Rebirth Day

If I have been quiet for most of this year, there was a reason. Back in February I was given a CT scan for a prospective hernia operation but what it showed up threw a log across that pathway and redirected me to oncology. There was a shadow on my liver, a malignant tumour or little nodule, depending on who you were speaking to. But it had to be dealt with. Next step biopsy, but we’ll cut to the chase because there is a point to all this which will be revealed at the end (no scrolling!) and the quicker we get there the better.

To protect those friends who have been such major players in all this I shall refer to them only by title and initial.

M, a healer, lives in Africa. I hadn’t seen her for twenty five years when suddenly she was in touch saying, ‘I have to see you. On Friday.’ She was in the UK and getting messages from those who guide her. She arrived on Friday and started her inner work shrinking the tumour.

AG, a retired Harley Street doctor, herself with Stage 4 cancer but directing her energies to helping others (she has outlived dire prognostications for over a year now). We zoomed. She recommended alternative treatments, such as dog worming tablets (it’s a thing!). She also recommended Bioresonance.

I had already agreed with myself that I would try alternatives, or, rather, complementaries, alongside standard orthodox practice to help the body deal with the treatments, and I would also go with what is presented rather than hare about trying everything. Dear friend of many years, N, came with me to Meet the Panel in oncology. On the way in I turned to him and said, ‘I want one thing out of this: another scan before they do anything.’

The consultant discussed with me the virtues of the latest in radiotherapy (SABR) and also what is involved in chemotherapy. To be honest, I’m far more affected by those nouns than the alternative one, death. My conversations with Death throughout all this consistently led to a state of bliss. Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy, on the other hand, lead to forlorn misery. I could not imagine how I would continue to look after my incapacitated husband when experiencing prolonged nausea and fatigue.

‘There is a third option,’ said the consultant, W. ‘We do nothing for a month then scan you again.’

I didn’t even pause for breath. ‘That’s the one.’

N smiled and nodded.

Abiding memory: the sweet-faced nurse with unbending will telling me, when I asked about dog-worming tablets, ‘Tumours do not shrink.’ And my response, uttered two or three times in this life when faced with that force of hopeless negativity: Watch me.

What Linda did in a month

Following AG’s suggestions, I searched for Bioresonance and found it was available at the Oxford Chiropratic Clinic in Headington. I made an appointment, had three hours in a magnetic chair and came out feeling who I was meant to be all along. It faded, of course. Lack of self-esteem is a powerful force. I had two treatments in the month and felt that they were really helpful in boosting the immune system.

Body Talk, as practised by a friend, C, in South Africa (so much coming out of Africa!). C does it remotely, all those miles away. Please don’t ask me to explain what it is. I haven’t a clue, only that it is based on energies and the chakra system. And it works.

Friend AB told me that her neighbour, a forensic scientist working for the police, was training in gong bathing. She wanted ‘models’ — was I interested? Signed up at once. I’ve had two other gong baths since; each time they whirl me back to neolithic times, chambered tombs, stone circles etc., understanding now what it was all about: resonance, rebalancing the nervous system. Yes, you would walk the length of the country to experience that at one of the great annual festivals.

There was one therapy that I did suggest to myself and I hared about on the internet looking for a local Aryurvedic practitioner. Found her two miles away. I’ve tried Aryurveda before — it is not easy. Indeed, it makes you positively snappy as you remove from your diet everything you like and substitute it with stuff you don’t like. Still, they say it takes two weeks to change a taste and I’d say now that some things have gone forever and others are severely reduced (but open to occasional indulgence, like the trifle AB is bringing for lunch today). Above all things, you do need to keep happy.

And positive. And full of faith. Faith in the healer being uppermost.

What happened next

A month later, the scan, followed three days after that by another meeting with W, this time alone without the onlookers, and his face is wreathed in smiles. He can hardly contain himself. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is highly, highly unusual, but the tumour has reduced by 30% spontaneously. Which makes it possible to try another treatment, a one-off, gentle, curative process called ablation.’ Which I hear as oblation and my mind runs back to ancient rituals of thanks to the gods. It is midsummer. I pour some mead into the ground.

The team are being very co-operative in finding a date for the procedure which doesn’t clash with my calendar somewhat full of meet-the-author dates. We settle on September. Then a phone call — a cancellation — how about next week, July 8th? Why not? Get it over with. It only clashes with my birthday and that can always be postponed. Or renamed: Rebirth Day.

N, a practising Christian but slightly uncomfortable church-goer, says, ‘Why do people tell God what is happening to those they are praying for? God already knows! Have they never heard of omniscience?’ As ever, N has me creasing up. ‘Prayer,’ he says, ‘is holding another in mind.’ Clearly I am being practised on by those friends who pray this way. The least I can do is try it myself. Three friends are going through the grief of loss, for a wife, a brother, a mother. I am soaked in their grief. Tears come readily to my eyes. And it is all a grace. Because, because, it was my inability to grieve for my own beloved mother that brought me down the path of disease.

On Wednesday last I had the ablation, where they ‘operate’ while you are on the bed of a CT scanner, injecting a straw into the tumour and blasting it with microwaves for six minutes. A bit like doing a korma, only without the stirring and resting one minute at the end. I might experience pain afterwards, they said. I didn’t. I won’t tell you what I did experience other than to say I had one and half litres of water pumped in to keep other organs away from the drama, and it had to come out afterwards, as it does. But not usually in that quantity.

I was curious to know how the surgeons could do this in a room all others vacate as soon as the scanner starts, but it is necessary, allowing them to see what they are doing. I’d had visions of them operating robotic arms from behind glass but I learned that they stay in the room, that he dose is low and they wear leather aprons. ‘We’re not robots,’ they said. ‘Yet.’

At the same time as I was unconscious, another woman was having both legs amputated following a kidney infection. I think of her every time I’m tempted to congratulate myself on my stoicism. Apparently she was calm about it.

The lesson which may be useful

So, is there anything in this somewhat abbreviated (!) story that may help anyone in a similar position? I believe there is. Ignore all the treatments I have outlined above. They worked for me, but it will be different for others. The lesson is, have faith in yourself, in your body, to know what it wants or needs, and obey. You are not your body, it is your servant, and right now it needs care which only you can provide.

Follow the prompts. Whether it comes from friends whose neighbours have taken to making soft swishy noises on gongs as an antidote to their own working lives, or someone ‘sent’ to see you, where you are advised to lay aside any cynicism and go with it, having faith in the healer. Wherever it comes from, learn to recognise it and heed it. It is what you need right now. You might be on the downward chute (don’t worry about that), or saved to face something else further down the line. Just allow yourself to be led. Hold the proferred hand, go with it. In love.

Footnote. It is sad to report that no one in the medical profession asked what I’d done that may have brought about ‘spontaneous reduction’. Science should never have a closed mind. That said, I did ask the surgeon about this, to me, miraculous occurence, and he said it can happen. ‘The body’s auto-immune system kicked in.’ That struck me as true, and a happy bridge between worlds, because my uppermost thought when I was given the month’s delay was that I’d use it trying therapies that would help the body help itself. Just think how different the outcome if I’d said yes to SABR.