November 7th to 9th, 2008: Minutes before heading to the hospital, I open my mail of the day and there is a short card from my Mom wishing me well. “I’m sure,” she says, “that UCSF Mt. Parnassus will take good care of you this time, just like they did when you had the illness on your head 60 years ago.” How odd. The only two times I have ever been to UCSF were for life-threatening procedures and they happened some 60 years apart. Wondering what that might mean, I am comforted to remember that the first time, I sailed out with a cure that has lasted for a very long time. May it be so again.

It was easy to check in to UCSF Mt. Parnassus Long Hospital 11th floor. My first bonding experience was with my nurse Dolores. She has the great fortune of looking quite a bit like Michelle Obama. Wanting to connect, I asked her if she was happy about the election. She looked at me, smiled and said, “Well, I just moved to San Francisco, and I’m from Atlanta. So on Monday I flew to Atlanta to vote on Tuesday, then I flew back to San Francisco on Tuesday for my afternoon shift here at the hospital. I surely did not want to miss voting.” I told her that her effort was a heroic act. Modestly, she agreed, “The whole day was about heroic stuff.” Then we were giddy with sharing bits of the Acceptance Speech in Chicago and stories from around the world. Dolores really grounded me onto the hospital floor.

Chemo doesn’t start right away. Thursday night I was fitted with hydration infusions and basically pumped full of water until the chemo started on Friday afternoon. Of the chemos, Doxoyrubicin infuses for 21 hours nonstop. That startled me. I thought that the timing would be more restrained, but not so. The three 21 hour cycles of Doxo stretched out the hospital stay. Ifosfamide infuses for a three hour cycle. In addition, there’s an infusion solution that protects the lining of the bladder. Seems that Doxo can strip off the inner layer of bladder cells; definitely a bad thing. When you see my fully equipped tower of chemo delivery, it looks like this: six feet into the air are the four gelatinous bags of fluid—the chemos, hydration water, bladder protection—connected to plastic cording attached to the pumps located mid-tower that monitor the fluid rate into my body. There are also sub-drip containers that moderate the fluid flows. Because of the complex number of drips that are going through all lines at all times, the tower has the pleasant effect of sounding like a gentle, insistent rainstorm that’s happening right outside the window.

Normally, I’m in bed and the tower is next to the bed with a power cord going into the wall. In order to become mobile, all I had to do was take out the power cord and start walking around. All the fluids feed into two separate needles which had been installed into my chest port. Inserting the needles was an unpleasant surprise. Of course I wanted to have the chemo lines installed and in the next minute a very thick gauge needle was pushed directly into my chest! I was told that the skin covering the port becomes much less tolerant over time. That was not the case the first time. And there was another needle to go. Point being, because of the needles, I remained connected to the tower through my time in the hospital.

Over the first two days, I settled into my hospital routine. I met the complex layers of staff: nurses, medical interns, oncology doctors, medical doctors sometimes in groups, usually solo. I avoided television but found the patient services group that supplies DVDs. Most important, I finished reading Bone, and celebrated with Marion Woodman as she becomes cancer free and also discovers the archetypal resolution of her multiple desires to fly free and to live on the earth. Her solution at the end of the book is dance: airborne motion that springs from the ground and returns to the ground.

Throughout this time, when someone new came into the room for more than a few seconds, I would show them my invocation to the chemo. When I hand it over I am mostly in my adult sharing a technique and explaining about the group that is a chorus welcoming the chemo. But also I sense my child, about four or five, handing over something he’s created and wanting approval. Of course my child is in the hospital with me. When ever I feel him, I let him know that he’s protected and safe, that he can go home and play with his toys whenever he wants to. I eat well, I sleep well, I am off to a very good start.

November 6th, 2008: Went to work this morning and jammed to finish the first draft of my current project. Once done, I came home and headed for bed. Then the phone rang and I picked up the long-awaited call from the hospital. “We have a bed for you!” Music, music. After hosting this cancer for years, giving it the best food I could find, nurturing it with no interruptions to growth, finally, I am going to start assaulting the “Haughty Foe.” That’s what Lorenzo calls my cancer: The Haughty Foe. Well, Haughty Foe, “Get outta here. Go.”

I doubt if I will have any treatments this evening, but tomorrow, the chemo will start. If you would all go to the November 3rd blog entry and take a minute to read or better yet, recite out loud, my invocation welcoming the chemical assault, I would truly appreciate this effort from you. I’ll be getting the chemo on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. If you read the invocation on any or all of those days, you will be so right next to me. That’s what I’ll be doing as well. Reading the invocation and starting on the path to accelerated healing. Thank you all for being a part of my path.

