Chapter Nine – Questioning My Decision

    By the end of March the Oprah segment had aired, I had been inundated with hundreds of emails and was still searching for a cure.

    Half the emails applauded me on my choice to search for a cure, the other half either shared with me protocols that had worked for someone else or were trying to sell me some new product that would 'cure my cancer' and that I would be more than welcome to share with the rest of the world.

    Unfortunately, a few emails were mean. I have often wondered what caused these people to take the time and trouble of finding me and sharing their opinions and negative prophecies with me. I was doing what I thought was best for me and they thought it their duty and many their 'God Ordained' mission to tell me that I was killing myself.

    These negative emails were written by the kind of people who would swerve to hit animal in the road when they could easily miss it. They would run over the poor animal and then mumble about animals should not be in the road and that they saved them from a life of hunger and disease. These were those kind of people. Self righteous and self justified.

    I will never forget one email that I received where the woman actually told me that God would not heal me because I would not trust in conventional medicine. She quoted biblical scripture to back up her case. When she was finished I was the one laying broke and bleeding in the middle of her road. Tire tracks on my back and her words of self righteousness about how she saved me from a worse fate trailing behind her as she sped away crossing herself.

    I read some of these emails over and over. The positive ones kept me searching for a cure. The negative ones threw fuel on my fire anytime I questioned my decision. I would not let these doomsayers win. I would not let them do this to anyone and get away with it. How dare they have a negative effect on my life! THEY were the cancer. They were the reason no cure had been found and if found not shared. They were the reason that more and more money was being poured into 'research' and this disease was still out there.

I often asked myself why no cure had been found yet when so many people supposedly were searching for it. Maybe a cure for cancer cost too much money? Not in research, but in monies lost to those who benefit from keeping cancer alive and well. Maybe these people who wrote to me with their negative comments represented this group that fought to keep cancer in our lives.

    Only God knows; but God knows.

    

Chapter Eight – “Being Irresponsible”

    I continued my research and started to find things that I felt could make a difference in my healing. I started changing the way I ate. I was still seeing Dr. M and he had me working with a nutritionist that had started educating me on certain foods that I should stay away from. I had gotten my first thermogram and it in itself had shown me what cancer looked like. It was hot. It showed up as heat in my thermogram. To me that was an explanation of my hot flashes as well as my constant need for air conditioning. Funny, as hot as I was feeling I didn't seem to sweat much.

    By this time I had opted for the biopsy. When I made the decision to cure myself I made the decision also to have a needle biopsy performed. You can't say that you have cured yourself of cancer unless you have the proof that you had cancer in the first place. I had the biopsy on February 14^th, Valentine's Day a week after my 50^th birthday.

    By March 9^th I was well into a month of research. I had not told anyone outside of my immediate family of my decision to heal myself. Most people did not even know about my diagnosis. I decided that this was the best way to go about it. I was a pretty private person; until I received an email.

    It was sitting in my inbox and was from someone with Harpo.com. It was what seemed to be a courtesy response from my earlier email thanking me for my 'Letter to Oprah' about The Secret and that they would like a recent photograph of me. I figured that perhaps they wanted to use it for their website with their other 'Letters to Oprah' participants and I attached a recent headshot in the reply email and went about my day. I did mention to my sister that I had heard back from Oprah's people and that maybe it would be on the website in the future.

    It was about week later that I received a phone call from the Harpo organization inviting me to be on their upcoming 'Letters to Oprah' Show. The voice on the other end of the call was professional, friendly and I am certain not surprised when my answer was 'YES'! "Oprah loved my letter and wanted to have me on the show." How could I not say yes. This was the perfect opportunity to help others out there who were in the same predicament. Oprah Winfrey was known throughout the world. She could jumpstart the search for a real prevention or cure for cancer and I could share with her and her audience what I had found out!

    I have to tell you that I had written on my Vision List that someday I would be on the Oprah Winfrey Show for something I had written. Being a magazine publisher, I had always assumed that it would be a book. Never would I have thought that a late night email would land me on the show.

