Chicken Soup for the Cancer Survivor's Soul Read online

  And tonight, before I go to bed, I’ll go outside and raise my eyes to the heavens. I will stand in awe at the beauty of the stars and the moon, and I will praise God for these magnificent treasures.

  As the day ends and I lay my head down on my pillow, I will thank the Almighty for the best day of my life. And I will sleep the sleep of a contented child, excited with expectation because I know tomorrow is going to be the best day of my life, ever!

  Gregory M. Lousig-Nont, Ph.D.

  Love Is Stronger . . .

  Having a goal based on love is the greatest life insurance in the world.

  If you had asked my dad why he got up in the morning, you would have found his answer disarmingly simple: “To make my wife happy.”

  Mom and Dad met when they were nine. Every day before school, they met on a park bench with their homework. Mom corrected Dad’s English and he did the same with her math. Upon graduation, their teachers said that the two of them were the best “student” in the school. Note the singular!

  They took their time building their relationship, even though Dad always knew she was the girl for him. Their first kiss occurred when they were 17, and their romance continued to grow into their 80s.

  Just how much power their relationship created was brought to light in 1964. The doctor told Dad he had cancer and estimated that he had six months to one year left at the most.

  “Sorry to disagree with you, Doc,” my father said. “But I’ll tell you how long I have. One day longer than my wife. I love her too much to leave the planet without her.”

  And so it was, to the amazement of everyone who didn’t really know this love-matched pair, that Mom passed away at the age of 85 and Dad followed one year later when he was 86. Near the end, he told my brothers and me that those 17 years were the best six months he ever spent.

  To the wonderful doctors and nurses at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs Medical Center at Long Beach, he was a walking miracle. They kept a loving watch on him and just couldn’t understand how a body so riddled with cancer could continue to function so well.

  My dad’s explanation was simple. He informed them that he had been a medic in World War I and saw amputated arms and legs, and he had noticed that none of them could think. So he decided he would tell his body how to behave. Once, as he stood up and it was evident he felt a stabbing pain, he looked down at his chest and shouted, “Shut up! We’re having a party here.”

  Two days before he left us he said, “Boys, I’ll be with your mother very soon and someday, some place we’ll all be together again. But take your time about joining us; your mother and I have a lot of catching up to do.”

  It is said that love is stronger than prison walls. Dad proved it was a heck of a lot stronger than tiny cancer cells.

  Bob, George and I are still here, armed with Dad’s final gift.

  Agoal, alove and a dream give you total control over your body and your life.

  John Wayne Schlatter

  The Power to Choose

  When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.

  Helen Keller

  I always feel good when I’m in Angela Passidomo Trafford’s office. I feel validated, nurtured and somehow better about myself. On this occasion I was there to talk about the workshop she was co-facilitating that month with well-known author and surgeon, Bernie Siegel, M.D.

  When I asked how she chose the title of the workshop, “The Power to Choose,” Angela explained, “Most people are paralyzed in their ability to make a decision and in their ability to choose. They are paralyzed with their conditioning of the past and with the guilt and shame of the past.”

  Angela speaks from personal experience. As told in her book, The Heroic Path, she recalled to me the low point of her life that led her to Bernie’s book. She hit rock bottom after finding out on the same day that she lost custody of her children and that she had cancer. “I fell on my knees and let go of my life to God. I asked God to take my life and show me how to live because I realized that I did not know how.

  “Afterward, I found myself just wandering through the public library; I didn’t even know what I was doing there. The librarian came up to me—I didn’t even know her—and she had Bernie Siegel’s book, Love, Medicine and Miracles, in her hand. She asked me if I had read it. When I shook my head no, she said, ‘Well, you should!’ That was the beginning of what I referred to often as a divine plan, how one thing leads to another and puts you in touch with the idea that there is a plan for your life. Getting in touch with that connection to a higher intelligence inside each and every one of us, that’s what healing and life are all about.

  “My divine plan continued unfolding when I took Bernie Siegel’s book home and found this eminent surgeon saying things that I had felt all my life. He had put forth this whole philosophy of taking charge of your life, and taking charge of your health and being responsible for your feelings. And going within to heal.

  “I began waking up early in the morning and giving thanks for the gift of life. I realized that even though everything had been taken from me, I still had this amazing awareness that life itself is a great gift, and I felt tremendous gratitude for that gift.

  “I would ride my bike and then go home and do the meditation and visualization exercises outlined in the book. One day a visualization came forth from a creative source. I visualized these little birds eating golden crumbs; the little birds were the immune system cells and the golden crumbs the cancer cells. I followed this visualization by imagining a white light coming through the top of my head, flowing through my body, healing me.

  “During the three weeks before my scheduled surgical biopsy, I continued meditating each morning after my bike ride, until one morning, all of a sudden I felt this tremendous, powerful white light coursing through my body. I was alarmed and my rational mind screamed in all its conditioning of fear and mistrust, ‘Get out, get out, you’re having a heart attack, stop the experience.’ But I chose to let go and allow my being to become one with the beautiful light, that powerful energy.

