folgendes email bekam ich heute von einer freundin. kommentare braucht es nicht:

I would like to share some excellent news with you: My mother has been declared 100% cancer-free. The doctor told her yesterday (she is still in hospital) that her chances of ever having cancer again are the same as with any other person who has never had cancer. She is entirely cured, and it's a miracle that the doctors can't explain. The closest explanation given was that the chemo therapy worked perfectly, but that the main reason was her enormous positive thinking and energy.

From my talks with many people I know that there is a cancer case in every family. It is a terrible disease, and on the increase. But perhaps the story of my mother can give some hope and inspiration. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer "in its final stage" ("im Endstadium" in German) on 1 March. According to the statistics, she would not have had another year to live. A tumor, as big as a hand, had been found in her womb, and could not be taken out as it was covering many crucial organs that could not be removed. The doctor who operated her the first time did not have much hope, and did not give her much hope either. I accompanied my parents to the first appointment with him after the operation. He told us that the chemo therapy could, in the best case, reduce the cancer, and then another operation would be necessary where hopefully a big part of the tumor could be taken out, though not entirely. He said that the chemo therapy could only prolong life, but not cure. When my father asked him whether he would be able to grow old with my mother, the doctor remained silent. My parents were devastated.

An aunt recommended a famous cancer rehabilitation clinic for the time after the chemo therapy. My father sent my mother's medical file. The head of the clinic called my father and told him: "I want to be frank with you. Your wife has minimal survival chances. The places in this clinic are in very high demand, and I cannot reserve a place for her now, as I don't know whether she will still be alive in 6 months time". The situation was this bad in March. But my mother is very brave. After the first initial shock, she decided that she would not let the cancer ruin her life. Her mood changed, and she became very positive and calm. She told me that if she could not have "quantity of life", she wanted "quality of life". My parents took up their hobbies again, adn my father took off 6 months from work to spend all his time with her.

The second thing that made the difference was that she heard things that gave her hope. I used to think that one needed to be realistic and face the hard facts. But this is only part of it. You also need to have hope, and believe in a happy ending, no matter how unlikely. I told my parents the story of my friend Olaf's mother. Olaf's mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in her late 30s. This was 25 years ago when the medical field was not yet as advanced as it is now. The doctors gave her less than a year. But she had two small children to look after. And she lived for another 18 years. (Olaf, who today is a doctor, told me that he reread the medical file of his mother as a doctor, years after her death, and would not given her more than a year either, even today.) When my parents heard this story, it gave them hope. Whenever one of my parents felt depressed, the other one repeated this story and the figure of 18 years.

The other crucial thing was that my mother changed doctors. My sister and I made enquiries and found her a well-known cancer specialist, the head of a nearby university hospital. This doctor was also human. He saw the despair in my parents' eyes and told them that he had cured many supposedly hopeless cases. My parents were thrilled after they had talked to him. It made such a huge difference. My mother started the chemo therapy, with the highest dosis that there is, and she only had minimal side effects. This in itself was already a miracle. OK, she lost her hair, but she felt fine and was cheerful. Those of you that were there saw my parents dancing like crazy at our wedding. One would never have thought that she was very ill. And she was like that all the time. Very calm and cheerful, and positive. Half way through the chemo therapy the doctor checked whether the cancer had been reduced. It had indeed been reduced slightly, which was great, but the tumor in the shape of an apple was still there.

On August 9 she had the all-decisive operation. The doctors opened her belly and found - nothing!!!! The cancer had disappeared. There was a benign tumor, which they took out, and then during 6 hours a whole team of surgeons searched her womb for the cancer. They took lots of tissue samples to be analysed later. The result of the last analysis reached us yesterday. Not a single sample had shown any trace of cancer. One wonders how this can happen. The doctor thinks that it was her positive spirit and the many positive events that she had (our wedding, the birth of her first grandchild...). But science can only do so much, and what may be even more important is the person's morale.

I always doubted those stories of "medical miracles" that one sometimes reads about in the papers. But now just this has happened to my mother. I thought it was worth telling you about.

Ute