Crisis And A Call To Healing
In the spring of 1975, I was a graduate student training to be a psychotherapist. I had been feeling tired, and
had some swollen glands. Nothing to worry about I thought, probably just a case of mononucleosis. A quick trip to student
health services, some antibiotics, and I would be feeling back to normal in a couple of days. Following a general
examination however, the doctor ordered a lymph node biopsy. “Probably nothing to worry about,” he said.
The biopsy would be back on Monday.
That Monday I received the call that changed the entire course of my life. “Your biopsy was a bad one”, he said.
“You have Hodgkins Disease.” My only thought was, Oh my God, I´m gonna die!
The protocol was aggressive. In the seventies that meant invasive surgery, liver and bone marrow biopsies, radiation therapy
and MOPP – a course of chemotherapy involving a regimen of mechlorethamine, prednisone and procarbozine. At the age of 27,
I was unable to get out of my bed.
Inexplicably however, I began to feel a strong sense of well–being soon after my treatment began, and I knew that I had
to change my very way of being in the world.
As a therapist, my cancer experience has caused me to realize the importance of the internal power of healing that lies
within each of us – and that dealing with our emotional lives has important implications in the prevention, augmentation
of treatment, healing and emotional resolution of the issues surrounding disease and dying.
When I was first diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, I believed that people would see me as damaged…weak
somehow. Now I know that my diagnosis was a gift – setting me on a path for helping others to heal and to face our common
mortality as living beings.
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