Alma Flor Ada

Life After Cancer: Profound Gratitude

It is has been over four years since a group of excel­lent physi­cians and researches con­tributed to sav­ing my life and the qual­ity of my life. It has been years lived in pro­found grat­i­tude for the mir­a­cle of exis­tence and very specif­i­cally for the gen­eros­ity towards me of many car­ing and won­der­ful peo­ple which includes beside the health prac­ti­tion­ers my fam­ily and friends.

Although this grat­i­tude has been con­stant, after a cou­ple of failed attempts to express it I have sim­ply nour­ished it within myself. Now I want to share these words, in spite of their inad­e­quacy to reflect the breadth of my thank­ful­ness. The chronol­ogy of the events guides the order in which I men­tion all of those to whom I am so deeply thank­ful for con­tribut­ing to pre­serv­ing my life and nour­ish­ing me in the jour­ney to increased health and a finer sense of well-being.

Being told I had had can­cer, then fac­ing the recov­ery from a very dev­as­tat­ing surgery and mov­ing towards the accep­tance of a new real­ity in my life has indeed brought about many reflec­tions. I had always believed that I appre­ci­ated life, but the depth of that appre­ci­a­tion has mul­ti­plied ten­fold, and so has the joy of every minute. I had believed I was thank­ful for breath, but now each breath brings a deeper aware­ness of this extra­or­di­nary, inex­plic­a­ble sym­bio­sis between us and air, this gift of hav­ing life renewed with every breath. And at every instance grat­i­tude is present behind every thought, every action, every word.

The per­son who first saw a shadow on one of my lungs in an X-ray she had ordered and who took the pro­fes­sional respon­si­bil­ity of alert­ing me to its sig­nif­i­cance was a NURSE PRACTITIONER at the UCSF Lakeshore Inter­nal Fam­ily Prac­tice Clinic. I must con­fess that I dis­missed the warn­ing because a long time ago I had been told that there were some old scars on my lungs. My gen­eral prac­ti­tioner, DR. KATHERINE STRELKOFF, insisted that unless I could pro­duce those old X-rays she needed new exams. It took a great deal of prod­ding from her before I agreed to have addi­tional test­ing; and it was also her insis­tence that led me to the Pul­monary Prac­tice Depart­ment at UCSF. The doc­tors in the Pul­monary Depart­ment took great inter­est, and though their pre­vail­ing opin­ion was that I should go ahead with surgery to remove the lump even if we did not know for a fact that it was malig­nant, they respected my resis­tance and facil­i­tated all inter­me­di­ate tests—cultures, breath­ing tests, and finally a bron­choscopy. DR. DANA MCCLINTOCK sup­ported me with the best of med­ical care, an exem­plary com­bi­na­tion of exper­tise and humanity.

The team who per­formed the bron­choscopy were not only very pro­fes­sional, but also helped me through my great fears. Although I was much more aware and remem­ber much more than they thought I would, it was their kind atti­tude more than the anes­the­sia that helped me most. I have promised them that some­day they will find them­selves as won­der­ful char­ac­ters in one of my nov­els, and I intend to ful­fill that promise.

Of course, the great­est mir­a­cle was the surgery per­formed by DR DAVID M. JABLONS and his out­stand­ing team, who were able to remove half of my left lung and leave me alive. I am very much aware of the enor­mous amount of sac­ri­fice that acquir­ing this kind of exper­tise demands: of the many hours of their lives that were not spent on enter­tain­ment or rest, but on study­ing to become sur­geons; of the unend­ing efforts to remain on top of evolv­ing sci­ence; and of the enor­mous respon­si­bil­ity and con­cen­tra­tion that an oper­a­tion of this nature requires and the stress it must cre­ate on those per­form­ing it. How can I thank them enough for hav­ing devoted their lives to sav­ing those of others?

