Chicken Soup for the Cancer Survivor's Soul (14 page)

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Head First

T
he greatest discovery of any generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering the attitudes of their minds.

Albert Schweitzer

Perhaps the most striking experience of all came late in 1978, just as Ellen and I were about to leave for China. A physician in Sherman Oaks telephoned and identified himself as Dr. Avrum Bluming. He was calling about his patient, a judge, who was in the terminal stage of cancer and who was then at the Encino Hospital. He said the judge’s mood was understandably bleak. All of his personal and professional life he had been known for courage, determination and a positive outlook on life. His illness, however, had given him the psychology of fatalism. He told his wife and children that there was no hope and that he expected to die very soon.

Dr. Bluming told me that the effect of the judge’s mood on the family was catastrophic. He said that the judge’s seeming willingness to give up without a fight was totally out of character. The physician was worried that the judge’s wife might be vulnerable to serious illness.

On the way to the airport for the flight to China, I stopped off at the Encino Hospital. Before entering the judge’s room, I met with Dr. Bluming, who told me that the judge had virtually stopped eating and was resisting intravenous feeding. At the present rate, he said, it was doubtful that he would survive more than two or three days.

When I entered the room, the judge made me sit close to the bedside. He spoke in a hoarse whisper and it was difficult to follow what he was saying, but I picked up enough to learn that he had been a longtime reader of the
Saturday Review
and had sympathetically followed its various enthusiasms and concerns.

I took his hand and thanked him and told him that few things in my life were more gratifying than to meet readers of the magazine. I asked how he felt. He closed his eyes and shook his head.

I said that Dr. Bluming had given me a briefing on his condition and that I was also concerned about his wife and sons and, in fact, about all the people who loved him.

His eyes narrowed in a way that indicated he wanted me to explain myself. I said I understood that all his life he had been a fighter for things he considered just and right.

He nodded and again he narrowed his eyes, as though to find out what I was getting at.

I said that one of the things I had learned at the medical school was that the attitude of the patient had a profound effect on members of the family. Their health could be jeopardized by the negative attitude of the patient. I said that I hoped he would forgive me if I said that his family was anguished by the judge’s apparent defeatism. Such defeatism might seem natural in anyone else, but in the judge...

The judge closed his eyes momentarily. Then he looked at me and uttered just two words: “I gotcha.”

The emphasis and sense of purpose even in his whisper were unmistakable, as was the pressure of his handshake before I left.

When Ellen and I arrived in Hong Kong, the first thing I did was to telephone the Encino Hospital. Dr. Bluming went out to the nurse’s station to take the call.

“Something is happening here that you’ll find difficult to believe,” he said. “When the nurse began to rig up the intravenous device, the judge demanded that he be given breakfast on a tray. This was done. He got the food down, and kept it down. How he did that I’ll never know. When his wife arrived, he called her to the bedside, then invited her to work on problems that come up in bridge games. The judge used to be a tournament bridge player. Where he got the energy to concentrate on bridge, I have no idea.

“This isn’t all,” he continued. “After bridge, he asked for a robe and slippers, he got out of bed, and went to the bathroom on his own. When the nurse tried to restrain him, saying she wanted him to use the bedpan, he waved her off and said he could take care of himself. He was crusty and strong-willed—just the way people had always known him.”

I asked if this was any indication that the underlying situation had changed.

“Not so far as I can tell, but it sure has made a difference in the lives of his wife and children. He’s going to survive this weekend and then some.”

After I arrived in China, we were escorted into the interior of the country where international telephone facilities were not readily available. It was not until two weeks later, when we arrived in Shanghai, that I was able to telephone the hospital again.

This time, the judge’s wife went out to the nurse’s station to take the call. Her voice was strong and cheerful.

“The judge’s spirits have been wonderful,” she said. “He has had good talks with our sons. He follows the newspapers and makes his usual witty comments. Now he takes walks in the hospital corridors and chats with other patients. The ultimate outlook hasn’t changed, but the general atmosphere has. We are... well, a lot less despondent than we were.”

The judge survived for several more weeks. It was a magnificent example of how the human spirit could make a difference—not just in prolonging one’s life, but in bolstering the lives of others. The judge’s deep sense of purpose didn’t reverse the disease—the cancer had spread so widely to his vital organs that it was only a question of time before it would claim his life. But he was able to prolong his life beyond the expectations of the physician. He was also able to govern the circumstances of his passing in a way that provided spiritual nourishment to the people who loved him. He died in character.

This was his gift to everyone who knew him.

Norman Cousins

I’ve Just Got to Make
That Man Laugh!

I
n order to laugh, you must be able to play with your pain.

Annette Goodheart

Bobby was 13, one of nine kids in his Portuguese-American family, with beautiful, thick, silky black hair and liquid expressive eyes. A quiet boy, a polite boy, loved by his teachers and worshipped by his younger brothers and sisters.

His family were milkers, living and working on another family’s ranch, eking out their living and taking care of the cows. A loving but strictly religious family, they rose early and worked hard every day just to make ends meet.

It was a disaster beyond expression when Bobby was diagnosed with leukemia and later with bone cancer. His parents struggled to contain their grief, worry and fear. His father hid his pain behind a screen of stoicism and unrelenting work. His mother seemed to walk through each day with tears hiding just behind her eyes.

They did their chores, then took Bobby in for his treatments, enduring the costs of time, money and uncertainty as best they could. Their love for Bobby was expressed without drama or display, in those silent looks shared when they didn’t think he’d notice and in their bluff assertions to him that they knew he’d recover from this “cancer thing.” It never occurred to them that humor was missing from their lives, so deeply were they enmeshed in the struggle for economic survival and the physical survival of their eldest son. Every morning and evening, the clockwork of their lives turned and it was time for milking. Now added to these chiming hours were the regular medications and treatments for their boy.

