Ashley’s ponytail was loose, her red hair falling string-straight across her freckled face. In the mirror, I caught her eye. “Hey, do you like my new hair color?”
She shrugged and then nodded. Garrett turned away from me and looked a little harder out the window. I didn’t really expect them to approve. After all, when I dropped them off for school this morning, I was dishwater blonde. Then, without warning, I bought a box of midnight ebony at the grocery store. Two or three hours later and voila! My hair was now the deep black I’d always envied on my edgy, artistic friends.
A crossing guard stopped traffic in front of us, near the intersection of Greencove and Glenville Drive. A group of the neighborhood girls skipped by in light-up tennis shoes and vibrant jackets. Waiting for the parade to reach the far curb, I let my eyes linger on the rearview mirror. Still no smile from the silence behind me. Not surprising, I reasoned. Ashley and Garrett had lived through a divorce, adjusted to new step-parents and made a difficult transition from their mother’s house to ours. Then, just when life must have felt predictable again, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“Hey, if you don’t like this new hue,” I continued, emphasizing the rhyme to lighten things up, “the good thing is, my hair is going to fall out soon anyway.” I giggled, turning to Garrett, playfully, “And then . . . I’m going to get a tattoo on my bald head!”
He snapped back to the world inside our car, fiercely locking his eyes on to mine. “Stop changing!” he demanded. “Don’t lose your hair! Don’t get a tattoo! I’ll be in third grade before it grows back.”
As stunned as we were by his outburst, Ashley spoke first. “Garrett,” she said softly, comforting him in the motherly tone she had perfected, “it’s okay. It’s okay.”
My mind was racing. Why is he so upset? My hair was waist-length when I first met the kids. For our wedding, it was bobbed at the shoulder. Then last month, it got shorter, much shorter. Change. Change. Change. Now, it was a different color. More change.
Then it hit me. Garrett’s desperation revealed my own hidden fear. For the first time in my life, I am faced with something I cannot control . . . and I am terrified. Breast cancer changed things without my permission, changed things that I didn’t want to change. Cutting, coloring, tattooing— these things helped sustain the illusion that I decided what would happen to my body, that I was in control.
In the driveway, the kids squeezed out of the car. I shouldered my briefcase, picked up Ashley’s pink backpack and reached for Garrett’s hand.
“After supper, would you guys help me and your dad pick out a wig?”
“Not red,” Ashley said.
“Like your hair was before?” Garrett asked.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “The catalog has lots of choices. Maybe one will be like mine was before.”
We walked into the house together. It was a good feeling, knowing what would probably happen next, able to predict that after supper we would all sit down together and choose a wig, then brush our teeth, read a book and go to sleep.
I love this time of day, I thought. I’m so glad to be part of this family.
Rhonda Richards-Cohen
“Shoot the Messengers”
No matter how difficult, it might be a pearl in the making.
Don Kelly
When bad news comes like a thunderclap, it’s hard to imagine good can come of it.
Two years ago, I went with my wife to hear the results of her biopsy. A routine mammogram had indicated something suspicious, the ultrasound confirmed it, and she had a needle biopsy. I accompanied her to hear the results, even though we both knew there could be nothing wrong with her—she was so healthy! She squeezed my hand tight as we entered the radiation offices, bent on keeping our positive attitude.
We sat in the hallway for five to ten minutes, and then were called in to a storage room filled with unused X-ray equipment. We sat on cold steel stools against a cement wall on a cement floor in an icy-cold air-conditioned room.
The technician wasted no time. She looked my wife straight in the eye and said, “It is cancer.”
We both sat there in shock. I asked, “Couldn’t there be some mistake?”
“No mistake,” she said coldly. “It’s cancer. It’s definitely cancer.”
