Tumor needs attention-winter '09

Tumor needs attention-winter’09

Early Ray Charles playing, having watched Ray last nite, I consider his junkiedom with compassion. Sometimes the ability to remain sober, whatever your comfort medicine is a discipline better disregarded. Marijuana’s role in this for me personally is a constant embracing relationship, one the masculine aspect of myself says to stand on my own two feet, wanting to use it primarily when doing cancer treatment. Then I remind myself that though I am not going to a hospital, IV needle protruding, poison flowing thru my veins, I am in consistent and sometimes more extreme, cancer treatment. The winter of 2009 has been one of those times.

I’ve been dragging those two feet about writing this BLOG edition. Bored with sounding like a broken record though knowing what I’m doing in response to the tumor requiring attention is not charted. At least not where I have been able to find in the past three and a half years. The Breast Wishes Fund that was created by my friends and I this year is committed to making alternative and complimentary breast cancer treatment information easily accessible. We received our first small grant from the McCune Foundation and are in the process of forming a non-profit to approach like organizations for funding. I have Working Title outreach residency application to thank for creating the awareness in me that perhaps more important than focusing on the ME film, is to take advantage of all the other options for consciousness. This BLOG is a large part of that, thus, today’s informative entry of the daily life of a woman with a breast cancer reoccurrence who chooses to work with it inexpensively, biologically and persistently.

Each January for the past two, I’ve chosen to reenter the Cancer Institute where I was diagnosed to meet with the surgeon to keep me on Medicaid. Why bother if I don’t plan to do surgery, chemo or radiation? I don’t know, maybe it’s because I can’t afford health insurance in case I break a bone, my optimism of true complimentary care being covered by insurance or that I’m not 100% sure of what I’ll do in the next year to not die now. Dr. Anna Voltura has just completed a yearlong fellowship at John Hopkins University specializing in breast surgery. There was a part of me that wanted to see if she had any cutting edge information to share. Also to thank her for her diligence in following the tumor in 2005 after two negative test results. My approach is to have a massage and perhaps a trip to the women’s tub at the waves spa after the appointment. The shock and memory of the environment is enough to bring on a recurrence for me even with my inquisitive documentary director hat on. We talked for over an hour and while in it I thought I was doing really well, asking if she had any new theories that resonated with her about why I should at this time still consider breast cancer surgery. She said that there may be a stem cell at the original tumor site and that by removing it, my life expectancy may be prolonged.

This idea has been turning itself around in my mind and challenging my resolve about surgery. The other part of my brain says how would I know if I’m experiencing a cancer episode if I didn’t have my breast and tumor. By feeling and seeing the changes in my breast, I can tell now when the tumor needs attention. I try to uncover the clues of what is out of balance with every aspect of my self, physically, emotionally, spiritually and mentally. This in itself is full time work. Is that why I haven’t had a job since December, regardless of resumes sent, so I may have the luxury of time though not money to concentrate on my health? From the time I get up to the time I go to sleep there are different parts of the regime that require my full attention because I am making many of the healing components from scratch to save money and/or empower myself.

In compliance with the Dr., I needed to have some testing done and agreed to an ultrasound. This feels to me the least invasive, non-radioactive form of seeing what is happening inside my skin. Once I arrived at the screening venue, I was told I was also having a mammogram. “No I will not be having a mammogram today, thank you”, I told the receptionist. My experience with this testing is that the radioactive load can bring on the stimulation of cancer cells and while even with an obvious raging cancer inside me, the cancer has gone undetected. Premenopausal women have dense breast tissue and this test frequently is ineffective for them. Not to say I’m premenopausal anymore, chemo shocking my eggs though at this moment I have had the blessed bloody event, starting on new moon no less. What feminine joy! I experience these periods, as I would have liked to embrace them as an adolescent with all the promise and great fortune of youth and womanhood. Back in the ultrasound, I strain to look at the images, trying to control my nervousness when she takes stills of a certain area, trying to remember if that’s one of the spots I had one of many biopsies three and a half years ago. After what feels like a very long time, I’m off the table, waiting for the diagnostic doctor to tell me my results. She’s taking forever and I just can’t be there anymore and tell them to please call me. I am completely freaked out at this point of which a massage helps tremendously to calm me. The phoned results are, all appears stable at this time. And it was for a couple more weeks when I started to feel the tumor growing.

In addition to changes under my skin, I notice the size of my breast growing, nipple denting, and overall appearance altering somewhat dramatically, quickly. There is a lot of pain where the tumor has been, a deep ache and tenderness. I remember this sensation from the very beginning of this tumor’s rapid growth and receding. I start to inject myself with Iscador or European Mistletoe. I change the dosages in an effort to save money though I realize this is not enough. I start to look at my diet and eliminate all sugar, eat only fresh veggies, sprouted legumes, fresh turmeric and ginger. I’ve been fortunate to be milking my neighbor’s goats and have been living on panir and yoghurt. Sadly, I must admit to myself that regardless of the integrity of this raw dairy, it is feeding the cancer. I begin to do regular infrared saunas and medicated enemas followed up by colonics, thankful to the purveyor that she will do some trade and cash with me. The tumor is still growing and I am becoming sad, depressed of all that is not as I wish in my life, the man I love does not reciprocate, I am still broke, in debt with no work coming thru, I live in this part of the house that has forced me from day one to reconcile the difficult parts of myself.

Working the system as I have learned to do, there is a local weatherization program I qualify for and they are doing some work on the house. Stupidly, as if in slow motion, I breathe in plaster dust, which two weeks later, I’m still trying to get out of my lungs. This brings on a whole myriad of flu like symptoms that I can’t be sure if it is the side effects of the Iscador and/or the plaster dust. Here it is, the end of March and the tumor is slowed though changes direction and shape daily. This is the longest episode of working with it and I question, what is next? If I had money, I would go get IV treatments to ozonate and ultravioletize my blood in the tradition of the Paracelsus Clinic.
Would I do chemo again? Will I do surgery? For now I will step up the regimes, add some maitake mushrooms and more antioxidants perhaps. In list form I’m going to show a typical day:

