The Myth of Normal 34

Chapter 2 Living in an Immaterial World: Emotions, Health, and the Body-Mind Unity Unless we can measure something, science won’t concede it exists, which is why science refuses to deal with such “nonthings” as the emotions, the mind, the soul, or the spirit. —Candace Pert, Ph.D., Molecules of Emotion “I was thirty-six when they told me it was a very early breast cancer,” said Caroline, a resident of the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. That diagnosis occurred more than three decades ago, in 1988. The tumor was treated with surgery and radiation. A few years later, when a new malignancy showed up in her left hip and femur, Caroline required emergency joint replacement; the surgeons had to remove a large part of her thigh bone as well. “At that time, they gave me a timeline of one to two years,” she recalled. “My boys were very young, only eight and nine. I’ve just turned fifty-six, so I’ve beaten all their records.” Caroline had multiple courses of chemotherapy over the intervening years. By the time of our conversation, the cancer had reached the palliative stage, having spread to her right hip and thigh. As we spoke, she could not expect to outpace her current prognosis by much; [*] still, this mother of two radiated deep satisfaction with how things had gone. She had, after all, gained two unforeseen decades to raise her kids. “You know,” she mused, “looking at my own mortality, and them telling me I had twelve to twenty-four months . . . I got extremely profane with the doctor and said, you know, sorry, I need ten