Katie

Sorry you had to join the cancer club. I just wanted to stress that "stress' does not cause cancer nor does "living in harmony" cause "all diseases to pass by". That assertion is just another aspect of woo woo medicine. Long time readers know just how upset I get when posters link to web site or say this nonsense. (Max is lucky I've been off line for a while and missed his egregious violations as I am not as temperate as Christine when I spell out just how delusional such claims are, especially since he still left that woo woo nonsense in his post after claiming to clean it up)
It is natural for all of us "to often wonder" if stressful years caused our cancer because we are deluged with woo woo in the news, TV and internet. Of course now the marketers have renamed it CAM or Complimentary Alternative Medicine
Since I am so snarky and mean and outright nasty in my denunciations, I find it better to post excerpts from more temperate articles debunking the central dogma of most of the fake CAM or quackademic medicine
[quote]Wishing for healing heals. Alternatively, it can be stated somewhat more accurately as: You attract health to yourself. Note that this is just like The Secret, only for health.;note Secret is FALSE[/quote]
[[quote]Who wouldn�t want to be able to increase his or her chances of surviving by finding a way to overcome depression or negative thoughts.... Unfortunately, the flip side of that �empowerment� is the implication that if you are not doing well or, if you are a cancer patient and are deteriorating, it must be because you don�t have a �positive� enough attitude. Barbara Ehrenreich pointed out the toll this sort of thinking takes on actual cancer patients in her book, Bright Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Ruined America, even going so far as to entitle a chapter Smile or Die: The Bright Side of Cancer...[/quote]
[quote]In other words, we bring cancer on ourselves by allowing immune systems to acquiesce to stress, tension, and negativity in our lives. Note this is also FALSE
[/quote] This is so wrong and yes, even doctors who should know better promulgate this stuff. Don't be fooled. It is not your fault you have cancer (except at the genetic level). The toxins in our environment have been proven time and time again to be carcinogenic.
The full article from Science Based medicine can be found here, It deals with more than the stress fallacy.
Central dogma of CAM
This is a hard road we are on, and unnecessary guilt will not help you beat it. Like one of the OCF speakers at an OCF walk (go to one, they are great) said: Be the one to put the can in cancer, the rad in radiation and the emo in chemotherapy
Keep the Faith
Charm