Excerpt 3: "Agent Orange / Brush Kill / Human Kill" Pages 284-285
In early 2001 I signed up for a workshop with Robert Moss, a lifelong dream explorer from Australia now living in New York State. Several months after registering, and seven weeks prior to the workshop, I was diagnosed with cancer. When I received the news, I reached out to Robert by email. His workshop, Dancing with Bear, was designed to experience wellness through dream healing. I had signed up because of my aches and pains. I knew there was no time to waste when it came to cancer ... JOURNEY WITH BEAR The following are excerpts from my journals written during my experience with cancer. They have been edited for your reading ease. The journey begins with Doctor Douglas Smith’s call. Day One I have Liposarcoma of the thigh. My journey is just beginning. Day Three Everything seems brighter. The yellow of the grosbeak is more yellow. I see nature everywhere. Colors are magnified. I wonder if this will be the last journal I need to buy. I have been saying to my family and friends that I don’t think I am going to die. I don’t want to hurt them – for now they can take my words at face value. What I really mean is that I don’t believe our individual energy evaporates. I have a sense that we become part of the all. Within a year I think I will pass over. But I will not die in the strictest meaning. I am at peace and not afraid. I am nervous about the unknown. Cancer is part of my anatomy. Day Five My work here is almost complete. Some might think this is morbid thinking. I don’t feel that way. I’m looking at things matter of factly. It will be important to protect my family and close friends about these thoughts I am having about death. Day Six I am convinced I must have over-reacted. This cancer is rare. I’m certain Doctor Smith was premature in his diagnosis. I misunderstood him. This is probably a benign tumour. Day Seven I emailed Robert Moss, “The MRI showed a large tumour, Robert. The biopsy is next week.” He said, “If you have not already met the Bear as a medicine helper, this is definitely the right time. This will of course be a central theme in our gathering in Fredericton. Sweet dreams and bright blessings.” I answered, “I have never met Bear. I have only had Eagle’s presence. I will try to find Bear.” I told him I picture my tumour like an orange and say to her, “I love you. I accept you as part of my anatomy as long as you are with me.” Day Eight I wrote to Robert again to tell him the bears had started arriving. “I saw them in my mind’s eye. Big Bear is in the foreground. There are a lot of other bears too.” He replied, “This is the song I use to summon Bear. It’s a Mohawk cradle song, and shaman song. Here’s how it flows, Don’t cry little one, Don’t cry little one, The Bear is coming to dance for you The Bear is coming to dance for you. We’ll sing this in our circle at Fredericton. Dream on the music for now. Now the Bear is with you, you have direct access to immense healing and protection. Thank you for following the dreaming. I wish you deep healing and many blessings.” Day Nine (am) I call my cancer My Little Tumour. She pulsates. When I stroke my thigh it is as though I can feel her stretch towards my fingertips, like a magnet. I talked with her about the biopsy and that the cut could hurt her. I said, “There are still healthy parts of me, My Little Tumour. They will help you get through it.” Maggie Cat now spends all of her time in my bedroom closet. She only comes out to eat and do her business. This is unusual for her. One of my friends thinks she might be afraid of the bears. Day Nine (pm) My Little Tumour gyrates and jives to BB King’s song, Let the Good Times Roll. She crooks her fingers and calls to any stray cells, “Come back here to Mama, you little devils.” My Little Tumour has a vibrating, low pitch to her voice. She has a steady rhythm. She says, “Ommmmmm. Ommmmmm. This may take a little time.” She is busiest at night. I continue to stroke my thigh and tell her all the time, “My Little Tumour – you are one great chick. You go, girl.” Day Ten I received an email from the Senior Friend Finder Chat Room. Tinaten told me she had done an absent healing on my leg. She wrote, “I have never seen anything like this before. It was like an electrical spiral penetrating your thigh, the point of the spiral going deep within, circling and circling and sparks were flying out of your thigh. Amazing. It was amazing.” I have been thinking about all the bears. I don’t know why I see so many rather than just one. This is exciting. Day Eleven My Little Tumour told me she felt guilty about being in my thigh. She said, “I’ve been trapped inside and can’t find my way out of your body. That’s why I’ve grown so fast. I’ve been trying to leave in so many different directions.” I said, “Please don’t be sad. I’ve had a lot of fears over the years and they are all lodged in your cells. I never liked my thighs so it’s natural my thighs became sick. Don’t blame yourself, My Little Tumour.” She seemed to understand all this. Our conversation made me cry. Day Twelve I went to sleep last night listening to a tape Tinaten gave to me. It’s a chant Om Namah Shivay. It must have looped around in the stereo and played several times during the night while I slept. It jarred me awake this morning. I sat bolt upright, then I looked out the window and saw a sunrise that made me gasp. It was magnificent. I began to laugh out loud. Coming out of the sunrise was a little dancing bear heading for My Little Tumour and me. His name is Rumba Bear and he wears a tuxedo. He flirted with My Little Tumour and she pulsated faster. Mind you, My Little Tumour is like an orange – pretty and juicy. I can understand his attraction to her. He asked her to dance and she accepted. Rumba Bear knew a good thing when he saw it. He asked My Little Tumour if she would like to dance towards the horizon with him. She said “yes” again. She put on her sunglasses and took his hand. They asked me to join them in a threesome dance before they left. I got out of bed and went into the living room. I closed the drapes so we could rumba privately there. We danced. And danced. Then off they went towards the first of several knolls. The last thing I remember before I closed my eyes for the night was BB King still singing, Let the Good Times Roll ...
