Book Excerpt: A Cancer Patient Fends Off Faux Science and Medicine — With Humor

I was in Malibu because a friend had texted that she knew “a guy with an ​energy machine and he’s had great results with curing diseases in his garage in Topanga.” Topanga Canyon is one of the few remaining hippie enclaves in Southern California, a tangle of dirt roads and dusty hiking paths where Native American dream catchers hanging from rearview mirrors are as commonplace as writers tapping out screenplays.

When I didn’t respond to her initial text, she pinged me a few months later to ask if I’d connected with Topanga Guy. By then, I’d forgotten the context and, being single, thought she was referring to a possible date. “I wouldn’t want to date a guy with an energy machine in his garage, so why would I entrust this dude with my life?” was what I wanted to text. But I was worn down by the crush of recommendations I’d received.

My residency in Cancerland had given me an unwelcome-wagon gift: an ever-present nagging suspicion that if I didn’t at least try the outlandish cure, I wasn’t doing everything I could. When I called to schedule, I learned that Topanga Guy had recently married one of Charlie Sheen’s ex-wives and upgraded from his garage to a swank Herman Miller-bedecked office suite.

I want to believe! That was one tagline for the TV series The X-Files. And I wanted to believe that the proprietor was the self-taught scientific savant he claimed to be and that this “resonant light” therapy might be something more than colorful kid’s play.

But when the owner of the Q360 wellness center trained his baby blues on me on that sunny afternoon in Malibu and said, “Diseases are caused by negative thinking; your lung cancer indicates that you’re harboring toxic levels of grief,” I stood up, shaken out of my intimidating-language stupor, and said, “No, that’s not true,” although I was experiencing grief, the grief of knowing that I could never get back the time or the $360 I’d paid for that consultation.

I marched out on wobbly legs. My body carried me, but my brain was still inside bargaining. Should I stay and try it out just to be able to disprove it myself, or, you know, just in case … Wasn’t Viagra originally indicated for heart disease?

My friend’s recommendation was just one in a potluck of magical thinking, ancient rituals and speculative remedies that came my way.

Like juicing: If you care anything at all about your health, they say, you need to start juicing. Juicing is the gateway to wellness woo-woo. Juice acolytes claim benefits ranging from improved IQ to increased longevity. Its anticancer properties are so often touted that when I wrote in The New York Times that I’d been given a juicer as a present after being diagnosed, dozens of readers sent photos of abandoned juicers they’d also received.

“Juicing is the gateway to wellness woo-woo,” Gurwitch writes.

Leland Foster

So when my juicer arrived, I hastily unboxed it. It was a super-sleek model, almost sculptural, seamlessly smooth and bullet-shaped. I considered the steps I’d have to take to make juice.

First, I’d need vegetables on hand. This was during a COVID lockdown, and I wasn’t doing much shopping, not to mention that the vegetables considered the most potent elixirs are best ordered in a farm delivery box, which sounded expensive.

Also, anxiety making. What to get and how much of it? And: I’d have to take a nap after making my morning coffee, then make the juice, and would need another nap after all that.

I’ve never managed to introduce that much organization into my shopping routine, because I’m never sure whether I should order for a day or a week. I’d also have to make space in my refrigerator, which might mean chucking the prepared foods that were sustaining me because cooking took too much effort.

“I give up,” I sighed after my son, Ezra, got a job at a popular local juice bar. Was the universe trying to tell me something? I slunk into the joint. “What’s your most nutritious green juice? Should I have the ‘Zeus’ with ginger and watercress or ‘Eternal Life’ with turmeric and Himalayan shilajit?”

He didn’t hesitate. “‘Eternal Life’ sucks, Mom, you don’t want that. Here’s what you want: a Greek coffee. It’s got dates, bananas, cold-pressed coffee, figs, cardamom and cacao.”

I don’t know if a Greek coffee is healthy by any measurable standard, and it doesn’t cure worms in canines or humans, but that combination of ingredients makes me glowy, gives me sugar and caffeine-powered energy. And it tastes even better when someone else makes it for me, especially my son.

Still, if you ever hear that I’ve hung a shingle for Annabelle’s Greek Coffee Cure with Turmeric, or find yourself in some sun-splashed Malibu office and notice that I’m one of the clients receiving realigning resonant rays of light, please don’t be surprised or disappointed. I still haven’t cycled through a dozen lines of alternative treatments, and I don’t know what lengths I’ll go to when that day comes.

Also, can I interest you in a juicer? Never used, nearly new. I’ve got big medical bills, so I’m letting it go for a good price. I’ll let you have it for a cool million.

Adapted from The End of My Life Is Killing Me: The Unexpected Joys of a Cancer Slacker by Annabelle Gurwitch, to be published by Zibby Publishing on March 17, 2026. Copyright © 2026 by Annabelle Gurwitch.