Chicken Soup for the Cancer Survivor's Soul

by Jack Canfield

“Now it’s your turn to be the model. Now it’s your turn to dig deep and draw on all of those things that you’ve said are important in life—courage, hope, love, the strength of the family. We’ll be with you. No matter what.”

  Pete Legge

  Teens Launch Campaign to Save Dying Baby’s Life

  As he left home for his teaching job at Kamiakin Junior High, near Seattle, Washington, on February 26, 1992, Jeff Leeland prayed for his son, Michael. The six-month-old boy had undergone hospital tests, and results were due that day.

  In January, Michael had developed pneumonia; tests revealed that the clotting cells in his blood were at a surprisingly low level. He was referred to Children’s Hospital and Medical Center.

  At 10 o’clock, Jeff called home. “Hello, sweetheart . . . what’s wrong? Michael has what?” Through tears, Jeff’s wife, Kristi, repeated the diagnosis: “Michael has myelodysplasia syndrome. It’s a pre-leukemia disease.” Kristi’s voice broke. “He needs a bone marrow transplant.”

  Jeff felt as though a sledgehammer had slammed into his gut.

  Later, Kristi and Jeff shared the news with their other children: Jaclyn, nine, Amy, six, and Kevin, three. The family members were to have their blood tested in the hope that one of them would be an eligible bone marrow donor.

  On March 20, Kristi called Jeff at work. Her elated voice cried out, “Amy’s a perfect match!” It was the couple’s first taste of tangible hope.

  Unexpectedly, however, a dark cloud cast its shadow over this hope. The Leelands’ insurance policy had a 12 month waiting period on benefits relating to organ transplants. Jeff had signed up for the coverage the previous October.

  A bone marrow transplant costs $200,000, money the family didn’t have. On top of this, the transplant needed to be done soon.

  In solitude, one May morning, Jeff lay bare his wounded soul. Writing in his journal, his words formed a prayer to God, his only hope. His little boy was dying. In the stillness, a deep calming came in a whisper to his soul. God has everything in control.

  Several days later, Dameon Sharkey, one of Jeff’s students, walked in. At 13, with learning difficulties and few friends, Dameon faced his own mountains of adversity. The teen approached Jeff and gave him his life savings— twelve $5 bills. After hugging and thanking Dameon, Jeff went to the principal’s office. They agreed to use Dameon’s gift to establish “The Michael Leeland Fund.”

  From then on, the Leelands witnessed the incredible difference kids can make. In the coming weeks, the high-spirited junior high kids staged a walkathon, held a raffle and pursued media contacts. The ninth-grade class donated the proceeds from its dance to Michael. Mary, an eighth-grade student, cashed in $300 in savings bonds. Jon, a ninth-grader, knocked on doors in his neighborhood. The Leelands were awestruck by this outpouring of love.

  As a result of the students’ appeal, reports appeared in the local media. After reading about Michael, a man walked into the bank with a check for $10,000, and a second-grade girl donated the contents of her piggy bank. Just one week after Dameon’s gift, Michael’s account grew to $16,000.

  One woman set up phone chains for prayer and support all over the state. One man, though jobless and $35,000 in debt, sent $10 because “I have my health.”

  Four weeks after Dameon’s gift opened the floodgates, the fund totaled over $220,000. Michael would get a second chance.

  In July, the boy endured 12 days of chemotherapy and radiation to destroy his diseased marrow before doctors transfused his sister’s healthy cells into him. On Michael’s first birthday, his family received great news: Michael’s white cell count had finally exceeded the minimum acceptable level! A week later, Michael was able to go home.

  Today, three years later, the disease is in remission. Doctors say Michael has a 95 percent probability of a lifetime cure.

  The Leelands pray that the compassion their community demonstrated will not die out, and that Michael will one day be as selfless as Dameon Sharkey, the boy whose gift started Michael’s life-saving fund, and who became a vital link in a chain of love.*

  Jeff Leeland

  * The Leeland family has now established The Sparrow Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides seed money to youth groups involved in fund-raising efforts. For more information, write to: The Sparrow Foundation, 1155 N. 130th, Suite 310, Seattle, WA 98133.

