Part 4. Righteousness

I like to get to the root cause of issues; to solve puzzles. If I look to any reason why I became disillusioned with Western medicine it is probably that particular trait. Twenty four years ago my youngest son Scott, a few months old at the time, was beset with ear infections for which antibiotics were prescribed…and prescribed…and prescribed. Finally, tubes were placed in his ears. I became disillusioned because the only explanation given is “some babies' eustachian tubes are shaped such that they become susceptible to infection”. But why does the infection start in the first place? Frustrated because I felt we were dealing with symptoms not causes, a friend recommended a naturopath which was a rare find at the time, particularly living in Salt Lake City. He explained what the cause probably was (allergies), tweaked his diet, prescribed some herbal supplements and Scott's ear infections were a thing of the past. Neither of my children needed antibiotics for years after that and this was the beginning of the antibiotic craze.

Actually, the seed of disillusionment was probably planted way back in 5th grade. I had a wart on my finger and I remember hearing on the radio of a person who got rid of a wart by imagining it away. Every night for a week before falling asleep he imagined that place on his finger without the wart. Instead, he saw the spot but saw it with smooth, normal skin. In my sweet innocence, unencumbered with the collective society’s belief system, I decided to do it and it worked. My wart disappeared…easier to do when young because we don’t have decades of experiences telling us what is or isn’t possible.

At the same time I was dealing with Scott’s ear infections, I also read a book by Carolyn Myss called, “The Anatomy of the Spirit” which resonated completely with me. As a medical intuitive, she worked closely with a Harvard trained doctor, C. Norman Shealy, MD. She could “tune in” to a patient's body and discover the illness. She found that “every illness corresponds to a pattern of emotional and psychological stresses, beliefs, and attitudes that have influenced corresponding areas of the human body.” For me, her explanation for why things can go awry in our bodies made perfect sense. (Ironically or coincidentally, twenty years later part of my tool box as a personal coach would include modalities that could address those stressors.)

Over the next two decades multiple experiences left me traveling further and further from the Western model of healthcare. A few personal examples:

1. One winter when I was 36 I experienced multiple sinus infections. Why now when I never got them before? Refusing antibiotics, the sinus infections were solved with a change in diet. I had been a vegetarian, more like a bread-a-tarian. I cut out the bagels, began the Zone Diet and the sinus infections stopped.
2. When I was 40 I experienced chronic heartburn and an endoscopy showed no abnormality and a PPI was prescribed. The bottle of Prilosec occupied a place on my bedside table as if it were part of the interior design. But why was I experiencing the heartburn? After two years of trying many solutions the heartburn finally went away with the solving of an emotional issue. (Anyone experiencing chronic heartburn I would ask, “What issue exists with a loved one that is very important to you yet you feel powerless?)
3. At 48 I ended up in the emergency room with abdominal pain. The doctor thought it was diverticulitis. It was. Did I really need the CT scan to prove his diagnosis and two antibiotics to solve it? 

When I found the lump in my breast at 49 (2009) and the subsequent biopsy showed it was malignant, it was after:

1. 10 years of annual mammograms that all came back negative for breast cancer including the one I had the week before I felt it.
2. 3 ultrasounds in the preceding 18 months that showed the lump as a “benign cyst”, including the ultrasound I had the week before I felt it.
3. Every factor the Western approach (Mayo Clinic)  said“helped” reduce your chances of breast cancer didn’t help me. I’ve never been overweight, no one in my family has had breast cancer (other cancers, but not breast cancer), I had and breast fed two babies, I’ve been physically active all my life, don’t smoke, didn’t use birth control pills or have hormone therapy, limited my alcohol consumption, and ate organic. They also suggest limiting radiation exposure. Mine came from mammograms, X-rays and the CT scan.

To be perfectly honest, my conclusion from the experience I had with my original diagnosis was “they (Western medicine) don’t know what they’re doing.” With my cynicism cemented, when it came time to decide how to treat the cancer was I going to trust them with my life? No. I researched alternative approaches to healing and with the assistance of a naturopath and naturopath oncologist I employed an alternative protocol. Although my cancer marker went down, in early 2010, with the recommendation of my oncologist I had a lumpectomy.

