(This piece was written thirteen years ago before my first or second brain surgeries. and nine years before the cancer I now live with moved in to stay.)

Humor, Life and Death

A Fictional, Non-Fiction, Reality-Essay, Short Story…Not.

Angle of view, distance of time, tension for too long contained–so many geometric shifts of mind can contort any emotion into its opposite.

On June 7th of this year, In Omaha, Nebraska, I stood backstage, preparing to deliver a talk entitled  “Lighten Up and Live” before an audience of over 500 cancer survivors and their families.  That presentation was an installment on a debt that will never be fully repaid.  Because, for more than a decade, it has been my volunteer work with cancer and Aids patients that has, literally, granted me a new career and a constantly renewed sense of joy in being alive.  As the Master of Ceremonies began to tell the audience about the afternoon’s program, my mind wandered back to how my debt to these survivors had been incurred.

In 1978, while I was researching material for a television special on the Center for Attitudinal Healing in Tiburon, California, a young cancer patient turned my world upside down.  That boy, I’ll call him Todd, approached me one day at a gathering of young cancer patients, their families and friends.

I had drawn away from the group to be alone on the porch and ponder a disquieting question: How could those people–all of whom had one problem that made my difficulties seem incidental–maintain such a sense of compassion, joy and hope?  It seemed “unrealistic” to me.  After all, I knew that the world was a dark and dangerous place.  I had learned that lesson early, and had nurtured it for more than thirty years.  I hadn’t noticed Todd approaching me, and was startled when he tugged on my jacket to get my attention.

He was very frail, completely bald-headed and his eyes were focused on me with a disquieting intensity.  He made me very nervous.

“What do you want?” I asked in a tone more irritable than I intended.

“You don’t look to good,” he said hesitantly, “you wanna come in and sit down?”

I was stunned.  This kid, who had obviously suffered a great deal in his bout with cancer, was worried about me?  He thought I didn’t look good?

(It didn’t occur to me until years later, after I had learned more about cancer treatment and patients, who because I was bald, he thought I was a cancer patient, too.)

Before I could respond he took my hand and almost whispered, “Do you hurt much?”

Well, I lost it.  I started to cry because I thought that, somehow, this child had seen my soul, and knew it was maimed.

As I pretended to cough and try to hold back the tears, Todd said,  “It’s okay, I was scared in the beginning, too.  If you want to talk to me or my folks, we’re in there by the fireplace.”

He let go of my hand, patted me the back with his small hand, grinned and said, “Hey, we’re here to help each other, so, lighten up!”  Then he grinned and left me

Lighten up?  I asked myself.  Lighten up?  How could he say that?  What did he know that I didn’t?

Well, it’s been nearly fifteen years, and I’m still learning from people like Todd.  That’s why, whenever my schedule permits, I attempt to repay the patients, their families, hospice volunteers and professional healthcare providers, for the lessons I continue to learn.  And every time I speak to people like the Survivor’s Day group in Omaha, I learn even more about the enormous strength, tenacity endurance and, yes, even humor, that it takes to cope with and frequently survive the threat of cancer.

Since 1983 I have built a business with a worldwide corporate clientele that is based on what I’ve learned from my hospice experience.  So, my hospice friends, clients and co-workers not only changed my life but, through our business, they have affected the lives of literally millions of others.  That is why my thanks can never fully be repaid; and, that is why I went to Omaha for Cancer Survivors Day.

The Omaha event was sponsored by a mutual effort of local area hospitals.  Those hospitals had set aside their competitive interests to help cancer survivors celebrate and communicate a message of healing and hope to thousands of others, a message was put succinctly by Ms. Pam McCoy when she was honored with the Spirit of Survivorship award prior to my presentation.

“Just because they say you have cancer,” she said, “doesn’t mean you have to die.”

Pam received the award, among other reasons, for her service to fellow patients.  During her radiation and chemo treatments, she noticed that some people were missing appointments because they were too tired to drive to see a doctor.  While still coping with her own disease, she applied for a job driving a van for Bergan Mercy Hospital that takes patients to receive treatment.

