It’s not over when it’s over…
My cousin is a clinical researcher who is deeply involved in finding a cure for cancer… she sent along this link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4jgUcxMezM

Personally, I didn’t think it would happen to me… I didn’t really think at all… Outrageous tans with reflectors, baby oil/iodine… but at age 58, there it was, twice. I don’t know if I was “lucky” and “caught it in time”… I’ll never know. But I do know this. There will never be a moment of doubt when ever I have an unusual ache or pain anywhere in my body… it will always possibly be a third melanoma recurrence. I remain thankful for the 5 years I have been on the planet instead of a statistic and for what is left of my left ankle. I hope that the people who get this message help to spread the word.

Inspirational Message

Stand up for what you believe in. Act in congruence with your values and follow through on your commitments.

 
Much of what we have learned about life was outside-in from our parents, schools, and cultures.  They informed our beliefs and assigned meaning to our actions, often not in alignment with who we were inside.  It set us up to constantly look outside ourselves for whatever we felt might be missing, causing us to mis-take and mis-place our power.
 
We hear a lot about paradigm shifts, which is simply changing our world views. We create the reality we think exists by the way we connect our beliefs, values, and perceptions together. Our filters do not allow us to see what we do not believe exists which basically includes everything outside of our ‘box’.
 
We need to adopt a new world view which is (w)holistic; one world, one body that includes all life on the planet and the planet itself. What I do affects the whole, what you do affects the whole, not just the one or me (me-listic) or the few-listic; family, friends, community.
 
So changing our world view is a paradigm shift; from me-listic and few-listic to wholistic. Think in terms of our world as circular – what goes around comes around – rather than linear, straight lining, never to return to me. The rise of people awakening to a sense of re-membering and meaning that guides their life is accelerating. We can no longer ignore our own truth as it arisings and act from old strategies and patterns.
 
Cultivating our interconnectedness and awareness of the subtle forces that pass between us gives us new capabilities and allows solutions to arise that have not yet been recognized. Together let us hold Integrity as our aligning Angel for the month of April and build a world that reflects our highest values and deepest inner desires.
 
Go deep into your interior and let your luminous light radiate. Reclaim your truth from the inside out an may your heart, mind, and actions be one with integrity.
 
Warmly,
Kathy 
 
 
P.S. If you worked with the Angel of Contentment during March, take a few moments to release it with your gratitude before welcoming the Angel of Integrity into your life for the month of April. 
©1981-2011 InnerLinks Angel® Cards is a registered trademark of InnerLinks. Please link to our site to share with your visitors

Survivor since 2004…

It was March 18th, 2004, a brilliant day. A few weeks before that, I had seen Dr. Paul Salmen. He asked me if I had done a mammogram with someone else. I said, “no. You’re my Doc!” He informed me that I hadn’t had one for four years. I was too busy running my flower shop, Joy-Ann Creations, Inc. If was going great guns. I was trying very hard. Lots of long hours. I had some help, but not over abundanced by any means. He and I talked about it, and Nichole walked in with an appointment. I didn’t have a choice! Of course, being Joyce, I canceled the appointment. Something took priority. That’s usually the way my life goes. I did, however, make another one.

It was a couple of weeks later. I went in at 8:30 a.m. Cindy did the mamo. This was on a Tuesday. On Wednesday, a.m. Cindy called. She asked me to return on Thursday. They were not please with the pictures. I agreed. We joked. I showed up at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday. That was the brilliant day of March 18, 2004! My life was due to change. I just didn’t know it! I was diagnosed on the spot with a possible Lobuale Carcinoma, left breast, under my arm. This was very close to the lymph nodes.

They proceeded to call Dr. Ross. I saw him for an ultrasound on Friday a.m. He confirmed that the diagnosis was suspicious. He scheduled me for a biopsy, and, as it turned out, surgery early Monday a.m. When he got in, he saw it. He removed what he could. The next Monday, I was back to remove more tissue, check the lymph nodes,etc. The following Monday, I was back. Some lymphs were removed. Thank the Dear Lord, they were not infected. I ended up having a lumpectomy, some nodes removed, and was set up for eight and one-half weeks of radiation. I am extremely medicine unfriendly. Dr. Paul calls me his “Pharmaceutical Dilemma!” We were trying the radiation first.