@8AM-wake up-take any combination of tinctures from a women’s blend to a detox formula, tulsi for my spirit, chickweed, nettle and oatstraw for my female system, ephedra for my lungs. I do a regime of Essiac tonic, a blood purifier, either as a tea or tincture. If there are Chinese herbs to take, I ingest those and will again later in the day. Also if this is an enema day, take Colosan to oxygenate my colon, perhaps some Triphala, an ayurvedic stool softener. Spray vitamins, Isocort adrenal support.
8:30AM-Arti, Hindu morning prayers and offerings followed by Zen Buddhist style meditation
9:30AM- Make a fire in the woodstove and my drink of homemade kombucha with a mix of powdered seaweeds including bladderwrack, dulse, kelp and perhaps licorice powder for an ulcer that had been acting up. In the summer I will make this in the blender with fresh greens, add a fresh fruit.
10AM-Qi Gong-lately I’ve been doing Incense Qi Gong to strengthen my lungs. At the end I use tuning forks on the tumor to break up the cancer. I visualize warm golden, white light filling my whole body, particularly my breasts. When it is warm outside, I go down to the stream and do this routine and if warmer still, I do arti, meditation and bathe briskly in the Rio en Medio. This earth connection keeps me balanced as little else does and I have accepted the Rio as my own private Ganges.
11AM-If this is an enema day I prep the bag with either yoghurt and triphala or coffee. Coffee if it is a colonic day for sure. This all takes @ an hour and a half once all is done and said.
Noonish-check email, return phone calls. Make lunch on the woodstove, usually a medicine bowl of sprouted legumes, fresh veggies and a handful of grain choosing if it’s an Asian, Indian or an Italian bowl.
Afternoon-Eat lunch. Take flax oil, Banyan Botanicals women’s support, calcium, and digestive enzymes. Depending on my energy, I’ll either rest or gather and cut wood, go for a walk, visit my adopted Grandparents in the village or work on grant proposals, film and cancer related research. Many times the projects of tinctures or kombucha or food preservation require attention.
Evening-turn on the infrared sauna, drink a lot of water and give myself a lymph-stimulating shower after. Sometimes I’ll do a bath in Epsom salt to detox or just a nice nurturing bath in goat milk and essential oils. Have a snack of oatmeal and fruit though popcorn cooked in ghee is my constant craving, especially if sad.
Perhaps after this I will write, read, watch a movie, tend fire, talk to a friend and try to be in bed by midnite. At base, I still love the nite and that is a constant struggle to make myself go to bed as early as possible. I take 5 mg of melatonin sublingually, I like Source Naturals peppermint, that has a Pavlovian response with me and I take another as I am going to bed. I used to have a lot of difficulty sleeping for more than a few hours and for the past year or two, thank you Goddess; I have been overall sleeping very well, deep and long. If I’m upset emotionally I will take Banyan Botanicals I Sleep Soundly and/or Tranquil Mind formulas. Make my self a cup of hops and chamomile tea or some other soothing combo.

On the days I go into town, which is less and less, I will sometimes have appointments. I go to traditional acupuncture @ once a month and take the herbs Dr. Yang gives me. I would like to get more massage, energy work though all of this now is for trade and sometimes I’m flush on that and sometimes not. I rely less and less on practitioners because of finances and there are not a whole lot of people I want to work with any more. I hope this is helpful to someone, at base, my work is to reinvent the rhythms I was born with, be thankful for what I do have trying not to dwell on problems, especially finances and to give more than I receive. I am working on this house and land to be a place of healing for others though first I must transform it for my self. Healing the healers has been a frequent transmission. Many have been chosen to do hard work on themselves now so they may be of service to others soon.

Fungahuasca 2-09

Feel surprisingly normal considering. Sock monster from Zoë definitely has a different connotation, a voodoo doll with trickster magic. The cats and I are closer, me understanding their species as chosen by witches. Jenny dog felt very close by for my journey partner and me. Many rants from me about Obama being chosen by God, a personal compassion for the great dead and alive saints. Amma, Ghandi, MLK, JFK, RFK, and excitedly, many friends. Cady’s amazing opp to create change at a place with a beautiful infrastructure, her being chosen to mobilize a heart change and eliminate classism. Caroline and Jim in the international forum not just putting on an event though creating an international community which seems more and more palpable of the direction towards peace. Well, let’s start at the beginning, shall we…

The woman formerly known as Chris and I prepped in different ways. L came over @ 11 AM, my goat friend visiting at the kitchen table after delivering milk. I had tried to clean the house so we could just be floppy anywhere without excessive filth covering us. This paid off as there was quite a bit of the floppy. More like flailing on my part. Great sympathy for a friend with mittens for hands, as mine became clubs. Flailing clubs. Most obvious as I was wrapped in Tracy via Jeff to me sadhu wrap that I sported post a towel. Had to be naked. Had to be in water constantly or dousing the woodstove for steam or ordering L to do it, when too comatose to do it myself. Oh and that was frequently. The narcotic aspect was better than any heroin or opium. Maybe because it was more visual. More personally visual also. L’s trip was quite different, more introspective, tactile, feeling while mine was phenomenal visuals on the first wave coming down the hill from the dunes where we drank the well simmered decoction of Banisteriopsis caapi.

1-Daniel Pinchbeck Breaking open the Head-pg 140-“Ayahuasca is highly sophisticated jungle chemistry. The Amazonian potion usually consists of two ingredients, the bark of the ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi, which grows in thick double-helix-shaped coils around rain forest trees) and the leaves of Psychotria viridis or some other plant.”

In our case, we did Fungahuasca. We boiled down the leaves and bark of the ayahuasca on the wood stove and added mushrooms grown locally. The combo creates a DMT trip (dimethyltryptamine, naturally occurring in human base of spine and brain) with waves of deep narcotic bliss. Better than any heroin or opium I’ve ever had, yep said that already. No post crunchiness. I’m tired though I went to bed by midnite and slept well ( minus Leon kittie wanting a chat outside my door @ 5 AM). I find it shocking right now that the house is not completely trashed. There were such delusions of Hunter S. Thompson: I became gecko like, much like Johnny Depp’s rendition in FEAR & LOATHING. Like a chicken after decapitation, little body control, out of body, which felt amazing. Sweetly sensual at times.