I wasn’t surprised by her altruistic efforts.  As I stood backstage, I recalled that  the people who seem to do best when coping with illness, are those who pay as much attention to helping others as they do to helping themselves.  I would learn that  when we reach out to others we are affirming the value and sanctity of life, as well as manifesting the respect and love which nourish us all when things are difficult.  And, through her volunteer work, this woman was accessing another common denominator of many survivors–involvement in a community of understanding peers who share common problems and solutions.  Pam’s next words completed the picture of survivors that I had seen evolve over the years.

“I believe we’re called here for a purpose,” Ms. McCoy told her audience.  “But before you can help anyone with anything, you have to be able to laugh at yourself.  Life’s too short to be on a serious roller coaster all of the time.”

Since the children and their families at the Center for Attitudinal Healing had embraced me in 1978, I have continued to see that sense of purpose, that ability to make their experience count for something, as a hallmark of survivors.  And, through it all, I have seen a remarkable capacity for humor underscore a renewed sense of joy in life–even in the most difficult situations that some patients must confront.

As the audience rose to offer Pat McCoy a standing ovation, I remembered literally dozens of moments encapsulated in my memory of how many cancer patients use humor to disarm their fears, to find absurdity in the things that threaten them, and thereby gain control.  And, I thought of how I had come to Omaha to return that gift to this audience of survivors.

Oh, I wasn’t going to teach them how to tell jokes–that’s comedy, and comedy is an art form I had learned that humor was a set of developed skills which were common among people who remain creative under pressure; skills that were shared by those who survived unbroken by the crisis, chaos and change of human experience.

I certainly didn’t intend to tell them that humor skills would make anyone live a long time.  After all, if humor made us live  longer, where did all those bitter, nasty people we know come from?  Besides, I had seen some of the most upbeat, joyful, humor filled souls I knew die.  But, they had died in ways that magnified and uplifted those around them.

The applause ebbed as Pat returned to her seat.  I heard someone begin to introduce me.  Quickly, I ran through the elements that Pat had reminded me of which seem so common among not only cancer survivors, but among those who survive the multitude of trials we will all face in some way.

1)  They are actively altruistic.  They spend as much time helping others as they do attending to their own needs; they exhibit an avid desire to make their experience count for something.

2) They are sustained by a higher power of some kind, some sense of their part in a Divine Mystery that defies human comprehension.

3) They have, or develop, a vivid imagination that allows them to literally “see” their way through difficulty, and achieve a most powerful strength of unreasonable, logic defying being.

4) They are involved in a community of individuals where pain, hope, problems and solutions are shared.

5) They discipline themselves to focus on, nourish and sustain their sense of humor and joy in being alive.  They learn to take their disease, problem or job seriously while taking themselves lightly–so, they never become their problem.

As the MC continued my introduction, I realized that one young boy who reached out to me in Tiburon in 1978 had illuminated all five of those elements.

When I walked out on stage to speak to the Cancer Survivors Day group, I realized that just being there was going to give me more than I could offer in return.  It’s odd really.  A debt that grows larger and less burdensome every time I make a payment.  What a gift.

©  C.W.Metcalf  6/15/92

In my last letter, I mentioned how “Dancing With The Cancer Bear” came to be a metaphor for the continuing journey I have been on since May of 2003; that was when I was first diagnosed with a case of AML so advanced that I was “beyond medical help”. Well, medical help did help, but since then several doctors have told me that medical assistance could not keep me alive beyond, oh, anywhere from 48 hours to 30 days to a few months. After so many people have written asking what “alternative care” has made the difference, I feel it is time to respond.

First, the term “alternative care,” means nothing to me. I understand caring, and I have received care from a wide variety of approaches including Western allopathic to homeopathic, acupuncture, Chinese herbalism, Native American ceremonies, a broad range of Spiritual teaching, and far more.

Second, it would be misleading and dangerous for me to suggest that anything I have done would be of value to others. I do believe that anyone’s perspective and/or persistence alters whatever external approaches are taken. (Other factors would include family history, genetic encoding, personal support, and a list of multiple determinants unknown to me.)

Finally, what I have done cannot be proven to have had any effect what so ever. The care I received from at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, CA, undoubtedly supported my 8-month journey into remission from AML. Subsequent support from health-care professionals at Virginia Mason in Seattle, WA, and Torrance Memorial Medical Center in CA, continues to be a major part of my ongoing treatment.

