CONTROVERSIAL TOPIC -- hear me out...

[Andrea Barnett Budin]

One of Leslie's post links has electrified me. DON'T MISS IT! I'm wading my way through her list slowly and eagerly. This site is from The Academy for Guided Imagery, located in Malibu, California. It mentions a book called Healing Yourself, by Dr. Martin Rossman. "Imagery is the natural language of the unconscious, going to the heart and bypassing words". It speaks of the fact that your body has an incredible natural ability to heal. Our goal is to harness that power. To learn about it and access it.

http://womensmindbodyhealth.info/science32.htm

"The Spirit is the master; imagination the tool, and the body the plastic material...the power of the imagination is a great factor in medicine. It may produce diseases in man and in animals, and it may cure them...Ills of the body may be cured by physical remedy or by the power of the Spirit acting through the Soul." Paracelsus, Father of Modern Medicine

"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral." Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Sending healing energy to all... ANDI

[vickie h]

Andi and Leslie and all,

Your posts are so wonderful to wake up to, a cup of tea in my hand, the sun peeking throught the Cypress, and deer playing in the hills beyond.

I think of E.E. Cummings and his quote when I think of you all...."To be nobody but yourself, in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human can fight....and never stop fighting"

Thank you for lifting us all up by making us think, by making us discover new trails...for we should not go where the path may lead, we should go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.....

Today is so breathtakingly beautiful and filled with the strains of classically moving music sung by the wind, orchestrated by the rustle of golden leaves, penned in the silver ink of human love.

I cherish all of you brave and bold and lovely women.

Never forget that All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident

My love reaches out to you . Love, Vickie

[fauxgypsy]

I don't feel very enlightened today. I have been tired and irritable all day. I don't know if it is the anemia or the shot they gave me for it but I have been tired. For some reason I am getting phone numbers wrong and I am typing worse than normal.

I may just be tired. My daughter, Athena, and I have done several faux finish jobs in the last few weeks and I may just need some down time to recharge my batteries. I have scheduled some down time for the summer so that will probably help. I hope to do more paintings in the next few weeks. I am going to try and get them in a gallery in Oxford. I would really rather paint than do the faux.

The mind-body connection is fascinating. I have been reading Deepak Chopra's book "Life After death" and Wayne Dyer's books "Intention" and "Inspiration." Wayne Dyer's works just seem to nourish my spirit. I have started a journal at WWW.fauxgypsy.pnn.com. I am not sure if it will be all that interesting but it is there for now. I also have started a page at Care Pages. It is called LoveLetters. I don't know if y'all are familiar with Care Pages. It is a place where you can create a page for your friends and family to keep up with how you are feeling. I think it is a great idea when you really don't feel like talking with everyone.

Here is another link that is addresses the mind-body connection. I don't think I included it in the last post. I get the MindPower newsletter. Some of it is a little out there but it makes for interesting reading.

http://www.cancerselfcare.com/html/mind_power.html

Andrea, I love your enthusiasm. Vicki, I love your quotes. I don't know if you read my post with this quote: "En el mundo del Destine, no hay statistica" - In the world of destiny, there are no statistics (attributed to Martin Alberto Filches and quoted in Stuart Archer Cohen's The Stone Angels). I read this right before my second PET scan. I still repeat it to myself when I need it.

Several years ago when I was a graduate student there were several of us who shared and office. My friend, Scott, and i would find quotes that we really liked, turn them into small signs and put them on the wall in a corner that we called our "profundity corner." One day we wanted to rearrange the office and asked the other students if they minded. One of them told us it was okay as long as we didnt' put his desk in the "fecundity corner." Scott and I just looked at each other. After the other student had left we fell out laughing. The we decided that maybe he was right. The quotes did keep mutiplying.
Leslie

[vickie h]

I read your journal, walked out to the sun and cried as I sat on the deck staring at the creek below. Your writing touched my heart so deeply. It was interesting, heartfelt and heart breaking all at once. It took me back over three years ago to Feb (like you) when I was diagnosed with stage 3b IBC.