As I entered my 50s I had become righteous/rigid about alternative approaches to healing. Righteousness in any form is ugly, divisive, lacking in compassion. Unless I broke a bone or was in an accident I saw no reason for managing health from the Western perspective nor did I see any reason anybody else should either. For the most part I silently judged. On a visit to see my mom in October 2014, I accompanied her to an appointment she had to see her oncologist. As we entered the facility draped in pink banners, pink ribbons, and pink writing, ironically, it was Breast Cancer Awareness month, I found my stomach churning. It was extremely uncomfortable for me to be in the building.  I saw people with no hair, others in wheel chairs with ports protruding from their chests, gray pallor, somber, moving slowly. I wanted to run out of there screaming as fast as I could. I was in a foreign land; one I had told myself I would NEVER enter willingly. I was so opposed to radiation that I was the one you saw at airports willingly subjecting herself to searches to avoid the screening devices. Chemotherapy…don’t even go there….Oh the judgement and proclamations that come with righteousness…

Mark Twain said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” Six months later, May 2015, found me visiting the foreign land again...and again...and again. This time it was my home town not Peoria IL and it was me, not my mom who was entering a Cancer Care facility. Wes and I were meeting with the radiation oncologist to review the results of the bone scan. I was still nauseous so I was lying on the exam room table, Wes was sitting next to me, the doctor across from us. I had no interest in viewing the bone scan image showing all the places the cancer had metastasized. Through our conversation the doctor knew my aversion to Western medicine and matter-of-factly stated, “I don’t know what your decision is going to be in dealing with the cancer, but what I do know is that if you don’t radiate two spots, one on your right hip and one on L4 your future ability to walk is in jeopardy.”

Radiation or my ability to walk? 

Part 3. Crumbling...

I was going through the motions. Surviving. Nauseous. Waiting. How long would it take? 

A bone scan and CT scan were scheduled the first week of May 2015 which meant a good portion of a day was going to be spent out of my house in some position other than draped over my ottoman or lying down which I could now do thanks to Oxycodone. Sitting upright made me want to vomit. My world was reduced to the family room in my house which felt safe as Wes was running interference on anything and everything; a sentry. Contemplating spending an entire day at the hospital sitting in waiting room chairs seemed intolerable on many levels. Fortunately, Wes negotiated a recovery room for me at the hospital where I could wait in between procedures so that I would have a bed to lie in rather than a waiting room chair that would force me to sit...one concern solved. 

Part of the process of a contrast CT scan for those who have yet to experience one is drinking two containers of this sickening sweet opaque colored liquid, barium sulfate. I don’t know if it's two pints or two quarts; one sip is one too many. I have to question America’s addiction to sugar when the company who makes them thinks this is the perfect amount of sweetness. You get your pick, Banana, Berry, and Creamy Vanilla “smoothies”. I think they offer a new flavor as well, Mocha. (Perhaps the Starbucks influence even extends to these circles…soon we will be able to buy them on Amazon.) Don't pick Vanilla.

The barium sulfate has to be consumed within a certain time. I had about an hour to drink these yet every sip felt like I was playing a Las Vegas slot machine. Which sip would land just right causing the eruption of the contents of my stomach? After gagging my way through 1/4 of one, some part of my being found a little bit of rebelliousness and I said “No, no more. I don’t care”. Apparently there is a Plan B. The nurse found something else for me to drink. It is a clear contrast without much taste that is given to bariatric patients. It was tolerable. 

Hours went by. I was wheeled from one place to another. I had an i.v. put in. When did they do that? Bone scan. Ahhh, that’s right, for the bone scan. Was that before or after the CT scan?  Before. Right. Back to the recovery room. Did I have an X ray on my leg that day, too? No, that and the ultrasounds were another day. Got it. And so on. I remember the barium sulfate “smoothie” well. The rest, not so much. 

Finally I was done. Wes and I walked to the car. He opened my door and I collapsed into the front seat and cried, sobbed the drive home. It was as if the part of me who learned to show strength to the outside world, who thought vulnerability meant weakness, collapsed with fatigue and the real me, the one whose heart was breaking felt the enormity of what was happening. I was so…sad. Grief stricken. Sad for what I saw as the trajectory of my life, sad for the choices I made that day and to be honest, other days too, sad for what I put my body through. And at a deeper level I was sad because every strategy and skill I knew for how to survive this world hadn’t worked and I had no replacements. How in the world did I get HERE? 