In conjunction with the support of friends, family and Spiritual allies, the following approaches appear to have helped. They are offered only for your consideration and should not be considered as recommended. (I am not a doctor, a shaman, or an herbalist, and my major television appearance was as a clown on “Happy Days”).

My research and interviews with others in the community of cancer dancers led me, in June of 2005, to two treatments that I have been deeply involved in ever since.

The first is based on the evolving science of glyconutrients, and involves plant-based products distributed by Mannatech. You can learn more at:

www.mannapages.com/jkintl

The second is grounded in research still considered incomplete by nearly everyone in the medical community. Below are a series of sites regarding Rife technology, including a negative view from “quackwatch.org”.

http://www.rife.org/

http://www.rense.com/health/rife.htm

http://www.royalrife.com/

http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/News/rife.html

Just this year I was introduced to a well-researched approach to therapy called Somatic Experiencing; the benefits for me have been very positive, and anyone interested can learn more at:

http://www.traumahealing.com/

Without hesitation I can offer what I have come to call the Three “P’s:” Prayer, Perspective and Persistence.

None of the above is anything more than a story; it is my story and I would appreciate hearing anyone else’s.

©C.W. Metcalf 2 March 2007

Why A Bear?

The “Dancing with the Cancer Bear” image came to me during my nearly four-week ICU vacation in May of 2003. I was unable to speak or do much more than scrawl
illegibly on a chalkboard, and my maternal grandfather paid me a brief
visit. The visit was particularly notable because Grandpa Roy had died fifty years previously, not long after I was born. In fact, he had to introduce himself, which he
did by showing me an old tin-type photo of himself and my grandmother that I had
seen on her mantle as a young boy.

“When ya dance with The Bear,” he said softly–so as not to disturb the
other patients, I presume–“Ya don’t get to take no break; ya have ta keep
dancin’ ’til the bastard drops.”

It is still my most vivid memory of ICU—well, besides that I-could-almost-swear-it-really-happened hallucination about Jack Bauer sneaking in to break me out.

These letters began as a way of communicating with friends, family, and
benefactors whose support, both spiritual and financial, literally helped
save my life. They continue as a tribute to the remarkable people I have
bumped into on various dance floors along the way.

C.W. Metcalf 1 Feb. 07

BEEN DYING SO LONG, IT LOOKS LIKE LIVING TO ME!

Okay, I understand that a lot of people are beginning to wonder if I have, or ever did have, cancer. After all, isn’t four years a long time for one guy to be terminal with leukemia? (I have to admit that there was that ersatz cancer back in the 70’s when a doctor diagnosed an x-ray shadow as “a remotely possible bone cancer.” I never went back for a biopsy, but I set about dying for a year or two of what, eventually, turned out to be a “dense bone mass due to an old injury.” That was several years before I got clean and sober. In truth, I suffered from a damned-near terminal case of dramatic indulgence and self-pity. And no, I don’t want to talk about karma right now.)

That was then, and this is now. In a fairly recent now–November 28, 2006, to be exact–oncologist Dr. Hool gave me the results of my latest bone marrow biopsy: After almost three years of fluctuating symptoms, I was officially out of remission. I was immediately signed up for Hospice Care. Depression set in, and that was at the high end of my emotional range.

For a few months prior to that November visit, my bone pain had increased to an almost crippling degree. Lethargy led me to sleep 16 to 18 hours out of every 24. The post-diagnostic depression did not help. On the upside, my insurance didn’t run out until March of ‘07, and my home health care was covered. Still, something was missing.
Ah, yes . . . resignation!

I just couldn’t embrace the supposed reality of my impending death. Since my 8-month hospitalization for AML in 2003, I have collected several doctors’ signatures on forms that claim I had anywhere from 48 hours to a few weeks or months to live. Some of those verdicts made me angry or mildly depressed, but I always found strength in “The Three P’s”: Perspective, Persistence and Prayer. Okay, so I was in denial; I was unrealistic, I was an idiot. I heard all of those too, but they didn’t stop me. Instead, I discovered emotional gifts and possibilities that made me more determined than ever not to give up. I trudged back up the soggy, brick road to the alternative doctor I reverently call my “Seattle Quack.”

