Crossing the River

For those of you who have followed my journey these last weeks, thank you for your interest, care and presence in my life.....  There are moments in our lives when a flash of clarity comes, or a breeze reminds us of a bigger Reality, the beauty of nature and sky tips the scales in favor of delight and our sometimes myopic vision opens a crack wider. Today is one of those days for me.  The Divine Alchemist has been furiously at work -- this relapse definitely got my attention! -- and I've seen nooks and crannies of  soul work I never fully realized were there.   As a result, not only my awareness of purpose and destiny for this life have become more clear, but my commitment and dedication to evolving as much as possible has deepened (which includes the deep inner work of shifting tendencies, forgiving ourselves and others, caring for our spirits, and bodies, in new ways, and so much more) in whatever time I have left.  God willing, that will be for many more years to come.

During my healing session last night (with the remarkable and rare "cold energy" treatments I'm getting), I found out the cancer is gone or nearly gone.  We are now going from every day to once a week.  In a few weeks, if all goes well, we will go to once a month.  I postponed my spinal tap to mid-September.  We will then see, from a Western perspective, if anything remains.

Thank each of you for your kind words and material support, your heart's love and smiles in this amazing bright night of my soul.  --  Heidi

Hi Everyone!  I wanted to start out letting you know how much I have been appreciating your well-wishes and love. Your cards, phone calls, messages, physical support, etc. sustain me as I travel through this intense experience.  I haven't been able to call everyone back who has left me a message, but I think about you all the time and little by little am trying to connect with you as I'm able.    This week brought really good news from my oncologist.  Peter took me to an appointment I had made a good while ago (before the relapse) and had never cancelled when I went into the hospital.  After Dr. Polikoff agreed to do the spinal tap during this appointment, I asked him if we could postpone it until I'm finished with my healing sessions so we can verify at that time if I'm indeed in a remission.  He said OK, so I'll have the spinal tap in September when he returns from his vacation.   But I took the general appointment anyway, just so I could see him and he could see how well I'm doing.  The last time he saw me I had one foot on the other side and he didn't think I'd make it without any traditional Western treatment.

I walked into his office without a walker and he was blown away!  He told me that in all his years as an oncologist (35) he has never seen anything like this and that I'm "unique" in his experience.  He further said that if we were to give me a spinal tap that day (instead of having postponed it a month) it wouldn't show any growth of the leukemia and most likely would show less or none at all, just based on how well I looked and am doing!  He was curious to know what kind of "energy treatment" I was receiving and I told him.  He's a very conservative type of doctor, and very respected in Kaiser. He's in charge of all chemotherapy clinical trials within Kaiser, for example, and was voted "partner of the year" last year, so is quite invested in chemotherapy protocols. We were so bouyed up by his response that we actually went out to a restaurant afterwards to celebrate. However, I realized when we got home that I had overdone it and was completely exhausted.  Nevertheless, sitting in that restaurant and feeling "normal" again was a real boost to my spirit.

The other news is that I had my bloodwork done this week and it was, and still is I feel, abnormally low. I've been more tired these last two days than I've been in awhile, sleeping or resting most of the day.  My hemoglobin, for example, is 8.5 and the normal is 13.    This is what carries oxygen to the blood and muscles. They give blood transfusions when you get as low as 8.0.   I've been hovering around this number recently, but they won't transfuse me til I'm actually at 8 or below.   So I've been reading online about how to boost my hemoglobin through diet and have added some iron to the super healthy smoothies I have each day.  I hope this helps.  We'll see.  My naturally curious mind wonders why it's so low these days, but there is really no telling since what I'm doing is so unprecedented.  So I have to go on faith and trust that all will be well.....

Often I feel overwhelmed with gratitude -- gratitude that I happen to know most likely the only two people on the planet who give this treatment and they happen to live close by, gratitude that through their help and the help of all of you and the supplements I'm taking, I'm turning around a deadly form of cancer that is 93% terminal when a relapse happens, gratitude that it has brought me so much closer to my dear family and friends and to people in my past whom I needed to forgive and love again.  If the relapse hadn't have occurred I wouldn't have gone so deeply into my soul. 

Here's a quote Peter sent me this morning.... 

