How can being positive be a bad thing?

Miracle Survivor Dave Massey demonstrates the power of positivity

Yesterday I heard a breast cancer survivor on NPR talking about her book, Bright-sided: When Happiness Doesn’t Help.

Let’s be blunt: the woman annoyed me – a lot. I kind of get her point. You can’t always be positive when faced with a cancer diagnosis. But she was actually saying there is no connection to healing and having a positive attitude.

I’ve read enough and talked to enough people to know that this is not true. Sure people with a positive attitude die from cancer, but that does not mean they have not healed their lives. Most of them lived a lot longer and healthier than doctors anticipated. After all, do you want to live your life angry and full of self-pity, or do you want to be filled with love, joy and gratitude for the day? We have a choice.

I’ve finally started reading Norman Cousin’s Anatomy of an Illness. It was written in the 70s, but still builds a strong case for the power of positive expectancy in healing of an illness. There have been numerous studies since then, many mentioned in the seminar on the immune system I just attended. So it’s not just hocus-pocus stuff we’re talking about here.

Dave Massey, one of the first people I interviewed for my book, is a poster boy for the benefits of a positive attitude. When he was first diagnosed with  a rare form of germ cell cancer in his legs, a doctor told him he had six months to live if he amputated both of his legs at his hips. Luckily he found another who treated him with legs intact.

Eleven years later, the cancer came back in his lungs. He had his left lung removed and again was told he had six months to live. Throughout his  grueling chemotherapy, radiation and physical therapy sessions, Dave maintained an extremely positive attitude and took charge of his own health:

I knew from Day One that I wasn’t going to die. It never even crossed my mind that I might not make it, even with the doctor’s gloomy prediction. Staying active was a key ingredient to my survival. The first time I had cancer, the hospital staff wanted to transport me from place to place via a wheelchair. I refused. It took me a lot longer to get where I needed to go, but I was afraid that if I got into the wheelchair, I would never get out.

I walked all over the hospital with my crutches. The more I “crutched” around, the stronger I felt. It was an escape for me. As I felt better, I would get passes to leave the hospital, and I would use them to walk to the zoo or museum three miles away. 

As Dave says, “All the good things in my life happened because of what looked like a challenge. If I could go back and change having cancer, I wouldn’t … because I wouldn’t be as happy as I am now.”

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