| Close to Death, Closer to
Spirit A short testament of a cancer survivor by Craig Howell "You are going to die." "What?" I said, slightly dazed. "If you don't take these chemo treatments, you are going to die," he barked. I listened to the fear in his voice. He was trying to scare me into it. Here I am paralyzed from the waist down from a tumor and I'm thinking to myself, doctors are supposed to be healing people, not shouting at them. I hung up the phone as he was yelling. This was not my first meeting with cancer. This was my second, only one year after I was supposedly cured. Now all they could offer was chemo. When the realization sets in that this could mean the end of your life, there is a break that occurs. Everyone reacts differently. After the fear turned into anger and frustration at a life out of control, I sat alone and wept like a baby. Not so much for the end of life itself -- I had always had a strong belief that physical life was just a time of lessons and that death was a walk through a door to the real life. No, it wasn't sorrow for leaving. I had no family, no children, no unfinished obligations. I was rebelling. I just didn't want to be forced to go through this torturous disease process again. After accepting that this may be a life-or-death situation, I made up my mind. I chose to stay. I wanted to live. There was more to do in this life. I felt I had not accomplished what my spirit had set out to do. I was sure I wanted to stay, but inside I knew. In the back of my mind, I knew there was the possibility that I may have run out of time. This was now June of 1989 and I had been going downhill since March, slowly losing control of my legs until I required a wheelchair. (I now have a newfound respect for the handicapped after trying to maneuver around my little apartment and negotiating with friends for rides.) I had plunged myself into a regimen of alternative healing treatments including acupuncture, Reiki (a hands-on healing technique), macrobiotics, herbs, visualization and anything else I thought might work, but it wasn't reversing it. There were small gains, but I felt myself slipping away. I decided to go for chemo for a while, but it didn't seem to be helping either. My friends had to walk up to my second-floor apartment and carry me down like a sack of potatoes and drive me to treatments. They had to cook and clean for me. I saw the look in their eyes behind their cheerful smiles and well-wishing. They too were thinking what the doctors were: It's just a matter of time. Each chemo session was a procedure of mental and emotional discipline. The stifling chemical smell lie thick in the air as I waited, pillow on my lap, until they pumped the drugs into me through the small plastic receptacle, which was embedded in the top of my hand. Just to sit in the little room at the clinic with all the other ill people was hard enough. Then I knew what was coming. I can't explain the feeling that follows a treatment. It is like my body is racing and I am wide awake, my stomach always on the verge of giving up my breakfast. All I wanted to do was sleep until the strange, uncomfortable feeling wears off, but it was impossible. So I lay there switching channels on the TV for hours to take my attention off of it, until I was feeling human again. This went on for about three months. I did half the treatments recommended and stopped. Despite the doctor's dire warnings, I knew that I just couldn't do any more. The last time I wheeled into the clinic for a treatment, something strange came over me. I was really not wanting to be there. The feeling built and built until I grabbed the wheels on my wheelchair and just bolted. I took off for the front door of the hospital, the nurses shouting and chasing me down, until I was stopped because I didn't have the strength to roll myself up the incline leading to the front door, to freedom. It was quite a hilarious scene amidst the gravity of the situation. I was sobbing about not wanting any more. When they caught up with me, they told me something that I had not thought of before, that it is my body and I can do what I want with it. Yes. It was so simple. This is MY body, my life. That December, I left my decaying relationship with my girlfriend, all my friends -- everything -- packed up a few things and moved down to my father's apartment in Florida. My mother had passed from this place just last year and I'm sure he thought I would too. I know it was hard for him. I pretended to see the doctors so he wouldn't worry. Then I took all my pills, said another prayer -- "your will, God" -- and flushed them down the toilet. I really didn't know if I could live, but I had to believe. That's all I had, my belief. It was a great leap of faith, a gamble with the highest of stakes. Although I was aware of my spirituality, this was my greatest spiritual test, one that would determine just how committed I was to what I felt was the truth. Something happens when you are in the whirlwind of a crisis, when you are so concentrated on healing and believing. It is as if it triggers a mechanism that denies you from thinking about the worst-possible scenario. It's what prevents you from collapsing on the floor in a heaving mass of jelly. This concentration kept my energy focused on living, not dying. It was more than positive reinforcement; it was an absolute necessity for healing. For without the daily, hourly, even minute-to-minute thoughts creating a mantra of life, love and God, I would succumb to the human fears that would bring to me what I feared. That I knew. We attract to us what we concentrate on. Every day at my father's apartment, I would read inspiring material, eat healthy food, sit in the sun. Every day I would get up, get myself dressed and walk as best I could. At first, it was just moving slowly down the narrow hall of the apartment over and over, slinging my legs with all my might, steadying myself with my hands. So much so, my handprints started to show on the walls. Then I moved to a walker and was able to go outside for periods at a time. Slowly, the life force was coming back to my legs. Finally I was walking on my own, slightly hunched, like a little old man, or a toddler tentatively taking his first steps -- my rebirth. By May of 1990, I was walking pretty well. By June I was ready to leave Florida and resume my life in Rhode Island. I had gone from completely paralyzed to fully walking in six months. I was skinny, but I was alive -- at least for the time being. I showed myself to the doctors who said before that I would not live. They weren't impressed. But I was. Every now and then I look back at the whole ordeal. When someone wonders aloud how I ever got through it, I silently wonder how, also. I try to picture myself going through it to try to understand what it took to make it, but even that is too hard. The only things I will never forget are the lessons I learned. There were many revelations in my healing process. The biggest of them all is forgiveness -- both of self and of others -- and acceptance. Acceptance of who I am, how the world is and how others are. When these hurdles fell, I started to heal. You can't measure it on a graph, you just know it's true. Being once so close to death, I am now closer to Spirit than ever before. In an intimate way, every day, I am grateful for the new life that I have. I am also more aware that I am a part of God and a part of all things. To live life with this knowing and strong belief is a blessing. It keeps me centered and calm, even in the midst of crisis and confusion. It keeps my heart open and helps me in sensing my spiritual self at all times. The soul that is here now telling this story is a far different person than before. The old me is gone, the new and hopefully improved version remaining with another test under my belt, another living testament to the strength of Spirit, the willingness to release old ways and the free will to choose to survive. Another soul still here working through the earthly experience. I try to catch myself when I waste my time being angry or regretful. I take full advantage of all that I can to express my creativity and to work through all my obsessions, anxieties and fears. I am still scared and uncertain about many things, but I face them more bravely now. I try to live each day as if it were the last. Sometimes this means just sitting alone in silence or walking in the woods. But most times it means a lot of activity, as I am anxious to experience as much as I can, and to contribute as much as I can, and learn as much as I can. For at any time when I least expect it, Spirit could sneak up behind me, tap me on the shoulder politely and quietly say, "It's time...," and I want to be able to honestly reply, "I'm ready." Craig Howell is a New Age writer, musician, composer, poet and publisher. He is the director of The Eyes of Kwan Yin, a spiritual work located online at www.mykwanyin.com. He is part-owner and founder of Sun Sprite Publishing, a metaphysical book publishing company, which just published a new gift book, "A Flower Unfolds," spiritual teachings in verse from Kwan Yin, set with delicate Asian art. He can be reached at kwanyin@ureach.com or by toll-free voice mail at 1 (877) 883-4798. Copyright © 2004 Craig Howell |
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Oct 2004 |
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