Chicken Soup for the Cancer Survivor's Soul (31 page)

Two hours later, we returned to our cabin in good spirits and exhausted. The week had taken a toll on us. As I opened the door, Rosa was screaming, “Lisa, help!” I immediately put my arm around her and tried to ask her what was wrong. She continued to cry, trying to talk through her tears. “My ear hurts so bad; I have never been in so much pain.” Oh, my goodness, I had made it the whole week without any big problems. My initial horrific apprehensions were coming true. I was so scared that something serious might go wrong that I couldn’t handle, something they did not teach me at the camp orientation.

Here it was 2 A.M. and ironically, it was Rosa who was crying out for help on this day. The whole week Rosa and I had connected so well, and I had so much fun setting her up with all these dates for the dance. However, today Rosa had displayed a mean streak in her and turned vicious, especially to me. I knew this was her way to continue getting my attention. She kept pushing me until I lost my patience, which is something I rarely do, and I stormed out of the cabin. She really hurt my feelings, and I was so upset that Rosa was able to get the best of me earlier.

Now, Rosa lay in my arms, crying hysterically for me to help her. I was so frightened that something would happen to her. The other girls in the cabin were so exhausted that they rolled over and continued sleeping through all this commotion, while Mary Anne and I got Rosa dressed and over to the Med Shed. I just held her tight and kept telling her it was going to be okay, reassuring myself in the process. We woke up the nurse on duty and she checked out our terrified patient. It turned out that she only had a bad earache, and I can’t tell you how thankful we all were.

Often when I am consumed with trials in my life, I reflect back on those special children who possess knowledge and maturity beyond their years. I have learned from them that in comparison, my troubles are very insignificant. As a teacher who usually gives lessons daily, I feel that I was instead taught valuable lessons on the importance of life in those nine days. Those optimistic, risk-taking campers taught me the preciousness of life, illustrating that each day is a gift and to live to the fullest because no one knows what tomorrow will bring. From this incredible experience, I learned first-hand the importance of giving yourself to others and receiving much more in return than what you gave. Thank you for these important life lessons.

Lisa McKeehan

Humor Helps

I have always set personal boundaries of what is funny and what is not. I have been quoted as saying, “There are just some things you don’t poke fun at.” I was wrong. Laughter rises out of tragedy when you need it the most and rewards you for your courage.

Without it, it would have been impossible to imagine how these children and their families could have endured their load.

The giddiness of a moment when 15-year-old Jessica, Burlington, Vermont, with a “below the knee” amputation, was playing soccer and not only the ball, but her prosthesis sailed through the air leaving “the tall, gorgeous, humorous person I am” convulsed on the floor with laughter.

Sometimes it was a situation that cried for perspective. Ryan was treated for neuroblastoma at age three with surgery and radiation. Eleven years later, he emerged with no health problems, but there was just one little glitch. He only perspires and blushes on one side of his body. Ryan may use less deodorant than the rest of us, but his sense of humor was left intact, as is evidenced by his artwork.

Betsy of Boston, Massachusetts, speaks of optimism and humor as her “caretakers” during her bout with cancer. It put the following experience in perspective. The 17–year-old entered a treatment room to receive her radiation therapy. Several people were already there so she dropped her gown and prepared to get on with it. Upon questioning she found that the extra people in the room weren’t medical students as she had assumed, but painters there to estimate the cost of repainting the room!

Worth noting is that the incident happened in 1965, and Betsy added, “I wish there had been organizations and opportunities available 24 years ago to allow me to share ‘experiences’ rather than ‘memories.’”

Erma Bombeck

EDITORS’ NOTE: Erma Bombeck died on April 22, 1996 due to complications from a kidney transplant. Her courage and strength exemplify the spirit of this book. We mourn her passing with great sorrow.

Cancer Introduced Me to Myself

O
ne secures the gold of the spirit when he finds himself.

Claude M. Bristol

A three-day wait for the results, which I already know in my gut. Three days lying flat on the couch, staring as the television changes programs hour after hour. The phone rings. They’ll cut off my breast on Monday. I am 13 weeks pregnant. I am 33 years old.

They do it. They really meant it. My right side has a 12–inch incision; no lymph glands, no breast. There are 12 more tumors in my glands.

I have three choices: immediate abortion, a cesarean section or induced labor at about 30 weeks, or a full-term delivery. My cancer is hormone-positive, and my body is lousy with hormones. I can’t have any of the usual cancer therapy if I keep the baby. Even with an abortion and therapy, my chances are a shattering one in six for five more years of life.

I choose to go for 30 weeks. I don’t choose it to save the baby. I choose it to get out of the hospital, so they won’t do anything more to me now. They pull two long, sucking tubes out of my side, and I go home. It is January in Minnesota, as frozen as you can get, unless, of course, you are pregnant and have cancer.

When you are a human time bomb, it is a lot longer than five months from January to May. Each day my baby grows, more of the hormones, so enormously dangerous to me, flood my body. There is little reason to hope that I will complete the pregnancy with no further cancer spread. I am so numb, so angry, so very, very sad that my face freezes into an expressionless mask. I lose the ability to read (previously one of my greatest joys), because my concentration is completely destroyed. I don’t expect to see my girl become eight years old on June 30, 1978. I buy all her gifts and wrap them in February. I plan my burial.

But I really was two people, each fighting hard for the upper hand. One heard what the doctors said and reacted as I have just described. But the other shouted obscenities at the hospital whenever her car passed by. This second person decided to fight, even though the first person was after her every day, sometimes every hour, to give up and give in.

