For the past year I have watched as my friend Kevyn Burger faced down a terrible beast — breast cancer. Many of you know her, too. She was for many years a reporter for WCCO-TV, and now hosts The Kevyn Burger show on weekday mornings on FM 107.1. I asked her to review a new DVD for cancer patients called Visions for Cancer Recovery. In the process she reveals some of the weapons she used to force the beast back into its cave.

The DVD was produced by Mary Hallman, a Minneapolis nurse who is also a cancer survivor. (You can find out more about it here.)

Kevyn Burger: Her blog is at http://gabster.fm1071.com/fm107_kevyn/blog/

When I was a little girl, I relished visiting my grandmother–right until bedtime. My beloved Oma understood that I felt lonely and frightened in that unfamiliar bed. She used to tuck me in and pat me on the back while I slipped into slumber, murmuring all the while to “just let go…to let my body feel like … it’s just an old washrag.”
That was my first encounter with creative visualization.

My more formal introduction came when I was pregnant with my first child in 1986. That was the hee-hee-hee-hoo! era, when moms-to-be were told in all seriousness that if we relaxed, focused and breathed correctly we would breeze right through labor. Every week we lugged our pillows to childbirth classes where we flopped our awkward bodies on the floor and practiced releasing tension from head to toe. I learned to enter a trance like state where I felt, well, like that old washrag.
Staring at a ‘focus object’ during labor would help me withstand the pain, they said. My object was a pair of yellow booties. When my labor began I stared away and breathed like a busy set of fireplace bellows and it worked…for a while. At the end, though, I screamed for an epidural and the Lord Jesus, and told those who urged me to “breathe through the pain” exactly where they could place that suggestion.
In the following years I did breathe through the pain. There were two more babies, some extensive dental work, all the usual pokes and prods with feet in stirrups. I’ve given blood and had blood taken. I became proficient at consciously relaxing, slowing my breath and allowing the tension to ebb from my body.
Last May I had to step up my game. I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. Then I began the countdown to 16 weeks of chemotherapy.

For the first time in my life I turned to alternative medicine to help me deal with my pain and fear. I had access to an extraordinary set of healers at The Insititute for Health and Healing at Abbott Northwestern Hospital. They gave me weekly acupuncture sessions, visits with a healing coach and biofeedback training to strengthen my relaxation response.
I also bought CDs that used creative visualization techniques specifically for cancer patients in the midst of chemo. I spent hours in my room, eyes closed, listening to the gentle encouragement and imagining the healing liquid entering my body to banish any of the bad cells that the surgeon’s scalpel might have missed.
The first day they put the poison in my body, I felt the panic rise, crest and then begin to fall back. I willed my body into the old washrag and then I floated away, grateful to live in a time and a country where science and faith could give me a better-than-fighting-chance to beat this thing.

Did the prayers and preparation help?
I know that they did.
A recent checkup confirmed my belief that I am cancer free. I had cancer. I don’t anymore.

Recently, your blogstress Josephine Marcotty asked me to to take a look at “Visions for Cancer Recovery,” a DVD produced for cancer patients. Josephine was interested in my take on the technique and the imagery it provided.

The first part uses exquisite scenes from the natural world and the guiding voice of a narrater to calm and settle the viewer into a state of relaxation. Later you see enlarged, animated images of cancer cells imploding onto themselves. They look like abstract balloons, lighting up and then exploding and deflating. It was fascinating for me to watch this and imagine the epic battle going on within the body, those hard-working and loyal immune system soldier cells going after those bastids and killing them good and dead.

Watching the DVD, I felt an odd sense of comfort. Cancer, which I have seen as evil, a monster, a malevolent force, is actually just…cells. They don’t intend to kill. They just do the only thing they know how to do–reproduce.
Modern medicine is very effective, but I want do everything I can to join this battle. For me, the movie screen on the back of my eyelids is the best way to do this. I have learned — and prefer — to run my own projector there, with soothing scenes that I have crafted from my own life.

Last Friday, I was back at my chemo clinic for a new drug that has been effective in preventing bone loss and cancer recurrence. Just like a year ago, I closed my eyes and relaxed as the nurse poked the needle into a vein on my hand. Silently, I blessed her and the cool liquid as it flowed into my arm. I willed my body to become that old washrag. I let my mind drift to my dear Oma…and then to my other grandmother, who survived a bout of breast cancer herself. I felt myself relaxing into an even deeper state as I tuned my imagination to one of my favorite scenes–my sister and me as young women, walking hand-in-hand along a deserted beach.
Then I saw all those cancer cells collapsing and dissolving, collapsing and dissolving. They are no match for me, my faith, and my doctors. I felt tears slide down my face. The nurse approached to ask me if I was all right, but I waved her away. My tears were born of gratitude for the sweetness of this life and for the victory that I know I am winning.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 9:35 am and is filed under cancer, complimentary medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.