In between all of this, our Daughter, Juliann, was scheduled to be married on April 24th, in Maui, Hawaii. Oh boy, did that put a damper on things. With Joy-Ann Creations, Inc., I had 32 weddings planned for that season, March through December. I was in shock, I’m sure! My Family and I went in to see Dr. Jaffery. He assured me that all would be well. Dr. Ross said, “You’ll be ready to go to Hawaii, but I must do the surgery. We can put off the radiation until May. We cannot put off the surgery. For the first time in my life, I really did not have control. I had no choice.

The sequence of events were, three surgeries, my daughter’s wedding, which I was determined to do, after all, over a course of about 15 years, I had done hundreds of wedding, and now to not be able to do my own daughter’s? This was not an option in my life! I did it all!

On May 5th, I began radiation. At first it was okay. As the time passed, I was leaving the shop at 2 p.m. each day, driving to Edwards, sometimes with just me and my dog, Turner Malone, not realizing how important this was! Turner was my “Flower Dog!” He spent each day with me, until late day, when Joe, my husband, would pick him up. Oh boy, he was a loyal partner, and my best friend. He watched me cry right by my side, he tried to make me smile, when he sensed I was not doing so well, and as in the picture, he gave a howl of, “We’re OK!” I still had a business to run. I had people to service, brides to please, everyday happenings, etc. I was way too busy to do this! However, those fine folks at Shaw Regional Cancer Center, Edwards, Colorado, are on top of it all. There was Andy, he scheduled my appointments. If I called to cancel, it was No! No! See you at 3 p.m. The crew was great. Dr. Hardenberg is very concerned, accurate, still seeing me, now once a year. I was in denial, however. I have had many different surgeries and illnesses in my lifetime, but none quite as serious as this one.

Well, I made it though! Several family members and friends helped me through the rough times. I completed all of the treatment, did 32 weddings that year, including our Daughter’s and our Son, Jim’s. I don’t remember a lot of the happenings. I think I was in a fog most of the time.

My shop had to be sold. I needed to slow down, so they told me. I did that, but I’m not sure about the slowing down. I don’t do that well!

I just saw Dr. Hardenberg in November, 2008. After taking several pictures, she and Dr. Ugarri, graduated me to the next step. It will be five years on March 18th. It has been quite a trip! I still have some down times, but overall, I thank God for helping guide me to better health.

Our dog, Turner, is getting older, now. He has had quite a life. My husband, Joe, had open heart surgery in 2001. Turner was his life saver. He would, everyday during his recovery, ask to go for a walk. Just as if he knew it was necessary. He and Joe had a front page picture in the Post Independent, labeled, “Dog Walks Master Back to Health!” He was with us every step of the way. We are now there for him, as he approaches 16 years old, having some eye problems. He still loves to romp and play with our new dog, Scherlok, a Miniature Schnauzer. Scherlok is sure fun for him. We are glad we got him for Turner. All is going great. A few bumps in the road, but over all, we’re living life. As I said, “Life is a painting…choose your colors and create it well!”

Joyce Louise Gornick and Turner Malone, My “Bud”
(Joyce still doing well. Turner passed away July 2, 2009 at age 17 years.)

Inspirational Message

Maximize every moment of liveness. Experience pleasurable involvement in all your activities and enjoy what you are doing. Have fun!
Play is at the heart of our creativity and animates our being in our most carefree moments. It helps us live with absurdity, paradox, and mystery. It feeds our joy and wonder. It keeps our search for meaning down to earth. 
There is so much going on in the world, and within us, that our stress levels have adjusted upwards to a new ‘normal’ creating a hidden epidemic of imagination deficit disorder. Play is an antidote to stress. Either can totally absorb your attention and cause a cascade of feelings that greatly impact your happiness quotient. 
 