We were paralyzed, our mouths dry, unable to speak for several minutes. Tears made a path down my wife’s cheeks. Finally, we stood up and walked like zombies down the cold hallway and out of the office. On the way to the car, I said, “Cruel! She was cold and cruel and almost seemed to enjoy telling us in a sadistic way.” Although it can never be an easy task to tell someone she or he has cancer, we both agreed there had to be a better way.
The surgeon’s office had closed early that day, so we hadn’t talked to her doctor. We didn’t know the gravity of the diagnosis; we had no details about the size, grade or seriousness of the cancer.
We went home to bed, and I held her as we both cried. We lay there a long time, holding hands, trying to assimilate the terrifying news. We talked about finances, our will; my wife was picking out her gravestone. Actually, she decided on cremation.
All this torture was unnecessary. Nobody told us that most people survive breast cancer. The technician who delivered the dire message suggested nothing positive, no books, no reading material, no support groups. Nothing. We were left to our own resources, stumbling in the dark to find out what choices we had.
As we lay there that night, we thought, With all the money that goes into research and equipment, wouldn’t it have been nice if we had been taken into a comfortable seating area, been greeted by a professional counselor whose job is to convey the news to people, as well as their many options and choices?
After that first night, having successfully weathered the “knock-out punch,” we called our friend and teacher on Kauai, Dr. Serge King, who specializes in Aloha Spirit and healing, using ancient Hawaiian practices. He informed us that he had developed a new technique called the Dynamind treatment. We flew to see him and had a session right away. He sat across from my wife and asked her if she was having any emotional feelings about her cancer. She couldn’t come up with anything, but then suddenly said, “I feel like I’m ruining our wonderful life.”
“There’s no reason for those feelings of guilt,” he said. “Let’s get rid of them. The Dynamind treatment can make an incredible difference by releasing stored emotions in the space of a minute. You first acknowledge the problem, relax the mind, fill the body with breath and energy, and use physical touch and kinesiology to redirect the mind.”
He continued, “Repeat after me: I’m feeling some guilt about my cancer and that can change. I want that feeling of guilt to change. I want that to go away now.”
She repeated what he said.
“Now tap your fingers seven times on the breastbone at the center of the chest, then seven times on the area between your left thumb and index finger, now seven times on the right hand, then seven times on the base of the neck. Now take a deep breath and tell me on a scale of ten, ten being the worst and one being the least, how are you feeling about the guilt?”
My wife took a deep breath, opened her eyes and said, “It’s about a seven.”
“Okay,” he said, “let’s do it again. Take a deep breath and do it again.”
She went through the series again, took a deep breath and said, “It’s about a four.”
“Well, then, let’s do it once more,” Serge said.
She went through the process one more time, and at the end she took a deep breath and said, “It’s gone.”
“Do you feel anything else? Sadness or anger at the cancer?”
“A little fear.”
“Whenever that comes up, take a deep breath and say, ‘I’m feeling a little anxiety, and that can change. I want that anxiety to change. I want it to go away now.’”
We were overjoyed to have something positive and constructive to use in our healing.
As my wife went through numerous
scary tests and treatments, this technique was immensely helpful and gave her the willpower to overcome her challenges.
When she was feeling nauseous after surgery, she was able to use the technique to overcome it. She went on to use the technique over and over again, through eight rounds of chemotherapy, seven weeks of radiation, hair loss, weight gain from steroids and other difficult side effects.
She has emerged on the other side of the tunnel, more beautiful than ever. She found some great books like Chicken Soup for the Survivor’s Soul; Living Beyond Breast Cancer, A Survivor’s Guide; Uplift: Secrets from the Sisterhood of Breast Cancer Survivors; Hope Is Contagious; Not Just One in Eight; and many others. She even wrote a book called Path of the Pearl: Discover Your Treasures Within, about the way a pearl oyster takes an irritant and transforms it into something of great rarity and beauty—a pearl. I came up with a phrase that sums up her book and her medical journey: “No matter how difficult, it might be a pearl in the making.”
