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Whatever has worked, whether hocus pocus or not, my cancer has been put into a deep, hypnotic sleep – please don’t wake it.
A month ago I had an MRI scan to find out if the treatment for stage 4 breast cancer had worked. After operations, radiation and chemo, the scan showed that a lot of my cancer had gone, but there remained a few cancer cells which were most likely inoperable and difficult to radiate because they were embedded in nerve tissue.
After fifteen years with cancers coming and going, I knew the rubric. With the prospect of ‘no more treatment’, it was time to check on my will and make funeral arrangements. I visited my surgeon and tried to cheer up my oncologist and friends, but in my heart I thought I knew. Further surgery was unlikely and radiation with a cyber knife, which was mentioned, was one new fangled invention too many.
My oncologist and surgeon recommended a CT/PET scan. Too optimistic, I thought. In my negative frame of mind I thought only fleetingly about the effects of radiation from the scan (see last blog) – I wasn’t going to be around anyway.
But the hocus pocus machine must have magically transformed my negative energy into positive. My oncologist was disbelieving when she called to say my cancer was inactive. I ran to her office in fear she might have got it wrong. Neither she nor I believe in magic, and she methodically checked with the technicians and pathologist to see if the machine was broken on the day or if the pathologist who had read the scan had forgot his glasses. All confirmed to her that the cancer was inactive. I think we were both in shock.
I began to tell my friends and they all asked, ‘Why? What had happened between the MRI and the PET/CT scan?’ The answer is, I have no idea.
Please cast your vote. You can put money on any or all of the following:
My negative attitude
During that time I was reading a book called ‘Final Exit’, and listening on line to lectures on death from the philosophy department at Yale University. Being negative always puts me in a good mood.
Moxibustion
Who cares if it works or not? It is such a great word.
I started this around the time of the first scan. Walking up the circular stairs of the Kite clinic on New Bond Street felt like going to a high price cosmetic surgery clinic. Gerard Kite uses a form of acupuncture in which magic moxi is made into heated candles and are placed one at a time on various acupuncture points. After the moxi is in place, a few needles follow, which penetrate the skin and feel a bit painful for a second or two. The whole thing takes only a few minutes but it did give me energy and who knows what else. I had about ten sessions between scans. I had put off going because the expense seemed too high but I decided the hell with the money, I wasn’t going to take it with me. I think it had done me a world of good.
The magic substance – Orgonite
My friend Martin Sexton, an artist, put Orgonite all over my bedroom. He takes this very seriously. It is a substance devised by Wilhelm Reich, a psychiatrist who worked with Freud until he went off in his own mad direction. He believed that he could harness the energy of the orgasm in a material made of resin, white quartz, rose quartz, and aluminum. He made cylindrical tablets that were full of magic properties.
Martin’s tablets were made in the shape of Silbury Hill. He bathed the tablets in Chalice Well at Glastonbury, in both the red spring and the white spring; shallow buried and retrieved them on Glastonbury Tor; placed them at the other sacred places of Wyvern Hill, Chalice Hill, Gog Magog Oaks, and Stonehenge, and then finally placed them on the erect phallus of the Cerne Abbas Giant.
They have sat on the windowsill near my bed during the time between scans and who knows?
The summer solstice
The PET scan did happen on the day of the solstice; maybe the druids intervened?
Prayers for the atheist
I do appreciate it when friends and people I don’t even know send me prayers. I do have a close friend in Australia who is a minister for the Church of England. He said he wanted to pray for me but he needed me to be specific. What exactly did I want him to pray for? I hope I said something relevant because I like the idea of being specific.
The shaman – the doctors
To give them their due, the doctors worked hard to get these results. At times their work seems more on the side of magic than science. Dr Margaret Spittle, my oncologist for fifteen years, planned my treatment with the aim to get rid of the cancer (a stage 3 solution) rather than watch it grow and take over (stage 4). She planned the operations, radiation treatments and chemotherapy. I can’t say that I always had faith or thought positive things about her. It has been a difficult two years.
The fight with cancer is no doubt not over, but for now,
Ssh, Ssh, the baby is sleeping…