Play engages us with the imaginal realm and enriches our metabolization of life. It is integral for generating insights and effortless realizations. Play literally gives us a ‘breather’ – restoring our vitality at a core level.
This month find a fun activity that totally captivates your attention to the point where time seems to slow or even stop, and the voice inside — the one giving constant commentary on what you’re doing, have done, or will be doing — ceases.  Laugh heartily at jokes, situations, and yourself.
 
Blessings for 2010 and wishing you playful, joyous moments throughout the New Year.
 
Warmly,
Kathy
 
P.S. If you worked with the Angel of Synthesis during December, take a few moments to release it with your gratitude before welcoming the Angel of Play into your life for the month of January. 
©1981-2009 InnerLinks Angel® Cards is a registered trademark of InnerLinks. Please link to our site to share with your visitors.  

Dear Bets…

Where to begin? Other than Mom, I’ve known you longer than anyone else on the planet! Growing up in Dover was a childhood that was hard to beat… for a while it was just the two of us and the only thing standing between us and our imaginations were those pesky parental controls such as naps and meals… I remember the Roy and Dale afternoons (you actually alternated between being Roy and my horse) and the bike rides up and down Strawberry Hill Street… especially the ones we had just before a hurricane was about to hit… remember the wild wind and us screaming as we peddled faster and faster… and that stupid Airedale that Charlie Bean had that would try and bite us every time we rolled past their house? Then came Nick and Amy, and our universe doubled… sometimes double trouble…

but you always seemed to have a way of managing things with a gentle hand, a gift you had all your life. It was always hard for me when we were both at Beaver because you were so good at everything. A skilled athlete, tremendously diligent leader and universally popular young lady. Let’s just say I was a late bloomer… so off I went to boarding school, and our friendship shifted… until Colorado, where we pretty much picked up where we left off… both of us in college and starting to manifest the different ways in which our adult lives would progress… You got a dog, I got her puppy… we traveled together, visited, and both settled into our separate lives. Next thing I know, you’re living in Jackson Hole Wyoming in a teepee in the middle of nowhere and being surrounded each night by a pack of serenading coyotes… I lost touch with you when Mike and I moved on to Seattle, but I started to hear troubling stories about you, and being away, I could only imagine… When we moved back east and settled in New Hampshire, you came up for visits, but it was like there was a thickening cloud around you and I could only see through in glimpses…

And this is the part I want to celebrate with you… sometimes courageous lives aren’t headliners… sometimes the battle of a lifetime is just to be normal like most people are without even thinking about it… little things we all stepped over without a thought were large walls between you and the world, but you never turned back… you never stopped striving for a place beside the rest of us… and you never quit even when you had achieved a life of independent living in Boston. In your recent years you were relational glue for the family and beyond… You were often the first to know and always the faithful caller… your caring and generous heart manifest itself in the small things you did…
There is only one Christmas card so far on our front bureau… the first of the season… it is from you… on the front, all it says is “Peace”.

With love, Sue…
your old Pal from the Erie Canal…
…drink to the love of joy!

Act with a win-win attitude. Use your creativity and sensitivity to blend all the diverse parts into a unified whole.
We inter-face with the world in numerous ways; as a partner, a family member, child, parent, pet pal, neighbor, customer, and community member both culturally and nationally to name a few.  Who is the ‘one’ that is behind the many faces — who is the ‘one’ inner-face?
The world we live in does not always appear to support the experience of essence living and this creates pressure. To protect our core expression we build defenses. The tension is felt as a suffering that closes our hearts, contracts our spirit, and limits our creativity.
A state of synthesis is a seamless presence. There is no gap; no space that gets filled in with misconceptions of who we or others think we are. It is from this presence that we can reach out in our many expressions. Blending all the diverse parts is a returning to the unified whole that existed before the perception of separation.
So, what is the practice this month? Lets call it ‘apexing’ – going to the highest midpoint and holding the apparent paradoxes of life and duality. And interestingly, it is not a point of non-duality, it is the point of Synthesis. Open to letting the truth you hold be replaced by a greater Truth. Synthesis allows a larger awareness of the whole to blend and fuse.
We hope the Angels continue to inspire your life.
May your inner-face shine through every experience.

