My trajectory

When I was in college, I became a theater techie.  I wanted to do stage lighting for a career, but I was sort of a slacker because I never really felt well.  Do you know how girls who don’t feel well are treated?

“If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?”  Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1899)

Oh, but that’s 1899, you say?  A long time ago?  In between visits to doubting doctors and humiliating tests that showed nothing, I got good at unwisely self-anesthetizing.  But finally, after I had graduated from college and was floating around wondering what to do with myself, it became apparent that I had ovarian cancer, specifically embryonal carcinoma, which is a rare form of cancer that occurs in girls and young adult women, is extremely difficult to detect, and has a high fatality rate.  In those days, only 10% of patients survived 5 years.  And now?  Only 11%.

At Thanksgiving, 1976, the gynecologist rushed me into the hospital for a hysterectomy a week after which the oncologists rushed me into chemotherapy.  The prescribed protocol, which they said came from MD Anderson Hospital where they had sent the slides, was for me to enter the hospital as an inpatient and receive 60ccs of Cytoxan daily for 5 days per month for 24 months.

I had a couple of outspoken friends who seriously believed that I was a guinea pig in a big experiment about which I knew nothing.  They brought me articles and pamphlets.  I wasn’t in a formal clinical trial, but an unproven treatment protocol that was only achieving a 10% success rate.  Did the docs think that the more they used this protocol, the more chance of success it might have?  Like I said, the survival rate has only risen 1% in 35 years.

When the book Getting Well Again was given to me, I started practicing the brilliant “deep relaxation and mental imagery” work of oncologist O. Carl Simonton (1942-2009):

“He developed a very sophisticated approach to shift thoughts in a healthy direction and refined mental imagery exercises that were individualized to the particular style, symbolism, and the needs of a person.  His patients were becoming experts at using their continuous natural imagination in healthy ways that promote getting well.”

I began taking classes in botanical medicine from a medical doctor who had seriously questioned conventional cancer treatment as well.  The more I read and thought about it, the more I had to question the whole philosophy behind the administration of a toxic chemical with the intention of wiping out my immune system, destroying the quality of my life, and leading me into a passive, wretched dying process.  And so, after the 9^th month of nauseating chemo, feeling like I would undoubtedly not survive the whole protocal if I continued, I made the very eccentric decision to quit conventional medicine.