"I marvel not only over the capacity to see, but also for the gift of reflection, the ability to integrate each new vision with all previous experience, to know that I am connected to all that has been, all that is now, and all that is to come. I can choose to live in contemplative fidelity to each moment of radical amazement, knowing that something great is indeed happening in my soul." -- Judy Cannato from Radical Amazement

Love, Heidi

Dear Family and Friends,

More to report!  But before I do so, let me just thank all of you have been donating for my care from the bottom (and top) of my heart!  I am overwhelmed by everyone's kindness and generosity.  To be in the position of "receiver" has been very humbling for me.  I am surrounded by all kinds of giving -- volunteers (my dear Peter, family and friends) have been with me for the last month around the clock.  Thank you for giving me part of your lives, your love, your good will and support, and your material means.  This all means more to me than I can ever express!  It's at times like this that we realize that when everything else goes, when hard times come, we are sustained, literally, by those we love.

The last few days have brought more energy.  The hospice nurses were able to take out the catheter, thank goodness, making it much easier for me to navigate out of my bed.  Apparently one of  the doctors in the hospital made the comment "Heidi will probably not be able to walk again," and I am proving them wrong as each day sees more of my motor skills return, especially walking -- still a bit on the halting/unsteady side.  I wasn't able to sit up in my bed for more than a few seconds just 3 short weeks ago.   Now I sit up most of the day.  The alternative treatment I'm receiving seems to be working and this is with an illness where Western medicine really has nothing else to offer.  They gave me just two months to live in the hospital if I didn't have any treatment.  I can hardly believe it as I write this, if I had not experienced the beginning of the "sleep of death" -- a letting go process of this world, the senses, one's cognitive faculties, etc.  There have been moments during this time when I could "sense" that things could go either way -- life OR death.  I just couldn't tell which one.  It was as if it hadn't yet been determined.....until one day, when I began to feel the tiniest resurgence of life within.  The will to live is a powerful thing, and I've had a strong will to live, along with a feeling that, God willing, there is more for me to do, learn, be in life.  We shall see.  For the moment I am happily appreciating each day and all my many, many blessings which include each one of you.

As I wrote in my last update, I had a very unusual experience for a time for a week or so.  Here is something I wrote recently to a friend, describing it in more detail:  "The ONLY thing real to me during the days I was in this "consciousness" was LOVE and oneness. There simply wasn't anything else...even though I was suffering pretty intensely at the time. I felt no fear. There was an "equality" to everyone I saw and interacted with.  Everyone was incredibly special, a bright light, with unique and amazing qualities.  I truly could see this. It was not just an intellectual understanding. There is a big difference. KNOWING it is experiencing it on a whole other level, complete with feelings and insights that are specific to the people who are placed in your life at any given moment, even total strangers. So all my family and friends, the nurses in the hospital, the doctors, the young men in the ambulance with me...everyone....sparkled anew with their soul qualities before my very eyes. It wasn't difficult at all to see their essence, their special gifts and even their larger purpose....."

The brain scientist, Jill Bolte, who had a stroke and wrote about it in her book "My Stroke of Insight", described so well what she experienced as her brain's natural functions, especially the logical, reasoning part, faded and she began to experience only a wonderful oneness with the universe: 

"When she lost the skills of her left brain, her consciousness shifted away from normal reality and she felt 'at one with the universe.' Taylor helps others not only rebuild their brains from trauma, but helps those of us with normal brains better understand how we can consciously influence the neural circuitry underlying what we think, how we feel and how we react to life's circumstances."



In my own small way I felt I had a tiny glimpse of this. As the "neural circuitry" began to come back "online" I began to feel myself re-enter this amazing material dimension more and more.   I began to shift BACK into the normal reality we all are so familiar with.  At first it was the ability to step back and wonder "What the heck happened to me these last few weeks?"  Then I could feel my reasoning come back:  "What am I going to do now?"  There were some bumps on the road here.  I felt moments of being overwhelmed by my condition.  Now, as I reflect on everything, I try to bring back the memory of that week or so when the "I" part of me was out of the way, at least to a degree, and thus any sense of being in control was out of the way too.  There is truly nothing like a life or death situation to show us how our lives are so utterly in the hands of the Universe, God.

Other practical things about my progress:  Peter and I took a walk yesterday without my walker!  I'm not yet steady enough on my feet to do that alone and still need someone next to me to hold on to.  But it felt so good to be doing this again.  Other bodily functions are becoming more normal, and I'm eating really well.  I'm beginning to visualize my next piece of art....  I took a shower this morning by myself and Peter and I took a drive the other evening to get an ice cream cone...