    The rest went pretty quickly. Medical records were sent, flight information was exchanged and brief phone interviews were performed. I was in Chicago with my sister Dana by my side by the next week.

    What happened before the taping of the show was pretty matter of fact. We arrived at DFW International Airport in Dallas and claimed our prepaid tickets; took the flight from Dallas and arrived in Chicago O'Hare where a chauffeur waited for us at the gate. We were then taken to the hotel, given vouchers for our meals and told what time we would be picked up in the morning. It was a nice little vacation for both my sister and me.

    That night I spoke over the phone for quite some time with one of the show's producers going over what I had been doing in the last month after I was diagnosed. No mention of what was going to be said, what order I was going to be on the show or anything else other than it was the 'Letters to Oprah' segment.

    The next morning a car came to pick us up and take us to the studio. We arrived at the studio went through security, signed releases and were escorted to the Green Room where I would have makeup applied and wait for the show to start. It was all very exciting!

    What happened next; even I could not have visualized. They sat us in the audience where we would watch other segments being taped. One of her producers came out and warmed up the audience to relax everyone and then they introduced Oprah. I remember thinking to myself, 'Wow, this is it." I could feel the butterflies start to flutter in my stomach. I wasn't nervous. Why should I be? Oprah loved my letter and we would just talk about how I believed that we are in control of our destinies. We would laugh about how we both believed that thoughts do become things. I would share with her the amazing things that I had found out during my month long search for a cure. We would hug at the end and she would wish me the best of luck.

    That's what should have happened. Instead, a completely different scenario took place.

As I was escorted to the famous couch on stage I was handed a piece of paper with an excerpt from my email letter that I had written. It wasn't until a few moments later that I would be asked to read those few sentences and hear those fateful words coming out of Oprah's mouth. In my recollection of that day I see and hear her speaking to the audience and I knew that things were going to be different as soon as she mentioned how concerned she was when her staff received my letter.

Then Oprah started speaking to the audience of her dismay that many people had taken the message of The Secret as being the answer to every problem known to man. People chanting their affirmations at home, seated on their couches and not doing anything to take action towards those goals. She was concerned that now I was here on the show thinking that I would be curing myself by just thinking good thoughts. She would do something different if she had been diagnosed. She would seek conventional medical care. And then she said those fateful words, "Don't you are being irresponsible?"

    It was at that moment that my experience with Toastmasters kicked in. This was however a 'table topic' that could kill me if I got it wrong. Oprah was looking at me with the question still hanging in the air. It was my turn to say something. In my head all I could think was, "I've been set up." But then my spirit rose up, grabbed my brain and I began to talk.

I told Oprah what I had been doing this past month, what I believed, what I knew in my soul to be true and how we could not make a decision based on fear. She asked me if it was about saving my breast. I told her "No, if it came down to my breast or my life I would choose my life, but it all boiled down to the right for me to choose when I had all my questions answered."

It was a blur. The taping of my segment ended. The audience clapped and I was led off Oprah's couch, her stage and into another dimension that was to become my new life.

    By the time we had reached the Green Room where we would wait for our ride back to the airport I realized that I had become the sacrificial lamb to appease the media gods. So much hoopla had centered around The Secret that the show had been catching a huge amount of flack for leading people down a path of inaction and irresponsibility. Oprah had to make people understand that it wasn't enough to just think good thoughts, you had to do something. She was able to get her point across but at what cost?

    By the time the show aired the following week I wasn't sure what would show and what would end up being edited out. Most of the interview remained intact. I was glad about that. I was able to get my point across.

    Then the hundreds of emails started pouring in and my life was forever changed.

    

Chapter Two – The Mammogram (Definitely NOT an E-Ticket Ride)

On the day of my mammogram I awoke with this feeling of dread. I didn't like taking time away from my work. I especially did not like taking time away from my work or anything else for that matter when it came to going through another mammogram. I was hoping that in the years between the last one I had experienced and this one that technology had indeed graduated out of the dark ages of cold metal and pressed flesh to a quick little laser light scan. I could hope.