Warmly,
Kathy

Survivor since 2009

I was on my way to a national ceramics conference between flights in the Denver airport. I sat down to eat my tuna fish sandwich and, as I slipped off my leather bag from my left shoulder, my hand grazed my chest and I thought, hmmm, that feels different, like a muscle I hadn’t noticed before. For the next five days I pretended I hadn’t noticed this weird bulge on one side and not the other.
Two weeks later, when I heard the words over the phone, “It seems that you do have a small breast cancer…” well, it just felt and sounded surreal.  It was so hard to put the words, “I have breast cancer,” in my mouth. They just didn’t fit. My friends didn’t believe me at first. Even now, seven months later, I still sometimes feel like this isn’t happening to me, like I am watching someone else go though this life changing experience.  But it is real and I know it. Going through chemo removes any doubt about how real this experience is! Everyone says I am doing great and that I look great and I don’t know- how am I supposed to look, act and feel? How does one dress for chemotherapy? I have just tried to keep doing what John and I have always done daily whenever possible, especially exercise and laugh, if at all possible.
So what have I learned? Or, more accurately, what am I learning?
Gratitude, for so many things…
Sometimes I am just overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude for the simplest and the most profound things, often all at once: For another day of life, for the astonishing beauty around me, for the walls of Glenwood Canyon and the way the sun hits the rock faces creating different dramatic effects of light and warmth daily. I am enchanted by the multi-colors of the November grasses along the Eagle River as I drive daily to Edwards for radiation treatments. I give thanks for every single card, phone call, email, meal, visit, car ride, offer of help from friends and family, and for every kind touch or word from medical caregivers. I am steeped in a sense of gratitude greater than I am, impossible to contain or adequately express.
Also, I am learning more about Beauty.
I feel that I am finally understanding with my mind, soul and body what beauty is all about and why I have spent most of my life as an artist attempting to serve and seek and create beauty. I am one who used to say that I didn’t need a life-threatening illness as a wake-up call to really see what’s important in life like friends, family, beauty, music, art, nature, etc.  Maybe I didn’t need it, but I do know that I am now more alive and absorbing love, music, art and nature with my whole being. I have not achieved all I can and want to do in my life and career. I still have unused cards on the table that I hope to play before I run out of time. I want to use color and paint, words and imagery in ways I have never done before.

I am also realizing in a deeper way, how important and life-saving, daily Outdoor Exercise is for me.
This may sound trite but exercising outdoors as much as possible through my treatments, whenever I have felt well enough, is the one thing that has helped me the most. I have surprised myself at what I have been able to do even during chemo and radiation. I swam a mile a few times a week, climbed hills and went for long walks alone or with my husband, John McCormick, and our dog, Archie. We even snow shoed up a mountainside recently. Often I have felt like I would rather lie on the couch but I have pushed myself to get outside and be active and I always feel so much better afterwards.  Nature is my cathedral. Exercise is my walking meditation feeding my soul, invigorating my body and dispelling the heaviness of depression that this illness can bring along with it.

I do not feel afraid, although the diagnosis was fearful. I do feel gratitude for life and a strong sense of connectedness to my fellow humans and nature. I also have a strong desire to give back, to use this experience to help others in some meaningful way.  In an odd way, cancer has been a gift, literally extending and expanding my life, giving me some dear new friends, deepening and renewing long-time friendships, and giving me incentive to change and expand my studio work.

One of my favorite quotes recently:
Everything changes, everything is connected; pay attention.  (Jane Hirshfield)

I am paying attention.

Angel of Discernment for November

Use your sharp-sightedness to make clear distinctions and wise choices. Move forward with confidence in your inner compass.

