Product Description

I was told I had cancer and that I must expect to die soon. Almost eight years later I still do my job and enjoy life. I have not had conventional treatment. Did my cancer simply disappear? Did I do nothing? Far from it. A number of things happened, some by accident, most by design.

Michael Gearin-Tosh is diagnosed with cancer at the age of fifty-four. The doctors urge immediate treatment. He refuses. Intuitively, not on the basis of reason. But as the days pass, Gearin-Tosh falls back on his habits as a scholar of literature. He begins to probe the experts' words and the meaning behind medical phrases. He tries to relate what each doctor says -- and does not say -- to the doctor's own temperament. And the more questions he asks, the more adamant his refusal to be hurried to treatment.

The delay is a high-risk gamble. He listens to much advice, especially that of three women friends, each with a different point of view, one a doctor. They challenge him. They challenge medical advice. They challenge one another. On no occasion do they speak with one voice. He also turns to unexpected guides within his own memory and in the authors he loves, from Shakespeare and Chekhov to Jean Renoir, Arthur Miller, and Václav Havel.

In the end, he chooses not to have chemotherapy but to combat his cancer largely through nutrition, vitamin supplements, an ancient Chinese breathing exercise with imaginative visualizations, and acupuncture.

No how-to book or prescriptive health guide, Living Proof is a celebration of human existence and friendship, a story of how a man steers through conflicting advice, between depression and seemingly inescapable rationalism, between the medicine he rejects and the doctors he honors.

Clear-eyed and unflinching, Gearin-Tosh even includes his own medical history, "The Case of the .005% Survivor"; explores general questions about cancer; and examines the role of individual temperament on medical attitudes, the choice of treatments, and, of course, survival.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #335346 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .95 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 340 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Gearin-Tosh, a tutor at St. Catherine's College, Oxford, was diagnosed with myeloma (cancer of the bone marrow) and told that if he did not begin chemotherapy immediately, he would be dead in less than a year. The recommended treatment, while probably extending his life somewhat, would not cure the condition. A second specialist confirmed the original prognosis, but the author rejected the proposed treatment after a former Oxford pupil consulted a cancer statistician who warned, "If your friend touches chemotherapy, he's a goner." Interwoven with engaging anecdotes from his professional life, Gearin-Tosh details his research into the world of alternative medicine, a journey that led him to Chinese breathing exercises and acupuncture. The treatment that he credits with saving his life he found in A Cancer Therapy, by Max Gerson, a doctor who died in 1958. Based on the daily drinking of freshly made juices and taking several coffee enemas a day, the Gerson Diet also includes a variety of supplements. Despite the time-consuming nature of this restrictive regime, eight years later Gearin-Tosh is alive and pursuing an active professional life. He is careful to point out that while this program is working for him, "each person should explore his own way with their physician." Gearin-Tosh's detailed, engaging memoir of a search for his own cure will inspire readers to take the time to consider their own treatments.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This is a captivating, detailed, and enlightening account of surviving multiple myeloma, a rare and usually incurable cancer. Yet it is much more than the story of a man who questioned the prevailing therapies of conventional medicine. It is the tale of a contemplative person who gave himself the gift of time to reflect over his diagnosis, gather and interpret information, and enlist the support and resources of friends. Rather than rush into debilitating treatment with its incapacitating side effects and questionable benefits, Gearin-Tosh weighed his options and ultimately chose an unconventional, alternative route. Living Proof is also about Gearin-Tosh's relationships with his physicians and researchers and with the friends and colleagues who provided him with support and counsel during his illness. A fellow in English at St. Catherine's College, Oxford, he weaves literary selections from Chekhov to Yeats into his highly personal account, as well as excerpts of correspondence between his physicians and colleagues and relevant citations from the medical literature. It all comes together in an intelligent, beautifully written narrative sprinkled liberally with humor and aplomb. Recommended for consumer cancer collections and large general consumer health collections. Valeria Long, Grand Valley State Univ. Lib., Grand Rapids, MI
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gearin-Tosh's story of cancer and his choice of treatment for it (which is where the mutiny comes in) engages us with his and his friends' and colleagues' attitudes about his illness as well as those of various American and English general and specialist practitioners. He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma--bone-marrow cancer--in June 1994, and to treat this disease that is incurable but manageable by many treatment regimes, he eschewed regular Western medicine's usual use of powerful drugs, such as thalidomide and pamidronate, for a course of treatment including frequent coffee enemas and plenty of freshly prepared vegetable juices; acupuncture helped, too. His cancer seemed in remission when he wrote this book. An English teacher who works in university theater, he enlivens what might have been a self-pitying ramble with abundant references to and quotations from Shakespeare and Chekhov, in particular, which point up his sense of humor and feeling for irony. Gearin-Tosh provides pertinent information about unusual treatment of a devastating malady in a context that resembles a good novel. William Beatty
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