There was the water cycle, which followed the massive crying, and releasing, writhing, taking in the community’s pain, letting it move thru me. At one point saying it wasn’t time for me to leave this body yet though an incredible death practice. Great compassion, self-sacrifice and acknowledgment of the hard work of God’s emissaries. Bob Marley became important especially for L. The version of Hare Krishna from Beloved Krishna exalted and Wilco’s A Ghost is Born provided perfect poetic catharsis as the waves got less intense, more quiet and blissfiss. There was massive purging of family pain, the breast cancer lineage. Releasing for my Aunt and Grandmother, protection for my Goddaughter. So many blessings and pujas I performed last nite for so many, my body a conduit for other’s healing. The expulsion of cancer from my breast and body. Bathed not just once but twice, not so different from Benicio in Fear and Loathing. L def concerned at times for my wellbeing. Needed constant water, to be in it, drinking it, on the woodstove in steam, making tea. Uaahh, the tea ceremony, L great about doing my bidding, bringing the blue corn cake baked on the woodstove pre transmission with ghee, warmed and royal jelly. Manna as L called it. Muhhh. Me so sloppy when eating and drinking, consistently pulling up my sadhu robe, feeling my body changing after the water purging and oiling. Like a baby’s skin, true shedding of the old and rebirth. Nay and I went up to Ojo the day before and that was a great prep for this.

I felt great affection for my body and appearance. Seemed as if my hair grew an inch in 1 day. I kept pulling on it. The rebirth and return to my body had me thankful for it, releasing the loathing I have felt over my appearance, since cancer, probably before too. So many colors, heat sensitive, infrared, as I had the first wave of no movement, L heading back to house. Me slumped against the wall of the ruin in the most foreboding of landscapes on the property, in the cholla and tumbleweed field. Intense yellows, orange, red and such spikiness from the plants. A stop at the stream on the way back revealed the mosaic like vision I had read about. Much of what I have read was accurate and am thankful for the prep I had done over the past year particularly.

Feb 7
The Wolf has been a constant theme before, during and since this journey. I remember feeling awestruck when I heard that Obama in his first day in office had placed the Gray Wolf back on the endangered species list for the western and northern states. As Americans in the past decade, we have been trained to feel this earthwork is unimportant and I’m having difficulty waking up after the long nitemare of indifference to the creatures and elements that matter most to me.

From Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams and David Carson, pg97
“Wolf is the pathfinder, the forerunner of new ideas who returns to the clan to teach and share medicine. Wolf takes one mate for life and is loyal like Dog. If you were to keep company with Wolves, you would find an enormous sense of family within the pack, as well as a strong individualistic urge. Baying at the Moon may be an indication of Wolf’s desire to connect with new ideas which are just below the surface of consciousness.”

One dog spirit of a man came to me frequently during the trip, he is one who helped me burn my dog Jenny and offer puja to her. It’s hard to know if the yearning for union is an unevolved clinging or the feeling of our destinies being intertwined and now the time to be revisited, a question that stays with me. This time of year is MahaShivaratri, an all nite celebration of the story of Lord Shiva. Last year at the Neem Karoli Baba Hanuman Temple in Taos, I felt for the first time a true understanding of God and sensuality, Tantra. The connection I feel personally necessary for sexual union with another as an extension of God, thus being celibate now for 4 1/2 years.

A day in town yesterday was both familiar, confusing and annoying. I have read that it is difficult to move thru the world in the same way after this experience; insight to everything quite keen and perhaps the work is to not adopt a sense of superiority. A book club for Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina had me perplexed at first then finding my sea legs amongst so many beautiful female friends became fun and recognizable. I have decided to go up to the Temple in Taos for a few days, staying over and being a karma yogi, one who practices selfless service. I have a sense of peace about my house I have not felt before, less urgent to get away
from it, knowing I can create small miracles by sitting still and concentrating on the work right here in front of me.

Today's rhythm-4-29-08

One of the most difficult disciplines in Buddhist thought is to do nothing. Buddha spent something like 18 years on that one concept, with many going crazy after just a few days. It sounds so easy, such a respite from the modern world though in practice, not answering email, refinancing the mortgage, or talking about the next job with the outside world feels next to impossible. To turn off the mental chatter, the wounds of rejection from a past lover who no longer desires one in the same way, as well as figuring out how will I pay off my credit cards and yes, is this cancer growing in my other breast. Ultimately, it is that acceptance and surrender to a body death sooner than a 41-year old woman who appears vital that allows true healing for me.

Today I woke up late after a twisty turny nite of unsleep and decided to abandon my normal schedule of Aarti (Hindu ritual done each dawn and dusk with the light of a candle, incense and offerings as well as prayers that many temples work with differently to the deities). I wanted to update this BLOG, which I have been lax about with more practical dealing with cancer as I have been doing on a very limited budget for over a year now. I’ve let go of the expensive alt-doctor administered protocols because, well, I had no choice. I’m amazed really that my credit card debt is not more in the six figure range and my credit rating completely shot. Not yet at least.

I have begun working jobs again more regularly. Recently as the volunteer coordinator for a haphazard, inaugural film festival. I didn’t like the person who emerged in this chaos, an experienced woman who could have directed the festival though quite nasty and haughty about it. I was aware of this at the time and tried to work with it, though realized in order to make at least $10 an hour at this job with the lump sum I was being paid, I needed to back off my normal work ethic of giving 100%. When paid significantly less to cook for many more hours of physical work, it is somehow much more gratifying than talking on cell phones and being chained to my computer. The balance.

I am trying to create community where I live, many building projects with recycled materials, me out of the main house into the apartment that I am now renting out. Since this film festival I feel I am constantly caring for others and had to realize, I am drained, I am mean and I think I have more cancer possibly growing in the opposite breast from the former tumor. Given the recurrences I have self-diagnosed and come through, I’m now aware of my process. I’m in denial for about a month, sometimes medicating with marijuana more than usual though since I have cut my consumption by @ 80% since becoming a New Mexico Medical Marijuana patient, that is less of an option and I just walk around angst filled, angry and sad. Before I handed in the Doctor’s recommendation to apply for the program I thought it important to be cognizant of my honest history with drugs, anaesthetizing to numb out from the trauma of a life lived, the unreconciled hurts. Flower essences have been tremendously helpful with those immediate as well as long standing wounds. They are subtle and fascinating, with lasting effects in making the changes in personality or temperament that seemed a long-standing trait.

