STARTING CHEMOTHERAPY

July 2012. I had been due to start chemotherapy twice in July, and twice I had dodged the bullet.  The doctor who was in charge of my case in the hospital was understandably pretty fed up with me by now, and from where she was sitting my behaviour must have been totally incomprehensible, she must have thought something along the lines: Why doesn't this woman just get on with it, doesn't she want to live?

I would see the doctor, have three chemo sessions programmed, then I would phone up the reception where they programme the visits and say I wasn't going to turn up.  Then another visit with the doctor three weeks later, chemo mission 2 planned, chemo mission 2 aborted.  The first time was forgiven and put down to the fear of starting treatment (I can't have been the first to do this, surely?), but the second time I got my knuckles severely rapped. I was told the medication was extremely costly and because it is prepared specifically for each patient  the day before, it had had to be thrown away.  I wasn't and am still not sure whether to believe that or not. If it is true it means the big pharmaceutical companies are making a packet out of cancer (there now, what a surprise).  

I finally started chemotherapy on the 3rd of August 2012, the day of my birthday.  I didn't and don't think I had put off the inevitable. From the very beginning I had had NO REAL intention of doing chemotherapy.  Chemotherapy had always been one of my (and everybody's?) greatest fears. I had accompanied my mother to the hospital for her marathon 8 hour session of christmas chemotherapy in December 2011. Guildford Hospital, the UK.  It really had seemed sinister to me at the time: wards full of sickly looking oncology patients hooked up on drips, patiently poisoning their bodies and everybody going around as if that were the normal state of events.  

More than anything I couldn't see the logic of it: how could I put a poison inside my body that would kill healthy cells? How could I make myself ill when I was healthy? Yes, healthy. This is not living in cloud-cuckoo land (quaint expression).  Health is: vitality, balance, good skin and hair, bright eyes, all body systems working well - good digestion, good circulation, a relaxed nervous and endocrine system (after the Reconnection), the hospital blood tests showed a strong immune system, relaxed breathing, a strong and supple body...

But the fact of the matter was that there was a tumour and a ganglion affected.  In the no-holds barred language of my Span partner "you've got a time bomb inside you".  The power of the mind, the power of words.  Little by little the fear of metastasis overcame me, I believed in the treatments I was receiving, but it was a slow process, was there enough time? Then I started to feel/imagine strange sensations in the areas of the lymph system, which is something I shouldn't have looked up on the Internet.  Here is a picture below for the non-susceptible.

I thought I had very firm beliefs, though obviously not that firm. I also recognised that I wasn't mentally strong enough to carry the responsibility, yet ultimately I believe we are all solely responsible for our health and our recovery from illness. Some doctors like to think it's down to them, the wise ones know that modern medicine is still in the dark ages. All in all, I didn't have the force of will or of my convictions or what they call the connection with myself to go AGAINST the whole darn establishment. Again, for the meditators among us, I had lost my connection with the source. So, with an extremely heavy heart I started chemotherapy, which is absolutely the wrong way to go about it!

THE RECONNECTION & CHEMOTHERAPY aborted missions

Late June / early July 2012. The hospital had ALL the results and had me marked down to start chemotherapy in early July. The alternative oncologists I had visited strongly urged me to do chemotherapy.  My family and certain friends were screaming at me to do chemotherapy.  But then came The Reconnection.

Well, my Span in doors had done The Reconnection course the previous year in Madrid and had come home with healing hands.  So now, Eric Pearl and crew were in Barcelona in July 2012.  We went to the hotel where the seminar was taking place to see if David could repeat the course for free, as Eric Pearl had not been present in the Madrid seminar. They put both of our names down.  Why argue? So we both went on the Sunday, day 2.  Hundreds of participants, masses of massage tables, and I took every opportunity I could to be the patient.  Just imagine for a minute a whole day of being on the receiving end of 3 or 4 pairs of healing hands?

I have received so many healing sessions over the last decade that I've lost count of the number and lost track of the names.  I've had rubbish massages in posh spas, regular to phenomenal reiki sessions, heavenly healing energy massages that have transported me to la-la land, I've done craneo-sacral, ataraxia, sound therapy, regressions and Sacred Sat Nam Rasayan, but the Reconnection was altogether another dimension.  I left the hotel at the end of the second day's seminar (not having attended the first) with wonderfully wobbly legs, cells that were zinging and a fabulous feeling in my heart.

Slept like a baby.  Monday morning's yoga class was simply spectacular as a result, and then I floated off to the hospital where the plot for chemotherapy thickened.  I nodded at whatever the oncologist was saying but inside I was saying "I can't do this, it's wrong, it's an act of aggression against my body, not an act of healing".

Because that night I had booked an individual healing session with one of The Reconnection teaching team.

A session lasts about half an hour.  The effects no doubt last a lifetime.  All I know is that for two weeks afterwards I felt happier than I had ever felt in my life, I felt grounded, centred, hormonally balanced*, fearless, (for the meditators among us: connected to the source).  It felt as if I had reprogrammed every cell in my body.  Now, this is how you feel sometimes after a yoga or meditation session, but in my case it wears off after a couple of hours, or possibly an afternoon.  This was two solid weeks of BLISS, with no ups and downs.  There was no flippin' way I was going to do chemotherapy.  I telephoned the reception of the day hospital and boldly cancelled my first chemotherpay session that should have been on the Thursday of the same week.

