Chicago: I love the Museum of Science & Industry. Just a whole lot of fun and I could spend 2-3 days in there.

Chicago has some wonderful mexican food restaurants, I'm happy to recommend my favorites if that is the kind of food your friend likes. I have some recommendations regarding hotels, but I have gotten some good deals from priceline. I have have stayed in a few hotels around downtown (perhaps quite a few), so if you can tell me the kind of hotel they are looking for, I'm happy to give a thumbs up/down.

Apparently a friend of my sister's beat cancer through diet. Avoided chemo and radiation.

Yeah, but that's just anecdata.

Also, it's usually not anything like the full story. Some people who say that have been diagnosed with something like DCIS that may or may not be precancerous. Some are saying they beat cancer while the cancer is merrily metastasizing while they've been juicing carrots instead of going to the doctor.

I have known several people who treated their cancers with diet, herbs and various other alternative therapies. They're dead.

(I don't feel strongly about this, do I?)

My late second cousin self-treated for lung cancer with diet and herbs.

Yeah. I'm glad you do, at least?

Apparently it takes being depressed (and having illness-affected depression) to get that. I know I've told my father I'm on ADs before (although I'm really crap at taking them), but he seemed startled when I was explaining depression to him (again). It's kind of scary how little he gets it. I feel like a preachy social justice type some times when I am trying to suggest ways for him to interact with his fucking wife of 40+ years.

it sounds like you just want to stop that shit at the source, and I guess that's way trickier.

I hope I've conveyed to my sister that I'm perfectly happy for her friend, but if any of this makes my mother more anxious, I'm going to...what the fuck am I going to do? Beam disapproval from the West Coast? I don't know.

My sister's not an idiot, and she's an academic with a thorough understanding of statistics. That said, she's the kind of skeptic that I'm not. I just hope I expressed myself rationally and non-confrontationally. Everyone is on a razor's edge of getting upset.

Chicago has some wonderful mexican food restaurants, I'm happy to recommend my favorites if that is the kind of food your friend likes.

I can say go for it!

H. says they've found a deal at the Drake.

ita !, I don't know if this will help, but I was pretty much told to try to eat healthy if I could, but finding foods I could eat was more important. It's more than a nausea thing--your taste buds get pretty fucked up, and things don't taste like they should. I was also told to steer away from foods I liked/my regular diet because there was a pretty good chance that I would develop bad associations with at least some of the food I was eating during chemo.

Apparently a friend of my sister's beat cancer through diet. Avoided chemo and radiation.

I don't know your sister's friend, but I guarantee you this did not happen. Correlation not causation, confirmation bias, etc etc etc.

All cases I've read about where someone claimed to have cured cancer through diet have turned out to be either (a) not cancer or (b) diet + conventional meds.

Apparently it takes being depressed (and having illness-affected depression) to get that.

I think that's true, for most people. It's the kind of thing that it's hard to imagine if you haven't actually felt it, I think.

In lighter news, I am ridiculously proud of myself for having just returned something used to CVS!

Lee points out one of the things that concerns me about treating cancer with diet, which is that the main thing that counts in chemo is calories in. I pretty much avoided severe nausea, but there were a lot of days when looking at food made my stomach say, "No, I don't think so." I could usually fall back on some soups, ice cream and plain crackers.

Chicagoistas! ... Suggestions?

[link] can be useful. Especially if they are willing to venture out into a variety of neighborhoods.