Living with cancer without guilt

It seems that this is the third time we have walked around the Gorbachev Museum of the Gorbachevs, which is both a museum of the country and a museum of their personal life. It is clearly seen that he is ready to talk about some events endlessly, and we stand at these stands for a long time; we pass by others without looking back.

Something else is also noticeable: his decision to talk about Raisa Maksimovna, about the illness that claimed her life, was so deep, difficult and thoughtful that it touched some inner strings, launched a dormant memory machine. And after an hour of silence, furrowed brows and half-shouts, half-sighs, he now talks about her in detail, without pauses, not allowing him to ask a question, sorting through memory after memory. He speaks so sincerely, in such detail that I sometimes look around: is he really telling me? ..

… “She loved winter very much, Katya. This is such a strange connection. Never could understand. She loved frosts, blizzards – incredibly … And now she told me all the time, almost from the first day in Munster, “Let’s go back home, I want to see winter.” I want to be at home, in my bed, it’s better there … And when she called me so urgently to her room, then at first she started talking about it again, let’s go home.

I think, oh no, Raisa, that’s not how the conversation will go, I won’t let you get limp, that’s not what all this is for. But what to say? How can I get her out of this state? Just sit and be silent? I am not that kind of person. And I didn’t want to somehow show my confusion, fear in front of her. And suddenly the thought spontaneously came: let me make you laugh.

And he came up with: first, in the most detailed way, he told the whole story of their acquaintance, as if someone else was observing it, readily noticing all the absurdities of the behavior of lovers. How someone went after whom, how important she was, but beautiful, how in love and uncouth he was, how confusingly he tried to tell her about his feelings for the very first time, how the confession failed.

And what labors it cost him to repeat then all over again, from the very beginning. And how carefully he chose his tie and jacket. And how then I had to put on others, both a tie and a jacket. And how almost by accident they got married. And what did it all lead to…

So for several hours in a row in the sterile ward of the University Hospital of Münster, Mikhail Gorbachev recounted to Raisa Gorbacheva their entire long life together as a funny anecdote. She was laughing. And then he continued, again inventing, improvising, remembering … And he was afraid to stop even for a minute.

***

The debate about whether there is a direct link between a person’s psychological state and the likelihood that he will get cancer has been going on for about as long as doctors have been actively looking for ways to treat it.

Back in 1759, an English surgeon wrote that, according to his observations, cancer accompanies “life catastrophes, bringing great grief and trouble.”

In 1846, another Englishman, a prominent oncologist of his time, Walter Haile Walsh, commenting on the report of the British Ministry of Health, which stated: “… mental suffering, sudden changes in fate and the usual gloominess of character are the most serious cause of the disease,” added on his own behalf: “I I have seen cases in which the connection between a deep experience and illness seemed so obvious that I decided that challenging it would look like a fight against common sense.

In the early 1980s, scientists from the laboratory of Dr. The essence of the experiment was that the experimental rats were injected with cancer cells in an amount capable of killing every second rat.

The animals were then divided into three groups. The first (control) group of rats after the introduction of cancer cells was left alone and was not touched again. The second group of rats was subjected to weak random electric shocks, which they could not control. Animals of the third group were subjected to the same electric shocks, but they were trained to avoid subsequent shocks (to do this, they had to immediately press a special pedal).

The results of the Seligman laboratory experiment, published in the article “Tumor Rejection in Rats After Inescapable or Escapable Shock” (Science 216, 1982), made a great impression on the scientific world: rats that received an electric shock, but had no way to avoid it, were depressed, lost their appetite , stopped mating, reacted sluggishly to the invasion of their cage. 77% of the rats from this group died by the end of the experiment.

As for the first group (the rats that were left alone), then, as expected when introducing cancer cells, half of the animals (54%) died at the end of the experiment. However, scientists were struck by rats from the third group, those who were taught to control electric shock: 63% of rats from this group got rid of cancer.

What does it say? According to the researchers, it is not stress itself – electric shock – that causes the tumor to develop. A constant feeling of helplessness, depression – this is the breeding ground for the disease.

***

In psychology, there is such a thing – victim blaming, blaming the victim. In ordinary life, we often encounter this: “raped – it’s your own fault”, “disabled people are born only to alcoholics and drug addicts”, “your troubles are a punishment for sins.”

Fortunately, such a formulation of the question is already becoming unacceptable in our society. Externally. And internally and everything around, and above all the patient himself, scrupulously try to find the reason that connects him with this particular disease. When there are no external explanations.

It is generally accepted that the main cause of cancer is psychosomatics. In other words, grief that launches the body’s self-destruction program. Sometimes about a patient who burned down at work before his illness, they say sadly: “Nothing surprising, he gave himself to people, so he burned out.” That is, again, it turns out – it’s his own fault. It was necessary to suffer less, to help, to work, to live, in the end – then the disease would not have come.

All of these claims are completely false. And their only goal is to bring at least some kind of logical basis to what actually happens almost inexplicably and unpredictably. The search for mistakes, violations, the main point of no return, as a rule, drives all patients and their relatives crazy at the beginning of the disease, taking away such precious forces, so necessary for making a diagnosis and developing a strategy to combat the disease.