This Witch Has Cancer

9/4/2023 Monday

It’s true, first you cry. And you can’t stop, and you feel hopeless and helpless and why me and what the fuck is the point. I’m finally living where I want to live, in a community I dearly love, doing what I dearly love - healings and readings and writing - and this happens. Why me screaming in my head.  Flattened, I am steam rolled and right now the steam roller is way more powerful than I am.

You have a primary differentiated carcinoma with neuro endocrine features, Doctor G said.  It’s very rare. Only two percent of cancer patients have this tumor.

What does this mean?

You have rectal cancer.

Oh. Fuck.

Do you have any questions?

What happens now?

I will set you up with one of my associates, a surgeon, and get back to you next week.

And if I don’t hear from you by next Tuesday, what number do I call?

He gave me the number, his administrative assistant.

If she doesn’t answer leave a message, she will get back to you. Do you have any questions?

Am I going to die?

We’ll try to prevent that.

Good to know, I said, and hung up.

—

Terror and panic. I know my way around cancer. I’ve been doing reiki on cancer patients for over 20 years. Cancer treatment = chemo, radiation, surgery, more chemo, more radiation. What healers call slash and burn. I’ve seen chemo work; there are some cancers it works well for; not mine. Most of the people I know who’ve undergone chemo are dead. The cancer came back more virulent than ever. When that happens, the oncologist continues to pump even more chemo into the patient’s body, rendering his or her final days to abject horror. This is called fighting the cancer. Fighting the cancer my pretty ass.

Big pharma has programmed us to believe that subjecting yourself to slash and burn is how you fight cancer.  But, the dirty little secret is traditional cancer treatment does not cure cancer, stop metastasis, or prevent re-occurrence. It retards the growth of the cancer cell. That there is no correlation whatsoever between cancer cure and shrinking the cancer cell has been completely left out of the conversation. More cancer patients die from metastasis than their actual cancer, and chemo and radiation do not stop metastasis. The cancer industry is a trillion-dollar business. Oncology drugs alone earned $176 billion dollars in sales in 2021.

With everything I know, with all the research I’ve done, with all the reiki I’ve channeled into cancer patients (utterly horrified at what the poison (chemo) and radiation has done to the body under my hands) I heard my diagnosis and my mind jumped to, what kind of surgery will I need. Will I need chemo or radiation or both?  How fast can they get started? I see myself bald, on my deathbed, telling my son to be nice to my friends paying their respects. I see myself cleaning house. What to keep? What to throw away? Am I ever going to have sex again? Who will take the cats, my plants. I see my funeral. The movie is playing in my head, and I’m starring, but I did not audition for this part and the editor has left the building.

I called my brother, Michael, first. I think his brain exploded. I told Sheila, I called Rosanne, I called Betsy, I called Dharti, I called Gary, texted Frank, texted Shan. Sheila owns the house I live in. She is a breast cancer survivor; she knows the drill. We’re the same age, we’re both sober, our same and our differences compliment. I have to find a Reiki person. Trying to find a Reiki person as good as me is like trying to find a therapist good as Wise Joe. He died of bladder cancer. I keep hearing – NO CHEMO – and yes, it’s that loud and I’ve been hearing it since June.

I have been a healer for almost 40 years and have worked extensively with cancer patients. My mother died of lung cancer, my friend Mary Lou died of breast cancer, another friend, Christina, also died. What I know as a reiki therapist is the minute the chemo starts, I am no longer treating the cancer, but the side effects of the chemo. It never made any sense to me that you have to kill the life force in the body in order to be cured.

My thoughts are going fast and furious, on top of the emotional overload. I can’t meditate, I can’t touch into the sacred.  I can’t pray. Back in college when I was 3 days into doing entirely too much speed, that’s what this feels like.

***************

9/6/2023 Wednesday 2:58 am

Terror wakes me at 2:58 am. Usually, my first response to any difficulty is to sit at my altar and get quiet. I cannot sit at my altar and get quiet. I’m really hungry but afraid to eat anything because I have no food in the house that will starve the cancer.  From what I learned doing all the research for Green Wheel Multi-Dimensional Cancer Care, diet is key to cancer cure, cancer management.

