more than a decade after their physicians expected them to die.
The Healing Journey program introduced Andrew to the concept that cancer cells grow in the body chemistry or ‘soup’ created by the molecules in the bloodstream and that he could change the soup through his actions and his mind. Andrew wanted to change the ingredients in his life. Many of the things that fit into his old life did not fit his new life, and so he sold his house and car, gave away old furniture, closed his business, and retired. He and Velma moved to a new city where they felt they belonged and began life anew.
Another key teacher on Andrew’s journey towards wholeness was Adam, the Dreamhealer. At age sixteen, Adam first gained notoriety when he helped facilitate the miraculous healing of rock star Ronnie Hawkins. Apparently the distant healings and the visualizations Hawkins learned from Adam were critical to his complete recovery from a medically incurable pancreatic cancer.
Andrew had taught a corporate version of visualization to executives in his previous work, but his own healing visualizations were a much more intense experience. He would picture his tumor cells being zapped by lightning bolts and energy packets and then turned into a dusty substance that was expelled in a shower of light. Andrew learned the success of his visualizations depended on fully engaging his emotions in the process. He truly felt he was making changes to the cellular structure of his cells.
Remarkably, from being a highly controlled person who always lived in his head, Andrew feels the cancer diagnosis cracked his emotional shell wide open. A caring comment from a friend will bring tears to his eyes and a frog in his throat as he peers deeply into their eyes and heart.
He wants to dance at hearing happy music and cry with sad music. The aromas and odours that he smells are more distinct. He can smell carrots five feet away and flowers from thirty feet away. The pungent smell of a pig farm in the country is as wildly exciting as car fumes are painful. “Life is so vibrant that it is like when I fell in love with my wonderful wife.”
Andrew is incredibly grateful for the opportunity to experience the wholeness of life and is committed to serve others for whatever time he has left. He does not believe it is his time to die yet. He says, “There’s still more ‘stuff’ to do.”
How long he will remain on this earth is no longer a concern to Andrew. “I have surrendered with acceptance. It’s not my choice of when I come and go. As far as I know, I may have some input and I can do all I can while I’m here. But that final decision is not mine. There was a great relief when I started to accept that.”
An entry from his daily journal reads, “As long as the human spirit rises to the challenge of each new day, as long as we pursue worthwhile goals, as long as we strive, suffer, wrestle with our difficulties and endure, and find wonder in the world, we are living our dying with love.”
Now, more than three years after his original diagnosis, there appears to be no indication that his tumor will recur. He may ‘live his dying with love’ for years and years to come.
Chapter 6
Complete Cancer Care: Part I - Getting the Best Possible Medical Care
God grant me the serenity to
accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference
Serenity Prayer
Friday evening. Many of the people in the opening circle are living through the first few weeks and months of a cancer diagnosis and are looking for practical and effective advice about what they can do to maximize their chance of recovery. Drawing on his expertise as a cancer specialist, Rob outlines the approach of combining the best of western medicine with healthy lifestyle habits and wisdom-based complementary healing techniques. In the first part of this lecture, he provides advice on how to get the best care from the medical system by adopting a proactive and loving attitude towards yourself.
The marriage of scientifically-based treatments and wisdom-based healing practices is called ‘integrative medicine’. This integrated approach, also called ‘complete cancer care’, will give you the best chance of living well after a cancer diagnosis. By empowering yourself at the level of body, mind and spirit you can make a tremendous difference in how you feel, in your general health, and even in your cancer outcome.
Getting great care from the medical system is at the foundation of ‘complete cancer care’, and is an exercise in paying close attention to what is happening, recognizing the truth for what it is, and taking the appropriate action.
Pay Attention to How You Feel
At different stages in the journey, you’ll focus more on some elements of complete care than on others. For instance, gathering information and making the best possible medical decisions will dominate your thinking at the time of diagnosis and early on. Working with the emotional fallout of cancer often peaks near the end of your treatments. Nurturing your spiritual life can happen to various degrees throughout the journey.
There is no ‘best way’ to approach a cancer diagnosis. Everyone is different both in terms of their personality and in terms of their cancer situation. Therefore, you’ll need to engage your rational mind as well as your intuition in working towards a program and strategy tailored to your needs.
Gather Information Mindfully
Carol Shields, the Pulitzer-prize winning author, wrote that being diagnosed with advanced breast cancer was like waking up on a train in the middle of a stormy night in a foreign land where everybody spoke a different language. So, the first essential step in working with the medical system is to understand this language.
What can make this complicated is that most people are highly stressed when they are diagnosed with a life threatening disease, and it’s much harder to learn new information when you’re stressed. As well, cancer is a complicated disease, everyone’s case is unique, each person has their own way of learning optimally, and we all learn at different rates.
Being mindful in this ‘foreign land’ referred to by Carol Shields allows you to focus your attention on what’s happening in the outer world as well as to your inner reaction. As you gather information, you can ask yourself “Do I understand what I’m being told? Is this useful?” and at the same time ask “How does this information or situation make me feel?”
Some people feel driven to get as much information as possible about their cancer, staying up late at night surfing the net for the latest breakthroughs. By way of contrast, there are some people who don’t want to know anything and so don’t seek out any extra information. In both of these cases, there may be underlying psychological issues. In the first example, the person may be hoping information will give them control over the situation, and in the second case, the person may be in a state of denial. In both cases, being mindful about their feelings could be an important first step to a deeper level of healing.
If at any time you’re feeling overwhelmed with the information you’re reading, you can recognize those feelings and take steps to change what you’re doing. For example, by being mindful, you might realize that obsessing over information is actually depleting you of life energy. You can pay attention to your inner wisdom to do what you need to do. One strategy may be to ask a loved one to gather information for you. Either way, honouring that you have psychological limits, even while being appropriately proactive, is a clear act of kindness towards