Near the end of Bobby’s struggle with his disease, he told me this story.

“When I was admitted to the hospital for the first long series of treatments, there was a male nurse, Floyd, who reminded me of a middle linebacker. He was huge and never seemed to smile.

“Floyd came into my room one day with the breathing machine. Because I was too weak to do much other than lie in bed, my lungs were affected. He told me that I had to use this breathing machine and puff into it repeatedly. It had some little plastic ball that had to be puffed up to a certain mark on the machine. He had attached a little figurine of a hula dancer to the end of the machine’s air pipe. ‘Okay, kid,’ he said, ‘If you really puff hard, you’ll lift the hula dancer’s grass skirt!’ And without a smile, he left the room.

“I was amazed at what he said and that a nurse would do such a crazy thing. But I had to laugh. And I sure had to try to puff that skirt up! I ended up doing that machine so much they had to take it away from me for a while! That hula dancer helped a lot. And I laughed and laughed. I showed it to my brothers, too. But I couldn’t let my parents know because my mother and father would have been shocked.

“Then, one day, I was told about the radiation treatments and the chemotherapy I would have to go through. As the treatments progressed, my hair began falling out. When Floyd wheeled me back to my room after one grueling session, he brought in a paper bag and took out from it an atrocious, ugly, wild, black wig and a lollipop. He put this ill-fitting wig on his head and sucked on the lollipop as he said, ‘You have a choice, kid. It’s the rug or Kojak. You can get a wig, but you’ve got to know what people look like wearing one, or you can go with the bald head, but then you’ve got to suck on lollipops, like the TV star.’ With that, he deposited the wig and a fresh sucker on my lap and walked out of the room. I began laughing and laughed so hard I couldn’t stop myself. He had taken what seemed so horrible and made it so funny that I could live with it. It didn’t seem to matter after that whether I had hair or not. I just kept picturing that big man in his green surgical scrubs and the ugly wig. If he could look like that, I could, too.”

Today, Bobby is a thriving teenager with pimples, a patched-together pickup truck made from his uncle’s hand-me-downs and assorted parts found in junkyards. He’s got a girlfriend and the most upbeat attitude of any kid in town. These are the simple pleasures of his age.

Floyd introduced him to a tool that he could use for a lifetime of pleasures—the hopefulness of looking for the lighter, brighter, unexpected side of even the hardest times.

Meladee and Hanoch McCarty

The Prosthesis Intruder

N
othing is quite as funny as the unintended humor of reality.

Steve Allen

I am not usually the self-conscious type, even though I had my leg amputated when I was 10 due to cancer.

I believe that not only has growing up with just one leg not stunted my outdoor physical prowess, it has actually accelerated my love of snorkeling, dancing and hiking. Also, living with one leg has provided for quite a few humorous situations, like the following:

“Dave, wake up! Dave! Somebody’s down in the basement!”

I couldn’t for the life of me wake up Dave. I heard a noise like someone stumbling around drunk in our basement! Since it was quite apparent my heavy-sleeper hubby, Dave, was not going to be inconvenienced by this pesky intruder, I called the police.

I answered the door in my wheelchair and told the police where I believed the noises were coming from. Two of the officers went out to the backyard to check for footprints in the light powder snow we had in March, and the other officer went down into the basement to check for a prowler.

A few minutes later the two officers from outside came in and said they saw no footprints, and we waited for the other officer to return from the basement. Well, when he did return from the basement he was breathing heavily and ashen-faced.

We knew he must have come face to face with this intruder who left no footprints in the snow. We waited for him to catch his breath and he said in a gasping voice, “You didn’t tell me about the artificial legs in the basement!” (I did answer the door in a wheelchair!)

It turns out that while he was cautiously surveying the basement, he came upon one of my shoed legs sticking out of the closet. He claims he “drew his gun and almost shot the darned thing!”

Needless to say, after we all stopped laughing hysterically at 2 A.M. and the poor guy stopped quivering, they told me that this was the most interesting night-shift call to tell their fellow officers.

Well, men in blue, happy to be of service.

Maureen J. Khan-Lacoss

The Value of Laughter

I had gone to the hospital because a group of doctors there were concerned that the mood of the cancer patients was so bleak, they feared the collective environment of treatment was being impaired.

At the suggestion of the doctors, I met with the veterans in the cancer unit. There were perhaps 50 or 60 of them. They sat in rows and were every bit as glum as I had anticipated.

I reported my conversation to their doctors, and said I doubted that they were helping them or themselves with the grim mood of the place. Certainly one could understand the reason for their feelings—and it was arrogant for anyone to lecture to them about it. But in coming to Sepulveda Veterans, they were reaching out for help— and they were entitled to know what would optimize that prospect.

I told them any battle with serious illness involved two elements. One was represented by the ability of the physicians to make available to patients the best that medical science has to offer. The other element was represented by the ability of patients to summon all their physical and spiritual resources in fighting illness.

I said I hoped the veterans would agree that their part of the job was to create an environment in which the doctors could do their best. One thing they might do to replace the grim atmosphere was to put on performances. We could give them scripts of amusing one-act plays. Some of them might wish to produce or direct or act. If they wished, we could help them obtain videocassettes of amusing motion picture films. Ditto, audiocassettes of stand-up comics. One way or another, their part in the joint enterprise with their doctors was to create a mood conducive to the best medical treatment obtainable.