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How You Cure Breast Cancer According To Google

If you rely on google:

This is how you cure breast cancer:

Take a handful of kale and add turmeric to it then put it in carrot juice and use it as enema for 15 days then stand in a yoga pose for another five days then massage cannabis oil all over and slip and slide for two days followed by organic ground coffee enemas until you successfully shit out all the cancer. There!

Just stay in downward dog all your life with your head in coconut and avocado oil and have someone sprinkle a light dusting of matcha and green tea over you.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

Date: 19 September 2017

[Commentary by Dheeraj Raina: This was a Facebook post of Uzma’s. Read this to understand my approach to turning some of Uzma’s Facebook posts into blog posts. Upon learning that she had stage 4 cancer, some people would start asking her what she ate or start giving her unsolicited advice about what she should eat. Or should have eaten to prevent cancer. It bothered Uzma to no end. She believed in a holistic approach to health, took yoga classes, saw an integrative medicine doc, but never ever as an alternative to standard treatment. Earlier in the same year, as the following Facebook post, her frustration led her to write one of her popular posts, Diet Crazy: A Rant. This is along the same lines. I bet somebody had given her diet advice the same day.  The last line, though, is illustrative of the power of Uzma’s writing. She can make you conjure up images that make you feel what she is feeling. My addition to the post is in italics.]

 

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 Why I Keep Writing

[Commentary by Dheeraj Raina: This post is published under Uzma’s byline because it’s a previously unpublished post of hers. To read my approach to her unpublished work, read this. I know Uzma wanted to write a longer post about this. She was unable to complete putting many thoughts on paper because of the unpredictable ways in which cancer and its treatment interrupted life repeatedly. She started writing for herself. Over time, she heard how much her writing helped others. After learning that she never could ignore the obligation to write for the sake of others. That’s why she felt a great emotional need to complete her book before death came.]

From my inbox :

“Hi Uzma–

I want to introduce myself as a fellow warrior. I’m a physician and saw your blog thanks to a Facebook group yesterday. I read your Carpe Diem/Crappy Diem post and I have had the exact same musings. I am (age) yrs old and was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer last May. Initially, I was quite ill (liver mets). I have been back to work since September (was still in my initial chemo at the time) and am back in treatment (now near weekly chemo because things got worse in January). I’m feeling pretty great, all things considered. I have a husband and a young child.

Anyway, I wanted to say hello, and to let you know that I’m here working, alongside you and fighting. And actually, I’m fighting back tears after reading your blog posts, which contain many things I have thought about for the past year. Thanks for writing and making me feel not so alone as a doc and mom.”

We became friends. She is currently in hospice and the inevitable is looming and as I grieve I hold on to her words.

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Religious Platitudes For Cancer And Other Serious Illness

[Commentary by Dheeraj Raina: This was a Facebook post of Uzma’s. Read this to understand my approach to turning some of Uzma’s Facebook posts into blog posts.  I have edited this post’s formatting. Words I have added are in italics. Enjoy!]

* * *

This is what I hear over and over again.

I believe in prayers and miracles but these thoughts seem to have a pattern and classic content.

I hope for remission, I pray for recovery. But people do get better and some don’t.

Muslim platitudes for Illness:

1. When first sick

May Allah heal you, I will pray for you.

2. Illness prolonged

It’s not an illness , it’s a test. I will pray for you.

3. Still sick

Duas (prayers) change things. Keep praying.

4. Still quite sick

Shifa (healing) is in hands of Allah, keep asking.here are these things you should recite every day.

5.Still sick and worse.

Miracles happen all the time. I am praying for a miracle. Keep reciting what I sent you.

6. Patient suddenly better for one day

I told you never give up Hope , see how things change when you pray.

7. After 24 hours – Still sick, worse and may be terminal.

Death is inevitable. Whoever lives, will taste death.There is time to repent. Stay strong, keep faith .

8. Deathly ill

Now who can really interfere with Allah’s plans. He decides what is best. There is always a reason why prayers aren’t accepted. They wash away sins.

9. Died

We came from Him and shall return to Him. I will pray for the departed soul.

10. Someone else gets sick.

Rinse and repeat.

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“Left Boob Gone Rogue” the book

As I have said often, the only thing certain with cancer is uncertainity. . Last year, I was immersed in it. Different kind of challenges kept popping up , treatment and other wise.

I was being treated with Halaven ( Epirublin) which although kept me stable for 3 months, casued me severe neuropathy. I took a few falls and my balance was ruined. For a period of time I was using a walker and periodically used a wheel chair.

My blood sugars went completely out of sorts and they contributed even more to the lack of balance.

