This week's Decent Fucking Human is Bill Lee-Emery. His fucked up story is about surviving throat cancer.
In 2022, Bill was diagnosed with throat cancer. He was a healthy, 70-something-year-old man who up until that point wouldn't even take an aspirin for a headache. He'd prioritized alternative medicine for over 40 years, so the diagnosis created tougher questions for him than it would for many. He wasn't the type to just say "Hey doc, what's the plan?" so he consulted with both his naturopath and physician before deciding what to do next. He opted to hit it hard and fast with chemo and radiation.
It's hard to summarize what Bill's story is about - it's not the intense fuck cancer story you hear so often (although let me just say it - fuck cancer). It's not about a prolonged illness that almost beat him. Bill's battle was relatively short. He was in touch with his body, recognized a problem, sought treatment, and beat it. All of those are things we love to celebrate here, but I think this story is about Bill being humble enough to do what needed to be done, even going to the dark side of modern medicine, to save his own life.
What I love about this story - aside from Bill's delightful demeanor - is the idea of combining alternative and modern medicine. Alternative medicine sometimes gets a bad rap, and I'll admit that I'm guilty of questioning the efficacy at times. There are plenty of stories about people who lost battles with treatable diseases because they refused their doctor's recommendations. Bill even shared that he knew of two people who'd died of throat cancer after choosing not to pursue traditional treatments. What I had never considered before is how the two can work together.
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