The biggest healer when I admit to a possible reoccurrence or new cancer is to just stop. I recommit myself to morning practice of meditation, aarti and Qi Gong. I try to pattern most of my day around excursions in my beautiful backyard, allowing creativity to come, as it wants. That can be by bringing bones up to one of Jenny’s altars and doing ceremony or working on the land where I visualize new spaces of refuge. I allow chants and song to come forth from me as the Indian land behind my house channels spirit. Yesterday as calling Coyote to come with me where she will be safe on my land (I heard one shot and killed as I was singing with her a couple months ago), I was rewarded with the sight of two powerful, full grown deer. I’ve never seen deer here, though since Jenny passed I have been given passage to the local animal kingdom. A bear and I followed each other around right after her passing; a coyote came right up to me and now the deer couple. Each animal that seasonally makes itself known to me, I look up in my Medicine Cards to understand what advice the Earth is offering, what Native America has interpreted their power to mean. These cards tell a story of Fawn who was beckoned to Great Spirit on the top of Sacred Mountain. Blocking the way was a demon bully, archetype of all the ugly monsters that have ever been and those that live within each of us. The demon did not understand why Fawn was not petrified by all the evil posturing and continued to respond only with love and compassion. Demon shrunk to the size of a walnut, clearing the path to Sacred Mountain and the Great Spirit for all of those to come. Deer medicine teaches us to stop pushing so hard to get others to change and accept them unconditionally, lovingly, which also applies to ourselves.

I have been in love with a man who I have had to let go. As much as I have tried to love him unconditionally, I am not in a place any longer where I can receive nothing from him. He is splendid and worth a struggle, though that will not be mine any longer. Giving up these visions we create and see so clearly is a step towards nothingness, the ultimate surrender of this body and an attachment to this life. Meanwhile, I’m back on European Mistletoe injections, something I use when I feel cancer is growing. I get the max dosage series II and split that up into 2-3 syringes and take them over the week. I do this because the medicine is expensive and my body seems to react favorably to it with out the prescribed protocol.

I watch my sugar intake, trying not to deprive myself of sweet food though what I ingest has to be medicine in it’s own right. Yesterday I made a seaweed, quinoa, and coconut, cacao nib concoction sweetened with agave nectar that was strange and satisfying. Cooking for oneself is essential, eliminating all processed, frozen, inorganic and unlovingly prepared foods. Food is my main medicine as Ayurveda has taught me. Given my financial quandary, I had to think about what couldn’t I live without and still heal myself? Food is the answer so by sprouting all beans, grains, eating mostly fruit and veggies and hopefully those that I grow or meet the person who grows them, these are obvious healing methods that work within no budget. Seaweed (Mountain Rose Herbs wild harvests wakame and kombu for a reasonable price per pound) has been a thyroid healer, which after the chemo blasts, I find my self two and a half years later, just coming around from. Many menopausal symptoms appeared to be more thyroid issues. I have just gotten my moon cycle on the new moon for the first time since chemo. There have been some attempts at a period though this was the first one that felt real. I reveled in it as I wish I had been instructed to as a young woman, carrying with me this delicate and delicious secret of being a fertile woman. My breasts have changed in good ways though at times painful and unknown. I question if the lump I’m concerned could be cancer is my breasts regenerating to be more young and supple, wanting to make milk.

Friends have said they would go to the Dr. with me so I could find out for sure. My plan for these times of concerns remains similar. I take a month to be in nature, stop answering the phone, being on the computer and be in the woods or desert for many hours. I know what the Dr. will offer me, biopsies and radioactive testing as well as destructive pharmaceuticals and surgery. I continue to learn Tibetan death practice for my self and others. It offers me comfort, as difficult as the issues that come up around it are for me. Tara Mandala in Pagosa Springs, Colorado is a good source for these teachings of Bardo and Phowa. Once again Jenny, my recently departed dog, is my greatest teacher. She reassures me from afar when I need her most, giving me faith that leaving this body is not a bad thing. I was so empty and sad dealing with people and culture when giving myself a quiet moment I realized, I miss Jenny so much and have not given myself time to be with her, to honor her. There are tins that say Joy, Peace and Hope at the front steps with a Chinese kitty on top my friend gave me that hold her bones and ash and with flowers, incense and offerings, I took those bones to one of her more powerful altars at the sand dunes and just prayed and chanted, as if she was standing there right behind me as she did for years. I have given myself at least a three-day period of honoring her, spending time with her bones and memory in our favorite natural locations. Today I will walk up to the waterfall along the Rio en Medio, a trail I seem to have deprived my self of, one we enjoyed countless times. I will go to the Bodhi Manda Zen Center in Jemez Springs to meet the Roshi who is over 100 years old! I will be spending at least half the summer there, cooking for retreats. It will be long, hard work for less than minimum wage though I love that kitchen and the opportunity to nourish people as well as try out recipes that I may use for community and seasonal restaurant ideas I have been tossing around, perhaps for next spring.

Meanwhile I work towards my visions without becoming attached to their manifestation. I allow my self to rediscover my natural rhythms, which might mean going to bed at midnite and sleeping until 10 AM! I say what I need as kindly and concisely as possible and stop the chatter and fear of rejection, sometimes by literally banging my head with my fingers. I’m doing a heavy metal detox with cilantro tincture I culled supported with chlorella and vitamin C. I’m taking advantage of my infrared sauna with a series. I continue to make green smoothies in the morning that contain seasonal greens, fruit Prasad from Aarti, homemade kombucha and fruit juice with local bee pollen, Garden of Life’s Primal Defense probiotics, fresh ground flax seed, as well as a micro algae combo. I’m growing wheatgrass. Mostly, it’s time down at the snow melted Rio en Medio where I will start bathing everyday again in soon and this beautiful land of New Mexico that speaks to me and nurtures the most on my healing path.

zen 2008

I have always wanted to disappear from before Thanksgiving ‘til after New Year’s. The closest I have come to that was this year going into retreat at the Bodhi Manda Zen Center for just over 2 weeks, before the new year. I arrived at a quiet time at the center, just me, T., a remarkable old yenta who became in my mind, a Zenta. She seemed happy for the break in routine and a granddaughter type to talk to. She likes to talk. There was K. who had driven from the Midwest after his marriage collapsed, a “student” who pushed my buttons in a way that only family can, perhaps my greatest teacher though painfully repulsive and annoying to me at the time. Then there was I. a young, grad and zen student, who did his best to hold down the fort. A real “Lord of the Flies” situation which after one day of cleaning toilets, making 30 beds and being looked to as psychological leader, I requested to be in silent meditation for a week.

