Research for your life: Investigating your own health care

When I describe [Myra Finkelstein]'s Tijuana venture, [Larry Norton, M.D.] launches into a diatribe against untested, alternative remedies. "I tell patients, `You wouldn't get on an airplane if the CEO of the company said he had read an ancient Tibetan text and had a dream of how to build an airplane. So why would you put something in your body, based on that kind of logic?"' But he also doesn't think patients should discount their intuition when making medical decisions. "I'm an expert in medicine. But each patient is an expert in her own life," he says. "How can that be when I called ten minutes before coming over here, and you were running on time?" The office clerks are snickering. Rite follows Myra through the door. "My sister has cancer!" "Everyone has cancer here," the receptionist replies sharply. "Let's leave. This is what my experience tells me," Myra blurts. The other patients, waiting quietly, look up from their magazines. "The breast is probably the grayest area in medicine. No doctor wants to put their foot down and say, `Do this,"' he explains. I venture the details of our Tijuana trip and am startled by his response. "Chemotherapy is not the answer and everybody knows that," he says, and explains how it debilitates the immune system. "I've seen some pretty remarkable stuff that patients have done for themselves." Rite clasps her hands anxiously when he leaves the room. Within twenty minutes, he returns, a large smile illuminating his face. He felt no new growths during the manual exam, he says, and new tumors would be palpable. He sees no need for surgery. When Myra enters the room, he says what she's been waiting to hear: "Keep doing what you're doing. Do it all." For Myra, never-ending research and experimentation have been a life-affirming exercise. Her distrust of the medical establishment, her anger, has been an engine keeping her alert and engaged, perhaps even alive.