  Judy

  Judy started chemotherapy just prior to attending one of my workshops for the first time. Although it was necessary for friends to drive her to and from her treatments and stay with her afterward, she felt that she was imposing on them. Because of these feelings, as well as the rigors of the chemotherapy, she desperately needed love and support. Many workshop participants felt rejected while growing up and were eager to shower love on a recipient they knew wouldn’t refuse it. It was a powerful healing process. The group bonded quickly, and I decided to keep the group dynamic going by meeting monthly.

  At the next workshop, Judy lightheartedly shared her experiences about losing her hair, which she said was now falling out by the handful. “Maybe I should get a Mohawk hairdo and dye it purple. I might as well have fun with this,” she said. Her courageous attitude was an inspiration to us all. She shrugged this off, saying, “People are resilient in different areas. I just happen to have a lot of resiliency in this area.”

  She never did get a Mohawk, but she did start wearing caps—some had sequins; a favorite one had a propeller.

  One day, she called me just as I was leaving for the December workshop. “I had chemo yesterday, and I’m just too nauseous to make it,” she said. At the workshop, we made a special tape for her with messages from group members. When I told her about it, she cried.

  After three months of being unable to attend the group workshop, Judy let us know that she would once again grace us with her presence. When she walked in the room, we engulfed her with our hugs. Left unspoken was our concern for her emotional state; it’s one thing to joke about your hair falling out, and another to actually experience it. We wondered how she had stood up under the strain.

  Judy answered our question when she sat down and removed her scarf. I choked back my tears and then burst into laughter as I read the words on her bald head: “And you think you’re having a bad hair day!”

  Nancy Richard -Guilford

  Mrs. G in 3B

  The notice was posted next to the tenants’ mailboxes in the apartment building I’d just moved into in Brooklyn, New York. “A Mitzvah for Mrs. Green,” it read. “Sign up to drive Mrs. G in #3B home from her chemotherapy treatments twice a month.”

  Since I wasn’t a driver, I couldn’t add my name, but the word mitzvah lingered in my thoughts after I went upstairs. It’s a Hebrew word that means “to do a good deed,” or “an act that expresses God’s will.” It is more than that, really, more like a commandment to do things for others.

  And according to my grandmother, it also had another meaning. This was the one she was always pointing out to me because she’d notice how shy I was about letting people do things for me. “Linda, it’s a blessing to do a mitzvah for someone else, but sometimes it’s a blessing to let another person do something for you.”

  Grandma would be shaking her head at me right now. Several of my friends at the graduate school I attended nights had offered to help me settle in after the moving men left, but I’d said I could manage. Letting them help would have interfered with my image of myself as a capable and independent woman of 21.

  Snowflakes had been tumbling past my window for several hours when it came time to leave for class. I pulled on two sweaters, a coat, a wool hat and boots, bundling up for the trek to the bus stop that the real estate agent had dismissed as a short stroll. Maybe in May it was a stroll, but in this December storm it was a hike. As I topped off my outfit with a blue scarf that Grandma had crocheted for me, I could almost hear her voice: “Why don’t you see if you can find a lift?”

  A thousand reasons why popped into my head: I don
’t know my neighbors; I don’t like to impose; I feel funny asking for favors. Pride would not let me knock on a door and say, “It’s a 10-minute ride by car but a long wait for the bus, and it’s a 30-minute bus ride, so could you possibly give me a lift to school?”

  I trudged to the bus stop, reaching it just as a bus went by.

  Three weeks later, on the night of my final exam, the snow was falling steadily. I slogged through oceans of slush to the bus stop. For an hour, I craned my neck, praying desperately that a bus would come. Then I gave up. The wind at my back pushed me toward home, as I prayed, Dear God, how can I get to school? What should I do?

  As I pulled Grandma’s scarf more tightly around my neck, again I seemed to hear that whisper: Ask someone for a lift!It could be a mitzvah.

