Me, My Story, and the First Four Pages of My Book

I decided to try and fund my book on Indiegogo and wanted to provide both my blog readers as well as my potential investors with a preview of the book that is to come.

Before you start reading this, know that I am not a doctor or medical professional.  I am just a regular person with opinions and an experience I want to share.  I am not a product vendor for anything I have taken for my health and no one is paying me to say anything.   What follows is the story of what I have done (and not done) about it.

And so the story begins...

Chapter 1:  Wait...  I Have WHAT?!

On August 1, 2005, I was sitting in the parking lot of Whole Foods near our Las Vegas home when I got the call telling me that I had breast cancer.

The news was truly surprising, given the laundry list of attributes I reviewed that were on my “credit” side:

• I am a positive person, long interested in being healthy. I read and research about what can be done to look and feel young. 
• The vitamin regimen on which I have my husband and me is extensive and has gone on for many years.  
• When I am in charge of meals, I buy and prepare organic, pesticide-free foods. 
• I am fussy about what we consume when we eat out.  Fast food so rarely crosses our lips, I can’t recall the last time we darkened the doors of a chain where “What is that meat?” is served.
• I may be 10 pounds overweight, which makes me a little pudgy, not obese.
• I don’t smoke or do drugs.
• I was going to be 55 the following month and still not menopausal. 
• I love my husband with all my heart. 
• I would have put our sex life up against any youngster, as we only “missed” a few days every month.
• We shared a bottle of red wine almost every day for dinner, not over-indulging very often. 
• We were making a good living serving a predominantly high-end business owner clientele in the financial services industry.
• We were and still are members of a wonderful spiritual community where we feel nurtured and our leader is a living inspiration.

 Other than not having a disciplined exercise program, given my lifestyle and mental attitude, there is no sensible reason for this diagnosis.  I called my husband, Bob, and told him the news in a matter-of-fact tone, which he properly mirrored.  No emotion.

Just four days earlier, on July 28, I had my sort-of-annual mammogram in Denver.  Despite having lived in Las Vegas since 1993, I never found the medical community there one that commanded my confidence.  The few times we had “needed” care in Las Vegas, it was not a positive experience.  When you think about it, every medical class has a bottom 25% and I am convinced that an unfair share of that 25% must locate in Las Vegas in order to serve the burgeoning senior population and escape the onerous income taxes of the neighboring states.  Everyone I know in Las Vegas who has faced anything important medically has sought help at Scripts or the UCLA Medical Center in California or the Mayo Clinic in Arizona.  I am not alone in my beliefs and my opinion is just that.

The radiologist, a decade or more my junior with the sad eyes and demeanor of someone who has delivered a lot of unhappy messages in his life, reviewed my films that Friday.  He suggested he take a biopsy of a small, suspicious mass in my left breast, which he “happened” to have time to do right then if I would take the additional time to do it.  Given how hard it is for me to take time out for schedule invasions like a doctor visit, I agreed.

 

The procedure was interesting and radiologist, Dr. L., explained what he was doing as he worked.  My first ultrasound was an education with the introduction of a cold jelly on my skin to make it easy to “drive” the monitor, allowing the doctor to pinpoint and measure the area of interest.  He made markings on the screen and note of them somewhere.  It was odd for me to see the tissue of my breast as he rolled the scanner around.   Some numbing lotion came next and then a long needle was poked into me from several angles.  As a pain weenie and a needle-phobic person, I wanted to hold someone’s hand and nurse, Beth, obliged.  The digging around he did to get several pieces of tissue was not comfortable – a feeling he predicted would last through the weekend. 

No results were given that day, but knowing glances between Dr. L. and Beth and her hug for me as I left the office made it clear the path they believed I was headed down.  I did not own their sentiments at all.  I had reviewed my positive list of attributes.  I believe in a kind, abundant Universe.  I was not afraid. 

I had to keep ice on my breast Friday night and Saturday to keep the swelling down from the intrusion.  No big deal.  I was honestly surprised by that parking lot call from Bob’s general practitioner, who had gotten the news from Dr. L.  At that time I had no doctor relationship, general or otherwise, and I still don’t.  Bob’s GP was the only name in my Palm address book that I could offer for where to send my test results.

When I got the call, I did ask what the doctor suggested  -to make an appointment to discuss my options.  I wrote down “invasive ductal carcinoma” on a piece of paper, vowed to do some research on the internet about the term, and agreed to come in to talk in a couple of weeks and bring Bob with me.

The meeting was brief.  I asked for a copy of the paperwork that came with the films – The cancer is Stage 1 (out of 4, so it is slow-growing), hormone receptive (most common), and its size an innocuous less than one centimeter.  My junior high metric conversion facts came immediately to mind.  2.5 cm = 1 inch.  Less than 1 centimeter is less than ½ inch.  The unhealthy cells have taken up camp in a milk duct, all of which were unused.  I had not breast feed my children due to a variety of factors - my immaturity, the stupidity of raging women’s lib drivel at the time, and vanity concerns about how I would look “after” (droopy). I heard the information like a third party bystander and owned none of it.  Dr. S. offered the name of a surgeon to whom he often referred people with this diagnosis. 

