Surviving Cancerland by Kathleen O'Keefe-Kanavos

SURVIVING CANCERLAND: The Psychic Aspects Of Healing

SURVIVING CANCERLAND:

The Psychic Aspects Of Healing

NONFICTION FIRST-PERSON NARRATIVE—CANCER/SELF-HELP

118,923 WORDS /24 CHAPTERS /4 APPENDIXES / Additional Mind-Body Reading

By Kathleen O’Keefe-Kanavos

Cape Women On Line Magazine contributor and Q&A columnist (www.capewomenonline)

Two-time Breast Cancer Survivor

R.A. BLOCH CANCER FOUNDATION Phone Counselor

WE CAN Breast Cancer Mentor

Reiki Master

Synopsis

A young woman embarks on a Wonderland journey as she seeks a cancer cure by challenging medical authority with information from the psychic realm and finds her amusing “inner selves” in the process. Rather than believing healthy medical test results or that the lump in her breast is her imagination, she summons the courage to defy her doctors and uses everything available in this world and the next to save her life.  The healing power of humor, prayer, and spirit teach her an important lesson: “Take care of your spirit and it will take care of you.”

ABOUT THE COVER

“DRINK ME”: This page was scanned from an original book dated 1866. This is a color illustration by John Tenniel from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I have added two objects to the cover to make it more relevant to my story.  Can you find them?

PREFACE

“Being at odds with yourselves is self defeating.”

Kathleen O’Keefe-Kanavos

You’ve heard of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Well, I embarked on similar journey when I fell down the rabbit hole of Cancerland.

What is Cancerland?  Think of it as the intellectual, emotional, and psychic amusement park of cancer treatment where every ride, game, and attraction demonstrates a different aspect of humanity’s complexities and individualism during treatment. Cancerland provides multiple explanations of the way things are in the physical, spiritual, psychic, and dream worlds of crisis.

I use the allegory of Alice’s travels to make the crucial parts of my cancer survival more accessible and less frightening to the reader who may also be in treatment.

Cancer is humbling.  It is guaranteed to knock you down with its series of crises that begin with discovery and continue through treatment, often with no end in sight. If you are reading this book, odds are good that you or a loved one has been knocked down by illness and you are searching for answers that include and go beyond scientific facts. I also searched for answers when I found out the hard way that not all cancers are found by conventional medical tests. Intuition can play an important part in discovery and diagnosis. Intuition is defined as instinctively knowing without conscious reasoning. I was caught off guard, but maybe you can learn from my story.

What I seek to present by writing this book is an alternative to ignoring our intuition in favor of science or ignoring science in favor of intuition. Why limit ourselves with one when we can use both to our advantage?  I learned that the best way to survive any health crisis is to mix intuition and science and then cross-check them against each other for answers that are indisputably correct. Listen, then medically verify. By respecting both of these information modalities, we double our chances of finding answers that are correct and possibly lifesaving.

It is time to stop ignoring ourselves and discover our voices. You don’t have to be psychic to believe your intuition or inner voices. In order to effectively battle illness, we must get in touch with our inner selves and work together toward the goal of survival by using everything available to us. By searching within ourselves through dreams, meditation, or prayer, we will find our own set of answers to any challenge.

When my intuitive suspicion of breast cancer was medically confirmed, I considered suicide as a means of freeing myself from a painful uncertainty. I was engulfed by fear of the unknown and wanted to avoid the gruesome death Mom had suffered from cancer sixteen months earlier. Fortunately, armed with lessons I had learned throughout life and especially while caring for Mom, my inner selves became united in the goal of survival.  Everyone battling any life-threatening illness has his or her own set of questions concerning treatment and survival.  Unfortunately, questions concerning intuition often remain unanswered by the medical field.  Spiritual guides, angels, intuition, gut instincts, call them what you will, “voices” and dreams have gotten a bad rap in society. Just ask Joan of Arc. Her voices were a double-edged sword that led her to both victory and the stake. Yet they saved my life and were a help and comfort to me during treatment.  Without their intervention, I believe I would be dead, and this book would be a buried idea.  My voices are as much a part of my battle as the medical staff and treatments.

CHAPTER 1

DISCOVERY AND “VOICES”

“What a wonderful life I’ve had!  I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”

Colette

A deadly storm was brewing as I reclined against Peter’s chest during our ritualistic nightly bath.  As I massaged him, he lathered my body with fragrant bubbles. The tranquility within our bathroom offset the Cape Cod nor’easter building over the bay. Romantic candles and music made the squall appear benign through the large skylight. Halloween had ended weeks ago, yet the sky was still in rich costume. Black clouds enshrouded the full moon while angry winds rattled windows and howled like hungry werewolves.  I adjusted myself to better view the macabre performance of moonlight’s struggle against darkness and waited for the storm to pass. The serenity of our snuggle-session was shattered by a single life-altering question that forewarned of a deadlier storm building within our lives.

“Kathy, what’s this hard spot?” Peter asked over my shoulder as he gently caressed my breasts with his soapy hands.  My hand followed his finger to what felt like a pea beneath my skin.  His voice was suddenly replaced by another inner voice that declared, “Get to a doctor, now!”

Three days later, I have an appointment with my gynecologist/general practitioner. Dr. Wagner resembles the deceased actor Gary Cooper in both physique and manner.  When he enters the room, the theme song from the movie High Noon plays in my head, and I expect to see a Colt .44 slung on his hip rather than a stethoscope around his neck. “I can’t feel anything on or around your breast, Kathy.”

“Perhaps it’s easier to feel during my menstrual cycle,” I reply from a contorted position with my arm held like a pretzel over my head. He shakes his head as he manipulates the area again. I’m torn between relief and concern. Is nothing there? Did he miss it, or were the voices of alarm in my head just residual anxiety from my mother’s recent death from cancer. But Peter had felt it, too.

“You had a blood test and mammogram less than six months ago and everything was fine.” He helps me up from my pose and shows me a copy of the report from my chart. “I think what you felt was just a fibrous tumor that is sensitive to your menstrual cycle.  Let’s just keep an eye on it,” he concludes with a smile, and snaps my chart shut. While we speak a few minutes longer about how little cancer is in my family history, my mind wanders back to a day, not that long ago, when I had a similar heartbreaking cancer talk with Mom.

Her gurney was pushed against the corridor wall where she lay waiting for an ultrasound to see the extent of her cancer metastasis. Our last mother-daughter conversation began with the words, “Breast cancer doesn’t run in our family, but now colon cancer does. You must get a colonoscopy and be vigilant of symptoms.” She smiled through eyes filled with sadness and pain. Was her grief unwarranted guilt at having brought this dreaded disease into our formerly cancer-free family? Mom was probably of the opinion that cancer had to start with someone and that now it had started with her. That was the second saddest day of my life. The first was her death, two days later.

“You’re only 44—too young for cancer, you know.” Dr. Wagner’s words shock me back to my present situation in his office.  If he isn’t worried about this invisible hard spot, why am I?  After all, he’s the doctor, right?  I get dressed and head for home, worry free.