Why do so many kill themselves?

I don’t mean that they are deliberate suicides: far from it. Yet I have known many people, including some quite close to me, who had no intention of dying but who I firmly believe would have lived much longer had they been able to take care of themselves rationally. Seemingly normal, intelligent, educated people, when confronted with serious illness, often lose their balance and hard-earned good sense. I often see childhood issues, long submerged, roar back to life, complicating decision-making.

Putting two and two together becomes more difficult. Patients sometimes forget, for example, that multiple myeloma is a cancer of the immune system. The immunoglobulins that in a healthy person protect him from illness in our case are malignant. When we get a significant infection, like the flu, the immune system goes into overdrive in an attempt to cure it, like that of a normal person, but, in myeloma, this response increases the number of malignant plasma cells (by sending a signal out that they are to stay alive and productive longer than they normally would), and increases production of malignant immunoglobulins.

This is not a good thing. We don’t want our bodies to do what they normally do. We’d rather use strong antibiotics, anti-virals, and anti-fungals to suppress infections before the immune system kicks into high gear. We need to avoid situations where we’re likely to pick up such infections in the first place.

So why are there so many discussions among patients with myeloma about taking supplements that “strengthen” or “boost” the immune system? I tend to be tart in response, pointing out it is their immune system that is cancerous, and that the worst thing that could happen with these supplements is that they might actually work! How do they know they aren’t strengthening the cancer? (I can still hear the imploring voice of a friend of mine, who desperately wanted me to drink some vile concoction called “wheat grass juice.” He died the following year of a massive coronary.)

Don’t tell me magical thinking is an ancient relic. It is alive and well and living right here among us.

I will present you a few examples of people I knew, may they rest in peace.

Jane had familial hypercholesterolemia (inherited high cholesterol) and, in later life, very high blood pressure. Fortunately, her high cholesterol in itself didn’t seem to damage her, but with pressure of at least 240 over 140, she could stroke out at any second.

Fortunately, she responded well to common hypertension pills. Unfortunately, she was the daughter of a Christian Scientist, who instilled in Jane from an early age the idea that illness was G-d given, and that “taking drugs” worked against G-d’s plan. No matter than Jane was completely atheistic in adulthood. Deep inside she felt that taking drugs was bad.

Most medications and vaccinations she would simply refuse. When pressured into taking a drug, often she’d take just one, complain bitterly about how the pill made her feel, and then stop. She was deaf to the argument that side effects often quickly diminish with adaptation.

Yet at the same time, supplements were to her something other than drugs, so she could take all of those she pleased, and did she ever! She consumed fistfuls of supplements, including long-term, high-dose vitamin E, which eventually eroded the signals in her heart so that she required a pacemaker. Yet still she would not cut back on her supplements.

One day she decided to give up all of her high blood pressure pills because they “ruined the quality of her life,” and that she’d done fine without them, and that besides she had her supplements.

Of course she stroked out soon thereafter. So, was it a natural death or suicide? I am convinced that if she had simply continued to take her pills, she’d likely still be here.

Two more examples to follow.