My goal in coming was to empty my mind, give it space, digest Jenny not being in my life palpably anymore and process my Aunt’s passing, essentially from breast cancer. The center has tremendous hot springs right on the Jemez River and I took the time to detox my body as well as my head and heart. Listening only to I. who would tell me the schedule and my work, I wandered in the volcanic tuff, writing, cooking, cleaning and meditating. The schedule was rigorous and this was a down time. When the Osho (priest also the Vice Abbot) returned a typical day went something like this:
4 AM-wake up

4:15-In the Sutra Hall for chanting (a very methodical, phonetic chant, one is the Heart Sutra)

5:00-Zendo-for meditation-complete silence and stillness is the goal. Beginners count to ten and concentrate on breath. Students are given a koan (riddle) by the Roshi (great teacher) later. There are sesshins which are intense monastic training periods where the Roshi is present and gives teisho (dharma talks), meets with students and more chanting and meditation

6:30-breakfast-formal with silence and your bowl set. You receive 3 bowls which are wrapped up in cloth and have a washrag. At the end of the meal you get water in one of the bowls and clean all of then including your utensils (spoon and chopstix). Tremendously efficient.

After breakfast there is clean up and a short work period of general maintenance such as cleaning toilets, sweeping, emptying garbage,etc… Usually go for a dip in the hot pools post.

9AM- 12-Samu-work period. I had the honor and hard work of being the tenzo (cook). We were feeding from 5-80 people on New Year’s with up to 6 other people working in the kitchen. For a person who has never worked commercially as a cook it was an incredible experience, exhausting. I learned later that frequently the tenzo has many years of training before being given this opportunity.

12:30-lunch (informal, can talk) and clean up

2:30-4:30-Samu-more work. I frequently made dinner and prepped for the day to come. In the warm months there is much tending to their beautiful gardens, which I was still pulling exotic greens out of.

5:30-dinner, formal, in robes sometimes, clean up

6:30-8PM Zazen (seated meditation). This involved “rounds” of 25 minutes with a resting period in between, also still and silent, or walking meditation in the 0 degree weather, in robes. I put on my coat, many didn’t. You walk like a centipede, in each other’s steps, in darkness, stars above. There are wooden clappers and bowls that are rung as well as other rituals to let you know what to do next.

8:30-end of day

Quite a schedule to adapt to or live everyday! There were free days, some half days and to be honest, it takes an hour or two to remember how to not live on the schedule. I found myself in the kitchen, reading cookbooks and preparing snacks for the herds of folks that were coming in for the New Year’s Eve and Day programs on my time off.

New Year’s Eve was the most unusual I’ve participated in. It was a 4 hour meditation which included separate men’s and women’s hot pools, nude and in silence. There was a bonfire where Osho Hosen led a sharing of what one would like to leave behind in the fire. Her eclectic, feminine interpretation of Zen was refreshing. New Year’s Day was a large ceremony with a lot of chanting, many visitors.

Zen challenged my desire to praise God or Gods as I’ve adopted in Hinduism. The essence of this religion is esoteric, though very accepting. Monks and nuns are not celibate, there’s no constraints on alcohol or lifestyle as long as you adhere to the schedule. Even those who are challenging to the average person in the group are tolerated for a period of time. Stories go that some of the most obnoxious people end up giving the greatest service to the organization and very well may end up being the most devoted to the practice ultimately. I met some really lovely people whom I connected with immediately and had rich conversations. It reaffirmed my commitment to community, a dedicated work ethic and giving more of my self to those in need. It’s amazing what 5-10 people can accomplish when they are focused and hardworking. I’m going to be digesting this for a while though have a feeling it is a practice that will become deeper and more foundational to my being, seems to already be part of me and now it has more of a name.

Right now I am very tired. I seem to be reexperiencing chemo, 2 years later. Amazing how the body remembers the exact dates. I am going thru similar emotions and fatigue as when in chemo in the same cycles including unexplainable fear as if going to the hospital for the treatments. Willingly submitting to this poison felt much like going for a lobotomy with consent.

I don’t have plans for the new year, just letting it fill up day by day. It feels good, dreamlike at times. Sweet dreams to you gentle reader, lots of love and generosity for the new year. Thank you.

Thanksgiving '07

On this day of thanks, I feel a bit more at peace than I have in a while. Perhaps it’s the lengthy, unbroken sleep I enjoyed last nite, the fine sunny day outside, or the feeling of resolve that all that matters is right here, right now. Humorously, it has taken Dr. Doolittle, a contrary though humble name for a man who was my first Zen, vegetarian master. Not Eddie Murphy silly, but Rex Harrison as a man who could talk to the animals, wouldn’t eat them and defended their feelings and rights. He thinks only of the future in terms of expeditions he will do such as searching for the Great Pink Sea Snail or the Giant Lunar Moth, a month of planning the only time frame the audience hears about as he humanely exhibits the Push Me-Pull You at the circus to raise money. Emma Fairfax pines for his approval and affection and only in that moment of being asked does he consider his own feelings for her. It seems much of my time in relationship is thinking about it versus being in it. The Vedic scripture says yes, take action, buy that nice car, but don’t be attached to the outcome of anything. To love someone but not plan for a future with them. To make love and not want more or feel depressed after. To expect nothing from those I love, giving without an expectation of receiving. Words that roll off yet are so elusive in practice. This has been my work since I have last written, as well as grieving the passing of my best friend.

Jenny was the best friend I have ever had in my entire life. I don’t care that she was a dog because to me she was a spirit, greater than most humans I have come in contact with. She was my greatest teacher and sent to me for 14 years. She enhanced and affected many lives. In our time, this time, I learned how to be alone, to work thru my karma that was passed on to me thru generations of unrefined, painful emotions. For the first time I feel I can be a good friend, in a loving relationship, a valuable community member. This has taken the severing, reevaluation and rebuilding of many ties in family and friendship, on my terms, unpopular though necessary for my survival.