I arrived at the Breast Diagnostic Center for my mammogram appointment 20 minutes early. I wanted to fill out my paperwork and be ready to go when they called me in. I completed my paperwork, managed to read through two entire magazines and several brochures that touted the various other procedures that I might want to have at a later date. I watched three other women come and go before me and walked around the lobby feigning interest in the artwork. I know nothing of art. I was just killing time. I thought to myself that I should have brought my laptop and done some work. I would have if I had known it would take this long. Next time I will have to remember. What am I saying? There isn't going to be a next time. I was reaching for a third magazine when they called my name and I jumped up as if they would give my spot away if I didn't respond quickly enough. Don't ask me why. I'm just programmed that way. I hate to make people wait for two seconds even if it is people who have made me wait for … 55 MINUTES! Already I was hoping to get out of there as quickly as possible and get back to my work.

The rest is kind of hazy. The mammography tech was very friendly. As a matter of fact she was from my area. I began thinking that I hope she doesn't tell anyone that I was in. I don't like anyone to know what I do in my spare time. Who are we kidding? I make sure that I don't have any spare time. To paraphrase Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, "Spare time is for wimps." I took my attention off Michael Douglas'character and placed my attention back on the mammography tech who was now explaining to me what was going to happen. I smiled and cracked some joke about the machine not having made much progress from several years back … or from the dark ages for that matter. Yes, it was still cold, and yes, it hurt like hell.

We had some difficulty getting situated. I had forgotten that this was the first time I would have experienced a mammogram since the addition of breast implants several years earlier. I was more concerned about not damaging them during the session than anything else. I would hate to have to get them redone because I sprung a leak. Hey, I don't know why those thoughts went through my mind I just know they did. Anything was better than concentrating on the mammogram. When it was all over the tech excused herself and asked me to keep my gown on. She wanted to make sure that all the pictures were clear before I started getting redressed.

While I waited for her to come back in and tell me to redress I was playing out in my mind how I wanted to spend the rest of my day. I had to stop and get gas. I needed to check the mail at the post office. I needed to make a few phone calls on the way to people who had left me voicemails. I could be pretty productive even away from my office.

The door opened and I could tell by the look on her face that it was not good news. "Sorry, Kim, the films are just not clear enough. We're going to have to take another set."

Another set? You mean I have to do this all over again? I didn't want to do it the first time. Why not just stick me in a microwave? I thought all these things but all I could say was, "Okay." I really need to stand up for myself. I should put that on my resolutions list. I know it wasn't her fault. But it wasn't my fault either. I hopped off the stool where I had been sitting and once again subjected myself to the tech, who by now was looking like the female version of the Marquis de Sade.

The second set came out clear and I redressed to wait for the doctor to come in and tell me that everything looked normal and that they would see me again in twelve months for my next mammogram. Fat chance. I had already made up my mind not to visit this theme park anymore. The lines were too long and the rides weren't fun at all. In my head I imagined women waiting in line at the mamma-rail with their cute paisley and floral examination gowns. After an hour waiting for the ride you could climb on board and then be whisked away towards a tunnel that was much too small in which you and everyone with you would be squeezed into one sixteenth of your size between two cold, metal plates all the while music played in the background repeating the words, 'breathe in and hold still, breathe in and hold still, breathe in and hold still." No thanks, I was not returning.

"Hi Kim, how are you today?" a voice entered into the room trailed by a small dark haired woman in a white lab coat holding my films.

"Uh, well , I guess that would be for you to tell me. What's next?"

"Let's take a look at your films," the doctor said as she slid them onto the light board that seemed to come out of no where. She pointed at what looked like my breast and then to a huge mass. My heart stopped. I didn't know what to say. She continued, "This is your breast implant." She must have seen the shocked look on my face. Oh, thank God! I had thought it was the lump! I almost started laughing until I noticed what she was now pointing at. A small dark mass just above my breast implant and the muscle that covered it. It seemed pretty small. But looking at it now it did look larger than what I had been feeling. Come to think of it. I now realized that it was a little sore. It must have been all the probing, pushing and stretching during the mammograms. I could actually feel its presence now without touching it.