While surgery was the great gift that removed the can­cer from my body, it was at the same time the begin­ning of a jour­ney. The many nurses who took care of me in the recov­ery room, the inten­sive care unit, and on the sur­gi­cal floor, all con­tributed to my heal­ing. I will always remem­ber with spe­cial appre­ci­a­tion the X-ray tech­ni­cian who, see­ing me in such great pain, wrapped me in a warm blan­ket before he wheeled me into the hall­way to await the X-ray results. How much a lit­tle kind­ness can accom­plish! That sim­ple act moved me enor­mously, as he was moved when I returned to thank him. The pres­sures at a hos­pi­tal can be too great, and some­times cal­lous­ness may be a pro­tec­tive coat­ing to sur­viv­ing them. In that warm blan­ket, which I brought home from the hos­pi­tal, I keep find­ing a mes­sage of hope, not for my indi­vid­ual cure but for the tran­scen­dence of the human heart.

My fam­ily and close friends who were with me every moment helped me endure the pain, mon­i­tor the use of painkillers, and replace them rather quickly, if not nec­es­sar­ily eas­ily, with med­i­ta­tion, deep breath­ing, and a state of seren­ity that accel­er­ated the heal­ing. This sup­port became espe­cially impor­tant when I was faced with hav­ing to make a deci­sion about my ongo­ing treatment.

I had received from the Can­cer Board the diag­no­sis of a 1+ sta­tus and was given the alter­na­tive of hav­ing Chemother­apy or not. What were essen­tial to me in find­ing the courage to choose my own path were the pres­ence of my chil­dren at the moment I was given this diag­no­sis and the appro­pri­ate ques­tions they asked; the unfal­ter­ing pres­ence of my part­ner, Isabel, who accom­pa­nied me through the sub­se­quent searches; and above all, the promise of uncon­di­tional sup­port from those who were clos­est to me for what­ever deci­sion I would choose to make.

Here, my grat­i­tude goes to DR. GARRETT SMITH for his vision of com­bin­ing the best of all worlds in his prac­tice by sup­port­ing what tra­di­tional West­ern Med­i­cine has to offer with a com­pre­hen­sive well­ness path that is not bound by one given pro­to­col, but is open to all possibilities.

Also, my grat­i­tude to Dr. MARTIN L. ROSSMAN, author of Fight­ing Can­cer from Within, a doc­tor who embraces Med­i­cine as the path to health nur­tured by the body itself. He was kind enough to speak with Dr. Smith, when I still felt con­fused by the choice of treat­ments. Their dia­logue was most help­ful in clar­i­fy­ing what real expec­ta­tions for sur­vival could be derived from chemother­apy treat­ment in my case; and it cleared the way for my part­ner Isabel to feel com­fort­able with my deci­sion not to undergo chemother­apy at this time. She would have sup­ported me regard­less of my deci­sion, but because of this dia­logue she was able to feel at ease with my choice.

MICHAEL BROFFMAN from the Pine Street Clinic has been mon­i­tor­ing my process from the very first moment after the oper­a­tion. I thank UCSF Nurse Prac­ti­tioner SHANE CARDOSO for her high rec­om­men­da­tion of his work.

Michael clearly pointed out at our first meet­ing that my choice was not Chemother­apy or Nothing—that between those two extremes there was a con­tin­uum of many alter­na­tives. While he did not influ­ence my deci­sion not to choose chemother­apy, he pointed out that with or with­out it there were many things I could do to boost my immune sys­tem. Once I had told him that with Dr. Garrett’s approval I was choos­ing not to use chemo, he started me on a very com­pre­hen­sive plan that included a veg­e­tar­ian diet and numer­ous vit­a­mins and sup­ple­ments (includ­ing but not lim­ited to Sele­nium, Vit. D, EP-6, COQ10, EPA/DHA oil, Cur­cumin, Saven­taro, Resver­a­trol, Emer­ald Green Defense For­mula, and his own for­mu­las of Chi­nese Herbs), and rec­om­mended Qigong as a form of heal­ing med­i­ta­tion and exercise.