Other than my daughter and my best friend, Judi, who is like a sister to me, I told no one about this inconvenience.  I would not have told Judi, but she knew I had the biopsy because we had dinner together the weekend after I had it.  My arm was sore and she followed up and asked about it – true to form for her as she functions in her own large family’s role as the go-to caretaker.  She just added me to her fold of care and concern. 

You know how it is when you hear a word for the first time and then, suddenly, you hear or see it again and again?  That’s how it was for the pesky words, “breast cancer”.  It suddenly seemed to start popping up everywhere.   The young (early 40’s) wife of one of our clients was given the diagnosis in September and by Thanksgiving, she had a radical mastectomy.  Chemotherapy was scheduled to begin in the new year and their always-anticipated holiday party was cancelled due to the attention her condition commanded.  While I was in my self-imposed silence about my own mental prison, my work as a “card fairy” went into full gear, sending cards of encouragement, humor, and thoughtfulness to her mailbox several times each week for many months.   (See the “Card Fairy” article in the appendix to learn what to do to become one.)  I tried to take my own medicine of the hopefulness and upbeat outcomes about which I wrote to her. 

Then, one of my longest-term, physically beautiful clients a couple years older than I, came into the office, her face atypically round, her eyes appearing to almost recede into her head.  When I tried to gently inquire about what was going on, I learned she had undergone a lumpectomy for a growth in her breast, found it was cancer, had it removed, and she was on the drug Tamoxifen, which was causing the facial roundness and unprecedented weight gain.  She disclosed she “only” had to be on it for several years before the medical establishment considered her out of the woods for a recurrence.  I asked her for the specific kind and stage of her cancer.  This woman with a PhD in education knew the stage (II), but could not recall the type.  I mentally resolved to research Tamoxifen.   

Under the guise of comparing notes from the second woman, I called the younger woman with the mastectomy and asked her what kind of cancer she had and the stage it was in before she agreed to any treatment.  She did not know the answer to either question before agreeing to the radical mastectomy!!!  She said she had never asked!  She just wanted it “out”.  The doctors and surgeons and fundraising ads on television have done a swell job of instilling paralyzing fear into the public about cancer.  Drugs and expensive “procedures” which add significant burdens to the health care system and the associated medical costs are the paths of choice, both of which are far less demanding than courses requiring searches for information about alternatives and root causes.  Now I know how Kevin Trudeau feels trying to blow the whistle on an outrageous system not really geared whatsoever to promote healthy well-being.  Profit and fear are the drivers.

So, on my slow path of discovery, we continued our busy professional lives and personal travel.  After arming myself with pages printed off the internet and a list of questions, I set the appointment with the recommended surgeon and my hubby attended, stalwart and silent.

The woman was a brisk, no-nonsense person with the bedside manner of a drill sergeant.  She had no interest in my questions.  She had allocated so many minutes for the office visit.  Her goal was to set a date to do surgery (thus her title, you think?).  When I expressed reticence to jump right into that, she said if I didn't  the disease would eventually kill me.  I imagine she wrote a big note in my file to be certain no one in my family could ever sue her if that happened when I did not take her up immediately on her scalpel offer.  No worries.  I had no plans to ever talk to her again.   The “Me – Tarzan; you – idiot” approach doesn't fly with me. 

Here’s the thing.  I had some beliefs about cancer before anyone told me that I had it.  I know you don't catch it at the zoo or on an airplane or by not washing your hands after a restroom stop.  It’s an inside job.  That simple fact is what made me think that cutting (surgery), burning (radiation), and poisoning (chemotherapy) don’t make much sense if you don’t first figure out what caused it internally first.  If I caused or allowed it in the first place, surely I could step up my immune system and get rid of it, right?  I believed that “opening people up” gives oxygen to the unhealthy cells which incents them to grow more quickly because of the stories of people I knew who had not been well, been opened up, and died soon thereafter.  I had personal experience which was instrumental in shaping those beliefs.   

My father died at the ripe age of 55 from multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow and blood plasma, after nearly three years of suffering and pain and doing everything “they” said he should in terms of chemo and tests and guessing what to do next.  He was a lamb on the way to the slaughter with the methods and predictions of the timing of his death, which he did right on schedule.  I have no idea if his life would have been any different if he had gone vegan or drank Johnny Walker every day or chosen meditation over following the instruction of his truly caring oncologist. I do believe that my dad changed the chemistry of his own body when his business partner did some things which obligated my dad without his knowledge (as that’s how legal partnerships work), which caused him to have to file bankruptcy at the age of 50.  That blow to his self worth was the beginning of the end for him and no amount of chemotherapy or organic vegetables could have changed the internal poison of his thoughts.  He died on August 17, 1985.  I turned 35 the following month.  There I was, 55 years old myself.  In the dark of the night, thoughts about whether I was destined to die young like him flitted through my mind....

So, that is how it all began.  Cut to today - 8 years later.  I have learned a lot about options and protocols.  My path has hardly been a straight line. Some people have long lobbied that I should tell my story in a book as way to educate and inspire others in the same boat.  If you feel inspired, I hope you will join this project on Indiegogo (our promotion will begin sometime between 11/22/14 and 12/1/13) and help me get a cutting edge, healthy therapy that is proving highly effective in knocking out every kind of cancer that (of course) my incredibly expensive health insurance won’t cover.  I will include what happens with it in the book and my writing progress between now and then.  Come along with me.  The ride could be amazing!