SEEING THE VISION I visited an on-line sarcoma chat room before my one-year cancer check up. I met young Katherine Jarvis. She faced formidable odds with an abdominal sarcoma that had invaded her intestines, a kidney, her spine and back muscles, the aorta and the major vein to her right leg. Katherine had finished her chemotherapy treatments; she did not want to die and leave behind her husband and three-year-old child. I offered to share my experience with her. Mainly through email over several months we visualized her health as she started radiation treatments and prepared for surgery. She thought of calling the cancer Maxine but I sensed the tumour was more indicative of her masculine side; we settled on Maxwell to signify “Maximum Wellness.” I then painted Spirit of Max and sent several copies to her. We agreed I could distribute her story and copies of the paintings to others. I prepared fifty packages and mailed them. The Human Chain (Chapter Seven) went about its work. Some introduced Katherine’s health challenge to church congregations; others shared with their meditation groups. Her story was posted in the staff rooms of businesses. Two Internet groups sent out global prayer and meditation requests. One hand passed it to another. When I painted Spirit of Max I envisioned a skier riding an avalanche and a dog with a burden. Katherine, who saw praying hands and a purple tulip, later told me that her dog was dying with cancer. Karma, my daughter’s dog, was likewise diagnosed in the months to follow. The avalanche disturbed Katherine as she thought it was impossible to ski one. I told her, “Nothing is impossible. You just have to believe. You can overcome cancer in the same way the skier rode the avalanche.” We were amused after she made a visit to the BC Cancer Agency. (British Columbia) She always used the back entrance but one day she walked through the front door. She wrote, “I nearly flipped. There’s a portrait near the front door. Do you know what the name of that person is? Maxwell. Man oh man, it floored me.” Katherine was referring to Doctor A. Maxwell Evans who was Medical Director of the BC Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation and Director of the BC Cancer Institute from 1938-1971. It was the first I had heard of him. I received a call from Penny, one of those praying for Katherine. She said, “I could see that tumour. It wants to stick to Katherine. It’s like warm chewing gum sticking to a surface. Strands of gummy tissue.” When I shared this with Katherine, she expressed a lot of fear, “What if the surgeons can’t get it all?” We talked about this fear and started to visualize the strands leaving her body. Working the night shift the hours before Katherine’s surgery, I took a break and called her, knowing that she would be in bed. She sounded relaxed. Her son was tucked in beside her. Her husband was about to join them. I told her I loved her, that many would be praying for her during her surgery and that I would talk with her in a few days. Katherine turned herself over to four surgeons the next morning. She had been advised she might not make it off the operating room table but the first email I received from her father said she had made it through surgery. It was all good news after that. Many uncanny things happened in the journey between Katherine and me, but a surgeon’s remark to her, post-operatively, took our breath away. When I called her in the intensive care unit, she said, “Barbara, you aren’t going to believe this. One of the doctors told me he spent four hours, at the end of the operation, taking out strands of tissue.” I met Katherine for the first time ten weeks later at Jericho Beach in Vancouver. We faced mountains and water; we enjoyed the sun and Cameron’s playtime in the sand. I spent a couple of nights as a guest in her home and dined with her family. Her son and I enjoyed part of a morning together in a neighbourhood playground. It struck me how much trust had developed between two strangers who had connected in the Sarcoma Alliance Chatroom. Katherine’s prognosis improves with every day. Recovery from such extensive surgery has definite challenges. Bouts of depression. The weaning off pain medication. She wrote to me after her fourteen-month check, “The oncologist called me last night. There is no sign of cancer. What a boost. This survivorship is going to be an ongoing thing. There are still lots of bumps in the road to get over and around. To learn from. I know that.” Katherine lives more in the moment than she used to and understands the mind, body, and soul connection. She has a new view of life: “I want to live life every second again. Be thrilled with everything I lay my eyes on. Just like my son is all the time. I love watching him. He gets excited over how beautiful the weather is outside, or how the leaves have changed color, or bugs, or animals, and just everything. My love for life has definitely deepened over the last two years, no doubt about it.” Katherine Jarvis is the special friend of mine who gave me the medallion to wear around my neck, the medallion that is the mirror image of Mike McCabe’s tattoo (Chapter Two). I now keep the medallion in the medicine bag given to me by Thaweno’:ken.