The Quack took me on in June of ‘05, when one of the most prestigious cancer care centers in the country told me that I didn’t qualify for a marrow transplant and could only be offered palliative care (which, in case you haven’t heard the term yet, means “pain pills until you die.”) Under the Quack’s care my pain lessened, at least most of the time, and hey, I stayed alive.

Last November the Quack retested me, shifted my supplements and tinctures, and put me back on the Rife machine I had so idiotically sold when I left Seattle in May of ‘06. (Hey, I was better! What did I need with that machine any more? Besides, according to decades of antagonistic testing, the technology didn’t work anyway. I had signed a release attesting to my knowledge of that “fact” when treatment first began. I think it was something required by the government, whose faithful public servants look askew at cancer improvements outside of the drug companies’ purview: oops, where’d that soapbox come from?)

Within a few weeks of my new regimen, I had cut my pain meds in half and I was only sleeping 12 of every 24 hours.

As chance would have it, I then took a meeting on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA, with a group of people—most of whom I had never met before—which super-fueled the healing process.

The Agency Speakers, a talent management agency that had impressed me with rare qualities of ethical, moral and compassionate consideration for both their talent and their clients, had invited me to join their roster. The other speakers were kind enough to fly from around the country to meet near where I am now living.

Halfway through the second day in mid-December 2006, I realized I wasn’t so tired and had forgotten to take any pain medication. Our group was on the verge of creating an organization I had only dreamed of since my public speaking career had discovered me nearly 25 years ago. (For more information, click on •Agency Speakers Associates, when you return to the Blog site.)

My revitalized health regimen, plus a new focus on reinventing myself as part of a team designed to make a difference in the world, seems to have recharged my Spirit engine.

Oh, I’m still out of remission, but my January 8, 2007 visit with Dr. Hool revealed that the progression of my illness has virtually stalled, and I am, in my esteemed doctor’s words, “Looking healthier than I’ve seen you in months.”

Sure, it could all go south tomorrow, but who knows? Perhaps south is in the direction of healing. The Cancer Bear and I are still dancing, but at least I’m leading. Again.

Thursday, May 18th, 2006

Since my search for healing led me to leave my home in June of 04, I have been housed by Grace and the kindness of friends; I have lived in everything from a palatial, walled estate, to a Winnebago motor home, and now dwell in a new city the site and name of which is, like so much which has evolved from my altered perspective, irrelevant.

As I write this it is exactly three years since I first entered the hospital and my family was told “…any treatment would only prolong his suffering.” They chose, as I would have, to prolong my suffering. It was the first of at least seven, official, written prognostications over time that I would be dead in a matter of hours to months. The physical suffering continues, at a much-reduced intensity; along the way I have experienced a range of agonies from physical and psychological to perceptive and spiritual. That “suffering” has also become irrelevant.

What is now significant has more to do with silence, Divine Mystery and a new understanding of Love, although within that embrace are also laughable absurdity, deceit and the morphing story of my truth.