I have seen Michael reg­u­larly and I could not be hap­pier with the results. I lost 30 pounds; I have recov­ered a great deal of vital­ity; and my whole panel of blood tests are excel­lent. The seren­ity and sup­port offered by the Pine Street Clinic are also a bless­ing. Being under the com­bined care of Dr. Gar­rett Smith. Dr. Mar­tin Ross­man, who I met through the Pine Street Clinic, and Michael Broff­man is most com­fort­ing. The last PETScan, which Dr. Smith qual­i­fied as “pris­tine,” led him to sug­gest that I would not need a sim­i­lar test for a year. I will have the next in April 2010.

Dur­ing all this time Dr. Rossman’s wis­dom to treat the mul­ti­ple health issues that can sur­face at my age and his acupunc­ture and visu­al­iza­tion ses­sions. have improved my over­all health and well­be­ing. A doc­tor who com­bines tra­di­tional West­ern train­ing with an open­ness to com­ple­men­tary heal­ing prac­tices is indeed not com­mon. His com­bi­na­tion of wis­dom and knowl­edge, kind­ness and com­pas­sion, his abil­ity to lis­ten and sup­port patients in all ways is rare and I fully appre­ci­ate it.

As a result of the surgery, I had a torn lig­a­ment in my right shoul­der. This was very trou­ble­some, since I had the scar from the surgery on the left side and on the other side a shoul­der I could not rest on. Sleep­ing became very dif­fi­cult. I would wake up in pain sev­eral times each night and I had very lit­tle mobil­ity in my right arm. This went on for nine months, dur­ing which the Kent­field Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­ter, in Kent­field, was an extra­or­di­nary source of heal­ing and sup­port. Three excel­lent ther­a­pists, MATT DALPINO, SHIRLEY MCQUEEN and MARY DOWLING, pro­vided treat­ments and exer­cises for recu­per­at­ing from the surgery and heal­ing the shoul­der. They also offered me friend­ship and sup­port dur­ing some long peri­ods when I had to live alone while my part­ner assumed pro­fes­sional respon­si­bil­i­ties for both of us and while she trav­eled to Spain for fam­ily emer­gen­cies. These three phys­i­cal ther­a­pists are highly qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als and also kind and car­ing human beings who under­stand that their role in car­ing for the elderly, the infirm, the frail, and those in pain, requires much more than their heal­ing hands, and are there­fore will­ing to give their all as healers.

This is hardly the place to thank by name all the mem­bers of my fam­ily and the close friends who have given me such demon­stra­tions of love and care. I have tried to thank them all indi­vid­u­ally, but I want to state how impor­tant these expres­sions of love and friend­ship are for the heal­ing process.

I do want to acknowl­edge DONALD RUBBO and his excel­lent Qigong and Well­ness classes; the encour­age­ment I received from the video Can­cer Doesn’t Scare Me Any­more, by Loraine Day; the inspi­ra­tion found in My Grandfather’s Bless­ings and Kitchen Table Wis­dom, by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.; the deter­mi­na­tion to remain vegan for the rest of my life gained from read­ing The China Study by T. Colin Camp­bell, Ph.D., and the energy received from the video Strength­en­ing Your Immune Sys­tem Through Mind and Move­ment.

And always the tran­scen­dent energy derived from the Quan­tum Life Breath­ing Med­i­ta­tions, through the tapes of JERU KABBAL, and from the blessed con­tin­u­ous pres­ence in my life of GANGAJI . I par­tic­u­larly want to thank my dear­est friend ELAINE MARIE and the Watsu/Aquatic Mas­sage ses­sions we have shared in the inspir­ing and serene envi­ron­ment of Spirit Lake. These water ses­sions are capa­ble of pro­vid­ing the deep­est sense of relax­ation and renewal.

In the dif­fi­cult weeks fol­low­ing the surgery I needed a metaphor to explain what I was going through. My con­stant love for trees pro­vided one. Indeed the metaphor that sus­tained me through those weeks has proven right: this tree under­went prun­ing, and now it is fac­ing Spring with renewed strength. And my heart blooms in grat­i­tude to all of you.

If this infor­ma­tion could be use­ful to any­one who is fac­ing sim­i­lar chal­lenges it would give me pro­found satisfaction.

With pro­found grat­i­tude and appre­ci­a­tion,
Alma Flor Ada