I don’t recommend you do a lot of googling, Doctor G said.

Yeah, right. Of course, I’m going to google. I am my own advocate.

I can’t do much of anything till the cancer is staged, it’s the surgeon who does that, and unless you’re rich and have a great deal of structural power and/or both, the process is slow and tedious,. To be staged I need bloodwork, an MRI, and a cat scan. My cancer diagnosis alone has taken 3 months. There was blood in May, but I was in the process of moving to Delhi. Given my symptoms I knew I needed a colonoscopy and got a referral from my primary care doctor in Saugerties, before I moved here. The hospitals in Delhi, Oneonta, Cobleskill, and Cooperstown - are linked under Bassett Health Care. In order to get the colonoscopy, I had to see another doctor or physician’s assistant in the Bassett network. I was told to take my referral for a colonoscopy to O’Connor hospital, around the corner from where I live, and they would fax it to the appropriate people. It was early June. Someone would call me re: scheduling the appointment. No one called.

I called. The appointment was set for July 11.  The physician’s assistant I saw, agreed with my former primary care doctor’s physician assistant, that I did indeed need a colonoscopy. She said, I’m putting the order in this very minute. Someone will call you. No one called. I called the 2nd week of August and the woman I needed to speak with re: scheduling the colonoscopy was out for the day. Something snapped in me and I went batshit crazy. I’m bleeding!!! A lot!!! I wasn’t lying.

20 minutes later the woman I went batshit on called me back. She said, I was very concerned so I pulled your file. There’s a number here you were supposed to call if you hadn’t heard from anybody. I said, nobody ever gave me that number. She gave me the number. I thanked her profusely.

The woman who answered was at the hospital in Cooperstown. She said, we called you in early August. I said, no you didn’t. She read me the phone number; it was a digit off. Long story short she got me set up for the procedure, 2 weeks later. August 25^th. That was the first time slot available. The colonoscopy went without a hitch.

You had a 9mm polyp, Doctor G tells me when I come out of the anesthesia. Now it goes for biopsy.

He looked so sad; the nurses looked sad. I think I knew then. I left with the pictures of my polyp and cried the whole way home.

*****************

9/8/2023 Thursday

Today is my last day taking care of Joan, my Alzheimer patient. I gave notice before the diagnosis because I’ve never been so exhausted. Like first trimester-pregnancy-on-steroids-exhausted. I thought the exhaustion was due to a 3 hour commute and being 70. I’d no idea it was a symptom of the kind of cancer I have. Joan’s proxy and best friend Sue says she’s been upset because she knows I’m leaving – we’re not going to tell her about the cancer, which I think is for the best. Her memory, holey as it is, can fixate on something and she will fixate on my health because she loves me. I love her too.

Why did you have to move to Delhi? Joan asks.

This conversation happens 3 or 4 times a day.

Because I love it.

Why can’t you live in the spare bedroom here? It has its own bathroom.

I have cats, Joan. And I burn a lot of incense.

She shuddered. Cats are barn animals. You and I have such a good time. We get on. And we laugh.

We do giggle. You want PB&J?

That sounds good.

After I leave Joan, I don’t want you threatening anybody with your cane, you understand? You may not remember but you scared the poor man at Herzog’s to death.

Much as I love Joan, I was relieved to drive away. Kiss Woodstock goodbye. Not particularly difficult because I am not a Woodstock person. You have to resonate with where you live, and I never resonated with Saugerties or Woodstock. I resonated with Brooklyn, I resonated with the Bronx. I would not feel that kind of resonance again until I landed at the Mountain Brook Inn in Bovina, NY., for a wedding, 20 years ago. I never stopped coming up. The Mountain Brook was my home and Gary, the former owner was and is my family. I wanted to live up here so badly, but I couldn’t find an affordable place or a day job. Found a cheap place and a day job in Saugerties about an hour and a half away and moved there 6 years ago. The way I saw it, I was halfway to where I wanted to be. I can’t fucking believe I have cancer and start to cry.

Hauling ass home, from Woodstock, down 28. Led Zeppelin’s, Ramble On, blaring. The truck coming up the other way double blinked his lights, I slowed to speed limit and coming round the corner I saw the cop car sitting alongside the road. Resonance. I smiled all over. You can still feel good even though you have cancer Katie Lou. Cell phone rang. Dr G. I pulled off the road.

