LETTERS

A CANCER PATIENT SPEAKS OUT



SO AS NOT to be falsely accused as a person who has difficulty expressing anger and is harboring a grudge, I adamantly admit to action-provoking enragement reading “The Will to Live, Dr. Carl Simonton’s controversial approach to cancer treatment” [April]. My qualifications of authority are not those of an M. D. or of any associated university degree of science or medicine. The quality I bring to this controversy is my status: a cancer patient in remission.

I realize that neither the Simontons nor the medical community claim the proof-positive answers we seek. We know smoking enhances our chances of developing cancer, yet some people never smoke and experience the disease. Others inhale [cigarette smoke] a lifetime and never live firsthand with malignancy. Cancer is not an easy opponent.

The Simonton cancer profile might, in extreme interpretation, indicate that self-pitying rats have a higher cancer rate than those rats that are happy and have benefited by strong, healthy, long-lasting relationships. Absurd? Of course! Placing absolute responsibility and guilt upon a patient for his cancerous condition would (probably) be funny, if it didn’t make me so damned mad.

In honest and grateful recognition of Dr. Simonton – or in giving the devil his due, as it were – I did use mental imagery as part of my cancer-ridding process. My Hodgkins was diagnosed . . . in October 1981. Especially during the early weeks of my chemotherapy (which commenced in early November), I would, upon awakening each morning, imagine Jesus standing beside my bed saying, “Come out of her.” I do believe that the mental imagery I exercised helped my early achievement of being cancer-free four months later. I did feel it work, imagined or not.

I have great faith in my remission. I have met many encouraging cancer mates while sitting in oncology and radiation waiting rooms. I have come to admire, respect and love the cancer patients I have met and grown with at Baylor’s free support group. In this support group, we were introduced to cancer specialists, theologians and nutritionists, and [discussed] goal setting and coping with grief, both for ourselves and for those around us.

Two participating members of my support group have died, but certainly not without having loving, lasting relationships. They died wanting to live, wanting to give back to the world some of the strength and hope they possessed. You had to feel their strength, their courage, just by listening to them. They knew where they were, and they knew where they were going. There was no self-pity, no lack of humor, no lack of a healthy self-image, no lack – except of a healthy body.

I repudiate Dr. Simonton’s theories of guilt. These are the facts offered by a qualified cancer patient whose degree of dignity has been challenged by a “theory” unaccepted by this cancer patient as well as by a doctor’s own peers.

Diane M. Veader

The Colony



GETTING A LINE ON COCAINE

YOUR ARTICLE on drugs [“After the Party,” March] was excellent reading material. It really helped most parents to understand the pressure kids feel in today’s society as well as to understand why [cocaine] and other drugs are so popular among the “movers” in Dallas.

But a picture is worth a thousand words, and your cover screamed of glamour, sophistication and acceptability to the thousands who glanced at it while visiting the newsstands. Think about it. Please remember your responsibilities of leadership in the future.

Susan D. Kiely

Piano



THE CADILLAC CRAZE CONTINUES



THIS HERE contest [“The Great Cadillac Treasure Hunt,” April] that ya’ll got going is great! Those clues are something else, and the timing is just right. It does my heart good to know that someone else somewhere in Dallas finally caught on to that “classical Greek” fib. We’ve been hoodwinked for too long. I bet you don’t know who the lady was- I do.

Are you going to hide the keys out front or maybe where them trees used to be? Let me know when you’re coming, and I’ll be there to watch. I’ve been singing, “Oh, Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz” for months now, but a Cadillac will do just fine.

One Who Knows

Dallas



FASHION DOES PAY AT NEIMAN-MARCUS

THE ARTICLE entitled “Fashion 101” in your April edition quotes Earl Wheeler, president of the Fashion and Art Institute of Dallas, as saying that Neiman-Marcus “is notorious for offering the lowest pay.” I’m mystified as to how Mr. Wheeler arrived at this inaccurate conclusion. We pride ourselves in providing competitive or higher income for comparable work with any other retail organization. In fact, salary surveys that we receive (and use as a, guideline) reinforce this conclusion. To the specific point of the article, we do not employ patternmakers or designers. However, we do employ a number of executive trainees whose salary average is higher than our local competition.

Richard Marcus

Chairman,

Neiman-Marcus



SWITCHING SPOTS ON SCHOOLING



THEY SAY that a leopard never changes his/her spots; however, Lee Cul-lum’s “Editor’s Page” shoots that theory down in flames. When the Madame De-Farge of the Dallas liberal community admits that the liberal theory for so-called improvement of big-city schools is wrong, it has to be the beginning of the millennium for the denigrated, ridiculed, slandered Puritan ethic!

Nolan [Estes] the Messiah has left, thank God; and now perhaps the whole community will get behind DISD Superintendent] Linus Wright and see that the students in the DISD will finally learn to read and write.

Jim A. Van Campen

Dallas