Mirit the dietician confirmed Liora’s claim to nutritionist bilbul (confusion). The rule of thumb for a healthy diet seems to be to eat as many non-processed foods as possible (or as few processed foods that is feasible), and to reduce quantities of dairy and sugar-laden products. Tuna should hail from the ocean where there is less mercury begriming the waters. As glucose in fruit is natural and takes longer to be absorbed, I should continue to eat about three fruits a day. To all my questions, such as the hormonal and antibiotic content of cattle feed, she gave the equivalent of a verbal shrug; research into what we consume is so dynamic it’s beyond a mere dietician to know more than a mere cancer patient. I cannot in any way fault her attitude - she could only dispense information that has been proven today in the knowledge that it might be disproven tomorrow.
I won’t be making many changes to my diet - for years I’ve followed what could be deemed an essentially healthy regime with occasional forays into the high-fat cheese and cake departments. Before cancer, I frequently mentally patted myself on the back for my adherence to good eating habits, regarding it an adequate talisman against such horrendous diseases as, well, cancer. In fact, a few weeks before my diagnoses, there was a report on how eschewing beef can reduce the risk of cancer. I haven’t eaten beef for years - I originally stopped eating it because of Mad Cow’s disease, but once the crisis was over, I was never even tempted to start eating it again. I’ve also considered giving up chicken considering what is probably put into their feed to say nothing of the unsavory way chickens are bred. I was amazed, therefore, when Mirit said I should be eating red meat, beef, three times a week, in order to maintain B12, folic acid and iron levels. I’ll have a blood test to determine if I have any deficiencies and then make a decision.
For years I have eaten several almonds daily based on something I read over 30 years ago. Edward Cayce, aka the Sleeping Prophet, was an illiterate man with no medical training whatsover, who claimed that while in a deep sleep, his psyche travelled around the body of what he referred to as an entity and located whatever was awry in that body. He would then prescribe some herbal remedy, from which, according to the book, the entity recovered. Cayce claimed that three almonds a day would protect against cancer.
Incidentally, Cayce also claimed that our planet would not end with a big bang of a nuclear explosion but would whimper to an end through ever-increasing occurrences of drought, famine, pestilence, floods, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, all due to increased pollution. And that was in the 1940s.
Hmm! He was wrong about the almonds!
I showed Mirit a list of suggested natural remedies from the internet. This particular article, although well written and seemingly authentic had no attribution, nor was there any official endorsement from a research or medical facility. Articles such as these cause me no small amount of turmoil because they induce guilty feelings. If imbibing, smearing or swallowing one or many of these items would ensure my continued survival, then I am clearly not acting in my best interests by ignoring the advice. On the other hand, these very same items, taken in incorrect, or even recommended, proportions or in conjunction with other preparations, could in fact be injurious to health. Medicine Man Tea and Blue Green Algae will have to wait until I’ve exhausted other, recognized, options.
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What Do You Have To Do To Get A Psychologist Around Here?
The day took on a Pythonesque twist. The week before, I’d asked Liora the social worker to arrange for me to consult a dietician and a psychologist. Mirit had phoned a few days later but as no psychologist had yet contacted me, I called Liora to remind her. She gave me a phone number she said I could call to make an appointment. As soon as I’d taken my leave of Mirit, I called the number but I got an answering machine inviting me to leave a message for one of three doctors.
As I was already in the hospital, I thought it would be a good idea to go along to the department and try to make an appointment directly with a secretary or nurse. No-one in Reception knew where the Psychology department was so Nachum and I went over to Information.
The clerk behind the window didn’t know where the Psychology department was either, and, noting my meaningful glance at the sign above her head proclaiming Information in Hebrew, English and Arabic, protested that she didn’t know everything that happened in the hospital. She went to ask the ‘girls’ but they didn’t know where the Psychology department was either and, clearly feeling that she had made a supreme effort, indicated that my query had been dealt with to the maximum of her ability and would I now just go away.
