Wellbeing in WuHU

Cancer, Oncology Cure and Recuperation

I was recently in Wuhu on the Yangtse River in Anhui Province in China中国 as a guest of Dr Hu. Dr Hu is a traditional Chinese physician of some considerable current reputation. He has had significant success in improving the wellbeing of patients recovering from the ravages of the successful but aggressive approach of Western medicine to cancer treatment. I was in WuHu to mark the opening of his new clinic for the post operative care of oncology patients. This clinic seeks to look systemically at the post operative support peoples bodies need to get back into the healthy balance their body needs if they are to sustain the benefits the remission of their cancer proffers

Dr Hu’s grandfather had been a court physician to the Chinese Emperor and Dr Hu is sought out today by people from all over China to assist them in recovering from the ravages of moern Western cancer treatment. His daughter was my student at ANU. She herself is a successful Chinese physician in Sydney. She has been and is passionate about setting and developing high standards for the practice of Chinese Medicine Chinese medicine in Australia and the West.

Through her and because of my general interest in human wellbeing I have become more and more interested in the relationships that seem to exist between physical, intellectual and spiritual wellbeing.

The Chinese approach to health seems to me to be entirely sensible. It is to maintain people in a healthy way of being. This approach is increasingly seen as of interest in the West although healing the sick is still the dominant medical philosophy not the Chinese one of healthy being. The Chinese approach seeks to sustain the continuing health of a specific person in a specific environment. It is of keeping a person well in their real world not curing their illness when they get it.

The approach is systemic. It is always designed for a specific individual in a specific context. It is this systemic vision I love. I see it is indicative of what we need in an age when the wellbeing of our planet is evidently increasingly dependent on our collective attitudes and actions as human beings. For our planet to be healthy and to continue to nurture us we as individuals and collectivities need to work at our own total wellbeing, physical, intellectual and spiritual. Attempts to cure what has become bad are often too much too late for many cancer patients. Dr Hu’s systemic approach to post operative recovery it seems is the beginnings of a start to a better way as is the nutritional and life style approach increasingly being adopted by some in the West

Getting Enjoying and Maintaining (GEM) is what I find myself increasingly advocating and the Hu’s father and daughter offer no less backed up by a long family tradition, professionally honed skills and a balanced approach to the most effective interface they can effect with the kill or cure approach taken by some modern Western curative medicine especially in the treatment of cancer.