Each year more than 185,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer. In the
United States the prevailing myth is that breast cancer is a
"white woman's disease." The reality is that it affects all women of all races
and even a tiny number of men. Breast cancer ranks second after lung cancer as
the leading cause of death by cancer among women between 40 and 55 years old.
While cutting edge research in nutrition, surgical procedures, prevention
techniques, and drug therapies have given breast cancer patients a fighting
chance in overcoming the disease, nevertheless, a growing number of people have
begun to search for a more holistic, integrative approach to care. Guided
imagery (GI) is one of a growing number of therapeutic techniques used by breast
cancer patients as a complement to their conventional medical care.
Monthly breast self examination and annual gynecological examinations provide
the most effective strategy for preventing breast cancer. However, if you are
diagnosed with cancer, a physician may prescribe a number of drug therapies
including radiation therapy (use of high energy rays to kill cancer);
chemotherapy (use of drugs to kill cancer cells); hormonal therapy, which keeps
cancer cells from getting the hormones needed to grow; antitumor antibiotics,
antiestrogens such as tamoxifen, which blocks the action of estrogen on breast
tissue, monoclonal antibodies to block the protein receptor and high-dose
progestogens (steroid hormones). Herbs such as ginger root; dietary strategies
such as eating only organic foods, following a high fiber diet, and taking
certain vitamin supplements may help minimize the nausea and other side effects
of conventional medical care.
What conventional medicine cannot do, apparently, is adequately address the
needs of those with advanced disease, persistent cancer pain, or the
psychological burden of the disease. Approximately 65% of breast cancer patients
experience pain during the course of their disease, pain that becomes a constant
reminder of the illness and the destruction of their body image. This situation
has become a more pressing problem today than a generation ago because current
treatments are keeping people alive long enough to enter the chronic, terminal
phase of their illness, thereby extending the duration and severity of their
suffering. If left untreated, pain can trigger psychiatric symptoms, such as
depression, mood disturbance and anxiety, which in turn aggravate the pain. Pain
has also been linked to decreased survival in advanced cancer patients.
Guided imagery, as a form of healing, has long been utilized in the context
of illness and healing across cultural boundaries. It is recognized by many as a
means of establishing some sense of control over their lives and bodies and as a
way to attach meaning to the disease and its treatment. Guided imagery is a
relaxation technique that relieves cancer-related anxiety and pain by using
mental images produced by memory or imagination. So how does it actually work?
Typically, the clinician will have the patient lie or sit in a comfortable
position in a quiet room, close their eyes, and settle their thoughts and
breathing. The patient is then "guided" by a skilled therapist to access this
state of heightened, relaxed, inner awareness. The process can also be
facilitated by someone reading a script, or by using specially prepared
audiotapes.
For one woman undergoing chemotherapy, guided imagery helped her to imagine
that the IV (intravenous) that the nurses were putting in her arm contained lots
of little PAC Men that would eat up all the poisons in her body. When things got
bad, she writes: "I just thought it's all those little PAC Men at work." Another
woman imagined that she was stepping on cancer each time her foot hit the
pavement. She even imagined she went in with a vacuum cleaner and killed off the
cancer cells.
Guided imagery is clearly not a cure for breast cancer. But it can help
patients begin to feel as if they have some sense of control over the
progression of the disease in a situation that feels out of control. It also
helps to relieve pain. When used with conventional medical treatment, guided
imagery can provide a noninvasive, inexpensive, and necessary means of repairing
this ruptured relationship between the self, the body, and the woman's social
world. By discussing alternative or complementary medical therapies such as
guided imagery with their physicians, cancer patients can ensure an integrated
treatment strategy that addresses the whole person.
The potential cost-effectiveness and lack of side effects associated with
mind-body therapies such as guided imagery make continued research an important
priority for the medical community. Recently, the National Institutes for Health
received $10 million to conduct research in the behavioral sciences and
establish pilot mind-body medical centers (NIH 2000).