I zoned out during part of her conversation, but managed to jump back in when she said "… so we'd like to do a sonogram and see where we are. If you'll get undressed I will be back in to do a sonogram and then we will go from there."

Go from there? This was taking way too much time. This lump has come and gone and it probably would have been gone by the end of the week, but now it's mad because of the stupid double take on the mammograms and will hang on a bit longer just to get back at me. Go from there? Where are we going? Where are we? That's what I was thinking but all I said was, "okay". Boy, do I need to get a back bone.

Five minutes later the doctor came back in, had me lie down on the table and place my right arm above and behind my head. She squeezed a little jelly (it was cold) on to my breast and then placed the sonogram instrument (colder) on top of it. Memories of my sonogram when I was pregnant with my now teenage son, Garrett, came flooding back. I think the jelly and the instrument were cold then to. Once again, not much progress in patient comfort had been made in 18 years.

Dr. V began talking about this and that and size and placement and things that went through my ears and above my head. All I wanted to know was what is it? Do I need to get rid of it? And when can I go back to work? She finished with her exam, placed a tissue on my chest to wipe off the sonogram gel and said these words.

"I think we should do a biopsy today to find out if it is malignant. I can schedule you in within the next thirty minutes. I do think it needs to be done today. Is there someone you would like to call to tell them you will be a little longer? I'll be back in fifteen minutes." The door shut behind her. Somewhere between the words 'malignant' and 'I'll be back in fifteen minutes' she explained the needle biopsy procedure to me. It sounded easy enough, the needle is inserted into the lump (tumor), some tissue is extracted, you get a bandage over the small incision and you go home and wait for the lab results.

Malignant? Thirty minutes? Today? Call someone? Yes, Regis, I'd like to phone a friend. And who is this friend? Oh, that would be my husband, Scott. He knows all about how things like this work … fixing things that are broken … making do with what you have … he knows me.

That's when it hit me. I really didn't want to call Scott. He was going to tell me to do what I thought was best. I could always get my way with him. He always trusted my judgment. Funny, I'm not sure I trusted my own judgment right now. I pulled my phone out of my purse and dialed his number.

"Hi, how'd it go? Are you on your way home?" His voice was so normal sounding. I was surprised that he could hear me over the loud sound of blood rushing through my ears.

"Well, she wants to do a Biopsy today and I don't think that's what I want to do. I really need to think this over and do some research. Is that okay with you?"

"Yeah, whatever you want. But … (I thought to myself, Scott, do not give me a 'but' right now. I really want to just walk out of here and forget everything that just happened) maybe you should go ahead and take care of it today."

"No, I think I need to think about this right now. Besides I know that it's going to be pretty expensive and we really don't have the money right now. Is that okay? I promise I will get some more information and call back to make an appointment."

"Okay. I'll see you at home."

I got dressed and was sitting on the table with my purse and car keys in hand by the time Dr. V walked back in. There was a look of surprise on her face. "You're not going to have the biopsy today?"

"No, not today. I would like to think about it and get back to you if that's okay?"

"Well, yes, but I do think that the sooner we get this done the better. I've been performing these for over ten years now and this does not look good. You really should have this done as soon as you can."

"Yes, I will. I just need to think about it a bit, that's all. I also need to think about how I am going to pay for it. I'm self employed and my insurance …." Blah, blah, blah. She wasn't listening to me. I wasn't listening to me. I just wanted to get out of there. She handed me her card. I stopped by the front desk to pay and sign some things and then I walked out into the hallway, took the elevator downstairs, walked out into the parking lot and tried to remember where I had parked. I couldn't remember what car I drove. I pushed the alarm button on my remote and a horn started blaring from the right side of the parking lot. I wondered if there was something on the remote that I could push that would sound off the alarm on my brain so that I could find it. It had turned off somewhere between Dr. V handing me her business card and me pushing the first floor button on the elevator.

I can't drive without a brain!