The 49 day mourning period of Bardo was the most helpful practice I can imagine for doing what I could to feel involved with aiding Jenny’s spirit to find a beautiful rebirth and for me to truly digest and integrate her physical presence being removed from my life. The gaps of the nasty daily chores were initially missed, just the opportunity to serve her. On each Friday at 2:21 PM I meditated and prayed for her spirit, those prayers changing each week as I felt her more and more distant from this world, my world. I made walks, pilgrimages several times a week, with her bones and ash, creating altars all over Rio en Medio, to some of our favorite natural spaces. In nature is where I felt her most. In the first week I became sure that birds are the vehicles for the recently departed. They followed me in droves as well as a very large bear, or perhaps I followed her. Native America sees the bear as introspection. I seem to cross paths more and more with Indian healers and Shamans, their medicine becoming mine. This weekend I will do a peyote ceremony that will go from sunset to sunrise. Known for it’s powerful healing individually and for the collective, I have waited many years to be ready to be part of this ritual.

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer just over 2 years ago, I stopped my life. Jenny’s passing allowed me that same opportunity. In the 7 weeks of Bardo, I did not socialize very often outside of my home, mourning feeling palpable. I also grieved for bombing my being with poisonous drugs that my body is forever different as a result of. Almost 2 years since the last chemo and my hair is just starting to return. I am in menopause, brought on by the drugs, symptoms of which were exacerbated with the intense emotions of Jenny’s last days, hot flashing, bipolar and sleep deprived for the past few months. My teeth are brittle, shifting which naturally occurs when a person gets old, generally older than me who will be turning 41 on Wednesday. In a nervous moment I question if the drugs are still in me, after all the intense detoxing I have done over the past 2 years, and if they are just starting to leave, does that mean the chemo is what has kept the cancer at bay all this time? Given the route I have chosen post chemo, it’s very hard to know where I stand as a breast cancer recipient. Financial stress can’t help though the lessons from buying only necessities, learning to create whatever I need from clothes to food is empowering and part of my rebirth away from the initial energetic I came into this life thinking were the most important essences.

Money is an issue for everyone. In my family, I feel it was the motivation for what one translated as love and success. It wasn’t a priority for me personally, except when I unconsciously was trying to win approval by taking jobs that did not suit me. When I look in the mirror, I admit to having had an innate sense of entitlement. This manifested in staying in roles and unhealthy family relationships so I essentially would get paid. I also mutated money as reassurance of being loved since emotionally I had frequently felt unconditional love not present. Accepting my current profound poverty and debt has been arduous though liberating in being autonomous emotionally. Would I have preferred to have my letters to my family of need responded to with kindness and assistance? Sure. But obviously, that is not my path from here on in.

It still hurts to be misunderstood. I feel grossly misrepresented by having money donated in my honor to organizations that I feel are reprehensible in the medieval practices around breast cancer. Double mastectomies (a big word for cutting off your breasts) as “prophylactic” and radiation (cancer causing energy) as well as massive chemo (poison) are even more extreme, archaic methods of “fighting” cancer than my grandmother endured. The fear-based business of cancer has me beside myself with anger at times and that I am considered fringe for taunting these methods, willing to be a guinea pig on film to document some options. As I write this, I’ve just been told my aunt who has been diagnosed with breast cancer 3 times and had a hysterectomy for pelvic cancers, is on life support. She was supposedly unable to take the next chemo and stopped breathing. I pray for her to be free of pain and sadness. I feel she inherited generations of unresolved angst, like me, in what I refer to as the “genetic energetic”. God rest her soul and let love permeate her being now and at the time her body dies. Is she better off for taking the Western medicine that may have prolonged her life? We spoke on camera about this as part of “the ME film”.

I want to live a long life in this body though am daily becoming friendlier with death. After all, it is part of life and I will not pretend it doesn’t exist, for me or anyone else. I do pray that my lineage hereafter will benefit from my work in looking for the root of our breast cancer. If you want to help make a difference, please consider contributing to “the ME film” or the Lexie Health Fund so this anecdote may be televised.

Namaste’- I bow to the beloved in you who bows to the beloved in me.
lex

Ding Dong the Queen is Dead! 9/21/07 at 2:21 PM

My blackboard reads:
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 21 AT 2:21 PM
Jenny’s spirit left her body----
Remarkable Beloved Friend and Teacher
Namaste’ Jennyfleur

I found myself without Jenny on the morning of September 10th, 2007 down at our spot by the Rio en Medio where I do my morning meditation and Qi Gong each day. I felt her pain and my life so impinged upon, I prayed for her to be taken in the nite, gone by September 11th. This day has such obvious remembrances and power in American history; it felt fitting my most beloved creature should be remembered too. The next day, I woke up to her shaky from another stroke, one of several smaller ones after a huge one, June 27th. I truly thought she was dying then, her eyes rolling around in her head, unable to walk or eat for days. I tried, but was not ready to let her go yet. She kindly stepped back from death, with the help of a coffee enema administered with a turkey baster out in the field. The next three months offered me several opportunities to have more adventures with her and ultimately, by September 12th, to completely devote to her.

I’m so grateful for the opportunity to have served her completely, if just for 12 days. She has been my greatest teacher in the works of Hanuman, Hindu God of Selfless Devotion. Our drives up to the Neem Karoli Baba Temple and Ashram took on more meaning, me praying to be worthy of her love and bhakti or devotion. I feel I gave one day for each year she gave me completely, 12 days, even though she was 14 for in the beginning she was a wily pup, unruly at times and more devoted to her Dad, Dru who called just as we torched the pyre. 12 days where my life completely revolved around her, I was thankful for the opportunity to clean up the pile that lay next to her and on her. Thankful.

So on Tuesday, September 11th when I called the vet to put her down, wrote the email to Jenny lovers everywhere that if this is compassionate killing, I was doing it Friday. I talked with her; telling her I was going to help her so she didn’t have to go through the really painful part, just go now, easily. In reaction, she seemed to eat more heartily, her eyes bright and brown, looking almost puppyish. I woke up the next day and couldn’t control my wailing sobs, not ‘til I called the vet again at 1:10 PM and told her that I was calling it off, that Jenny wasn’t ready. I had to be honest that I was selfishly imposing my will on her. I was ready to live without her. At that moment of realization, I was so thankful for perhaps the greatest lesson of my life. I had stopped my life almost 2 years earlier with a breast cancer diagnosis, I could do it again. She was happy as long as I was home and she could sleep most of the day and nite with occasional walks to the stream and sometimes even farther.