Discernment is the recognition of the soul’s impulse within our lives. It builds our intuitive ability to act with an awareness of the power that is concealed within the present moment. Discernment requires that we regularly take a personal inventory of our values, beliefs, past actions, present hopes, and future dreams.
We live our lives based on what we believe.  Our actions are preceded by our beliefs. Our consciousness is reflected back to us. What we look for we will find. So, the question is ‘where do our beliefs come from?’.  I would guess the overwhelming answer is ‘from what others have told us’. We have very few original thoughts that comprise our beliefs. As individuals, we are defined by assumptions that have been formed over generations.
But, what if we are more than this? What if we are powerful beings about to awaken from a long night of dreams? What if we are at a tipping point of illumination, on the verge of uncovering the deep knowing of our origin and with it the capacity to bring about global peace? What would it be like to feel our connections to the whole and choose our actions based on this as reality? How would you be different today? How would this realization influence your actions?

Our collective challenge and opportunity is to surrender the illusions that keep us cocooned in assumptions and limitations. And, like the caterpillar, dissolve into our imaginal selves and redefine the world envisioning a future that welcomes the butterfly.
We hope the Angel of Discernment will illuminate your life this month. May your heart and mind discern and embrace the presence of your soul.
Warmly,
Kathy

P.S. If you worked with the Angel of Trust during October, take a few moments to release it with your gratitude before welcoming the Angel of Discernment into your life for the month of November.

©1981-2009 InnerLinks Angel® Cards is a registered trademark of InnerLinks. Please link to our site to share with your visitors.

ANGEL® Cards

Your Health is Your Wealth…
Former Senate President Jerry Hughes said it often.
Representative John Salazar said it best, with his vote…

I am a melanoma survivor, and I embrace each day now with a clear understanding of the dark abyss of disease and illness from which my medical team saved me. Cancer and chemo therapy are a terrifying storm of confusion, uncertainty and struggle, but with the proper medical solution, there is also hope. I can not imagine being as ill as I was without any hope of aid. I can not imagine resigning myself to the role of victim rather than survivor, because I did not have enough money to get treatment. I can not imagine standing by helplessly while someone I love slowly dies from a manageable disease. I can not imagine a nation of vision and integrity succumbing to the preferences of financial gain over humanitarian goals. If you have never been to the emergency ward of a major hospital facility, go to one. Go to one and witness our health care system first hand; people lying on chairs receiving intravenous, lying on the floor for lack of a chair, vomiting into waste paper baskets … and then imagine something different… health care for every person, hope and dignity in every case.