Katherine. How are you?

What’s going on Dr G?

You left a name of a surgeon you wanted me to refer you to?

Yes.

Do you know him?

No, he was recommended to me by a friend.

He’s outside the network. It will take a considerably longer time before you can see him.

Why is that?

The transfer of records. They request and we transfer. I was going to set you up with an associate of mine.

So set me up. Now. I need to get staged.

Absolutely. They’ll call you.

And if they don’t, what number do I call?

He gave me the number.

Dr. G I will be getting other second and third opinions.

I would expect you to.

****************

9/9/2023 Friday

My brother, Michael called, wanting to know when I am going to see the surgeon.

I’m not sure yet, I told him. I spoke with Dr G yesterday. He said the surgeon’s office would call me to set up an appointment.

They’ll call you?! What is wrong with these people?! You need to be staged!  You need bloodwork! An MRI! A Cat Scan! (Clearly someone else has been doing research) The surgeon should have been there the day after your surgery! You should get in your car, drive to the doctor’s office and sit there until you have a surgeon’s appointment!

Uh, Michael I hear you and I’m doing the best I can

I am not yelling at you, Kathy!! I am not finding fault with you!!

I know honey, I know. And I love you.

We hung up. A minute later, truly 1 minute, the phone rang and it was the surgeons’ office.

We can get you an appointment, in Oneonta, Friday, September 29^th, Deb said. Deb does all the booking for Dr. O (the surgeon) and his patients. Scheduling procedures, consultations, appointments, Deb does it all.

That’s unacceptable, I said. When is the first appointment available?

Monday the 11^th in Cobleskill at 10:45.

I’ll take it, I said.

(Cobleskill is an hour away)

What happens in the appointment, Deb?

He will discuss your case with you.

I already know my case. I need to be staged.

I’ll call you back, she said.

She did call me back (!) the same day (!). She’d spoken with the Dr. O and scheduled me for an MRI, and a Cat Scan, the week of September 19^th at O’Connor Hospital. O’Connor is around the corner from where I live.

You need blood drawn before the procedure, Deb says. The order is in. You can go to O’Connor any time the week before the procedures for the necessary bloodwork. No appointment necessary.

I’m worried about the MRI, Deb. I am horrifically claustrophobic.

I’ll let Dr. O know.

*****************

9/11/2023 Monday Cobleskill, NY

In the examination room. S, Dr O’s nurse, is very nice. Everyone is very nice, upbeat like kindergarten teachers on the first day of school.

Did you know only 2% of the population have your tumor, S asks, enthusiastically.

I say, Yes, I did. The door to the examination room opens.

I understand you can’t do the closed MRI? The surgeon says, striding into the room. How do you do, I’m Dr. O.

Katherine, I said, shaking his hand. I cannot do an MRI without being rendered unconscious. Valium will not do the trick.

We can sedate you, he said, or find an open MRI. I can’t do the closed MRI either, Katherine. He smiled. I was having an MRI of the jaw and they put a mask on me and wanted to strap me down….

Really? S, the nurse, says.

Yeah, they didn’t want me to move. You should have seen the mask…

What did it look like? The nurse wants to know.

I’m starting to feel like I’m in a psychological fun house of mirrors. Clearly, all of this upbeat and bonhomie is to put me at ease. It is not.

Could we cut to the chase please? I asked.

Dr. O nodded. He’s about my height, silver hair, black eyes. Handsome.

You have a rare tumor; only 2% of the population with rectal cancer have this particular tumor.

Yes, I said, very calmly, and it is indicative that the cancer has manifested somewhere else in my body. I am hoping I am a candidate for the TA-TME surgery. I’ve already changed my diet.

Something clicked in his head. I could see it in his eyes, taking my measure. It was not hostile.

After the MRI and the CAT Scan you’ll meet with the team. Your team. The radiologist, the oncologist, the nutritionist, the psychologist, to discuss a treatment plan.

I will be getting second opinions.

I expect you to. Let’s do a quick exam.

I reached for the nurse’s hand during the examination, felt my eyes fill with tears. She walked me to the hospital exit afterwards. (It’s a labyrinth around here!)  