We did tremendous walks in the last months of her life, making it up to the waterfall of the Rio en Medio, me behind her, frequently acting as her back legs. At her funeral pyre, I asked Tino, my adopted Abuela, what he remembered of Jenny. He said, “ Wherever you were…she was right behind you.” Zoe, who knew us later in Jenny’s life, said she always has a picture of me right behind Jenny, picking her up when she fell, helping her up hills and rocky paths. The circle comes full. At Jenny’s Birthday Party August 19th, Holy Dog Spirit Meyraj was noticed by friends who asked who was following me, much like Jenny. The two met on his 33rd Birthday at the temple on July 22nd. At one time he had 21 dogs, all wolf hybrids, now just one aloof lady, Shanti. The four of us took Jenny’s last walk together in the river at Ojo Caliente, a regular jaunt for Jenny and I. It was one of those perfect end of summer days, the water temperature warm, the height just right for Jenny to be able to wade, walk and enjoy without much assistance. One of the times she fell in a shallow pool I took the opportunity to give her a full bath, rinsing her nubs of teeth, belly, filthy ears. I knew this was her last bath, the Rio en Medio getting too cold for our daily routine of washing, soaking, lounging. This day the light was perfect streaming the water, we all felt just right.

The next day she was tired, slept all day but had eaten her breakfast of raw hamburger and softened chic chic dogfood. I had this fantasy we were going to go to Valley View Hot Springs on retreat for a few days though, even as I was packing I knew this was not going to happen. I tried to give Jen her nite food which I mix melatonin and marijuana butter in to help her sleep and to quiet the now consistent rasping cough. The thyroid tumor she had been diagnosed with less than a year after my own cancer seemed to block air passage, making breathing difficult, regardless, she forged on. Seeing her discomfort I blew pot smoke in her face, which seemed to calm her, though not enough. Time for the big guns, as she looked really frightened around midnite. During the first big stroke I had given her one, max, of the doggie morphine known as Tramodol. Concerned for her organs and knowing it constipated her, I was very discerning about quantity and tried homeopathics, flower essences, aromatherapy, and herbs before the heavy pharmaceuticals. Over the course of the next 14 hours I administered 2 Tramodol by crushing them up in her mortar and pestle, adding a touch of warm water and serving them up in a dropper every 2-3 hours. As I tried to get the last bit of drug out of the mortar in the darkest hours of nite, the pestle snapped in two. Confirmation. This is the last hours of using this tool for Jenny’s pills, a long relationship of doing so. Between icky tastes I rubbed her mouth with marigold honey, the holy flower I hoped would help her spirit ascend.

I slept about an hour that nite, simulating her tortured breathing as I lay there, trying to understand her. I became a channel for her wishes, Shiva and all the shamanic practice that is now just part of me. I massaged her organs gently, hoping to help them release what was holding her back. Every 45 minutes or so I’d pick up her dead weight to drain the fluid from one choking lung to the other. At one time she’d been this beefy butter colored polar bear of 110 pounds and now had become a shrinking 70-pound elder. I had called vets around 9 AM, knowing we couldn’t go through another nite of this agony. She had taken a bowel movement around this time, normal except for the unusual liquid that followed the poop. At 11AM, as a vet was on the line, Jenny expelled @ 2 cups from her mouth of what looked like blood, mucus and tissue. I had pads to catch fluids all around her and tried to move her head so she wasn’t swimming in it, cleaned her without disturbing her too much. I called the vets off figuring this was it, yes? About an hour later, another huge release similar to the first was leaping from her mouth, as were liquids from her bottom. I continued to give her homeopathic phosphorous, emergency rescue and walnut flower essences as well as sprinkling lavender and tulsi essential oils on her. More dope smoke. For me more than her at this point. I pulled on her feet and ears, made motions with the sage smoke to help her spirit leave her body up through her crown chakra. I told her I’d be fine. I gave her what I knew to be my last kisses to her beautiful snout, holding her heart, begging her to let go.

It was now 2 PM and I worried, how much longer could she go on? I called the vet and she said it’s possible for days. This was what euthanasia is really for in my mind so I made an appointment for the vet to come by as her last call at 6 PM. Jen’s head wasn’t moving, her tongue lifeless, I squirted a few more drops of water and said out loud, “That’s it, I need to stop putting things in your mouth, don’t I?” Caroline called and as I put the phone up to Jenny’s ears, her lifeless eyes danced one more time as Cor told her of her beauty, love and greatness. I made myself go in the kitchen, starting dal and rice to sprout that I knew would be served at her funeral, talking to Dyanna about how long this could take. As we were saying goodbye, I saw Jenny’s legs go rigid and urine trickle out. It was over.

My feelings were so mixed, hysterically sobbing and though trying to envision her beautiful spirit ascending, wanting to aid her passage any way possible. I stumbled, wandered, cleaned and decided we would be going up to the Neem Karoli Baba Ashram for Bhandara, the festival in honor of Maharaji’s own passing, that started with 108 Hanuman Chalisas at 4 AM the next morning. Jono came over and kindly acquiesced to helping me put her on her bed and into the car. I strew silks on her, put Ganesha, Hanuman, flowers, candles, incense in with her and fell asleep for a solid 5 hours until the alarm woke me to start driving with my best friend in the darkness to Taos.

I arrived early enough to score a perfect spot under a tree where she wouldn’t bake in the sun. Strange as it may sound, nothing felt more normal than taking one last drive north with my baby in the car. We had covered so many miles and adventures together in there. I left the windows open; she looked so beautiful, still present as I filed into the temple for hours of praying, crying, mourning. My black skirt and deep purple top were the colors of my aura, my prayer shawl allowing me to cry privately, in public. By the time I came out, Meyraj had already found the car and set to praying for Jenny. We met out there stealth-like, lighting incense, admiring her beauty, and making offerings. At 2:21-PM I wanted to meet and have ceremony, meditate on her spirit flying high, effortless, without pain, on her way to her next exalted rebirth. The Indian family next to me didn’t appreciate my decaying love next to them and with regret the temple caretaker, asked me to move my dog to the overflow parking, three blocks away, in the sun.

