This thread has spiraled the wrong way.  We are a small virtual family and it is bothersome to read negative posts.  I am not saying we can’t disagree about an issue however we can disagree and still not hurt each other’s feelings.  This board is very important to me and it has provided great comfort and information for what my family has gone through when dealing with blood cancer.

We as a family should be encouraging each other and not pushing family members away.  If you have been hurt by this thread, please do not leave the boards.  We need everyone’s voice.  This must be a safe place to share.   I know we have all been through and are going through a lot of pain and sometimes we let our emotions get the best of us.  I think this post is an anomaly.

So let’s take a big deep breath and relax and remember a few simple rules:

1.  Stay on topic, start a new post if the topic changes.

2.  If you disagree do so politely.

3.  Remember we are a family.

PS Let’s save the Calvin vs. Armenian discussion for another board J

cwg

Heart Girl,

I want to thank you for writing this,"In regards to the questions about "my faith healed me" or "God preserved me", or  "I needed to learn a lesson so I got cancer".  I just can't go along with that and I'm a Christian.  People die every single day.  Where is God then?  The truth is that when we die, that is the day we die.  If, as Christians, we are so worried about death, then why do we speak so much about how wonderful heaven will be.  If you, as a Christian, absolutely have factual evidence that heaven exists, then why aren't we all pounding on the door and eager to die?  Just a little food for thought.  I had WAY to much time on my hands during treatment and was able to consider all of these things."

I have thought much about this since my mother died on Sept. 18th.  She was a Christian and she died..  This disease does NOT JUDGE, and does not discriminate, if so she would be here I feel!

hugs, nicole

To all,

First off I am not taking sides on this issue and the rules for posting were just a suggestion.  My apologies if it appeared I was trying to dictate posting rules.  My goal was to try and defuse this thread which I failed to accomplish.  This virtual family and message board is very near and dear to my heart and I do not like to see the conflict.  So I will stop reading this thread and move on to a different one.

cwg

Kim,

I loved it!!  Also I love all of Mitch Album's books!  I am currently reading The Middle Place!  hugs, nicole

I don't post much anymore but:

In regard to the original question: Hey when you're survival is on the line (as mine was five years ago now) I was willing to try anything!!! I invited people to pray for me, I used Reiki, bloodstones, gems, meditation, relaxation, journaling, research/learning everything I could so I could be proactively involved in my treatment, practical things like fastidious hand washing and obsessive self protection against germs. As such, it makes it rather difficult to come up with any claim as to what contributed to my survival and what didn'tl. I do know I've seen many people who fought a damn good fight and died. I

t is not for me to say that a, b, or c contributed. Where does old fashion luck fit in? What about a stellar health care system and team of oncologists (within the context of a publically funded health care system that works very well despite other claims -- I'm Canadian). What about ethnicity and class? (we know that people of color and poorer folks experience considerable disparity in health outcomes in cancer care with poorer survival rates than those of us of the dominant culture) ... Another thing: There is evidence in the psycho-oncology realm though that does debunk the idea that prayer or even positive support (support groups, etc.) contribute to longer survival ...

Thoughts on any of that? (and possibly some re-direction from the rather mundane interventionist God, vs. non interventionist God, vs. no god/gods discussion possibly??)

I think the question of what's "controllale" is part of what's up with this whole discussion.  By "controllable" do we mean that we can control participating in things (like getting Reiki) or do we mean these things control our cancer.  Aimee did ask what we believe but I think things can potentially get out of hand, especially when people start claiming subjective experience as concrete proof.

Up until recently, there have been some good discussions of various ideas here.  As for the health care system, ethnicity, etc., I don't think those things are personally under our control, certainly not once we've been dx'd.  I'm sure those things factor in somewhere but that's a research project for someone else.  I was done with research when I left school.

I am of the personal view that being proactive in treatment and hand washing probably helped you a lot more than the other things you mentioned in the first paragraph.  Oh, I had massages, prayed, did visualization (and felt kind of silly myself and even began thinking on superficial evidence that drinking a can of V8 and taking a walk would help my counts recover (it didn't).  But when it's all done, I think it was/is mostly luck...whatever the hell that is.  Well, luck and the fact I got to the Hutch.  But Hutch patients die, too.

About the prayer thing and the evidence you sited, CS Lewis once wrote about testing prayer.  He said it would be impossible for a group of Christians to test prayer.  If, for example, a group got together and prayed for all the people in Hospital A but not for the patitnets in Hospital B, you couldn't prove anything regardless of the outcome.  It would be essentially un-Christian to ignore the people in Hospital B so whatever you wound up with wouldn't be a test of Christian prayer.

That said, I've seen some amazing things in experiential prayer.  In a class in seminary we prayed for one of the saints of our church who was in a local hospital.  When someone asked about it later, she said at the moment she felt a wave come over her and she knew she was being prayed for.

Even more interesting to me was that one of my classmates told a woman in her church about this and the woman asked her to have us pray for her.  Well, class was busy that week and the prof couldn't bring that up until Wednesday.  The woman had expected us to pray for her on Monday and was upset all Monday and Tuesday that our prayers hadn't worked.  At noon on Wednesday (just as we were praying for her) she felt a complete sense of peace about the things that were bothering her.

Certainly that could be a coincidence.  But that's a pretty weird one.

I believe prayer does something, I just don't know what exactly.  But I think it's more in the spiritual/emotional realm than in the physical.  Still, I've seen yet other things that have blown me away.

Now, about the gods/no gods thingy, let'if you want to go that way you might want to consider  doing that on the Open Forum, okay?  If you think this little spat has been weird, you ought to see what happens when we get agnosticism/atheism out on the table.  My goodness, all kinds of people come out of the woodwork!

For me it's always the support of family and friends, the power of prayer and to set goals.  Take one day at a time.