10/11/2024
BIRD’S EYE VIEW, - Patient Endorsement 🦅
“There is a warmth about Dr. Pooja Amy Shah that radiates kindness & safety and conveys a sense that in talking to her you will be heard. And certainly that’s the way that I felt when I first met her 5 yrs ago. I was there to ask for something simple: Increase the chances that my cancer won’t come back.
Maybe it was an unfair request considering that the docs at Memorial Sloan Kettering had no idea why I’d gotten gastro-esophageal junction cancer in the first place. But maybe there was a supplement or an elixir not known to Western doctors that could do the trick? Alas, no. What I got instead was, perhaps, better.
Well, to be honest, I would really have loved that magic pill! In its absence, however, I got a positive, affirmative approach to life. The importance of mind. The importance of thought. Of hopefulness. Of community. Of nutrition. Most importantly, of experimentation, of being willing to try something different, to move away from what doesn’t work and keep searching for what does.
So what I’ve gotten from her is a holistic approach to my illness & to my life. She suggested meditation, for example, to help deal with stress and frightening thoughts. Mediation morphed into breathing exercises. And that grew into yoga which I now also do regularly. Less stress, more relaxation, greater flexibility, better balance. Will that keep cancer away? I don’t know but life is certainly more enjoyable in the meantime.
Nutrition advice. Supplements. Strange sounding roots. All her ideas and suggestions have fueled my own research, my own experimentation which has lead me in directions and to things I’d never thought about before.
Didn’t think of myself as a yoga going, tea drinking, beet root supplementing, ashwagandha taking kind of guy. But that’s where my work with Dr. Shah has lead me. Is it working? Well, the cancer hasn’t come back, I’m running faster than I have in over six years and I can stay balanced on one leg for at least 30 seconds!
Dr. Shah has helped me become a smarter, more observant, more self aware person. She’s a GREAT doctor and an amazingly thoughtful, sweet person.”
— ML