On Your Mark… Personal research has shown me that most people who experience the kind of suffering and profound “near death experiences” I have known go, within about six months, from a renewed sense of elation and hope right back to the previously rutted story of their. Of the small percentage who maintain and take continued action to manifest a new vision of life, about half apparently become so enamored of their new story as to border on what I perceive to be zealous idiots, self-deceived hustlers, or well-meaning fools. They become celebrities speaking for the dead, or they found cults that feed on the desperation of others to “know” about an afterlife. (My judgments exist because I am still evolving, finding deceit in others and myself a most common behavior.) Other survivors move from appreciative and less materially obsessed to an evolving spiritual introspection that manifests itself in a variety of positive ways.One woman I have spoken with quit her job as a corporate executive and has devoted her life to Hospice volunteer work where her peers and clients alike, consider her to be the most compassionate and calming of individuals. Another man chose to use his considerable, corporate power to begin creating what he calls “the compassionate workplace.”Prior to my various dances with two craniotomies, three cancers and seven flat-line events I was a public speaker and, depending upon whom you to talked to, everything from a self-obsessed egoist who bordered on being a pathological liar, to a gregarious and helpful man. (Probably all of those descriptions were fitting to a degree.) What has changed? The first thing I noticed was the overwhelming content of deceit in human interactions, beginning with my own. I had an abrupt awareness of how barely a sentence came out of my mouth that did not contain some element of deceit. I had always had difficulty with “white lies,” I.E: acceptable deceits such as “dinner was terrific, Aunt Marge, “ when one would have rather eaten live snails dipped in rancid butter; or, “Fat? No, that dress makes you look quite seductive. I grew up a liar in a house where lies were commonplace: “Daddy is face down in his soup because he is tired,” rather than “Daddy is drunk,” I attended public schools and churches where I was acutely aware that the same people who professed high moral conduct were also those who sexually molested me. Then there were the standard locker room lies, and constant proof that the leaders of our country were non-stop liars.Okay, so I lied, but it was to spare you being hurt (a clever disguise for not feeling my own potential pain) or to make myself seem more than the loser I feared being. That habit pattern continued until I got clean and sober in 1982; still, it was so ingrained that when I made an attempt to become more honest my modest progress was tempered by the fact that I achieved cleverly sublimated forms of self-deception. The two craniotomies, in 1996 and 2002, stripped away more of the excuses and I was convinced that I had become a more honest man. Then the Cancer Bear grabbed me for a slam-danceathon that took everything God, my friends and I had to survive. The Dance became a slow and painful Gavotte after my release from the hospital just before Christmas of 2003. Honesty was less an issue than simply surviving, or so I thought. Not so slowly, those things that I had felt were precious to me were stripped away. First, I had to leave my family to seek treatment. I have not lived at home for nearly two years, and I miss my young children so much that to write of it still dissolves me to tears. Second, the avalanche of expenses combined with my limited, and eventual inability to work, reduced me from a paper millionaire to a literal pauper within a matter of months. Third, The Dance oscillated between apparent triumph and disaster so often that my sense of hope was often impaired. It was not until I made the decision to live, and cease focusing on out dancing the damned bear, that I experienced a depth of spiritual awakening which had evaded me.

Get Set…. My new and trusted oncologist asked that I apply for disability as travel and being around large groups of people, which was central to my work, threatened my compromised immune system. So much time was being spent on paying the monthly bills I had accrued, trips to and from various clinics and simply getting through a day that I was focused on staying alive but I was not living! I decided to live. I would work, although I would not pay myself for such efforts, but would make moves toward establishing an investment or non-profit structure that would offer me just enough in dividends or management fees to offset what disability pay I might qualify for. I would simplify my life even further to make more time for working with others, meditation, the world of streams, deep woods and languages of wind; I would open myself up to the possibilities of a social life which I had avoided. At present, I am beginning to manifest all of those changes. Which returns me to what has changed.

STOP! The story of my life has changed. It was, as are all the stories we make up about ourselves, mutable to begin with but I had failed to realize that. The wisdom of Thomas Szas has come home: “The self is not something one discovers, it is something one creates.” The self I am recreating gets honest more quickly, is more tolerant of the deceits I see manifest in human existence, and is focused more on living a life of service than staying alive and waiting to see what I will do if I live. Silence is more a daily part of my life as I practice a form of Buddhist meditation called Za Zen; physical exercise, which I had avoided out of fear of injury, is now manifest as a way of making myself stronger and more useful to others. The story of my life is just that, a story, and I see it from a bemused place of detachment, a form of what writers have dubbed “infotainment,” that teaches and entertains. Where, what and who I am becomes less relevant than what I am being at any given moment. I like this story and will continue to observe and report on it. I invite anyone who cares to do so to submit their stories for possible inclusion in a community of stories that might help us all to be of service to one another.

In Love, Light and Mystery, C.W. Metcalf

APRIL 21, 2004 THE ART OF LIVING
Although the leukemia that tried so hard to kill me on various occasions throughout last year has gone into remission, I still make monthly visits for tests. I have twenty months of such trips to the lab, without a return of cancer cells, before I am considered to be in abstract remission. Abstract remission is a wonderful phrase; it simply means that, because of the original depth of my illness, and the frequency of my disagreements with physicians who told my wife I would die, any remission is considered improbable, and not likely to last.

The phrase has led me to see myself as an abstract work of art, and to realize that any life is a work of art. Human lives are self portraits with numerous, unintended elements: the winds of change blow a paint can over, and abruptly our canvas is spattered; there is an earthquake of great emotional magnitude, and the canvas topples, creating a smeared edge; there are periods of joy which lead to grand arcs of color, and there are periods of pain that show themselves in dark blacks and browns, sometimes ripping gauges in the portrait we are creating.