That's it for now.  Thanks for your care and interest.

Heidi

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My dear friends and family,

It has almost been one month to the day that a good friend of mine called 911 for me and I was taken, by ambulance, to Kaiser Hospital.  The summer started with a sense that things were just "not right" with my health and I began my incredibly thorough journey of getting to the bottom of it sometime in May.  It started with increasing tiredness which only got worse as the weeks wore on.  Then bodily functions ceased functioning well or at all.  Headaches began.  Interestingly enough, all my emails to my oncologist, trips to Urgent Care and the ER for 2 months didn't uncover the cause:  a relapse of the Leukemia. It took a very bright doctor at Kaiser to consider giving me a spinal tap.  I'll never forget her kind and compassionate face when she came in with the news:  "Heidi, I'm sorry to tell you that you have alot of abnormal cells in your spinal fluid."  By that time, alot of damage had already been done and they gave me just weeks to live if I didn't have any treatment.

Oddly, such a relapse had never crossed my mind.  I had thought, rather, that almost two years of chemotherapy was finally taking its toll.  In retrospect, I'm amazed at how positive I've been through this whole ordeal.  I never thought the Leukemia came to take my life but to awaken me in some ways.  Now, in the hospital and for weeks afterward, I didn't know if this would be my time to leave this earth.  And it all happened so quickly.  I felt like I was slipping away.  I'm much better now, which is why I'm putting this in past tense.  I don't feel I'm declining anymore, but rather getting stronger with each day, though I have a long way to go in my healing journey.

What I never knew about Leukemia this whole time was that it could return JUST in the spinal fluid.  (My bone marrow is fine.)  Frankly, I didn't know too much about the spinal fluid, what it does, and what happens when it is "messed with" by cancer.  All of a sudden I went from being independent to being bed-bound and unable to walk or even sit up on my own.  In those early days I didn't know if I'd ever be able to walk again!  Kaiser told me they could basically just offer me palliative care.  A Bone Marrow transplant at City of Hope could offer me a 10% chance of a cure or simply prolong my life, if successful.  So I opted to go with some very wonderful and unique alternative treatments, which definitely are helping me.  I'm able to walk with a walker now, sit up in bed most of the day, eat a fairly normal diet and type.   My functioning is gradually coming back.

What I want to communicate to you more than anything right now is how grateful I am for how you have all rallied around me.  I have never felt so loved and cared for in all my life.  I've been BLOWN AWAY by your support on so many levels. 

Also, a remarkable thing happened to me in the hospital.  I somehow was given a glimpse of the true nature of life, which is LOVE.  It was extraordinary and experiential....not merely an intellectual understanding.  It was a state of consciousness. Even just describing it now in this update seems so small.  I will communicate about it more in future updates.   As I've gotten more of my functioning back, I've also seen how different functioning of my mind (reasoning, logic, etc) have also returned more.  But during those early days in the hospital there was no filter -- nothing keeping me from the experience of pure love, without any opposite or clarifier.  I saw my life, and all the events in my life, especially the difficult ones, as gifts that had been perfectly planned and executed by love.  This was not some fantasy, imagination, inspiration I had read in a book or hospital drug-induced haze...but real, complete with a sense of knowing in the deepest fiber of my being.  I felt like I could see "through" people into their souls.  Their particular spiritual orientation or belief system didn't matter in the least, or get in the way of seeing a deeper truth.  In fact, that's really all I saw for a few days.  I will never forget the simplicity and absolute clarity I experienced on this level, though now the experience has dimmed quite a bit and my "new/old" self is back more and more....  I share this with you because it is such good news, and if it can happen to me, it can happen to all of us since there is a oneness that runs through our spirits.....  It's as if we become more of our true selves when we face the end of life and our ego-self begins to fade....

Also, for those of you who don't know about a wonderful new fund raising website my boyfriend, Peter, and dear brother, Kevin, put together, please check it out if you feel so inclined:  http://www.giveforward.com/helpheidi   and forward to others too if you like.

I should be able to give more regular updates now.  Just learned that my blood work (taken yesterday) is improving!  My CBC (complete blood count) is improving!  A sign that my alternative treatment is working well!  Really good news!

So much love for all of you,

Heidi