Five-year survival rate: 7 percent. That's what I was told about my cancer. Yet in 2010, I reached my fifth year of survival. Three years have passed since then. Now I have survived for eight years, and I give my most heartfelt thanks to be alive.

We live at an exciting crossroads in the world of health care. Ancient medical systems like Ayurveda and traditional chinese medicine are as accessible as modern medical treatments like pharmaceuticals and surgery.

"I am well" means much more than the absence of active disease. What the public -- and most doctors -- hasn't found out is that the cause of illness is becoming more and more murky.  

It's all too easy to label as diagnostic any facet of the enormously complicated gamut of human emotion and behavior we do not understand or do not endorse. This is especially true in these days of increased anger and violence and fear. The harm done by these labels wounds us all.