This website is a collection of poetry and images that I wrote and created when I was in dis-ease.  I was diagnosed with a Brain Tumor in Broca’s region in October of 2000.  What resonated for me was poetry, a metaphorical means to embrace a surreal situation.  I was fortunate to have a fortress of family, friends and health care providers during a year of surgery, treatment and healing. One thing we often hear from those who have Cancer or who have survived Cancer, is that it is not the diagnosis that makes one feel sick, but the treatment.  This ironic approach to bring back health and serenity is what we accept as the path with the most potential to heal.  My greatest struggle at the time I was confronted with making certain choices to heal, was deciding to undertake a “treatment” that I was told would make me feel sick.  If I were to choose to do the “treatment”, I knew I needed to accept that feeling sick would cure me of dis-ease.  But how?

With guidance and willingness, I viewed my surgery, an awake craniotomy, as a rite of passage rather than an invasive operation into my body.  The result, I told myself, would unite me with my soul.  I wore my mother’s wedding ring to symbolize this.

While trapped in a mask bolted to a table, I embraced the invisible rays of high levels of radiation as golden healing light that would enter and exit my head and leave me in healthy peace.  Monday through Friday for six weeks, this was my mantra.  What quickly began to feel like a full-time job, I would recite these thoughts during the drive to the health care facility at 6am driving east watching the sunrise. After the technicians bolted my head to the table, I continued with my mantra as the radiation silently did its work.

The chemotherapy that followed was perhaps the most difficult to accept as a healing treatment.  The side effects from the toxicity of the Procarbazine, CCNU, and Vincristine (PCV), seemed to deconstruct rather than construct.  The side effects that I initially experienced seemed similar to that of what a pregnant woman experiences when she is creating a new life.  I intended to do the same.  Through the nausea, intense fatigue, particular eating habits and nerve sensitivity, I was ready to rebirth myself. 

The overall treatment lasted nine months, the perfect gestation period. I did my last Chemotherapy treatment at the end of October 2001, 12 months after my partner and I left on vacation from France to the States.

We have since called our stay in California as the “brain tumor vacation”.  It is with love, humor, an open heart and a true willingness to let my soul carry me through the day that I have created this web-site.  Sometimes my perceptions are dark, sometimes metaphorical, sometimes silly — whatever they are, I let them be and let them be free to guide me along a path of truth.

the brain tumor – October 2000

Follow