Cancer 4

Perhaps the worst aspect of the internet is the availability of information, some of it accurate, some of it less accurate. When someone gets a nasty disease it is common for them to search the internet and try to understand what is happening to them. I get it. I do those searches just like everyone else. We want to become knowledgeable so that we know what we are facing, have some idea of how to behave, and perhaps to have a reasonably intelligent conversation with our doctors.

While this may work to some extent it is not possible to become an expert in an area by reading a few webpages. The illusion of knowledge is a dangerous thing. We all know this implicitly. It is just that when we are faced with something difficult personally we somehow think it is different for us. It isn’t.

I am a professional psychologist, a trained scientist. I have at least 36 letters after my name. I have three fellowships. I work in a School of Medicine. I teach trainee medics. I read academic articles all the time. I can interpret theory and method. I have access to all the main academic journals and articles on cancer and bowel cancer. I can theoretical read them all.

What I cannot do is become an expert in bowel cancer in a matter of days, weeks or months.

The articles I have read have suggested many positive and negative aspects of the disease. I read one indicating that bowel cancer spreads much earlier than previously thought. I have read articles which suggest most people with bowel cancer die quite quickly (this was an easy one to interet as most people with bowel cancer are already old so they are going to die quite quickly anyway). I have read that most people with bowel cancer live for years. I have read about temporary and permanent colostomy bags, cutting out parts of the bowel, information about the right and wrong things to eat (I am pretty good at eating the wrong things), chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and so on. There are many words I have to look up as I don’t understand them. Sometimes when I look them up I still don’t understand them.

My point is that, even though I have all these qualifications, I am not going to become an expert on cancer, I am not going to know more than the people treating me. I might get to a point where I can have a half decent conversation about a particular treatment, but when I say half decent that is from my perspective, not the perspective of the person with years of education, training and experience who is having the conversation with me and is probably rolling his or her eyes, at least inwardly, and wishing that the internet had never been invented.

Michael Gove was wrong. I have not had enough of experts. I want more of them. I want to listen to them and take their advice. If I do this then hopefully I will receive the best treatment, become cancer free, and can stop writing this blog.

Of course there are exceptions. Experts sometimes get it wrong. Amateurs sometimes make surprising discoveries (usually in astronomy). But these are not the norm.

To be continued, hopefully.