  That idea had never really made sense to me. And even if I wanted to ask someone for a good deed, which I did not, there wasn’t a soul on the street.

  But as I shoved the door of my apartment building open, I found myself face to face with a woman at the mailbox. She was wearing a brown coat and had a set of keys in her hand. Obviously she had a car, and just as obviously, she was going out. In that split second, desperation overcame pride, and with my breath coming out in white puffs in the freezing hallway, I blurted, “Could you possibly give me a lift?” I hurriedly explained, ending with, “I never ask anybody for a lift, but...”

  An odd look crossed the woman’s face, and I added, “Oh! I live in 4R. I moved in recently.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’ve seen you through the window.” Then, after an almost imperceptible hesitation, “Of course, I’ll give you a lift. Let me get my car key.”

  “Your car key?” I repeated. “Isn’t that it in your hand?”

  She looked down. “No, no, I was just going to get my mail. I’ll be right back.” And she disappeared upstairs, ignoring my “Ma’am! Please! I don’t mean to put you out!” I was terribly embarrassed. But when she came back, she spoke so warmly as we plodded our way to a garage across the street that I stopped feeling uncomfortable.

  “You know the way better than I,” she said. “Why don’t you drive?”

  “I can’t,” I said.

  Now I felt inept again.

  She just laughed and patted me on the hand, saying, “It’s not so important,” and then I laughed, too.

  “You remind me of my grandmother,” I said.

  At that, a slight smile crossed her lips. “Just call me Grandma Alice. My grandchildren do. And you are...?” As she maneuvered her car—one of those big cars, like a tank—down the slushy streets, I introduced myself.

  When she dropped me off, I thanked her profusely and stood there waving as she drove away. My final exam was a breeze compared with the ordeal I’d gone through to get to it, and asking Grandma Alice for help had loosened me so that after class I was able to ask easily, “Is anyone going my way?” It turned out that while I’d been waiting for a bus every night, three fellow students passed my apartment house. “Why didn’t you say something before?” they chorused.

  Back home as I walked up the stairs, I passed Grandma Alice leaving her neighbor’s apartment. “Good night, Mrs. Green. See you tomorrow,” the neighbor was saying.

  I nodded to them and was four steps up the staircase before the name registered in my brain. Mrs. Green. The woman with cancer. “Grandma Alice” was Mrs. Green.

  I stood on the stairs, my hand covering my mouth, as the... grotesqueness was the only word I could think of ...of what I had done hit me: I had asked a person struggling with cancer to go out in a snowstorm to give me a lift to school. “Oh, Mrs. Green,” I stammered, “I didn’t realize who you were. Please forgive me.”

  I forced my legs to move me up the stairs. In my apartment, I stood still, not taking my coat off. How could I have been so insensitive? In a few seconds, someone tapped on my door. Mrs. Green stood there.

  “May I tell you something?” she asked. I nodded slowly, motioning her toward a chair, sinking down onto my couch. “I used to be so strong,” she said. She was crying, dabbing at her eyes with a white linen handkerchief. “I used to be able to do for other people. Now everybody keeps doing for me, giving me things, cooking my meals and taking me places. It’s not that I don’t appreciate it because I do. But tonight before I went out to get my mail, I prayed to God to let me feel like part of the human race again. Then you came along...”

  Linda Neukrug

  The Wellness Community

  Though my wife, Harriet, is fine today, in 1972 she had both breasts removed to stop the spread of cancer. Harriet’s illness showed me how uniquely destructive cancer is psychologically as well as physically. I also discovered that the emotional distress that accompanies cancer can be almost as debilitating as the illness itself. Because of that realization—and while continuing to practice law in Beverly Hills—I began to study the effect that emotions have on the onset and course of the disease. One of the most important facts I learned is: The belief that everyone with cancer dies of that illness is a dreadful myth. The truth is that there are over 8,000,000 people in the United States today to whom cancer is a memory. This information brings joy and hope to the heart of any person who has ever dreaded the onset of cancer.

