Call them cancer survivor-thrivers, local people who’ve beaten the odds and gone on to inspire others—from a man diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma who now competes in triathlons, to a TV reporter whose battle with lung cancer has made her an outspoken advocate of research into the disease.
They represent a growing trend: Fewer Americans diagnosed with cancer are dying from it. U.S. death rates for all cancers combined fell 1.5 percent per year from 2001 through 2010, according to the latest “Annual Report to the Nation,” a collaboration of the American Cancer Society, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Cancer Institute and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries. The biggest declines were in lung, colorectal, female breast and prostate cancer.
If you ask local cancer survivors why they’ve lived to tell their stories, they cite a variety of reasons: first-rate medical care, positive thinking, the support of family and friends. But perhaps
it’s just amazing luck.
Though positive thinking can help improve cancer patients’ quality of life, research into whether it helps them live longer has been inconclusive, says Dr. Jeffrey White, director of the National Cancer Institute’s Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Rockville.
Anecdotally, however, two oncologists at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville say they’ve treated cancer patients who appear to have benefited from alternative, or “complementary,” approaches.
Dr. Manish Agrawal tells of an adult patient with Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare tumor that forms in bone or soft tissue and is more common in children and teens. The chemotherapy used to treat this cancer is “very tough,” Agrawal says, usually requiring that patients be hospitalized for all 12 rounds. But this particular patient was admitted only once. On the advice of his brother, who was in remission from a type of leukemia, the man took ginger to combat nausea from the chemo, Agrawal says, adding, “I was really surprised at how well he tolerated the treatments.”
Increasingly, cancer patients are interested in integrating alternative, or “complementary,” therapies into their treatment plans, say Agrawal and his partner, Dr. Paul Thambi.
Shady Grove Adventist’s new Aquilino Cancer Center, Montgomery County’s first freestanding comprehensive cancer center, hopes eventually to bring in a doctor who specializes in integrative oncology, Agrawal says. Already, he says, “there’s yoga, there are nutritionists, there’s a healing garden” for meditation. And, Thambi adds, the center plans to offer cooking classes to help patients and their families learn about foods and spices that might have a beneficial effect.
“This is definitely part of taking care of cancer patients,” Agrawal says.
In 2004, Dr. Arnold Friedman went to the emergency department at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring with a severe headache, and walked out with a diagnosis of glioblastoma, a highly aggressive brain cancer. He was 56 years old, and statistics showed he would be lucky to live to 58.
The emergency room doctor recommended neurosurgeon Greg Rubino, who met Friedman and his wife, Carol, at the hospital within hours of his diagnosis. “Greg, you’ve got to save me. I’m too young to die,” Friedman told Rubino, who now practices in Louisiana. “But I’ve got to be me when I wake up.” If not, Friedman said, “let me go.”
Rubino would have removed the tumor immediately, but Friedman had taken aspirin for his headache, which could have increased his risk of bleeding during surgery. So he and his wife returned to their Potomac home for a few days. Their son and daughter came home from college. “We hugged and we cried,” Friedman recalls. “At that point, we knew it was bad. I’m an oral surgeon, so I know what a glioblastoma is. The odds are terrible.”
According to the American Brain Tumor Association, 70 percent of people diagnosed with a glioblastoma die within two years.
Yet in April, it will have been 10 years since Friedman was diagnosed. During that time, he walked his daughter down the aisle, celebrated the birth of two grandchildren and traveled the world with his wife. Since completing radiation and chemotherapy nearly eight years ago, he has been cancer-free.
But “you’re never over it,” Friedman says. “I still look over my shoulder.” He knows someone who died from a glioblastoma recurrence 20 years after the cancer was first diagnosed. So when Friedman goes in for his 10-year checkup, “I’m going to get into that MRI machine like it was the very first time.” He’ll hold his breath until he gets the films back, throws them up on a light box and sees for himself that there is no evidence of cancer.
Friedman, who had retired from his dental practice before his diagnosis, works out at the gym almost every day and believes that staying fit has helped him stay healthy. He’s probably on to something: A growing body of scientific research suggests that exercise can have a positive impact on cancer survival.
Friedman also has taken it upon himself to act as an ambassador to the newly diagnosed, now that he’s years beyond his frightening brain tumor diagnosis. After all, he and his wife will never forget those bleak first weeks and months.
“We never thought we would laugh again,” Carol Friedman says. “For the first six months, I don’t think I slept. I watched him breathe at night.”
Her husband remembers needing to talk to someone who’d been through a similar experience. “I needed to know that there was someone out there who was living more than six months after this horrible diagnosis,” he says.
So years after his diagnosis, the Friedmans posted their story and contact information on a website for people with brain tumors. “It becomes your responsibility to offer people hope,” Friedman says. A tumor “not only robs you of healthy brain tissue, but takes away your hope.”
He and his wife get calls from newly diagnosed patients around the country. And thanks to a local TV appearance after the late Sen. Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2008, Friedman is still occasionally recognized by strangers. They approach him and his wife when they dine at their son Dennis’ restaurants, Newton’s Table in Bethesda and Newton’s
Noodles in downtown Washington, D.C.
“The thing that I like to tell people is: It’s about hope,” Friedman says. “If you have hope, you’ll find the strength to go on and fight.”
