Chicken Soup for the Breast Cancer Survivor's Soul

by Jack Canfield

  Before long, just as in dance movement therapy class, with Pat leading the way, we loosened up. She said she was open to whatever the group wanted to do, so we started having theme nights. Once we each brought a video and voted on which one to watch. We drummed or toned or sculpted with clay or made masks. One time we went on a field trip to walk a labyrinth. When Pat lost her hair again, we decorated bald caps—and each of us wore one. The same night, we hennaed her bald head. And, of course, we played music and moved and danced. No matter what we did, Pat was game. She was always the most enthusiastic of us all.

  During the time we got together, sometimes Pat felt great, and sometimes she felt terrible. But, no matter how she felt, she was there, physically and in every other way. Her lightheartedness, her open attitude to embrace all that life had to offer and her willingness to play gave the rest of us permission to be the same way. And so, instead of being somber, serious and self-conscious, Pat’s healing circle became a respite of light and joy and fun. We played.

  During the last two weeks of Pat’s life, there wasn’t a day when one of us was not with her. And, at her memorial service, fittingly called a celebration of life, the healing circle was there. I spoke and sang in church, in front of complete strangers and, along with the rest of the members of Pat’s healing circle, I danced my heart out. In front of all those people we had never seen before in our lives, we played in Pat’s honor.

  I don’t know where Pat was born or where she grew up. I don’t know what her favorite color was or what her favorite song was. I don’t know if she was a Democrat or a Republican, and I have no idea if she went to church. Our friendship wasn’t like that.

  Pat and I—we were heart friends. We had a connection that came from the soul, a place where no one is self-conscious, no one is afraid to look foolish. It is a place where you can use words or music or art or movement or touch to show how you feel.

  A few months after Pat’s death, I joined another dance movement therapy class with nine other women, all of whom were strangers. Right from the very first moment of the very first class, when the music came on I was moving around the room with ease. I wasn’t self-conscious at all about using my body to express myself in front of an audience of strangers. In fact, I was having fun. I couldn’t believe how free, how safe, I felt showing who I really was and how I really felt. When the music stopped, I used the art supplies, and I knew then that Pat had helped me much more than I had ever helped her.

  Every day since she died, I hear Pat’s voice saying to me, “Remember to play.” And I play. I play.

  Lori Misicka

  A “Gift of Healing” Journey

  No journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.

  Lillian Smith

  Little did I know that following my breast-cancer diagnosis in June 1989 that I would go on a fantastic, life-enhancing, healing journey. It’s hard to believe that cancer can be a gift in a person’s life. It is in mine, although it didn’t happen right away. I had all the shock and fears, and I was so afraid that I couldn’t even pray for myself, but I reached out to everyone whom I thought could help me.

  My first call was to Reach to Recovery with the American Cancer Society. Next, I called Mitz Aoki, a professor at the University of Hawaii, who ministered to those with life-threatening illnesses. Through prayer and guided imagery, he turned my focus away from fear and into looking into our Lord’s face to see peace within me— and see myself healing.

  I created a team of loving people and a healing environment around me—medically, spiritually, emotionally and physically. In his book, Love, Medicine and Miracles, Bernie Siegel calls people like me “exceptional cancer patients.” He says we can’t only rely on doctors to help us; we play a major part in our healing. I began to feel I could be in control of my life again—a feeling I had lost.

  I also started to journal. I wrote down all the scary stuff, the frustrations, the mountain-top and valley experiences. It meant so much to me to reread it later—to see where I had been and how far I had come.

  I found a cancer support group at a local church led by a woman who was recovering from breast cancer. She, too, used guided imagery that she had composed and shared. She took us, in our imaginations, to places where we could feel comfortable, peaceful and safe—on a beach chair by the ocean, a flowering garden, beside a gentle, trickling stream. We were relaxed, refreshed and restored.

  The cancer support group became a part of my life, and our leader asked me to take over the group when her breast cancer recurred. Creating my own meditations and prayers, and ministering to my brothers and sisters, was where I wanted and needed to be. At that point I realized my healing journey had become a “gift” to me. I had my eyes open for other ways to share my “gift” on my healing journey.

  In 1996, I took a class on energy centers of the body that was offered for interested volunteers at Queen’s Medical Center. It is called Healing Touch as it is a hands-on type of complementary medicine, and I asked to volunteer in the radiation therapy department so I could be there for cancer patients. I see the patients in the waiting room, their faces full of concern, and I invite them to have Healing Touch in a room where we have a bed set aside. I play soft music and pray silently or aloud, whichever the person prefers. I show how to relax body and mind, and by placing my hand over the energy centers, bring mind, body and spirit back into peace, harmony and wellness.

  I began to introduce guided imagery into our sessions when several patients wished they could have a private cassette tape of our sessions. I asked them in their imaginations to go to a special place of their own, using all their senses, and describe the scene to me. I would write down all their words. The tape began with relaxation, and then I would repeat back to them the thoughts and the scene they had chosen, along with reinforcing, healing words. Their faces were peaceful, sometimes with a gentle smile. One patient went to her favorite childhood park to swing higher and higher; another went to a vacation on the beach in Bali with warm tradewinds; another went hang-gliding over Makapuu Beach, soaring for two hours. They were really there, no doubt in my mind. Energetic, but peaceful, they experienced a sense of well-being that the body acknowledged and responded with healing.

