Mrs. Pal just called me upstairs where she was watching Barbara Walters. She (Walters, not Mrs Pal) was interviewing actor Patrick Swayze who is battling metastatic pancreatic cancer, a disease which will certainly kill him. Walters asked him quite a bit about the disease and treatment, and Swayze, whose answers were earthy, but pretty accurate, gave a compelling interview. He is no graduate of Google U.; he spoke frankly about his suffering, his hopes, his fears, but didn’t claim to be any sort of expert outside of his own experience.
Walters asked him if he was using any alternative medicine. He unenthusiastically noted that he was taking a few Chinese herbs, but roundly dismissed alternative medicine as a hope for him:
If anybody had that cure out there like so many people swear to me they do, you’d be two things: you’d be very rich and you’d be very famous— otherwise shut up .
Patrick, thank you. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
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