I keep hoping

I just read this book, THE ANATOMY OF HOPE, by Jerome Groopman, for the second time. It's a subject dear to me. Eventually I learned that my original prognosis was measured in months -- five and a half years ago. So why am I alive? There are many factors. Good medicine for sure, the primary reason. I was lucky in treatment, both in having an oncologist who knew what was most likely to work and in the fact that his choice was spot on and proved to be even more effective than he imagined.

But I also believe there are other factors that aren't as measurable. I found treatment - every month for two years - from another physician who had made visualization one of his specialties. Each session we worked together to strengthen my immune system using the images that appeared from some deep place within my very soul. And that gave me hope. Hope, we now know, changes body chemistry. Some researchers believe that these changes give the immune system a better chance to fight disease. Sometimes this is the tipping point, just enough change that good things begin to happen.

This book is important to me for two reasons. I want to find ways to maintain hope within myself so that I can continue to survive this Stage 4 cancer that wasn't supposed to be surviveable. And I want to remind myself that each of us can offer hope -- true hope, not just platitudes -- to those we encounter who are also suffering.