  I became a participant in the bosom buddies program under Healing Touch about four years ago. We adopt a breast-cancer patient and serve her for six months in any way we can. I have had four bosom buddies, and my first was an exceptional cancer patient. She always had a notebook with her at our sessions. She said she was an author and wanted to write a book. I’m sure she has.

  My latest quest has been to create and record a CD of relaxation and guided imagery for all patients in our department and any other hospital patient who wants one. Our patients are well on their way into their healing journey as we provide them with healing tools to help themselves—a respite in times of need.

  We are here on Earth to love and take care of each other, and I’m deeply honored to share my “gift of healing” wherever I can. I am truly blessed.

  Betsy Ludwig

  Isabelle and Her Dollies’ Hair

  Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons.

  Ruth Ann Schabacker

  When the oncologist outlined my treatment following two breast-cancer surgeries, I was most fearful of the chemotherapy and the promise I would lose my hair. I’d bought two fashionable wigs (which I never wore) and asked my hair stylist if she would cutmy hair very short. In spite of all my preparations, I was in complete denial of the inevitable and hoped somehow it wouldn’t happen to me.

  I was told I would have sixteen weeks of chemotherapy (eight weeks of Cytoxan and Adriamycin and eight weeks of Taxol), to be followed by six weeks of daily radiation. Sixteen days after my first chemotherapy, my hair began to come out in huge clumps. True reality set in; not only was I feeling physically unwell, but with hair loss I plunged into emotional despair.

  My husban
d sweetly offered to clip the few remaining strands that clung to my scalp, but a friend frankly told me to deal with reality and have all that remained cut off, which my husband did. I was now totally bald—and it was just as tough an assignment for him as for me.

  I was determined to get this stage of my treatment over with as quickly as sixteen weeks could go, and I resolved to stay as healthy as possible. I followed all the directives and avoided crowds, ate as well as I could—even though my appetite was practically nonexistent—but the worst part was not seeing my grandchildren because I feared I might catch a cold or the flu.

  My friends knew this was a very difficult time because I truly love all four grandchildren and so enjoy their company, but staying healthy and infection-free was a great incentive because I longed for their sweet faces and amazing wisdom.

  Chemo treatments ended on schedule, without interruption, and I looked forward to my first celebration with family, friends and four grandchildren at Thanksgiving. Even though I wasn’t feeling well and was still very bald, I wore a hat and cautiously prepared to see my family, some of whom had not seen the “new” me, who had lost twenty-five pounds (not counting the missing hair). I was anxious about how my grandchildren, ages three to six, would feel . . . and I didn’t want to scare them.

  Thanksgiving was perfect in every way. How grateful I was to be back with my marvelous family and part of a social circle again! The children were all far less concerned by my appearance than I was; they were curious and innocently intrigued by my bald head. Grace, age four, simply proclaimed that I should have put my “old hair” under my pillow, and with true Tooth Fairy magic, my new hair would reappear the next day. The children cautiously touched my head, and I just assumed their simple behavior was a very accepting way to deal with my unusual appearance.

  When one of my walking friends asked me the next week how everything had gone, I was happy to report, “The day was uneventful, and I felt completely at ease, not really aware that any of the children were affected by my appearance.”

  It wasn’t until six weeks later, when I had a head of soft down, that my daughter Sara presented me with a photograph and told me what Isabelle, my three-year-old granddaughter, had done. Isabelle had secretively kept to herself in her room and was unusually quiet for a surprising amount of time. Sara, an exceptionally patient mother, entered her daughter’s room to discover the child cutting off her doll’s hair! Surprised by Isabelle’s actions, Sara discovered that over a period of three days, Isabelle had trimmed the hair of each of her three dolls, including Ariel, the red-headed Disney mermaid. Calmly, she asked Isabelle what she was doing.

  Very matter-of-factly, Isabelle said, “I needed to have them be just like Mew-Mew,” the name she calls me.

  Paula Young

  The Bus Ride

  An individual doesn’t get cancer, a family does.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Five afternoons each week, the rickety old shuttle bus opens its doors to a waiting group of radiation patients. The door creaks shut and, with windows and bones rattling, the bus and its cargo bump along four freeways to the Kaiser Permanente Cancer Center in Los Angeles.

  Stories, shared experiences and traumas unite these strangers thrown suddenly together. My wife, Catherine, is one of them.

  Rider: “Is that a Walkman?”

  Catherine: “Yes, it is. My husband bought it for me when I started riding this bus.”

  Rider: “Sounds like you got yourself quite a man.”

  Catherine: “Yes, he is. I appreciate him so very much.”

  Rider: “Wow, I’ve gotta get me one of those.”

  Catherine: “Don’t give up that thought—he may be just around the corner.”

  Rider: “What are you talking about?”