The deputy manager of the Reception department came out of her office to see what the altercation was about and invited us into her office. She tried to help by calling a few numbers, the upshot of which had us running back to Oncology to look for Room 31 where we would find Shlomit, a social worker who apparently was responsible for psychology appointments. Room 31 turned out to be a room containing a doctor and a patient who appeared justifiably disgruntled at being interrupted so we followed the signposts to Social Workers and found Shlomit’s office (Room 30) just as Hannah emerged from it. We told her that we were trying to locate the Psychology department and that Anat in Reception had sent us to Shlomit. She went off to find out some more details and a few minutes later, a dismayed Liora appeared in front of us, puzzled as why I would want to consult Shlomit about something she and I had discussed at length only a week earlier.
It seems there are only three psychologists attached to the Oncology department on a part time basis and they are usually not available to answer a phone. At Liora’s suggestion, I phoned again and left a message, which I probably should have done in the first place. But if no-one had contacted me after Liora passed on my request a week ago, how will leaving a message now make a difference?
One can go nuts trying to get an appointment with a psychologist around here.
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Radiotherapy Planning
At 3.00, I returned to Rambam for radiotherapy planning. When I entered the room, a technician pointed a digital camera at me and took a picture of me. It is something I am wont to do in social situations but I felt that under these circumstances, a friendly explanation would have been in order.
I was told to remove my top and bra - behind the curtain naturally - and then lie down on the table, arms raised and resting in the grooves of the bright red blocks. When I queried what was about to unfold I was told that they were going to ‘apply the simulation’, referring to the simulation I had undergone on June 20. I was under the impression that this would take only a few minutes and, thinking they were done, started to get down from the table. This was clearly a mistake as the two technicians told me to lie back, keep still and breathe deeply - this was going to take 20 minutes.
The room grew dark. I was lying under a sort of giant, 2-pronged propeller with a massive circular platter above me and a square one to my right. The circular platter appeared to move towards me and hovered at about half a meter above me. It whirred a few times as the technicians shouted out numbers at each other. Inexplicably, the table I was lying on occasionally shuddered. Lying as I was, stretched out with arms above my head staring at the ceiling, I could make out very little in my peripheral vision. At some point, the circular platter revolved to the left and the square platter appeared in my line of vision on the right. Suddenly, one of the technicians applied something to my breast and I raised my head, only to quickly lower it when she shouted at me. She repeated her action and the second technician laid something that felt like a cord on my body. I had a sensation of being captive to a bunch of lunatic aliens. I was aware only of bobbing heads somewhere in the periphery of my vision as, mystifyingly, the technicians, appeared to be going about their tasks on or about my body while seated on very low chairs.
About 15 minutes into this activity, one of the technicians told me that Dr. Bernstein (the radio therapist) was going to mark a place on the scar on my breast and in a voice reminiscent of a drum roll, announced that Dr. Bernstein had entered the room. Totally misunderstanding, I lowered my arms and began to sit up. Again I was told - brusquely - to lie down and Dr. Bernstein, who was barely visible in my peripheral vision, made a mark on my scar, also seemingly from a sitting position.
By this time, even my right arm, which, unlike my left one, had not undergone an operation in the recent past, was feeling the strain of being in a constantly raised position. The circular and square platters continued to whir into action interchangeably and I was reaching the point where I’d had enough.
The whirring stopped, the lights went on and I discovered that the table on which I lay was raised a few meters from the floor, which explains why I’d only been able to make out the tops of heads from my prone position. Well, here was a lesson is perception - I had been sure that the circular platter had moved towards me when in fact, the table, had moved towards the platter. How lucky I had been that in my enthusiasm in greeting Dr. Bernstein I hadn’t leaped from the table to what would have been the floor, very far below.
This unpleasant session ended when, after lowering the table (!), I berated the technician for not informing me what they were doing while they were doing it. She asked if I meant that they should have pointed out that... and then she sarcastically reeled off a litany of activities they had performed on or about my body. I waited patiently for her to finish and said, ‘Yes, the answer is yes.’
Generally speaking, the higher up the scale the practitioner, the more the patient is treated with courtesy and given some explanation of what, why and how something is being done to them. Perhaps it is merely a matter of training in which case, radiation technicians need to be better taught to understand that the bodies lying on their tables belong to human beings with curiosity and fears, all of which could be allayed if they were to relate in a friendly manner.
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