Glowing with health, her energy returned, we both give thanks for the gifts of this journey. We appreciate every day of our lives that we have together. We take nothing for granted. We feel blessed—we’ve been given a second chance. We both feel a deep commitment to helping others get through their breast-cancer journey. We believe in utilizing all the support that is available—great Web sites, helpful books, local support groups, alternative healing along with Western medicine, and plenty of positive tools and techniques.
There is a lot of help out there! Make use of all the excellent support that’s available and then perhaps you won’t have to “shoot the messenger.”
Don Kelly
Angel Hugh
If you are going through hell, keep going.
SirWinston Churchill
“Try my feet,” I groaned. “I’ve got some good veins there.” The IV needle in my hand had stopped working, and an exhausted young doctor was unsuccessfully trying to insert a new one. She had been at it for half an hour. At midnight on a Friday, she was the only doctor on duty in the oncology ward of this National Health Service hospital in central London, and for me, she was the only game in town. I knew she’d been on duty for far too many hours, but I didn’t really care. I had my own problems.
“I’ll give you one more shot at it, then I’m done. I’ll drink the damn blood, the antibiotics, the acyclovir, whatever you want. But after this one, I’ve had enough.” I gritted my teeth, grabbed the cold iron bed frame and tried not to cry out. Vampira dug around, looking for a vein on my foot. She stabbed. She stabbed again.
“I can’t do this,” and she stood, hands shaking. “I’ve done twenty of these today, and I did them perfectly well. You’ve had so much chemo, your veins just won’t cooperate.” She angrily pulled the curtain back and stomped out into the ward.
I had an infection in the central line they had surgically implanted in my chest, as well as an adverse reaction to my first high dose of chemotherapy. My white blood count had dropped, and a fever had gone so high that it gave me the shakes. I was at the nadir of my nadir. And all I wanted now was for it all to stop. All of it.
The last weeks had seen me in and out of the hospital in preparation for the high doses of chemotherapy I was soon to receive. Each visit meant a different bed, a different view of the same gray-green walls and mostly different faces. Unlike American hospitals with their double or triple patient rooms, this was one large ward, with approximately twenty beds separated only by the curtains you were allowed to draw around. It was a mixed sex ward, but we had all lost our modesty along with our privacy. Personal dignity had somehow ceased to matter.
Most of my fellow patients were asleep, and I sat in my curtained cubicle, legs crossed, a red velvet hat on my bald head, listening to their snores and grunts. I dreaded the next chapter of my nightmare and had stopped trying to imagine just where the plot was headed.
Suddenly, the ward sister flung my curtain wide. “This is Hugh from the intensive care unit.” And she was gone.
“Nice hat,” Hugh said with a grin, as he gently pulled the curtain shut.
“Bet you’re bald as a coot under there.” I tried to smile.
“May I?” and he took a seat beside me on the bed. “What’s the problem?” He looked me over, as though buying a used car. “I see a lot of places we can get a needle in.” He counted the little Band-aids plastered over all the failed attempts on my arm and hand. “Thirteen,” he exclaimed in wonder.
I shook my head. “You missed my feet.”
He shook his head back at me. “And before every one, the doc said, ‘This won’t hurt a bit.’ Right?” He laughed. “You ever hear the one about the guy who wanted to castrate his cat?”
I shook my head, slower this time. Was this guy going to tell me a joke?
Didn’t he have a life to save, a phone call to make, a nap to take?
Hugh continued. “He didn’t have any money to go to the vet, so his best friend tells him, ‘I’ll do it for you. It’s simple. You hold the cat. I get a couple of bricks, and I hold ’em one in each hand. Like this. When the cat’s nice and calm, I do this.’ And the best friend slams the two bricks together. The cat owner is appalled. ‘Won’t that hurt?’ he whispered. ‘Oh, no,’ replied the best friend. ‘Not as long as I remember to keep my thumbs up.’”
Hugh grinned even wider. And I laughed for the first time in days, as much at his enjoyment as at the joke.
