Stories in Hope

The Power of Yoga
by Mary Ellen Ireland, chaplain at St. Mary's Regional Cancer Center

I had finished my breast cancer treatments, including surgery, chemotherapy, and 33 radiation treatments when I attended the Courageous Women retreat in Colorado. I was still feeling rather beat up and I was having big problems with my digestion. I went to one yoga class and voila! I was immediately relieved of whatever was wrong with my intestines. I felt great for the first time in a year. Thanks to the yoga classes I attended at that retreat, I took a weekly yoga class throughout my year of treatments, bald head and all. I’m sure it was quite a sight because I had gained 16 pounds from the steroids and could barely move. Yoga gave me a chance to feel normal and in charge of my disease.

The year 2008 has been my year to focus on my health and fitness. I found a DVD of Kundalini Yoga at our library that I have been using at home and it has given me renewed energy. Just last week, I started taking yoga classes again at the local Yoga Academy. I feel like a beginner all over again and it feels great to be alive!

Evaporation
By Sarah Michaelson
 
It is mid-August and I am sitting in the back of the Old Orchard theatre, watching March of the Penguins. They’re waddling in the snow, the temperature 80 degrees below zero, toward their mating destination. Seventy miles to go: waddle, waddle, waddle, thunk—another one falls into the snow. It’s too cold, too far, one of the penguins is too hungry to go on.
 
My parents are sitting on my left, watching the movie with me, their faces earnestly following the penguins’ arduous fate. I have tuned out the narration but watch an egg, a potential penguin, get passed between the mother and her mate. The father is not fast enough and the egg is lost; there will be no new baby penguin. The frame moves slowly. I watch the crack expand up the body of the egg and listen to the sound of ice attacking. The parents marched 70 miles for nothing.
 
I look over at my parents, who flew in from New York this morning. Tomorrow we find out if my cancer is back. My mother looks so worried, but she won’t talk about it.
 
At the hospital the next day, the surgeon meets with me in a room labeled “Consulting” to discuss the removal of the mass and the removal of one or both of my ovaries. We are on the cancer floor. I don’t look at the bald women with headscarves, sitting attached to their chemo drips. After I enter the room, I do glance at the brochure on the rack by the door labeled “End of Life Planning.” I am cold but sweating. I lost a breast to cancer six years ago. There is a familiar lack of smell in the room, and I am starting to feel nauseous.
 
I make an appointment with my primary doctor. She is lovely and petite and remembers everything in my records and every symptom I’ve ever told her about. She looks me in the eye while she reports her conversation with the oncologist.
 
“There are four possibilities,” she says, “It could be benign, ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer, or the breast cancer has metastasized.”
 
“Well, these are exciting times,” I answer. Her smile is pained and I look away.
 
My husband checks in with me 50 times a day to see how I am doing. He spends hours on the Internet and suggests new vitamins, perhaps a new DVD player, a better camera, a new vacation idea. He does not seem to tire of me. I, however, am exhausted of myself. I’m cranky and sullen, and I do not make a very pleasant companion. He does not seem to notice.
 
I am sitting on a mat in my yoga class; it is 92 degrees outside and we are learning sitali, a type of breathing designed to cool the body. This room is the kindest and gentlest place I’ve ever visited. Twelve cross-legged women are sticking out their curled tongues and making sucking noises as they breathe in. My instructor counts aloud…1, 2, 3, 4…everything slows down. The inhale fills my belly and lungs. In that moment, I am as big and boundless as the sky. The fear becomes a tiny droplet that evaporates with the heat of my exhale.
 
Back in the recovery room, through my foggy sleep, I hear a female voice say the word “benign.” I turn to see my mother’s face. It is beautiful and open. I feel the warmth of my father’s hand, the hug of his palm against mine. The sounds are blurred, yet I hear the clarity of the words thank you, spoken in my husband’s soothing voice.
 
Within a week, the incisions are almost healed, but the thumping of my heart is not quieting. I wake up at 3:00 a.m. and walk around the house, down and back, down and back. Finally, I sit in half-lotus position, breathe in deeply through my curled tongue, suck in the air…and wait.
 
And I understand that this is what I have. This moment.

Dance Is My Lifesaver
By Christine Rodgers, MD

Dance, for me, has always been a sanctuary from difficult times and a way to find inner peace and joy. Even before I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I had always taken patients who were distressed, either with disease or personal issues, to various forms of dance classes. After dance classes they had found a sense of rebirth and a new desire to be part of the world again in a better frame of mind.
 
After my bilateral mastectomies, I returned to my dance classes nine days after surgery with the understanding of my body’s new limitation. I felt that I had to return to my old friend, dance, which could take away my fear and uncertainty about what might lay ahead. I began slowly, but the music and dance were as necessary to me as air. I surrendered myself to their power and flow, and my heart was calm and peaceful during that first year when I was dealing with life questions such as my own survival.  Not only was I able to find mental strength to cope with the treatments in the ensuing months, but additionally, I achieved my pre-surgical strength within about 3 weeks after my mastectomies. Stretch, dance and ice-skating allowed me to recover much more quickly than had I rested during the entire post-operative period.

As a physician, I know that moderate exercise has been shown to reduce the chances of recurrence in breast cancer by up to 40-50%. It can also reduce the chance of ever getting breast cancer by 25-30% if one exercises moderately 3 hours per week. This reduction in cancer occurrence holds to nearly the same degree for males as well, specifically with prostate and colon cancer. Dance itself has been shown also to reduce the symptoms of both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's more so than any other form of exercise.
Despite my strong advice to my patients to exercise, many of them do not due to time constraints, feelings of depression and despair or embarrassment about their bodies.
   
For myself, dance is the way I find a spiritual connection with the world. It sounds strange, I know, but when I was able to dance to beautiful music, I just felt that whatever would happen to me, I knew that I had experienced the best that a human could know and feel. Even during stressful times, when there was a question of a recurrence, my ballet teacher and I would dance to choreography that we created and I felt that I was a child once again, imbued with the sense of possibility and wonder in the future. Nothing could harm me and if it tried, I had a special secret that could only be known by letting myself go in the freedom of movement and music.
 
I can confidently state that dance is my lifesaver.

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