Do you have a partner?

No.

You live alone?

I do. I have friends who can help me.

Back in my car I find the Emmy Lou Harris station on Pandora and start to cry. By the time I hit Rt 88 I’m dry eyed, marveling at this amazing 4 lane highway with almost no traffic, spectacular mountain forest beauty on either side of me.  I’m going 80. Emmy Lou’s singing, I was born to be fast I was born to run. Not for the first time I am beyond grateful to live where I live.

—

Colleen texted me later. Did you like him?

I texted back, I don’t think I’m going to like anybody right now. But my psychic sense says he’s incredibly competent.

She texted back. Well, I guess unlikeable competency trumps likable incompetence in this situation.

Ha!

I am able to sit at my altar, chant and meditate that night. I am able to feel the sacred.

**************

Sept 14, 2023 Thursday

10 days, this all started 10 days ago, and I’ve quit asking why me? Have completely changed my diet. No sugar, no dairy, no meat, no coffee, no juice. Beans, sweet potatoes, broccoli, nuts, cauliflower, arugula, spinach, green leaf lettuce. Water and more water. Soursop tea. Supplements include: turmeric, moringa, oleifera, berberine, quercetin, vit d, vit b, vit c, zinc, cal mag. Need to add potassium. There will more supplements to add by the end of the week. I am a woman who lived on cheese, eggs, salad, café au lait and honey toast. Trust me when I tell you it’s real easy to change your diet when you’ve had a cancer diagnosis and you want to live.

Tiddly-bopped over the O’Connor for bloodwork yesterday. While I was there decided to double check I’d be knocked out for the MRI I was scheduled for Monday, the 18^th.

We don’t sedate people here, the woman in X-Ray told me.

I called Deb and told her. Then I drove to Oneonta and went to Walmart. I know I shouldn’t shop at Walmart. The Waltons are terrible people but it’s so cheap and I do live on the lower edge of the economic spectrum and I’m 70 and I’ve got cancer so fuck it.

Walking into Walmart, I say out loud, Attention Walmart shoppers!

Old women laugh, the rest blink away. You can only shop Walmart before noon because the murderers don’t come out till late in the day. I head for the craft section for white chalk paint and the perfect navy blue. By the time I get back to my car my phone, which I left in the car, is blowing up.

Deb’s found an open MRI for me at Empire, in Elmira, New York. My insurance will cover it and she’s emailed them my paperwork. I can do an open MRI. You’re not in a tube, you can see the ceiling of the room. Deb tells me to call Sheri at Empire Elmira and gives me the number. I call. Sheri tells me I’m closer to Latham, NY, and she is emailing my paperwork to them.  She tells me to call Dawn at Empire Latham. Dawn tells me the first available appointment is 9/29 at 11 am.

I’ll take I said., even though I knew it would push staging back a week.

Dawn gives me the address.

We’re in a mall, she tells me. If you see a big sign for ABC Fitness you’ll know it’s the right one.

—

Whenever there’s a cancer diagnosis, rule of thumb is you have to act quickly, but if you’re everyday people you can’t. You’re literally at the mercy of the system, unless of course you’re rich and famous. I don’t have the time for anger right now. I only have so much energy and I need it for focus and mental clarity. I have to stay on top of the everyday, the little glitches, and there’s more research to do, so that I can advocate for myself. I’m thinking a husband would be nice to have right now and I’m wondering how I’m going to support myself through this.  I do not have the luxury of not working. I have to work; actually I want to work, I love what I do, I’m damn good at what I do. I don’t want to be sitting around thinking cancer, cancer, cancer, all the time. I’d rather be doing the work of my soul; the work I was put on the planet to do. I hope my clients won’t stop coming to me because I have cancer. What a bite in the ass that would be.

I keep hearing, why would anyone come to you? You have cancer, what do you know? I hear, yeah, you’re so spiritual you got cancer. I hear, healer heal yourself. The voice is judgmental, vicious, and mean. The voice doesn’t belong to me; it’s an interject. Wise Joe taught me about interjects. They’re a voice of the culture that splintered off into you psyche. The voice can be parental, societal, educational, etc. The voice is meant to keep you cut to size and manageable.