In a low, conspiratorial voice, he went on, “So the doc was right. It didn’t hurt her a bit.” I laughed again. “Now I’m going to numb this bit of your hand with a little cream, and we’ll wait a minute for it to work. No need for any more pain than you have already, right?” We waited.
Hugh cocked his head. “They tell me you’re having a hard time?” A pause, and he continued. “I had a Jeep accident in Africa a few years ago. My girlfriend and my friend were killed, and I was in the hospital for six months. It was a pretty dark time. It might have been something like what you’re going through now.” He was almost whispering.
“You don’t want to do this anymore, do you?” I nodded, hesitantly. It was hard to admit in a world that admired fighters that I wanted to quit, to give up, to give in.
“I always compare it to mal de mer. You know, seasickness? When you’re in the middle of a channel crossing to France, and the boat is heaving, and you’re being sick over the side, all you want is for it to stop. You just want to die. But when you get to the other side, you can’t believe you ever felt that way.”
Hugh looked straight into my eyes. “You’re going to get to the other side of this, and you won’t believe you ever felt the way you’ve felt tonight.”
I could feel my tears. “Now, let’s get this needle in. There. Done. Perfect.” And it was.
He stood to go. “If you have any more trouble, have them page me, and if I’m in the hospital, I’ll come.” He stopped at the curtain and turned back. “I’m not a very good fortune teller, but I’m a heck of a good bookie. You know what I say? You’re going to make it.” With that, he was gone.
It’s now seven years since I finished my high-dose chemotherapy and the radiotherapy that followed. My health remains robust, and though others may say I am in “remission,” I consider myself “cured.” Out of my experience came my first play, “Gone to L.A.,” a black comedy about breast cancer, which will be made into a film later this year. In it, one of my favorite characters refers to “Angel Hugh from ICU,” the guy who can “cannulate your friggin’ earlobe.”
When “Gone to L.A.” opened at the Hampstead Theatre in London, I was pleased that a great number of the family and friends who helped me through my illness were among the audience. It made me laugh inside to know that Angel Hugh was one of them.
Lolly Susi
“He’s looking for his wife, but she’s been taking
all those life-saving breast cancer treatments and he’s
not sure when she might be able to get away.”
Reprinted w
ith permission of Charles Markman ©2005.
6
COURAGE
The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next.
Mignon McLaughlin
Knowing What Your Rope Is
When you get to the end of your rope—tie a knot in it and hang on.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Shortly after learning I had a rare kind of breast cancer that would require a year of aggressive treatments, I decided to cut back on some of my activities.
I stopped by my son’s classroom to explain to his teacher why I would no longer be coming to help every Monday morning. When I became upset as I told her about my diagnosis and the long months of treatment that lay ahead, she took my hands, held them tightly and told me this story about her friend, Ann.
One summer, Ann decided to go river rafting. Everyone who signed up for the trip had to learn the basic procedures and safety measures. As the instructor outlined the dangers, Ann became scared. What if her raft capsized or was dashed against the rocks? What if she were thrown into the rapidly churning water and carried downstream before anyone could rescue her?
The instructor had one answer to all of Ann’s anxious questions: “There is a rope that is attached to the perimeter of the raft. Whatever happens, hold on to that rope. Never let go. Just hold on.” And do you know what? An unexpected storm came up, and Ann’s raft did capsize, but she remembered her instructor’s words. She held on to that rope, and she survived.
I stared at my friend, wondering what this had to do with me. “Know what your rope is, Myra,” she counseled. “And hold on—to whatever it is. Through whatever happens, just keep holding on.”
She gave me a hug and returned to her classroom, leaving me to ponder her words. What was my rope? What would I hold on to in the days ahead? What would help me survive my perilous journey through surgery? It didn’t take me long to find the answer. My rope would be the love of my family and friends, which I knew would support me through whatever lay ahead.