Physically, my mastectomy didn’t hurt very much. My chest, upper arm and back were numb, but I healed fast, without complications. But my arm hurt from the beginning, sometimes so badly that I couldn’t straighten it for days. Unfortunately it was my right arm, the one I used to strum my guitar. But it really didn’t matter, because I wasn’t happy enough to sing anymore.

As soon as I left the hospital, I tried to listen to my insides. I wanted my body and mind to tell me how to help them survive. I got some answers, and I tried to follow them even when I was too depressed to move or care. My body said, “drink orange juice,” a curious craving I’d never experienced before. I drank and drank, and it felt right. I put serious thought into what I put into my body. I told my food to make me strong. I told each vitamin, as it slid down my throat, to go to the right places and do the right things, because they were the only cancer pills I had.

My body said, “Move, Lois, and do it fast!” Thirty minutes after I came home from the hospital I went for a walk. It was hard. I was afraid of falling on my side. I was humped like an old lady. But my legs were strong. I bought a pedometer and walked off miles and miles. When spring came, I walked, ran, walked and ran, until there was too much baby.

I told my body through exercise that I loved it and wanted it to be healthy. I started yoga again the week I came home. At first I could only move my arm about five inches from my side in any direction, but I stretched and stretched it. I got my three-pound weights out and made my arm muscles and tendons work even though they protested painfully. I got my arm strength back quickly and have full mobility and strength today. Reach to Recovery says, “Walk your fingers slowly up the door.” I say, “Hang on the door, and then do chin-ups if you can.”

My mind and body said, “Make love,” and they were right. Making love (and other forms of exercise) gave me the only times I was free, the only times I was me again, the only times I didn’t have cancer.

My mind said, “I need peace. I need some rest every day from the overpowering pressure. Rest me!” I had never meditated, but I went to the library and discovered the forms that worked for me. I practiced. Meditation dropped my tense body out of my waking turmoil into a sweet cradle, deep and dark and refreshingly peaceful. I literally lived for those moments.

Meditation also provided me with a chance to practice medicine without a license. I told my body to be well. I told my immunological system to protect me. I looked at my brain, my bones, my liver, and my lungs every night. I felt them and told them to be free of cancer. I watched my blood flowing strongly. I told the wound to heal quickly and the area around it to be clean. I told my other breast to behave, because its the only one my husband and I have left. I still tell my body and mind every night, “I reject cancer. I reject cancer.”

The doctors poke around, look at my X rays, let me out into the world again. I make it into spring, into May.

We try an induction the last week in May. It goes on for 10 hours, it hurts a lot, and accomplishes nothing. They, the ones not in the bed, want to try again tomorrow. Baby and I want to go home. We go, and I tell myself that three or four more weeks won’t kill me! I am happy because, going full term, I can deliver with the midwives. Perhaps the birth, at least, will be beautiful even if the pregnancy was hell.

My college roommate had a baby on June 13, and I guess that I will, too. With amniotic fluid beginning to leak, I go to the hospital to a lovely room with plants and a big double bed. My midwife is good in all ways. The contractions are close and getting stronger, and I begin to lose the fear all women have. I am handling this well. I’m going to enjoy it.

She breaks the bag, and the bed and I are drenched. She says I’m six centimeters, but I watch her face change. I’m pushing the cord out before the baby. I know immediately that he could die—fast. She holds the baby’s head off the cord, pushes him up as I push him down, and I now know what the word agony means. As we race to surgery, I hear them say that the baby’s pulse rate is 60.

Maybe a C-section was a good idea. They spend another hour looking at my insides. They find nothing but insides, and when my husband tells me, I feel a moment of great relief.

The baby is an 8-pound, 1/2-ounce, 21-inch baby boy named Nathan Scott. He is very cute, with brown hair, long dark eyelashes—and a large ventricular septal defect, known among the lucky uninitiated as a heart murmur or hole-in-the-heart. It is congenital. It is serious. It will probably need surgery and it could be life threatening. And, worst of all for me, it means constant trips to a hospital I hate. Trips that leave me exhausted and depressed for days. It means letting my baby be cut up, just like me, for his own good.

Nathan is in danger of congestive heart failure for the first six months of his life. He takes digitalis twice a day. He sweats when he eats. His little bony chest rises and falls much too fast, and his liver and heart are enlarged. He goes into the hospital for a while. I stay with him, and it causes me nearly to break. His original 50 percent chance of closure drops to 25 percent.

But then, sometime in his seventh month, he improves. (I like to think it was during one of those moments when I was whispering in his little ear, “Nathan, you are
going
to get well!”)

The doctors are surprised. The EKGs improve. He gains weight. His breathing slows and the liquid swelling leaves his liver.

In May 1979 Nate has his first normal EKG, a better event than a first birthday. The muscle has closed around the hole. Nathan pulls himself up on his feet and stands tall, and I begin to believe in his existence.

When my tummy flattened out, I had a big surprise. I really didn’t have a breast on the right side. Now was the time when most new mothers love to put on their old clothes, or buy new ones, or dream of two-piece bathing suits. My tent clothes had protected me for six months. Now I had to confront my true feelings about my body, another struggle to add to all the rest.

To describe how I felt as depression is mild. But I kept pushing myself to continue the positive elements in my life. For seven months I didn’t lose my baby fat, but when Nathan began to improve, I experienced a new wave of determination.