About a month ago I repeated the very same process and it wasn’t that big of a deal. Granted I didn’t relish the idea of more radiation but the day itself wasn’t traumatic. A year ago it was. Why? My world, the one I had constructed for myself was falling apart, crumbling before my eyes. That day was emblematic of what was to come, I was watching it happen, didn’t like it and there was nothing I could do to stop it. 

Part 2. Shock and Awe

My stomach has both been churning and tightening as the days on the calendar have been advancing this month. Each day represents a one year anniversary of sorts for me with the first really big demarcation being today. It was one year ago, April 23, 2015 that I went in for an MRI because of severe back pain.

The only place I could find relief...the infamous ottoman.

The beginning of April 2015 I felt a hitch in my groin and as the weeks unfolded the pain spread to my back and right hip. I could not sit, I could not lie down with my legs stretched out, I walked with a limp and slept face down draped over an ottoman. It was the only position that gave me any sort of relief although my elbows and knees were rubbed raw. The pain was clearly getting worse, not better with time. 

I have had MRIs done a handful of times, but this one was excruciating because it required that I keep my legs stretched out straight, flat, and unmoving for the 40 or so minutes it took to complete the imaging. The minute I was rolled out of the tube I brought my knees up to my chest, rolled to my side, dropped to the floor and sobbed. Birthing two children paled in comparison to this pain. With the MRIs I had done before the technician always said the same thing upon completion, “ The radiologist will review the results and your doctor will be in touch.” On April 23, 2015 something different was said. “Your doctor happens to be in the building and can come see you now.” I thought how fortunate I was to be able to get an answer so quickly and not have to see him at our scheduled appointment the next day. Pain had clouded my discernment….when a doctor can see you NOW it means something is serious!  

My husband, Wes was sitting in one chair. I was kneeling on the floor, arms folded on the seat of another, head resting on my arms when the doctor came in. With a somber look on his face he said, “I’m afraid I don’t have good news. You have cancerous lesions on your vertebrae.” In pain and numb, I couldn’t really absorb the information. I heard the words but my being was saying “no”. There was an impenetrable shield surrounding me and were it not for that shield, it felt like I would have died with the force of that shockwave. Something I feared and fought for so long had come true. Breast cancer, a 2009 diagnosis, had metastasized.

Over the next few days, the impenetrable shield began to give way and in its place was a weird sort of comfort. Though the doctor spoke words you never want to hear, six years of wondering, worrying and fearing cancer’s return were over. I had an answer…there was no longer a question. Fortified with heavy duty pain killers, I don’t remember much of those early days other than I was “existing” not “living”. When I wasn’t in pain I was nauseous from the pharmaceuticals my body was unused to and I lay on the couch all day, everyday, panting, hoping to keep the vomit from erupting. Other than managing bodily functions, Wes was doing everything for me. I took no phone calls, saw few visitors, had no interest. I was tired. Tired of cancer being in my life, tired of fighting it, tired of thinking what the road ahead entailed. When I could think about the future, I could see no reason for wanting to experience it. The months ahead seemed daunting and for what purpose? It seemed like cancer had no interest in leaving me. I wanted to die; I was ready to die; I was ready for the relief it would bring physically and emotionally. My life force began to slip away. My biggest worry was how long it would take and could I tolerate the pain while alive. Until this moment in my life no one could have convinced me that given the pain my family would experience with my death I would choose death anyway...

Part 1. In the Beginning...

I have a story to tell. Are the stirrings in my stomach excitement or worry as I contemplate the telling of the story? My intention in creating this blog is to be of service and to do so in a way that is worthy of the time you will take to read it. There exists this space I desire to occupy. On one side is teaching and preaching. I'm uninterested in that. On the other side is a dry chronological accounting of a story. I'm equally uninterested in that. In between lies a space of sharing what happened; the feelings, the choices, the decisions and within that space of sharing is the potential for connection and relatability. That is where I hope to reside with each blog post.

 The stirrings in my tummy I’m sure have nothing to do with the vulnerability and honesty it will take to make it a worthy read!

The story is about an odyssey that a woman takes…is still taking. For a long time she felt like she was being followed by a silent predator always lurking, never leaving her alone no matter how she tried to separate herself from it. Unsafe, she ran. There were many strategies that fall under the category of running and she employed them all. One day she got confirmation that the predator had struck, had been striking for awhile, though her denial would not allow her to see it.  Devastated and sure the predator had won, she quit running and she gave UP. The real story starts there… and the telling of it starts tomorrow.