Pills and Prayers

September 28, 2009

O Best Beloveds, here’s a fun fact I just learned; when considering a case for sainthood, the Vatican office in charge of same out of hand rejects alleged miracles involving certain diseases, because those have a high enough rate of natural remission that it is impossible to make a case for solely supernatural, i.e. divine, intervention. On that list? Breast cancer.

In not entirely unrelated news, last month’s tumor marker numbers: 2915.

This month’s? 1424.

The math-inclined tell me this is a more than 50% drop.

Go little blue pills!

The results weren’t totally unexpected, as Dr. Waisman examined me a few days ago and couldn’t feel my liver, which is always good, as that means it’s not notably enlarged with tumors. He predicted the downward marker trend would continue for a bit. But I don’t think he expected quite this level of success.

So…prayers or pills? I’m inclined to say the latter, but here’s the thing about the former. I know that there are a humbling number of you out there praying for me (and I am staggered with gratitude by and for this), each in your own way. I talked about my unease about intercessionary prayer with my first-cousin-once-removed Sister Veronica, a most excellent nun, and she said, calmly, “when I pray, I don’t say `please cure Mary.’ I just think about you.” To me, prayer means love. Surely even the best of chemicals is more effective when taken in combo with love. (Aren’t there some who think love is just a hormone, anyway? Maybe I’m getting that along with my estrogen.) The Vatican’s standards notwithstanding, I can’t see any reason why you-all shouldn’t pat yourselves on the back at this news.

Once again, I’m not getting too excited about this, for all the reasons I’ve said before. But we’ve got another month of Good, and so it’s off to NOLA for some food porn, and back to scouring the map with Steve to figure out a longer distance trip. Some place with pastries.

‘Cause, eat/pray/love–it’s all the same, isn’t it?