First, my sincere condolences on your family member's pain and suffering. Turning to a friendly critique: what is cancer's "miracle" here? that the writer finally realized that his mother in law is a gem (I'm assuming that's what he means when he writes that her mother's *gifts* to us [were] a gem)? I was rather disappointed to find that the content of the blog did not seem to match its title. I also would like to make a comment on one comment of the blog: There may be little you can do to reverse the disease process in your wife's mother, but investigate the damage that chemicals in perfumes, air "freshener"s, dryer sheets, fabric softeners, scented cat litter, and so many other products used blithely by the American public, can do in terms of both cardiovascular spasms and cancer. How is that? After the liver's ability to detoxify inhaled chemicals, has been damaged sufficiently by the total of chemicals to which one has been exposed thus far in one's life, additional incoming chemicals circulate UNdetoxified in the bloodstream irritating tissues everywhere they go (including the tissues of the CardioVascular (CV) system--capillaries, etc.) and can eventually lead to both CV spasms (with consequent heart attack) and to a level of free radical and mutational damage that can lead to cancer in vulnerable tissues. As an MD, you can be a force for good in the world, publicizing such links between everyday chemicals and CV disease and cancer, and in your personal world, you can be a force for health in your own family, friends, and patients in warning of these dangers. And may I add that any person who loves people, or is enjoined by their religion to "love thy neighbor as thyself", should be aware that, like secondhand smoke, these secondhand chemicals affect anyone within range of their presence in the air. Just this morning I was gassed by some perfume worn by a woman not only at the time she was present, but for more than an hour after she passed through the hallway that I, too, must walk through, AND later found that my sweatshirt I had tied around my face to try to keep (some) of the perFUME out of my lungs, now REEKS of it. Perfume wearers harm anyone with a sufficiently damaged detox system (and we are many, and increasing, in today's polluted world) as well as migraine, asthma, and other breathing challenged individuals--in many cases, making it impossible for us to go out into the world. Maxie