November 4th, 2008: My new chest port was installed easily this morning, however there was no available bed for me to stay in the hospital for a five day chemo course. As I was about to be sedated, the nurse asked, “So, who is driving you home?” “Uhhh,” the taxi driver.” I replied. “Oh, no, no, no. We can’t let a sedated person leave the hospital unattended. You’ll have to call a friend to take you home.” Sigh. I wish they had told me this ahead of time. But, my hero Gaetano answered the phone and cheerfully agreed to pick me up. Thank you, Gaetano. Now, I’m back in the comfort of my apartment on a bright day. Sunlight bounces off the big pieces of glass in the front window, and the grass in the park across the street shines with a juicy green rejuvenated by the weekend rains. My home heals me.

To date, I haven’t done anything specific to organize my support group for when I come out of the hospital. I’m not sure what I’ll need at this point, so how to schedule someone when the dates and tasks are still unclear? Please, stay tuned. There will be ways to help, even if it means visiting over a cup of tea which is what happened after the hip replacement. Hey, nothing wrong with visiting over a cup of tea with any of you.

This blog started out as a way to automate information delivery to many people. The content was matter-of-fact medical and informational. “I visited doctor X on this day and the outcome Y.” However, my visualizations have changed this content because they reach way into my psyche. I’m glad for the wider and deeper access to myself, and it’s a surprise and an honor to share it with all of you. I’ve never had this way of expressing myself before. All my life I’ve had far-out experiences. Sometimes I talk about them and just as often they don’t come up in conversation. Now, because of so many issues that constellate around the questions—What is this cancer? How will I heal?—there’s this opportunity to be more holistic in my approach. I’m reminded of talking with Sista Monica Parker back on September 30th, when she thought about her own successful struggle with cancer and concluded, “It was a blessing.”

November 3rd, 2008: Tomorrow I go to the hospital to have my chest port installed. There’s a chance that a bed will be available so that I can stay for five days and have my first chemo session. But, given that the 11th floor is full with a waiting list and the beds on the 14th floor are also full, it may be a few days before I begin my treatments. If I come home tomorrow after the port install, I’ll let you know on this very site.

One of my deep beliefs is that chemo will be effective for me. I have been visualizing it coming into my body from the drip line, entering my bloodstream and then dispersing through all my fluid systems into the cells of my physical self. Since chemo is such a drastic variance from the care I take to avoid toxins, I want to honor that shift of habit. I welcome the chemo and support its task. And I don’t want to do this alone. I’ve drafted a prayer that I’ll recite during the time of my treatments. I ask the readers of this blog to join me in reciting this invocation while I am in treatment. Your chorus of voices will multiply this welcome. You can recite it by reading to yourself or speak it out loud. When you read it, imagine me receiving the incoming chemo. The resonance you create will make a difference. I feel that resonance already in your phone calls and email messages telling me of the love and care you are sending. You can do this any time of day or night over the next few days. So, all together now:

I welcome two elixirs into my body.
They swim into my body’s river systems.
They insinuate through cell walls.
They’ve been chosen for their willingness to kill.
They are poisons with a longer purpose.
My body will hold their heat.
They will burn my cancer into the bone.
My body understands this.
Each atom, cell and organ knows its destiny.
The mix of health and contagion will end.
Welcome Ifosfamide
Welcome Doxorubicin
Welcome to my body.
Find your way through me.
You have been invited.
Finally, you are here.

November 2nd, 2008: I’ve spent a lot of the day in bed, reading and napping. Not a lot of energy, but not exhausted either. Feeling quiet and inward; pain is under control. I’ve been reading Marion Woodman’s Bone, a journal of her plague year when she was treated for advanced uterine cancer. Given Woodman’s attention to her body, her dreams, the physical world around her and her various inner persons who are wild, terrified, free, maternal, etc. and with her deep experience as a Jungian analyst, the book is a stunner: full of insights and a great model of how to honor the multiple parts of the psyche.

Then, late afternoon, I took the following trip to my healing spot. My pain medication blurs clear visualization. To focus, I’ve been listening to a CD where my friend, Bob Kudrna plays Tibetan crystal bowls. Nice hums to the music. Today, I started by cleaning out my chakras, running energy through my body, grounding myself, doing a bit of repair on my etheric body. Then, I traveled to the magic redwood tree and went through its trunk to my healing center. My soak in the turquoise lined tub was brief, but for a long time, I simply lay on the soft marble stone, listening to sounds of the natural world, and watching the sky. I felt open and offered to the world. “Here I am,” I could feel my body say. “We’re all together in the same world.”