I was greeted by four Drs. while I was in the hospital with pneumonia. It seems that the CAT scan they took of my chest lit up like a christmas tree, and they were somber, looking at the floor, their eyes fleeting, glancing only as long as they had to at me lying there in bed. I was told that my prognosis was very poor and that chemo was my only hope for another year or two of life. My husband was running an errand and I was there by myself. I felt myself wanting to reach out and put my hands on their heavy shoulders. I told them not to be burdened...I felt sorry for them. One was a surgeon, the other an Oncologist, another a plastic surgeon, and the other a Pulmonologist. I told them I would be OK, I smiled, I felt my body melt into the crisp, white hospital sheets, I turned and stared out the door. When they left, the tears fell like acid across my cheeks onto my chest, etching the beginning of a story I was part of, an actress in a movie I never auditioned for, a black comedy perhaps. I fled to Mexico as soon as I left the hospital and would not call back home for the results of my biopsy. I sat by the pool and ate almonds and brown rice and water, while others feasted on enchiladas and washed them down with margaritas. I took long walks and swam and wondered about all things.

I came home to messages on my phone directing me to an Oncologist's office and my diagnosis. They were frantic, they were worried. I called them, haltingly, and assured them I would be OK. I fled then to The Kushi Institute, A macrobiotic compound in Maryland. Again, I stayed there for a week and cancelled appointments for chemo. I ate lots of seaweed, vegies, brown rice, and slept to the sound of the snow outside.

I came home and started chemo, and as they put in that first needle, again the tears spilled all over my shirt. I felt broken, I felt lost, I felt cheated. The women sitting near me nodded in recognition, in sisterhood. They knew. I didn't yet. The nurses hugged me and comforted me that day. My husband and daughters stood by me like boulders fending off the floods. I walked out of there a person changed forever. My hair fell out a week later, followed by all other body hair the next week. I. too. stared in the mirror, but a strange thing happened then. I looked at a reflection of a woman filled with stregnth and courage and hope and I hardly recognized her. It was me. Without any hair, eyelashes, or wigs. I missed the old me, wanting to hang on, but letting go and floating into the next world.

Today, I have hair, and eyelashes and dignity. I love the new me, though I still catch a glimpse of myself all those years ago in the mirror. I've decided I love both of those people and I love you, too, Vickie

[fauxgypsy]

Vicki,
Thank you. I am so sorry you were alone when you found out. I understand the need to tell everyone that it will be all right. I still want to protect my family from the worst of it. I knew it was bad the day the young woman who did my ultrasound wished me luck while she was avoiding looking at me. I had a terrible sense of urgency but it seemed like no one else did. I wanted everything done right then. The surgeon didn't seem concerned at the time. If I had left it up to him it would have taken several more days to find out the results of the lumpectomy. I knew the head of the lab at the hospital where they were processing my tissue samples so I was able to get it expedited a little and I had them send the results to my GP who got back to me as soon as he heard. I knew before the surgeon did. When I saw him he was very negative. Terrible prognosis, on and on. When I went back to him to get my port he started again, asking me did I realize how bad this was, how terrible the side effects would be, etc. I finally pulled out the information on the chemo from the oncologist and laid it in front of him. The port he put in never quit hurting and when it quit working two months into this I refused to go back to him and had another surgeon replace it. It seemed as if he thought that I wasn't taking it seriously because I wasn't crying. I have cried very little. And I would not cry in front of him.
I have been on the verge of tears many times lately, which seems a little backwards since I had that wonderful PET scan that nobody expected last month. I was sitting on the deck yesterday holding a calico kitten and wondering if she would outlive me. Just a passing thought. I have realized that my life has irrevocably changed and I will never again be without this cancer. I will never again take so much for granted. I know that I will come to terms with it in time but right now I don't feel that I even have the words to explain what I have lost.
Several good things have come out of this, though. In 1999 I was taking a medication called Reglan and one of the side effects can be clinical suicidal depression. It took me months to get over this. My mother died two days after I got out of the hospital. I have always loved to write and during this time words literally failed me. For the first time in my life I could not write. It gave me no comfort. If I tried I could not focus. Poetry could not comfort me. Now I feel that I am able to write again. So maybe this time words will help me find a way through.

Leslie

[fauxgypsy]

One more site.

http://www.mindpowernews.com/PsychologyOfMiraculous.htm

Leslie

[Mary Anne in TX]

Hi Leslie!

And so wonderfully, your words allow so many more of us to, through your words, see our own thoughts, feelings, and experiences in writing. Thanks so much to all for your honest sharing - it keeps life rich, real, and doable! ma

[hutchibk]

I am so very intrigued by this thread. I love what Andi is trying to share. I am also astounded that anyone could infer from what she has written that the cancer patient can find blame in their life for getting cancer. That is so far removed from what she is trying to share...