What I’ve witnessed in 30 years working on cancer patients, what I know for fact, is that cancer doesn’t give a rat’s ass if you’re good, bad, virtuous, positive, repressed, enraged, or spiritual; it doesn’t care how much you forgive or how deeply you love or how earnestly you bargain. One out of two people are going to be diagnosed with cancer in 2024 and it is not because they’re sitting around thinking negative thoughts, festering with resentment, or repressing their deepest feelings. It’s because the level of chemical toxicity in the environment and the chemicals in food and virtually everything with which you come into contact are damaging the mitochondrial DNA of the cells and they can’t breath right; they can’t do whatever they’re supposed to be doing, so they do whatever it is they have to do to live. Like become a tumor. This is my theory - as I do more research this theory may change. We’re all walking around chock full of damaged cells. The scientists and doctors still have no idea what definitely initiates the cancer. They do know that a mutated cell comes first.

It's new moon today; I’m going into the silence and asking for guidance. The panic is subsiding. I’m starting to get my footing. Clients who have no idea I have cancer continue to book. Yay! Friends call, text. I am beyond grateful.

***********************

Sept 18, 2023 Monday

My life is interwoven with threads of the mystical.  Beauty, magick, mystery, all figure prominently in the life of this witch. Witches who practice the way I practice hold true that everything contains it’s opposite, not in terms of opposing, but in terms of compliment. I’ve been avoiding thinking that cancer might have an opposite, a compliment. If cancer is disease than it must contain perfect health. The idea makes my brain reel.

—

Marci offered me a reading. Marci is a medium. A truly old soul and fully conscious, she knows her way around shadow, and is not controlled by her wounds. She has done the work and continues to do the work that allows her to live from her authenticity.  Like me she lives firmly in this world but has the soul skill to bend the boundaries and communicate with those on the other side. The reading was scheduled for Saturday, September 16^th, on zoom.

Saturday at the designated time, I did a quick prayer and pressed - launch meeting. Marci and I talked, finding common ground; energies around us started shifting and it was time to begin. I closed my eyes, dropped root, and gave over in perfect love and perfect trust. Marci mingled her soul energy with mine and opened the portal.

A fine kettle of fish. So many fish, dump the kettle. Marci says. No question there’s cancer, but the diagnosis is off, confused.

I suspected as much. My blood work showed a perfectly normal CEA of 2.5 and CEA is a tumor marker.

You do have quite the battle ahead.

This I also knew. My life, and the lives of many of my friends, up to now would have probably killed a lesser woman or man. My awareness shifts. I am surround by a half moon of loving ancestors, spirit, and guides, basking in the love of the Lady and the Lord. The night before in my new moon meditation I could feel the love, the prayers, the healing energy being sent to me by all my friends. The essence of the sensation is the same, love without hooks, without contingencies, equally powerful. The finite rooted in the infinite. As above so below, I think. I am deeply loved.

I think Joe’s here, Marci says.

It is decidedly Joe. Wise Joe, my beloved therapist who died of kidney cancer. I can feel him and start to cry, it is so Joe’s energy.

Marci says, I see him in a boxing ring putting on the gloves, fitting in the mouth guard, doing that little dance.

I laugh. He’s an Aries, I say.

Marci makes jabbing motions with her fists. Joe says you know who you are, stand firm in who you are. I flash on meeting with the surgeon. I was a grown-up, mature, professional. I didn’t do my usual charm thing. I’m southern, charm is knee jerk for me. 

Joe says, you know what you’re doing. Lead with your soul and your spirit. He will help you find the right surgeon. Marci is quiet a minute. Joe says he wouldn’t want to be your doctor. 

I start to laugh. Joe once told me the worse day he ever had as a therapist was with me.

And when it’s all over, it doesn’t seem fair that Marci lives on the other side of the country. We are friends who have found each other late in life but share lifetimes.

I am subtly, perfectly, changed by the experience. We are all energy. You cannot genuinely feel the energy of the sacred without it changing you. I needed to walk, to mull, and headed for the track.