  My study continued until 1982, when—armed with the information I had gleaned over that 10-year period—I conceived of the Patient Active Concept. The power of the Patient Active Concept awed me. I retired from the practice of law to found The Wellness Community* based on it. I based the Wellness Community Patient Active Concept on the premise that cancer patients don’t have to be hopeless, helpless and passive in the face of the illness. There are many actions they can take as partners with their physicians that are likely to improve the quality of their lives, and that may increase the possibility of recovery. Isn’t that liberating and empowering? The Wellness Community Patient Active Concept sets forth a series of methods cancer patients can use to join their physician in the fight for recovery: using guided imagery, making plans for the future, controlling stress, avoiding pain, and many others that may have a positive effect on the course of the illness.

  The purpose of The Wellness Community was and is to help cancer patients learn what they need to know to fight for their recovery as partners with their physicians. The Wellness Center does this without charging the patient in any way—it is free. Since its founding, over 30,000 participants have used The Wellness Community and over 1,000 physicians have referred their patients to us.

  I believe the interaction these people have with each other at The Wellness Community also makes them aware of how much control they have over their lives. They become aware that all of life is a series of choices we must make—whether we want to or not—and that control is not a single act but is a culmination of the decisions we make. It starts with decisions such as, “Taking into account my need for the salary and the insurance my job provides, I will decide whether to remain in this job.” If someone has cancer, it may be important to exert control with the following types of decisions: “I will choose what arm the injection will be given into”; “I will choose just how much I will participate in my fight for recovery”; and if the illness becomes desperate, “I will choose how that information will affect me and how I will react to that situation.” All of this culminates in the ultimate control: “I know that whatever choice I make will be the correct choice for me.”

  Harold H. Benjamin, Ph.D.

  * Harold H. Benjamin, Ph.D., is founder and president of The Wellness Community, Santa Monica, California, and is the author of The Wellness Community Guide to Fighting for Recovery from Cancer. For more information call 310-314-2555.

  The Corporate Angel Network

  Keyboarding for help on the information superhighway took a new turn this year when a cancer patient posted his SOS on a computer bulletin board and tapped into the Corporate Angel Network (CAN)*, the not-for–profit organization that arranges for cancer patients to use empty seats on company aircraft for transpo
rtation to treatment centers across the United States.

  Jay Weinberg, CAN Vice President, said an anxious cancer patient posted his inquiry on the nationwide Internet computer network about where to get transportation assistance and was referred to CAN by another Internet subscriber.

  And with that one simple listing, one more person joined the ranks of CAN’s family of 8,000 cancer patients who have hitched rides aboard corporate jets.

  Weinberg partnered with friend Pat Blum 14 years ago to create CAN. Both are recovered cancer patients, Blum from breast cancer 25 years ago and Weinberg from melanoma 20 years ago. Oddly, both lived within 45 miles of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and neither endured much of a commute from their homes.

  But even though they did not have a difficult commute, they empathize today with what they call “the psychological and emotional journey” cancer patients must take on the road to recovery.

  Blum hatched the idea that corporate jets might be able to help shuttle cancer patients when she found herself sitting on a plane waiting on the runway at Westchester County Airport in White Plains, New York, for a number of corporate jets to take off. She noticed that many of them had empty seats.

  She phoned Weinberg and they toasted their enterprise over a cup of coffee. That was 14 years ago and in that time, the 8,000-plus CAN cancer patients have been shuttled by 550 participating company aircraft.

  Of those, 12 corporations have flown more than 100 patients each. This year, AT&T’s 100th flight was nine–year-old Alexis Farrell, who needed a ride from her home in Washington, D.C., to New York, where she was being treated for an autoimmune deficiency.

  CAN’s youngest rider to date was a 15-day-old infant, Faith Miller, whose journey from hometown Pittsburgh to New York City has also been taken by both her sister and brother, who share her genetic problem.

  The oldest cancer patient on CAN so far was Emma Hughes, 93. Despite her age, she drives herself from Phoenix to Scottsdale airport, where she catches the corporate flight to her cancer treatment center in Denver.