I also began to sense energy on the other side of the gate, an urgency to get into my healing space. After the usual question “Are you here to help heal me?” and the affirmative, the gate opened and a man leapt into the garden wearing a huge carved African face. I’d say the mask was two feet or longer and clearly made of heavy wood with eyes so wide they were concentric circles. Long gouges filled with white and red pigment stretched in V shape across the face. I was startled. It was like the masks in Picasso’s Le Demoiselles d’Avignon: aggressive, primitive, confrontive. “How does he wear that heavy thing?” I wondered. But then, the shaman came over and brushed his hands over my abdomen and pelvis, nodding the weighty mask over my body. Plunging his hands into my pelvis, he extracted the tumor, quickly and without a moment of pain. Both of us watched as he raised the tumor high into the air over my body. What happened next will be with me for the rest of my life. The tumor let out a scream of rage and fury. “Aughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!” The sound was so unrestrained that it took me a while to realize that this was my voice, but as I’ve never let it out. This was the voice of my self from four to seven when I was being molested by my father, “Don’t tooooouch me!” “Go awaaaaaay!!” This was the cry that I never cried. Instead we froze in our family roles: father molesting me on whim, mother denying everything, me leaving my body a lot while knowing that if I told my mother about being molested she would confide this to my Dad. I screamed as any child would, but the sound did not come out of me…until today in my healing garden. The cry became louder and deeper and wider, truly deafening and oh, the pain in that voice. The masked healer would not put the tumor down, and the cry increased until I couldn’t stay separated from it. Finally, I became a part of the cry and this tableau endured—me on the marble table, tumor raised high over me by a figure masked with bulging eyes—for a very long time. And then, with a quick drop of the arms, the shaman returned the tumor to my pelvis, turned the mask full toward me and leapt backward out of the garden.

November 1st 2008: It’s been a wonderfully wet day with thrashing showers and a dark light that intensifies the colors in the park across from my apartment. A day of reflection and balancing—let’s see, what needs attention? I believe that healing comes from many directions. But when I thought of myself as healthy, my maintenance regimens were much more low key; three days a week at the gym; healthy food, lots of opera and ballet, voila! Health! It’s a complex project to manage a cancer diagnosis. There has been a huge amount to learn about self-care in the past few weeks. Change of diet has been a big shift, and I’m happy to say that I’ve found that most fresh food is tasty on my palate. But what’s a good diet that supports the rigors of chemo? Need to ask a nutritionist. And what about body work? My friend Terry Conner has been visiting twice a week and doing powerful, insight-full Reiki sessions. But is this enough? It’s been hard to stay in my body. I assume this is basic terror management. Cancer diagnosis? Leave the body and don’t come back until it’s over. Well, that really misses the point.

There are so many parts of the self that need attention and deserve attention. Under all of these care systems are the deeper questions. Am I bringing my full self to this effort? How do I gather my energies? Also, it’s taken a while for me to get close to the core issues: do I want to live or die? If live, why? What do I hold with such passion that I am willing to fight to live for it? And how is this time different than the last time I confronted death some sixty years ago? Briefly, here’s that story….

A month after I was born in 1946, my older sister was diagnosed with acute leukemia and she died very shortly afterward. My parents were devastated, really flattened. After many months of living with two inconsolable adults, my loneliness reached such a pitch that I devised a plan. I would get really ill and if my parents rallied, then their attention and love would make it worthwhile to live. If not, then I would die and, having recently come from the other side, that held no fears. I had to do something to break the cycle of neglect that was literally killing me. The next thing I knew, I had a serious and ugly growth on my forehead. My parents freaked, immediately found medical care and from that time on, I felt like we had the connections of a family. All of this memory came forth effortlessly late one morning a some years ago when a Swiss body worker gently cupped his hand under the back of my knee. That, apparently, is where the memory resided. And when he touched that place, the whole story returned intact and complete.

Well, not exactly complete, because here I am sixty years later with cancer. I’m not perishing from loneliness. But something, clearly, has gone out of balance, and I believe the cancer is a way of expressing my disunity, my dis-ease. I have to say, I have no interest in the question, “Why me?” The answer to that is, “Because.” But I am very interested in the question, “Why?” Why do I have cancer now? Why have I been growing this tumor without knowing it for the past two years, at least? What’s that about and what can I do to re-balance myself into health?

October 28th, 2008: A good end to a long life: my boyfriend Lorenzo’s father passed away yesterday afternoon at age 92. It’s been a dance for the past few weeks with Lorenzo, balancing time given to his father’s illness and my own health issues. I would say that we’ve danced very well together. May his father be free from suffering.

More forward motion today toward the start of treatment. Appointments have been booked for a central line to be installed in my upper chest, and, perhaps the same day—election day!—I may check into the hospital for my first five-day round of chemo. It will depend on whether there is a bed available.

Over the past weeks, I’ve slowly realized that I have been living with this tumor for a long time, at least two years by my body memory. An insidious feature of pelvic sarcoma is that you don’t know you have it. It feels like a weird sciatica or a sore butt or a painful hip, etc. depending on where it’s located. Even after my hip replacement—which was needed, very definitely—I have the same ache in my hip and pelvis. It’s been strange to go through the surgery with all my hope to easing the pain, only to confront the real pain. Now that the sarcoma tumor board and the melanoma tumor board have had a chance to review the tests, images, biopsies and scans, I am very anxious to begin treatment. I feel like this cancer has had a very long life, and in recent days I’ve actively talking with it about leaving. I tell it that I can’t continue to be a host to its growth. We all want to live, but my cancer will have to go somewhere else to find longer life.

My end-of-day reward to self: a trip to my healing center and the anticipation of tonight’s healer: Animal? Vegetable? Mineral?