To top it all , I was running unexplained fever.

All of this started early June and did not abate until end of August completely. The Halaven stopped working and it was time to move on to another agent. This time it was Navelbine which I am currently on.

In between all this, the part of my skull that had been operated upon started to hurt. On MRI , they founf three spots in need of radiation. I went through five sessions of high intensity radiation during which chemotherapy was suspended.

Now I am back on chemo but my liver seems unhappy and I get pain from it off and on.

The challenges have been numerous but for now I am working hard to deliver my book “Left Boob Gone Rogue” in your hands this month. So stay tuned.

Also the blog has been update and will be up and running. Please leave in comments what you would like to hear about.

Much love,

Uzma

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You are beautiful!

“You are as beautiful as you feel. It took me a long time to understand this.

Now through Cancer I still feel beautiful even though it has taken a lot in terms of physical beauty or what is considered as such in our culture.

Many times women feel ugly without their hair, eyebrows and lashes. But that is why we have wigs and fake lashes and brows.

They hide because they don’t feel desirable and feel no longer feminine.

Skin takes a hit during chemo, it stains dark sometimes and we may get a grey hue. Hands and feet can darken.

But there are ways to offset all of this.

I keep getting told how beautiful I am and I appreciate it.

But I work at it.

Here is my pic with no make up and no wig.

I am putting it out there because I am no longer afraid of what I look like, what matters is who I am!” Uzma Yunus

No make up no filter

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Time

The life between scans continues.

Another trimester ended and scans are being done tomorrow.

It has been a busy three months full of living, experiences and family time.

Grief has been a companion as time approaches fourth month without my father in this mortal world.

Have been busy drawing and painting which has been therapeutic and healing.

Life remain perched on a house of cards and one bad scan can collapse this outfit but until then to me it seems a castle of hope.

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Is Laughter truly the best medicine?

It was chemo day today. The whole routine which starts with anxiety the night before, mental agony of the week of side effects, lidocaine on the port, a stick , a blood draw and then wait for the results. A time span of starting at other bald women who have gone to different lengths to cover their baldness, of looking at husbands watching You Tube videos to keep themselves entertained, chatty girl friends and some anxious older women. Then finally you get seated in the chemo chair. Now its staring at others who are either getting chemo or will get it. You never know what you get this time, the nosy immigrant grandma who thinks its okay to ask your life story, the pleasant young professional or the weepy lady who is still not recovered from her diagnosis. Its as uncertain as cancer it self.

Among all this chaos and uncertainty, all a patient can rely on is care and comfort from the nursing staff and at the minimum, professionalism and understanding that this is the group of people whose lives are on hold or permanently wrecked by cancer.
This is a group of people who are trying to stay afloat in an unpredictable world filled with worries and fear. Empathy is desperately needed and emotional uplifting is very helpful.

Most patients after their pre-medications are dozing in and out of sleep. Some just want to close their eyes and some make small talk with others. Over all the set up is deserving of peace and quiet with an underpinning of hope and comfort.

I was sitting in my sub room with two other women as Halaven was dripping into my blood as I heard a loud piercing laughter. I noticed it to be one of the oncology nurses sitting barely three feet away at the laughing hysterically at the nursing station. It wasn’t just one loud laugh but a whole three minute laughter fest at a volume that would have pierced through a closed door.

I wondered about how other patients related to this lack of professionalism, since as a physician-patient it made my blood boil. How can such a thing occur in a patient care area? If I were the attending and had walked in at that moment, nothing short of a written complaint would have satisfied me.

I have great respect for nursing in general and especially oncology nurses who do a very difficult job. However certain lines must never be crossed and one for sure is unexplained loud laughter in patient care areas. Break rooms are perfect for staff to go and lighten the load that comes with their emotionally draining jobs.

Today for me, and I suspect for some other fifteen patients in that area, laughter wasn’t the best medicine but a rather toxic display of lack of empathy for all those who were receiving treatment.

Have you encountered unprofessional behavior from someone your oncology team? and if so, how did you feel and react?

 

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Some more

Instead of laying with cold machines

All day

I wish I were home with my little girl and keeping her warm on her sick day

I wish this day were my own

Fully mine

But Cancer grabs these hours

That I am trying to gather

To put together the best I can

To make it a life, nurturing and full

A mom with cancer

A Metastatic wife

An unemployed doctor

A writer with lament

Cobble up the identities

In a string

Looking for a little hope

In radiographic scans

Every ninety days

Stop and go

Limping along

Asking gods to grant me

Some more

A little more

To us

A mom with cancer

A Metastatic wife…