2021 - Cancer; New Smyrna return
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They got the news all at once, hardly any prelude or perceived premonitory symptoms: Stage 4, mets as big as golf balls, a 5% chance of making it even 6 months.
They all wept, except Linda: she would have none of it. She would hear nothing of “the stats”, nothing that did not start and proceed with how she was gonna’ lick this thing. She took it on, on all levels, with all modalities – integrated, alternative, conventional, and spiritual.
She expressed guilt as well as outrage at the unfairness of the diagnosis, the unfairness of such an occurrence falling upon this organic earth mother hippie non-smoker non-drinker. But damn if she accepted it. Having manifested so much joy and positivity in her life, she was convinced that with this, too, she could manifest a cure, health, a long continuing life.
She would not allow use of “the C word”, any discussion of contingency plans, “final wishes” and arrangements. Instead, she meditated and visualized 3 hours a day, enunciating affirmation after affirmation, did detox diets and “HOCAT” treatments (a combination of electric field applications, magnetic treatment, ozone and heat). Paul gave her IV high-dose Vitamin C and nutritional boosters. She accepted injected mistletoe as well as FDA-just approved immunotherapy and conventional chemo… she tried anything and everything.
Initially, Linda’s approach, her vibe, and one or the other of her treatments clearly worked. Near miraculously, the intruder tissue shrank, and she maintained connection and activities she loved. But as one modality and then the others became less effective and then ineffective, her energy waned, her positivity dissipated. Although she never became pessimistic per se: she just began to let go, to just “be”.
She began watching 20 hours of “garbage TV” that Alia described as her “drug of escape”, which confounded Paul, a programming tape of trite trivialities pounding into her consciousness even while she was asleep. But when he heard her belly laugh with Alia, saw her innocent smile as she watched Ru Paul drag queens, he knew it was good. Or at least OK. It was her choice, and that’s what mattered.
As the entire mishmash of the disease and secondary complications took their toll, they headed back to New Smyrna Beach as a family one more time.
