental drugs are for women only who have never smoked. Forget about men period, and forget about everyone else, even if perhaps they quit smoking years and years ago. Even though lung cancer kills more Americans than any of the other major cancers combined, it STILL doesn’t get the funding etc. that the other cancers get combined, because of the social stigma and absence of political will.</p>
<p>No support group offers a lung cancer survivor to look to as a role model and even the doctors don’t “know personally” of any long term survivors. There are far too few of them. That’s my reality. </p>
<p>So I am very, very, horribly angry. The rabbi is helping with this a LOT, thankfully. As recently as just 27 days ago I was so very enthusiastically looking forward to all of the wonderful, happy things I was going to do in what I viewed was the final third of my life, which in my mind had a 25 to 30 year horizon at least. It was going to be such a wonderful time, with college expenses and everything, child rearing responsibilities all behind me. It was going to be time at long last to celebrate, and enjoy. Now it’s not to be, according to the numbers. The radiation onc doctor told me to “live in the moment” but that’s not in my DNA - I’m a person who lives with views of long horizons and plans for the long term, not spontaneous day by day. </p>
<p>So as to the larger issue of cancers in this country, we have to fix this. We have to try to fix and make some correction to the environmental issues that are contributing to what my DEA friend calls a cancer epidemic. This means taking a very serious hard look at what our aspiring politicians are up to, among other things.</p>
<p>The other thing we just have to find some way to do is fix the whole big pharma/health care issue, which is just huge, very tangled up, and will require some of the young men and women that we are sending to college today to fix. We can start the “fix” in this generation but we cannot solve it - it’s going to take the current population of college students, and perhaps even their offspring, to bring about real change. I think that one of the reasons that my cancer and other aggressive malignancies have such terrible prognosises (sp?) is that the chemotherapy to kill the bad cells is so destructive to other areas of the body that it’s difficult to fight off everything that comes next. But chemo, radiation and other drugs are only 20% of the cancer battle - the rest is environmental, psychological, nutritional, etc. (The entire subject matter of “the cancer personality” is fascinating in and of itself.)</p>
<p>As for me, I do feel very much alone. I will never meet face to face a ten year or maybe even five year survivor of my cancer because apparently they do not exist - no one lives that long and/or if they do they do not come to support groups. I cannot even learn the name of one such person, or even hear a survivor story, unlike other cancers in support groups. I absolutely refuse to feel sorry for myself or deteriorate into thinking it’s not fair (Randy Pausch’s situation is 1000 times more unfair if we want to go down that road) but it is very, very lonely and the fight is just simply going to be very, very difficult. But I’m not giving up and I’m not backing down.</p>