  “Afterward I just slumped over on the couch. And for the first time in my life I had no thoughts at all. Just this tremendous feeling of peace. And I knew something wonderful had happened to me.

  “My next visit to the doctor’s confirmed what I already knew. The cancer had disappeared.

  “This experience changed my life. I began a mission to share my experience with others facing the illness of cancer. Lots has happened since then. I acquired the custody of my children, opened my business, Self Healing, and wrote my first book, The Heroic Path, describing my journey from cancer to self-healing.

  “I believe this is a time in our world that people are awakening to the possibility of more joy in our lives. The universe offers us endless opportunities to let go of the fear and the guilt and the shame and the anger, all the repressed issues of the past.

  “Health is a choice. We choose to be healthy, we choose joy, we choose happiness. These are all choices that we make when we have the power to choose. But in order to feel that power, we have to learn what it means to love ourselves and be empowered as individuals—and I have discovered how to do that in day-to-day life.”

  Sharon Bruckman

  Laugh!

  Many years ago, Norman Cousins was diagnosed as “terminally ill.” He was given six months to live. His chance for recovery was one in 500.

  He could see that the worry, depression and anger in his life contributed to, and perhaps helped cause, his disease. He wondered, “If illness can be caused by negativity, can wellness be created by positivity?”

  He decided to make an experiment of himself. Laughter was one of the most positive activities he knew. He rented all the funny movies he could find—Keaton, Chaplin, Fields, the Marx Brothers. (This was before VCRs, so he had to rent the actual films.) He read funny stories. He asked his friends to call him whenever they said, he
ard or did something funny.

  His pain was so great he could not sleep. Laughing for 10 solid minutes, he found, relieved the pain for several hours so he could sleep.

  He fully recovered from his illness and lived another 20 happy, healthy and productive years. (His journey is detailed in his book, Anatomy of an Illness.) He credits visualization, the love of his family and friends, and laughter for his recovery.

  Some people think laughter is a waste of time. It is a luxury, they say, a frivolity, something to indulge in only every so often.

  Nothing could be further from the truth. Laughter is essential to our equilibrium, to our well-being, to our aliveness. If we’re not well, laughter helps us get well; if we are well, laughter helps us stay that way.

  Since Cousins’ ground-breaking subjective work, scientific studies have shown that laughter has a curative effect on the body, the mind and the emotions.

  So, if you like laughter, consider it sound medical advice to indulge in it as often as you can. If you don’t like laughter, then take your medicine—laugh anyway.

  Use whatever makes you laugh—movies, sitcoms, Monty Python, records, books, New Yorker cartoons, jokes, friends.

  Give yourself permission to laugh—long and loud and out loud—whenever anything strikes you as funny. The people around you may think you’re strange, but sooner or later they’ll join in even if they don’t know what you’re laughing about.

  Some diseases may be contagious, but none is as contagious as the cure... laughter.

  Peter McWilliams

  Reprinted by permission: Tribune Media Services.

  The “Wee” Nurse

  There ain’t much fun in medicine, but there’s a heck of a lot of medicine in fun.

  Josh Billings

  When I was in the hospital, I had a “We” nurse. She began each sentence with “How are we today?” “We need to have a bath.” This really irritated me, so I decided to play a little joke on her.

  One day, she brought in a specimen cup and requested a urine sample. After she left, I poured my apple juice into the cup. When she returned for the specimen, she observed it and noted, “My, we’re a little cloudy today, aren’t we?”

  I asked to see it, removed the lid and said, “Yep, better run it through again,” and drank it. The look of shock on her face was priceless.

  Norman Cousins

  Until Tomorrow Comes

  The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.

  Anonymous

  Our lives changed drastically on a spring day that started like any other—in a humdrum way. The alarm clock rang, I dressed quickly and headed downstairs to make breakfast for my husband, Orville, and our four children.

  In the kitchen I set the table, put the coffeepot on the stove to perk and prepared oatmeal. The sun was just coming up, and it was probably a glorious sight rising over the Mississippi (we can see the river from our house), but I was too preoccupied to notice. I was still trying to figure out the math problem that had stumped my 13–year-old son, Mark, and me the night before.

  Before I could solve the problem, Orville interrupted my thoughts by slumping into his chair at the table. “Honey,” he said with a sigh, “I discovered something just now as I was washing under my arm—I felt a lump there.”

  Even though our kitchen was toasty warm, a chill of fear swept through my body as I recalled how Orville had been coming home from work for months complaining of being so tired. But I didn’t want anything serious to touch this husky man I loved so much, so I said, “Now, don’t worry so much. You’re probably still feeling the effects of that flu you’ve had. But if the lump doesn’t go away in a few days, you should have it checked.”

  By the time he went to the doctor several days later, there were three lumps. Orville told him about the nagging tired feeling and his lack of energy.

  “Well, we’ll remove one of the lumps,” the doctor said matter-of-factly, “and have it checked.”