AGENT ORANGE / BRUSH KILL / HUMAN KILL There is evidence that soft tissue sarcomas are linked to the poison Agent Orange. The colour orange that Barbara visualized regarding the liposarcoma in her leg was not based on any prior knowledge of this connection. It was not until approximately two years following her experience with cancer that she discovered that liposarcoma is recognized for compensation by Viet Nam war vets exposed to Agent Orange. (Veterans Benefits News and Resources, Vietnam Veterans of America.) Barbara spent many hours in nature during visits on her grandparents’ farm – on the opposite side of the Saint John River from the Commonwealth’s largest training base (land mass). She also has swum a great deal in Grand Lake which is closely connected to the Saint John River system and Canadian Forces Base Gagetown. (Camp Gagetown). During the fifties and sixties there was extensive spraying of since-banned herbicides. Agent Orange was sprayed in the 1960’s to defoliate training areas in Camp Gagetown. Winds carried spray in 1964 to an area near the family farm and at the time the Crown restituted market gardeners for damage to their crops. (CBC News In-depth: Agent Orange) This, in addition to the Crown lands wood which was trucked into the mill yard - wood that may have been sprayed with dioxins - adds to the argument that Barbara’s past exposure to chemicals was probable. The mill yard was Barbara’s playground and during her adolescence, a place to sit and reflect. CBC reported, “According to Doctor Wayne Dwernchuck, a Canadian expert on Agent Orange, there is likely still dioxin in the soil at Gagetown. That means dioxin may still be leeching into the water system . . . and eventually into people’s bodies . . . through the process of biomagnification . . . it could eventually end up in humans and develop some form of high levels in livers and fatty tissues.” The cancer experienced by Barbara was a sarcoma of the fatty tissue. Liposarcoma constitutes less than one percent of all cancers. Many disorders are now being investigated for potential links to chemical exposure. These include sarcoidosis and fibromyalgia – two other diagnoses received by Barbara. To her knowledge no relationship has been established. However, when she was diagnosed with sarcoidosis in 1972, a doctor of Internal Medicine asked her if she had spent time in the woods, especially around pine trees. He suggested that there seemed to be a vague connection between pine trees and the condition. Further research indicates this premise is documented, laying blame on the pollen of the pine. (Turkish Respiratory Journal, 2001) Barbara believes that the human race and nature evolved in harmony with one another. She believes it is humans who have upset the balance and are feeling the effects of that imbalance. If the pine pollen is creating problems – did the pine pollen constitutionally change once exposed to chemicals produced by humans? Barbara asks, “Does it come as a surprise that there is an increase in environmental illnesses, compromised immune systems and a plethora of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders?” In 2005, the Government of Canada, in response to the concerns of citizens in the area of Camp Gagetown, initiated investigation for compensation claims for those who have been afflicted by dioxin exposure, one of the main ingredients of Agent Orange. The question that is tantamount is whether today’s government leaders and bureaucrats are responsible for the decisions of yesterday. If Barbara argued for compensation, would it be the same as blaming her parents and their generation for apathy, ignorance and/or complicity. Or would it say that governing parties and bureaucrats had failed to disclose the horrible truth? Or – has everybody been in denial? This goes to the issue of legacy and raises the spectre of what Barbara’s generation will provide as legacy to the generations to follow. Much of Canada continues to use herbicides. Her maternal grandmother used to say, “Is there anything prettier than a field of dandelions?” Barbara refers to the herbicidal tidiness of our properties as suicidal conditioning: the pristine pollution that poisons our childrens’ playgrounds. |
