I had testicular cancer as a 22 year old medical student. My style of practice is based not only on my medical knowledge but on my awareness of being the patient's advocate at as many levels of being as possible.

  I have survived 40 years and two months. As a statistic, only 5 per cent of people with malignant teratoma of the testis survived five years.

  I advocate research into what patients feel, think, know and do for themselves. I advocate Patient power in place of assumptions and medical arrogance and doctor knows best.

"The person who has the illness is more important than the illness the person has." So quoted Sir William Osler, Professor of Medicine at Oxford at the beginning of the last century.

  I wonder how many of you are happy to be a statistic?

  How long have I got Doc?

  The answers to such questions are filled with vital opportunities lost.

  Giving a person three months, two years or whatever based on statistics, leads those people to find it immensely difficult to live longer than the prescribed time. At a cancer support group I attend regularly people know that they are supposed to die by next week or next month. Very often they do die. Such is the power of their illness, the power of the word cancer and the power of the doctor's statistical knowledge.

  What a missed opportunity.

  If instead the emphasis was put on patient empowerment putting the patient back in the driving seat and saying something like "The length of time you live may depend on a number of factors". Nobody can say how long you will live because nobody knows what measures you will take for yourself to boost your immune system. For example dealing with the circumstances in which you found yourself when the cancer arose.

  How you are feeling emotionally?

  How is your diet?

  How is your state of health generally?

  Is more rest and relaxation needed?

  Is more exercise needed?

  Vitamin and mineral supplements?

  Counselling?

  All these matters can be helped by appropriate counselling, nutritionists and touch therapists-massage, aromatherapy, reflexology and healing and others.

  This is the Bristol Cancer Help Centre approach alongside orthodox medicine.

  It is also the New Approaches to Cancer approach.

  If we listen to people with cancer they are entirely consistent. They know when their illness arose and how and why. They know that they reached a climax of unwellness because and they know what the because is. They know, and especially with hindsight and after the shock has died down, what to do if given the right opportunity and approach to explore their own thoughts and feelings.

  I wonder how many of you have attended cancer support groups. How many scientists have looked at the individual context in which cancer arose?

  How many scientists have read a book like "Remarkable Recoveries, What extraordinary Healings can tell us about getting well and staying well". By Caryle Hirshberg and Marc Ian Bavasch. Headline Publication 1995. This contains the stories about deep spiritual change, switching on the immune system again after the trauma of cancer.

  Dr Bernie Siegel has written Love, Medicine and Miracles, Living, Loving and Healing, and Peace, Love and Healing. As an American surgeon he realised a long time ago that what Sir William Osler quoted from plateau "the person who has the illness is more important than the illness that the person has" applied very much especially to what Dr Siegel calls his Ex CaPs, meaning his exceptional cancer patients. In my own experience almost all people with cancer are or become exceptional if given the right surroundings, the right listening ear and the opportunity to explore themselves and what the wake-up call of cancer actually means to them. The self motivation which follows on from this kind of holistic approach can often tap into deep spiritual energy which will produce the remarkable recovery by switching on the immune system as mentioned earlier.

  The immune system is hardly ever mentioned by doctors in cancer and over the last few years whilst attending cancer support groups and sitting in with oncologists I only ever hear of a negative attitude to the person's initiative in wanting to know what it is they can do for themselves. This is very sad and makes the people with cancer very upset and angry, helpless and dependent.

  If it were not assumed that the patient will automatically have orthodox treatment but if instead the patient was asked what they felt was the most appropriate kind of approach for themselves and perhaps being offered some options many patients would choose a range of therapies to kill the cancer cells whilst at the same time stimulating their own immune system.

  Somehow patients seem to know this whilst doctors have forgotten.

June 2000