  When the day came for the biopsy, we took my mother and Mark with us to the hospital. I didn’t say anything to Tammy, 11, Lori, 8, or Britt, 4, about their father’s problem. While waiting in the hospital lounge, my mother and I passed the time by recounting events of the 14 years since Orville and I had married. There was our first meeting one morning in the little restaurant where I worked—Orville’s big brown eyes were heart–melters— marriage, children, chicken pox, drafty farmhouses, overdue fuel bills, Orville’s struggle to find his calling. He had made a lot of job changes before he began writing for newspapers—and then his search was over. He loved newspaper work.

  We kept talking about our lives until Mark interrupted us. I looked up to see a nurse beckoning; she escorted me into an office. The doctor was mercifully quick. “Mrs. Kelly, your husband has lymphoma.”

  “Can-cer?” I stammered. I could hardly bring myself to say the word. Numbly I stumbled out of the doctor’s office. My eyes burned and I knew I was about to cry, but I bit my lip and drove a fingernail into my palm. “Not here, Wanda, not here,” I told myself.

  Straightening, I marched down the hall to the office to see about Blue Cross and hospital papers, then to the lobby and outside. The cold air had barely hit my face when the first tear ran down my cheek. By the time I got to the parking lot I was sobbing uncontrollably. “Mom, I’m going to lose him,” I wailed. “Why, God? He’s only 42.”

  After a couple of minutes I pulled myself together, dried my eyes, powdered my face and pasted on a smile. By the time we drove around to the hospital entrance to pick up Orville, I thought I looked okay, but he knew I’d been crying. “Don’t worry, honey,” he said as he stepped into the car. “I’ll be all right.” But his voice was listless, and I had to clench my teeth to keep from crying again.

  After dropping off Orville, Mark and Mother at the house, I took the babysitter home. Hurrying back to my family, I passed a church and suddenly decided to go in. I was grateful there was no one there because I ran down the aisle and threw myself on the floor in front of the altar.

  “God, dear God,” I sobbed, “please give us a miracle. Heal Orville. I beg You.” I don’t know how long I lay there pleading, weeping, but after a while I got up, left the church and went on home.

  Orville was lying on the davenport, staring at the ceiling. We exchanged some meaningless conversation and I went to the kitchen to fix dinner. At the table the kids were as noisy as ever, but Orville ate in silence and left as soon as he was finished. Not once did he say anything about the doctor’s report and not once did the word cancer come up in our conversation.

  After further hospital tests, the doctors told Orville he might have as little as six months or as long as three years to live.

  From then on, Orville and I talked very little to each other. A tension built up in our home. The gaiety that had always been a part of our marriage and our household was gone. No longer were there picnics or barbecues or rides for an evening ice cream cone, as we commonly did in the past.

  Although the children didn’t know what was wrong, they became edgy and upset. I was sometimes sharp with Mother, and she cried over the slightest thing. When I tried to talk to friends about our situation, they said, “Don’t think about it,” and tried to change the subject. Gradually, perhaps out of fear and not knowing what to say, our friends stopped seeing us. There was no one to talk to, nothing to say. I’ve never felt so alone or lonely in my life. And I knew it was even worse for Orville.

  He spent most of his time in the study lying down. In fact, he slept there at night. Coming to bed with me would have meant that we had to talk to each other, something neither of us could bear. Though I wanted to say something loving, positive, hopeful, and I was sure he wanted to reassure me, we couldn’t find any honest words, so we remained silent.

  Meanwhile, I spent hours pleading with God. And every night before going to bed I prayed the same prayer. “God, heal Orville, please....“

  Then Orville was place
d on chemotherapy. For his treatments, we drove to a hospital in Iowa City. I’ll never forget that first return trip. We had taken Britt along and he was asleep in the back seat. Inside the car we rode in complete silence except for the purr of the engine and the humming of the tires.

  Suddenly Orville spoke, clearly and distinctly, in a tone I hadn’t heard for weeks. “Wanda,” he said, “you know, I’m not dead yet.” Abruptly he pulled the car off the highway and parked. “Honey, I’ve got cancer. Cancer. And I’ll probably die of it. But I’m not dead yet. We’ve got to talk about it.”

  I reached over and touched his hand. “Are you sure you want to?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” he continued. “We’ve got to face it together. I know you haven’t told me the way you really feel. I don’t know how we can help each other if we don’t talk about it. I’ve just been moping around the house making everyone miserable.” He took a deep breath. “Let’s go home and have a barbecue tonight,” he said. “And tell the kids. I don’t want to waste any more time living like we have.”

  Pulling me to him, Orville threw his arms around me and gave me a long kiss. For the first time in weeks I felt a flicker of our old happiness. The sun was shining brilliantly on the rich fields and bright fall leaves. Part of a great burden had been lifted off my shoulders and I felt alive again.

  I bought spareribs on the way home and that evening we cooked out, just like old times. After dinner I put little Britt to bed and we called Mark, Tammy and Lori to join us on the back porch.

  It was a lovely starlit night. In the distance the moon shimmered on the Mississippi. As the children gathered around, Orville said, “I think it’s time you knew what’s wrong with me.” Then he explained that he had cancer— a disease that destroys parts of the body—and the doctors said he would probably die of it. Tammy’s eyes filled with tears and Orville drew her to him.