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Event Overview

Speaker & Participant Remarks

Mr. Geoff Eaton - Monday, April 12th, 2010

I was 22 when I was diagnosed my first time and I had a recurrence just after my two-year anniversary of my first transplant. At which time my doctors told me my risk for relapse would drop right off so I had a recurrence at the age of 25 which was about 8 and a half years ago. Listening some of the points that Kara went through, one of the items that really speaks to me is the idea of integrated medicine. I was thinking about Simon's comments about how would I, as a patient defines that. I would say that anything ending with 'logy' is integrated medicine-so it's biology, physiology and it's psychology.

If anyone has a word that ends in logy that summarizes social and economic health and wellness I'll add that to my list. To me that's really what integrated medicine is about. It's not just about that my doctors and nurses are going to talk to each other but it's about looking after all of me. The other think that speaks to me because of the simple way the letters line up is that integrated medicine is if you drop the 'D' in integrated it's really "integrate me" that's a part that I was really lucky because I found that very natural. Because I was a very assertive, proactive patient I demanded to be integrated. It was my view that I was at the very top of the decision tree. I took a very unconventional approach in my first challenge with cancer. I thought in my head I was playing hockey against cancer in a playoff series of seven games. I had a puck and a stick and a cup and a jersey and I took those things with me everywhere. My haematologist Dr. Mary Francis Skully fully embraced that strategy right from day one and the drop of the puck. That type of an approach for me was essential to dealing with this issue. I always felt that science, the treatment, was 20% of what I hoped to be a long life; an essential 20% that I knew I wouldn't get by without, but I never once did it occur to me that it was the saviour of me. I really thought I had to put so much more around me my strategy and my team to approach this challenge and that's how I did it--it was embraced locally and when I would travel away for treatment as well.

Another thing that I think fits in with the integrated medicine canopy, the idea of complementary alternative medicine. I do a lot of work with young adults with cancer-it's the majority of my work on a daily basis. As one of our survivors said we want East to meet West--I think that's a great way to look at it. As young adults and I think all survivors, we want East to meet West. My mom made great observation one time, she said if we had been discovered from BC and populated ourselves across east as opposed to being discovered east and populated west what we call traditional medicine would likely be based on the Eastern model not the Western model. I really feel that would be better for all of the patients because it's a real struggle to be a patient and want to seek out anything from homeopathy to massage and to have the health system to frown upon you for doing that or in some cases, come down upon you for doing that.

The final thing I'd like to say, as a personalized approach to medicine, is it's my life and I really want you as a health system to help me save it, but I don't want you to do that at the cost of all the quality that I may have left in my life. Quality of life is such an essential element and I think that probably gets heightened the younger we are when we're diagnosed but that's such an important part of this discussion--that personalized care has to include quality of life.