My counselor and I have been talking about this for 3 years now. It has been a very educational journey. I have always presented outwardly what others have experienced to be a positive attitude. I have received many compliments during this journey from outsiders who find me inspiring. But I knew that something was missing, that portraying a positive attitude was the easy part and was only half of the equation, that living it on the inside, in my body and my mind was a more difficult part to accomplish. It has taken me a while to get there and I am not totally there yet. But I am working on it. I still go to the dark places. You have to. You have to bring them to the surface, experience them and acknowledge them in order to let them go. But it's the learning to cope with them, bringing them into the light and purging them that is the key. It's a discipline just like anything else in life. Changing thought patterns is hard work. It's challenging. It's more than just anti-depressants and weekly therapy. (both of which have been tremendously helpful to me). Thoughts and inner dialogue are as innate as putting one foot in front of the other. But over a lifetime, left truly unattended, the brain and the thoughts can take on a sludge, a "coating", an unintended and ill-trained way of operating. Much like a car engine that is never lubed or maintained and eventually needs an overhaul. It's human nature and it is not something to blame one's self for. The key is to recognize it and take steps to correct it - to do the "overhaul." It's hard to learn how to "expand the rubberband" on one's brain. Whether I had cancer or not, I would hope that I would have embarked on this journey anyway... of re-training my brain and inner dialogue. Of looking inward for the disconnect between mind and body. And finding ways to connect the two. The mind and body are a temple. I used to hear that and think it was hooey. Now I know differently.

My counselor has given me so many gifts, and one of them is the gift of relaxation and visualization. Another is the technique to change the inner dialogue. We have discussed that you can't truly find The Secret without regular wrestling with the negatives. You can't get to point B without doing the hard work of point A. Point A (the negatives) have to be acknowledged and brought into the light. And once you have done the work to lay the foundation, then you must set the goal and take massive action towards the goal. The Secret is more than just "positive thoughts" - it's a lot of challenging work. You can't skim over the fundamentals to the cream on top.

The less than positive thoughts and resentments in our lives, when allowed to go unchecked, are poison, toxic. I know that since I have truly embraced the harder work and gentle teachings from my counselor, my body has felt wildly better and healthier. My mind is sending it a more gentle and positive electricity instead of lightning bolts and surges of hidden negativity and resentment. I attribute my body's mostly easy tolerance of the many different treatments to the mind/body connection work that I have been doing (in earnest) over the last year.

The newest gift my counselor is giving me is the gift of meditation. Due to my work with her, I have found my personal access to what is know as "The Blue Pearl" and it is so beautiful. I know there is a deeper meaning to be found surrounding my Blue Pearl, but just to be able to see it so easily now is one of the most beautiful things in my life. I believe that accessing it and seeing it in my relaxation and meditation opens up blocked corridors to the essence of the crucial mind-body connection. Remember that word "connection" as you contemplate all of this. The mind and body are always connected, but you have to be sure that the electricity between the two is a positively charged connection and not negatively charged... "Putting Negative Electricity into a light bulb will darken a sunlit room."

As my nutritionist says: "There is more to winning the battle against cancer than simply relying on technology. When it comes to cancer survival, conventional medicine often ignores the body's own remarkable restorative powers. Doctors are unable to explain in scientific terms instances that can only be attributed to self-healing. The spiritual and emotional components of healing cannot be defined by statistics and cannot be measured by sophisticated instruments. No-one can guarantee you a miracle, but why not
try?"

I consider the work I am doing on mind-body connection to be simply another component in the natural and traditional healing/nutritional support changes I have chosen to pursue in combination with my conventional treatments...

[vickie h]

Leslie, Your post again grabbed and held my attention and my heart. You have been through so much . I want you to know that you have a lifelong (?) friend. And I too, held my cat and wondered that very same thing.

I have been wandering the beaches near here and have picked up sand dollars and star fish and shells, thinking about their existence and how they came to thier deaths and how they ended up in my hands, I have them in my home and everyday I look at them I realize how fleeting this moment on Earth is. I will walk through the next door into a whole new world someday. I cannot deny that nor would I want to. I just want to live with the blood coursing through my bones, alive and extremely grateful for every second I get to be here. I send you my love and healing energy today under the hot California sun. Much love, Vickie