I felt calm and crazy, knowing this was for a reason, not accepting that as the solution. I asked for some time and went to the drive next to the parking lot and waited for David to get out of the shower for what felt like an eternity. A human Jen listened to my woe and told me he’d be out soon. I was so nervous; grief stricken though inside I know this move was ultimately a good thing. Originally, I had envisioned the car across from the pool where the acequias meet, Jenny’s swimming hole, and where we had first met Meyraj on his birthday. David said of course, please park here and just in time for 2:21 remembrance of her, we could be more open here, incense aflame constantly, candles and flowers every time I walked meditatively around the temple and brought back as offerings. Many people walked by, lighting incense, offering prayers, telling stories of their loved beasts, listening about my heart throb, Jenny. Meyraj brought her a puri from a delicious lunch feast, the first real food I had eaten in a day or two. Later that nite as I went outside to the car to say goodnite to her, I saw the puri as a cartoon balloon from her mouth that said comically “I’m Dead!”

I went back into the temple where Sita led a euphoric round of the waning Chalisas. I couldn’t focus on the words, still learning the 5-minute prayer repeated over and over and over again. Instead I sat near the Durga or Mother altar and reveled in the spirit of the congregation, taking their energy to keep moving Jenny’s spirit higher and happier, pain free at last after such a long decline. I smiled each time Meyraj clapped enthusiastically for the Jai Jai Jai Hanuman verse, looking remarkably akin to the likeness of the monkey God right next to him. Bhindi in place, my third eye was open wide and I felt ecstatic, manic, exactly where I was supposed to be. Beth came by to see us, brought a Euphorbia or as she called it a “Euphoria” plant for Jenny and I reveled in her friendship and love.

At the end of the day, I sat with many devotee boys who were sweet and funny, relaxing, exhausted, knowing it was time to drive home with Jenny who was now starting to attract flies. I needed to stop in Espanola and get candles, which I did at Walgreen’s, reading each Saint’s description, deciding which were appropriate. Next day at the pyre as Meyraj beautifully arranged the 21 candles into the hill behind the pre-fire, we read each summary, invoking the spirit of each. Last stop in Pojoaque for 12 pounds of butter to make ghee as the sattvic lighter fluid. I caught a glimpse of myself in a window and realized why people were staring at me. I was so open and well, proud that I had gone through with honoring Jenny the way I felt fit. Perhaps she would have preferred a Jewish Temple for I realized that Jenny is a Jew. Always my greatest teacher, she chose to show me the significance of the 10 days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah (New Year’s) and Yom Kippur where Jews believe one should repent and ask to be inscribed in the Book of Life for the New Year. She knew to go before that time. In her death I realize I have been sitting my own brand of Jewish Shiva, not surprisingly, I’ve been repeating the mantra Om Namah Shivaya. The auspiciousness and symbiosis of her and Neem Karoli Baba’s Masasamadhi seems like a bone for me. When looking at the calendar the past few months, I saw that weekend as her last, the selfless devotee she was.

Sunday began with me finishing the ghee, starting the dal and talking to Lili on the phone. She said it was raining hard in town and was I sure I wanted to go ahead with this? I asked, “what’s the option?” to which she replied, “You could take her to Braemar to be cremated”. Yes, yes, thank you for the reality check but that doesn’t feel like an option. Dutifully and sweetly, she came over and helped dig the pit that would hold my baby’s pyre. Stacey moved giant sheets of tin and Deborah wrangled hose so I wouldn’t torch the village. Everyone needed to be elsewhere as Meyraj drove in with Shanti and a handsome Ganesh, a gift to me, a marigold under his arm. We were the only ones here for several hours of intimate ceremony, ritual and chanting. So much for my funeral procession that was to start at the church with everyone holding candles, following the Toyota hearse. I read from Hafiz and the meaning of Bardo, the 49 days after physical death in Tibetan Buddhism. I have observed her spirit everywhere since the pyre. In birds, the rain, a grove of trees. I drop her bones and ash, meditating for an exalted rebirth, pain free and able to detach from me, me from her.

It started to rain hard as we took Jenny out of the car and onto the pyre. I was worried she wouldn’t go up but this pinon/recycled wood; ghee paper, and cardboard was 15 feet high for ten minutes. So hot we had to keep stepping back, thankful for the drops of moisture. I filmed, Meyraj chanted, lit incense, candles, brought out marigolds from the Temple he had stopped for that morning, made offerings of blue and pink rice into the fire, onto Jenny. My first image is her leg sticking straight up and being black. As the wood fell over the next couple hours, her shape returned to that of when I first met her at 5 months old, sweetly sleeping curled up, moving towards the edge of the pit as if she wanted to be near us. She was charred but beautiful, framed in flames, flecks of colored rice melting into the ghee we continued to ladle over her form.

To see her decompose and go back to the earth as such has been incredibly cathartic for me this past week. My last image of her before we put her on the pyre was a fly on her eyeball. Knowing she would never permit such an indignity in life, it felt appropriate. My coup de grace was to shave my head again and throw my hair onto the fire, an act of cleansing and solidarity. Zoe arrived just then and I said, “Perfect, you can film me doing this.” The moment I turned the razor on, a piece went flying out. Zoe wrestled with it but I felt it to be God’s way of telling me that I had purged enough and that another winter bald, cold, was not necessary penance. Stacey returned and Bill, Jono, Tino, Henry, Bruce, dogs Sally and Yogi all came to pay their respects and tell stories of Jenny. Meyraj continued tending fire, her form reaching a charcoal stage. Jenny’s last wish was to take my cancer as well as any long time physical or emotional suffering that those who loved her would like to lose. She asked to release it into her body, for her spirit was now free and this flesh could help us all.

Meyraj made his way home, some 2 hours away in the north country and I asked Stacey, April and Zoe to stay with me a bit longer. Remembering to pop a bottle of champleasure that Tracey had given me at Jenny’s Birthday Party. Champleasure because there’s no pagne in champleasure! Tracey’s aged beast Miracle drove this day too close to home for her while Zoe had just put Milo to rest, a few weeks earlier. Let the Wake begin for all these gorgeous beasts!!! We toasted to Jenny and everything else, me dropping into bed, exhausted though satisfied for the moment.

The next day my girls met me at the women’s tub at 10,000 Waves Spa and I told the amazing story of Jenny. I have spent the past 3 days in walking meditation mostly, writing prolifically, crying intensely, taking her bones to our special places, and creating altars. The Dunes, thrown in The Waterfall, and today out to the sacred Indian spot where all 4 directions seemed to answer me in thunder. Meyraj just called and said he had dreamed that nite of a giant river with pyres all along it. The ghats of India. How appropriate.

Profile story in local weekly link...

Here's the link

http://sfreporter.com/articles/publish/cover-090507-hot-hot-hot.php