* My menstrual cycle had been on the rampage in recent months. It suddenly stopped rampaging.  The crazy hormonal ups and downs just ceased. For all women who have had mad menstrual cycles, imagine this: 2 weeks without a single  fluctuation on an emotional or physical level. And for the first time ever I had the whole 28 days between periods, the perfect menstrual cycle. Nirvana for women, I tell you.

THE FINAL SCAN & THINGS ALTERNATIVE

June 2012 was the month of tests, leading up to the mother of all scans - the MRI scan.  Facedown for 45 minutes or so,and  inspite of the padding I could feel the metal underneath boring into pressure points in my body.  At the end of the session I came out with a mark on my forehead that literally took all afternoon to wear off. And the noise!  Like a pneumatic drill inside your body, despite earphones.  And then you mustn't move or you'll ruin the image.  Why don't you you try it - as soon as somebody says don't move, what's the first thing you want to do?  Then try doing that in an excrutiatingly uncomfortable position with massive tension in every muscle.  The mantras helped momentarily but I think it would be a challenge for the best Buddhist monk to meditate in such conditions .  A slow kind of torture, but of a different sort to the biopsy, I have to say.  This was great discomfort and prolonged tension, while the biopsy was pain.

Things alternative
June was also the month of everything alternative. I had already started sessions of par biomagnetism and I had already changed my diet from the moment I found out I had the lump.  My immense thanks goes to Lily who treated me for free and who gave me invaluable advice on diet, detoxing, hygiene and alternative therapies.

Amongst other things (!) here are some of the treatments and therapies that I did or still do, and which have helped to boost my immune system and my spirits, reduce the tumour, reduce the side effects and levels of toxicity in my body after chemotherapy, help me emotionally to deal with this experience.  The main ones are explained fully in the section on alternative therapies: Sound therapy sessions (a million thank yous to Montse Hari Avtar), Sat Nam Rasayan, which is healing through meditation (thank you Ambrosio and Elena), quantum feng shui (not what it sounds like - thank you Ton and Annette), Zen therapy (thank you Eva), Reiki, the Yuen method (thank you again Lily), the Reconnection, which deserves a section all to itself (and thank you David, if you only knew the gift you have and if only you would share it with the world).  Thank you to Satyarthi, Michael Mokrus, Rafael, Eva, Roser and Roger and all my fellow participants on the Family Constellations/Somatic Experience course and for the amazing constellation they did for me.

Now, with my yoga background I thought I'd seen or at least heard of most things wild and wacky (I don't mean this perjoratively).  But how wrong I was. How wrong we are about most things in life, in the end. I read everything I could get my hands on and checked out what seemed feasible - for instance, I toyed with orinotherapy, yes, drinking your own urine (I joke not, I know yogis who have done it for other things, and speak wonders of it ) and I even contacted an association  in Madrid that could arrange a personalised vaccine (we have antibodies and antigenes in our urine, our body produces its own cure) from a very reputable clinic in Mexico.  The info never came, seemed it wasn't meant to be, I didn't pursue it. I visited a private oncologist in Granollers, a small town near Barcelona to look into hipertermina, where I also got essential information about diet.

The posh oncologists (meant affecctionately because of their address)
Then there is the private clinic in Barcelona, run by the oncologist Natalia,  who has been and still is absolutely invaluable.  First and foremost thank you for listening and for treating me with such respect, Cristina and Natalia.  I could not have hoped for better- the best of the conventional and the alternative.  Homeopathy, nutrition , supplements, psycho-biology (the emotional causes behind the manifestation of a tumour), invaluable advice on habits (don't do yoga on the day of the chemotherapy or the day after, to not stimulate the circulation, insisting I meditate for longer), recommendations of all sorts beyond the conventional, and the fact that I could talk about any non-conventional treatments freely and easily and they didn't bat an eyelid and they knew them all!  If only I'd known you embrace all things alternative at the beginning, I wouldn't have been so guarded and on the defensive. Thank you to Lily for putting me in touch with them.  So many talented loving people in this world.

Then there's PSYCH-K.  Awesome (Obligatory American accent).  To change the biology of your beliefs.  I knew that everything we think and feel produces chemical substances, and has an effect on the cells in our body.  I knew I had developed breast cancer from the shock of finding out my mother had a tumour last  autumn 2011.  It made perfect sense to me.  But how do you reprogramme your beliefs and the behavioural patterns of a lifetime when time is of the essence?  This was how.  So, thank you to Esther.  ¡Como molas!  You're awesome (American accent again, as is befitting the expression).

And if this is the section for thankyous, then thank you to all my friends and all the people who have offered help, love and shown me kindness throughout this time.  To my yogi friends who have given me such incredible support, who have understood so much of the experience and given such knowledgeable advice without having gone through it themselves, you are generous and wise spirits.  Thank you to my friend Anna, for being there, for letting me stay.  Thank you to my friend Montse for all you have given me, the list is endless. Thank you to my mum and sister for the unconditional love and support and for bailing me out!

Thank you to all the doctors of the Vall d'Hebron hospital.  I'm so sorry I was a difficult, confrontational patient.  Thank you to the nurses there who were and are angels, especially Ariadna, Carol and Edu.  I shall never forget you.