Cancers Can Vanish Without Treatment, but How?
By Gina Kolata
Call it the arrow of cancer. Like the arrow of time, it was supposed to point in one direction. Cancers grew and worsened.
But as a paper in The Journal of the American Medical Association noted last week, data from more than two decades of screening for breast and prostate cancer call that view into question. Besides finding tumors that would be lethal if left untreated, screening appears to be finding many small tumors that would not be a problem if they were left alone, undiscovered by screening. They were destined to stop growing on their own or shrink, or even, at least in the case of some breast cancers, disappear.
“The old view is that cancer is a linear process,” said Dr. Barnett Kramer, associate director for disease prevention at the National Institutes of Health. “A cell acquired a mutation, and little by little it acquired more and more mutations. Mutations are not supposed to revert spontaneously.”
So, Dr. Kramer said, the image was “an arrow that moved in one direction.” But now, he added, it is becoming increasingly clear that cancers require more than mutations to progress. They need the cooperation of surrounding cells and even, he said, “the whole organism, the person,” whose immune system or hormone levels, for example, can squelch or fuel a tumor.
Cancer, Dr. Kramer said, is a dynamic process.
It was a view that was hard for some cancer doctors and researchers to accept. But some of the skeptics have changed their minds and decided that, contrary as it seems to everything they had thought, cancers can disappear on their own.
“At the end of the day, I’m not sure how certain I am about this, but I do believe it,” said Dr. Robert M. Kaplan, the chairman of the department of health services at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, adding, “The weight of the evidence suggests that there is reason to believe.”
Disappearing tumors are well known in testicular cancer. Dr. Jonathan Epstein at Johns Hopkins says it does not happen often, but it happens.
A young man may have a lump in his testicle, but when doctors remove the organ all they find is a big scar. The tumor that was there is gone. Or, they see a large scar and a tiny tumor because more than 95 percent of the tumor had disappeared on its own by the time the testicle was removed.
Or a young man will show up with a big tumor near his kidney. Doctors realize that it started somewhere else, so they look for its origin. Then they discover a scar in the man’s testicle, the only remnant of the original cancer because no tumor is left.
Testicular cancer is unusual; most others do not disappear. But there is growing evidence that cancers can go backward or stop, and researchers are being forced to reassess their notions of what cancer is and how it develops.
Of course, cancers do not routinely go away, and no one is suggesting that patients avoid treatment because of such occasional occurrences.
“Biologically, it is a rare phenomenon to have an advanced cancer go into remission,” said Dr. Martin Gleave, a professor of urology at the University of British Columbia.
But knowing more about how tumors develop and sometimes reverse course might help doctors decide which tumors can be left alone and which need to be treated, something that is now not known in most cases.
Cancer cells and precancerous cells are so common that nearly everyone by middle age or old age is riddled with them, said Thea Tlsty, a professor of pathology at the University of California, San Francisco. That was discovered in autopsy studies of people who died of other causes, with no idea that they had cancer cells or precancerous cells. They did not have large tumors or symptoms of cancer. “The really interesting question,” Dr. Tlsty said, “is not so much why do we get cancer as why don’t we get cancer?”
The earlier a cell is in its path toward an aggressive cancer, researchers say, the more likely it is to reverse course. So, for example, cells that are early precursors of cervical cancer are likely to revert. One study found that 60 percent of precancerous cervical cells, found with Pap tests, revert to normal within a year; 90 percent revert within three years.
And the dynamic process of cancer development appears to be the reason that screening for breast cancer or prostate cancer finds huge numbers of early cancers without a corresponding decline in late stage cancers.
If every one of those early cancers were destined to turn into an advanced cancer, then the total number of cancers should be the same after screening is introduced, but the increase in early cancers should be balanced by a decrease in advanced cancers.
That has not happened with screening for breast and prostate cancer. So the hypothesis is that many early cancers go nowhere. And, with breast cancer, there is indirect evidence that some actually disappear.
It is harder to document disappearing prostate cancers; researchers say they doubt it happens. Instead, they say, it seems as if many cancers start to grow then stop or grow very slowly, as has been shown in studies like one now being done at Johns Hopkins. When men have small tumors with cells that do not look terribly deranged, doctors at Johns Hopkins offer them an option of “active surveillance.” They can forgo having their prostates removed or destroyed and be followed with biopsies. If their cancer progresses, they can then have their prostates removed.
Almost no one agrees to such a plan. “Most men want it out,” Dr. Epstein said. But, still, the researchers have found about 450 men in the past four or five years who chose active surveillance. By contrast, 1,000 a year have their prostates removed at Johns Hopkins. From following those men who chose not to be treated, the investigators discovered that only about 20 percent to 30 percent of those small tumors progressed. And many that did progress still did not look particularly dangerous, although once the cancers started to grow the men had their prostates removed.
In Canada, researchers are doing a similar study with small kidney cancers, among the few cancers that are reported to regress occasionally, even when far advanced.
That was documented in a study, led by Dr. Gleave that compared an experimental treatment with a placebo in people with kidney cancer that had spread throughout their bodies.
As many as 6 percent who received a placebo had tumors that shrank or remained stable. The same thing happened in those who received the therapy, leading the researchers to conclude that the treatment did not improve outcomes.
The big unknown is the natural history of many small kidney tumors, many of which are early kidney cancers. How often do small tumors progress? Do they ever disappear? Do they all need surgical excision? At what stage do most kidney cancers reach a point of no return?
These days, Dr. Gleave said, more patients are having ultrasound or CT scans for other reasons and learning that there is a small lump on one of their kidneys. In the United States, the accepted practice is to take those tumors out. But, he asks, “Is that always necessary?”
His university is participating in a countrywide study of people with small kidney tumors, asking what happens when those tumors are routinely examined, with scans, to see if they grow. About 80 percent do not change or actually regress over the next three years.
With early detection, he said, “our net has become so fine that we are pulling in small fish as well as big fish.” Now, he said, “we have to identify which small fish we can let go.”