Understanding Cancer: An Invaluable Book for Cancer Patients and Their Families

P.J. Kemp was a journalist living in Brigham, Quebec.

In Understanding Cancer Marilyn Dunlop discusses every aspect of the disease, from personal aspects (including nutrition, sexuality, pain control, self-help programmes, and palliative care) to the scientific side of it (the nitty-gritty of diagnostic procedures, such as X-rays, CAT scans, NMR, endoscopy, biopsy, and blood and urine tests). Symptoms are looked at briefly, as well as the various treatments — surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, hormonal therapy, etc. The book closes with a rather technical, optimistic look at the future of cancer therapy.

With all this, it’s difficult to know what more one could want.

Well, a more accurate title would have been preferable. With cancer, there is little that can be called true understanding. There is acceptance or rejection, based on what appears to have been successful in past cases. There are various observable phenomena, which Dunlop looks into to some extent, tendencies and probabilities. But if one approaches Understanding Cancer with the idea of finally grasping the mystery that is cancer, one will be disappointed.

Another objection is Dunlop’s rah-rah attitude toward the Cancer Society, which apparently does no wrong, ever. She writes somewhat disparagingly of the “well-oiled publicity machines” of some of the quack nostrum promoters, without noticing that the Cancer Society has a pretty well-oiled machine of its own. And while the Cancer Society may indeed be the best we have at the moment, this is due mainly to its monopolistic nature, rather than because it is truly best of all possibilities.

But perhaps the most infuriating aspect is the way Dunlop downplays both symptoms of disease and side-effects of treatment. It’s not a good idea to promote even more dread for a problem that already has more than its share, but side-stepping the prolonged pain, suffering, and terror of cancer offers no great service either.

Having been personal witness to two incidences of near-fatal bouts with cancer, I found little in Dunlop’s book that addressed the realities of my experience. She mentions nothing of the possibility of prolonged, violent, and rupture-inducing vomiting, lasting up to two weeks, following chemotherapy; there is nothing said about radiation treatments that turn flesh into a livid, par-broiled mess.

Neither are the other little nightmares mentioned, about doctors prescribing enemas and laxatives until bowel cancer is discovered, far too late; or of recalcitrant patients, wanting no further treatments, being rounded up and carted back to hospital against their will. In Dunlop’s scenarios, doctors are respectful and sincere in their concern, patients frightened but still in control of the situation. Cancer and its treatment all too frequently are a horror; we can’t gloss over this or ignore it in reality, and we should not do it in journalism.

And as a passing thought, one wonders about the millions and millions of animals that have been rather grotesquely used in the feverish search for a cancer “cure.” This is not to suggest that animals are more important than man, but that these resources should not so carelessly be sacrificed for the sake of senseless competition between different groups of researchers. This is an aspect Dunlop mentions not at all, but that doesn’t make it any less a part of the total picture of cancer.

In sum, better and more detailed information on the subject of cancer and its therapy can be found in the popular, easily accessible monthly science magazines.