  Catherine: “The possibility of a husband.”

  Rider: “Husband! I don’t want no husband, honey. I’ve already tried on one of those. I was talking about getting a Walkman. Now that’s what I call useful.”

  Catherine and I are in this thing together, and we have been ever since the doctor looked at the first suspect mammogram, sending us on a journey that has drawn us closer than ever before, even if I’m not on that daily ride. There’s nothing like a traumatic personal event to test the fabric of a relationship; out of that test, I suspect, comes one change or another—perhaps for better or worse. I can’t imagine everything remaining the same.

  Her first lumpectomy involved the placement of a marker wire clear through the right breast, and then removal of tissue, including a lump that sat against the chest wall. Before the surgery, the surgeon had said, “The signs are all in your favor. Let’s get this over with.”

  I answered the phone when he called a couple of days later with the pathology report. “It’s cancer,” he said. There was more, but those first words floored me, and I felt tears well in my eyes.

  Catherine said, “Tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out.”

  “He said a second surgery is needed to remove more tissue and several lymph nodes.” She listened and said simply, “Oh, I see.”

  We believe in stepping into the fire of life with both eyes open, and we looked at each other for awhile without needing to speak.

  Her second surgery was scheduled to last one hour. An hour and ten minutes later, the surgeon hadn’t shown up, and I was very concerned.

  Finally, he appeared. “Hi, John. You doing okay? Yes, the operation is now complete. No, it didn’t take too long . . . sometimes it’s longer, sometimes shorter, and she’s safely in the recovery room now. There were no complications or problems—the surgery was a thing well done.” Whew. Relief flooded every cell. Up, down, up, down, up. As long as we land on “up,” I’ll be fine.

  A cancer patient’s life is filled with the unexpected. Every day is a walk along a new learning path for the whole family. Patients often get used to it, even gaining a morbid sense of humor, as evidenced by this exchange Catherine heard on her daily bus adventure:

  Rider 1: “I don’t want to get on this bus one more day. It’s driving me out of my mind, and I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  Rider 2 (hands on hips, eyes twinkling): “Dearie, you get on that bus this instant! Get on that bus or die!”

  Rider 1 (smiling sweetly, as she gets on the bus): “Thank you. I needed that.”

  No one chooses to have cancer. It leaves a cloud hovering over one’s life because the outcome is never certain. But then . . . what is?

  It is also a gift.

  When Catherine was bed-ridden after each of the surgeries, I lovingly took care of her. Spending more time at home, I had the opportunity to look around and appreciate the pleasures and treasures that are mine: our faithful dog, the richly stocked library, the lovely kitchen, the bed of recovery, the couch of conviviality, the garden of dynamic life, and—most important—my healing wife.

  Being here is what I choose.

  For us, John and Catherine, this is the time of living intensely. Out go the previous habits of a lifetime that don’t serve, either because they never did or because they no longer do.

  In come those things that allow us to grow, to delve deeply into this life . . . and lead to happiness. We became better listeners, clearer speakers, more thoughtful discerners and quicker to smile in recognition of life’s joys. Somewhere, somehow, I was given this life that is so beautifully enmeshed with the life of another. It’s a blessing.

  John de Strakosch

  Reprinted with permission of Allan Hirsch ©1998.

  He Does Not Live in Vain

  If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.

  Emily Dickinson

  I never realized what an impact that quote had until I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was invasive, and I had to go through all the treatments—chemotherapy, radiation therapy and hormone therapy.

  I am blessed with a husband who does not live in vain and helped me through the treatment. I was forty-six years old, and Stan
and I had only been married two months.

  There was one definite: I would lose all my silky, strawberry-blonde hair—my crowning glory—the source of many compliments andmuch joy for me. The thought of being bald, even for a short period of time, saddened me.

  Three weeks after the first injection, my hair was coming out by the handfuls. I was sitting in front of our bathroom mirror crying as hard as I ever had. Stan heard me and came to find out what was the matter.

  He put his hands on my shoulders and asked me, “What’s wrong, honey?”

  “I don’t want you to wake up every morning and see me bald.”

  My husband, who is bald, smiled and said, “But you wake up every morning and see me that way.”

  Of all the words in the world, none have ever meant more to me. I still cried, but now more with the joy of having the love of this man than of losing my hair. I will never doubt how much he loves me.

  I’m happy to say that I’m now a nine-year survivor, a result of modern technological advances, wonderful medical personnel, a strong constitution, great faith and a man who “does not live in vain.”

  Suzanne Metzger

  Stop Changing!

  The Real Voyage of Discovery comes not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

  Marcel Proust

  As I pulled away from Mark Twain Elementary School, I observed the laughing school kids tumbling into waiting cars, daycare vans and school buses. Their tightly held homework sheets flapped in the almost autumn wind.

  I glanced into the rearview mirror and smiled. I love this time of day, I thought to myself.

  Ashley and Garrett, my two step-children, sat in the back seat under a pile of backpacks and lunchboxes. They smelled of orange peels, peanut butter and playground dust.

  I’m so glad to be part of this family, I thought.