—

I walk the track up at the college pretty much every day. I do 2-3 miles and I’m aiming for 5. All around me are mountains. Walking has seen me through the very worse, added more vibrancy to the best, and kept me even in the in-between. For me, walking is meditative, a form of conscious contact with my higher power. I do my best thinking when I’m walking, and any number of mystical experiences are normal because I walk the visible and invisible worlds.

Shan was the first person to mention the serpent to me. I’d called her right after the colonoscopy because I was really, really scared and I knew something was really, really wrong.

Omigod, she said. I had a dream about you this morning. Something about a serpent, you need to look up serpent totem. And you need to have as much cut out as possible.

Fucking great, I said.

On the walk I took after my talk with Shan, I saw a very angry cobra in between the worlds. The snake was standing tail, 5 feet tall, mouth open, fangs gleaming. Oh good heavens I said, I need a mongoose. A mongoose appeared and the cobra slunk away.

I flash on that as I walk the track after Marci’s reading; make a mental note to look up the serpent totem later. What I know of snake totem is life, death, rebirth. What I know of snake totem is shedding skin, earth wisdom. Witches love snakes and all they symbolize.  (Yeah, but what if the snake is just a snake, Joe once said) I keep hearing, the final task of the initiate is to transform the poison of the cobra. This is ancient mystery school stuff, the path of the adept.

I am a healer; everything I do - readings, healings, soul counseling, writing, everything is rooted in healing. I’m Scorpio born in the year of the dragon. Cobra is one of my totem’s. You don’t choose cobra, cobra chooses you. I have worn a pentagram surrounded by the snake for the past year. I have not been able to put the pentagram on since I was diagnosed. I seriously cannot put it on, and I keep hearing toss it, toss in the mountain brook. And I will.

The kids are back in college now, so I don’t have the track all to myself like I did this summer. One of the boys, waves at me, tells me he is using lane 1. Clearly, he’s training for something. No problem, I say, moving over to lane 3. Wise Joe shows up.

I’ve been really angry with Joe for a while, bitter and resentful, the details of which I won’t get into. Suffice it to say I felt abandoned, by him, after I quit therapy, left behind for another patient. I saw Joe for 14 years; the first 7, I never missed an appointment. I feel Joe’s side of my argument; what he communicates hadn’t occurred to me, and I forgive, I make my peace. Forgiveness is not about letting go, it’s a calling in. You call in the energy feeding the drama; you unhook and the tension you didn’t even know you were holding drains out of body. The feeling is relief and relief has always been one of my favorite feelings.

Coming up on my last lap, the world in-between turns very Egyptian. Sand, snakes, a scorpion or two, the Nile, rustling reeds, the temple of Isis. Isis is the Goddess of reclaiming the pieces of self that have been splintered off by life. I hear once again: the final task of the initiate is to transform the poison of the cobra. I think, fuck me, give my head a shake back into present time, and decide to go see Gary at the Putt-Putt and have a small cup of black coffee. I haven’t had any coffee in 10 days, and it was absolutely delicious. Coffee is forbidden on the anti-cancer diet but sometimes a girl just has to cut herself some slack.

—

Serpent totem is all about transmutation and transforming. Right use of fire and destruction. People carrying snake totem have been bitten deeply by life, many, many times. They have also lashed out hard, but nowhere near as many times as they’ve been bit. Takes a whole hell of a lot for a person carrying snake totem to lash out. True dat. Working with serpent is about transmuting poisonous thoughts and beliefs that keep you separate from wholeness. I know my poisons: resentment and shame, and I have worked tirelessly, tracing them to their source, to get out from under their paralyzing effects.

In tonight’s mediation I saw me as a sandstone sculpture, black surface lines running willy-nilly, deep into the stone. The lines are old; the result of every life I’m had on the planet. Not sure what it means, feels like the final battle, the final countdown. I will have to sit with it for a while. When I come out of the meditation, the energy in the room starts to snap, crackle, pop.  Wise Joe and he is determined. Next thing I know I’m at my computer googling best cancer hospitals. I already know I don’t want Sloan Kettering. Anderson in Houston is a possibility, but I have no gut sense that this is it. I land on Dana Farber, in Boston, and the earth tilted a little, and time inverted and opened out, and the cats meowed.

Ok Joe, I say, Dana Farber it is.

Boston? How the hell am I going to get to Boston?

                                       ****************