Some days I am Picasso, and my life is a cubic confusion of shapes and twisted embodiments of humanity, which delight and confuse me. Other days I am a Zen composition by Mark Rothko, rendered in simple colors and shapes that bring me peace. Even on darker days I am Pollock’s Lavender Mist: Number 1, 1950, with shades of lavender and white promise glimmering through the blackness.

I am preparing to return to my speaking work, road trips and audiences composed of artists whose life canvases have been shredded by the new, Global Community of terrorism. My intention is to grant everyone I meet a new understanding of how to control the palette of colors and shapes they use to create their self-portraits.

Finally, the way we choose to live our lives is the greatest artistic challenge we face. Should we choose shades of fear, misery, desire and egotism, we will leave behind an attic full of shame and death. If we work with the hues of altruism, community, humor, imagination and Divine Luck, we will leave a legacy of joy in the gallery of souls we have known and loved.

I wish you all the broad canvas of Light and Hope.

C.W. Metcalf

JANUARY 25, 2004

On January 22nd, the first marrow test since my last round of chemotherapy was clear at one unit per 50,000. The doctor rushed the results, as she was very happy, and surprised. What this means is that I have monthly blood tests for 24 months; if those remain clear, I will be in remission after two years. There are great odds against that happening, as she was careful to point out. However, she also pointed out that I was “a very special person,” who had come farther than anyone expected given the depth of my illness. She could offer no prognosis on my chances for success except to say, “you are not in any books on the illness, because no one has come back from as far down as you were. Just enjoy the days you are given because you are as close to a miracle as I have ever seen.”

It is almost exactly eight months ago that my wife, Angela, drove me from our mountain home in Idyllwild, CA, fifty-six miles down Highway 74 to Eisenhower Hospital in Palm Desert. According to my blood counts I was clinically dead. When I finally keeled over and they put me on the ventilator to keep me breathing, I began a trip down the River Styx to my Dance with the Cancer Bear. I recall the first few weeks in a series of drug-induced visions of demons and madness.

I had the last of my five, week & SHY;long, chemotherapy treatments in early December. After seven months on a trip that tested and taught me more than I thought myself capable of withstanding, I was released from the hospital on Christmas Eve of 2003. I would be home with my wife and two little girls on Christmas morning.

There were gifts, thanks to the generosity of my in-laws and the dozens of people who had been donating to the Metcalf Family Fund. I was humbled and grateful for that. Christmas day was cool, but rays of sunlight scattered brightness in a contest with the tree lights. It was the beginning of my recovery.

That recovery continues to this day, more than a month after my release into the world at large. My body finds new and perverse ways of reminding me, on a daily basis, that I am still in recovery from high doses of chemotherapy liquids that had been sloughed through my veins for seven months. So why am I mostly optimistic?

Adult Leukemia is much like a horrid microcosm of life: for all of the controls we delude ourselves into thinking we have, we have only two. We can control how we choose to think or act, and we can control our reaction to whatever outcome may present itself. That’s it. That is why I repeat again here, on our web site, and in most every conversation I have with myself. “The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Viktor Frankel

I am alive because of a chain of miracles: prayers offered up by so many; new and old friends who stood by me; the doctors and nurses who cared; the people who have been so very generous with their donations; and, most of all, to my wife. Beset by so many new challenges, Angela remained ferociously loyal, devoted and has acted as my defense against the many problems that can arise from confusion and simple idiocy in any hospital.
Altruism, Community, Humor, Imagination and Divine Luck, the very skills that I had been teaching others for so long came back to rescue me.

New Year? Life is too precious, tenuous, and warped with wonder to celebrate once a year. So, I wish for you a Happy New Day, New Night, and New Breath.

C.W. Metcalf

Monday, December 22nd, 2003

NEW FAMILY
After 50 years I had finally found the family I longed for. For the past eight years they have became my rock. Angela is the strongest, most resilient and spiritually powerful woman I had ever known. She brought two little girls with her, Melissa and Chloe. I was a daddy again, and I loved it. My girls are not allowed to visit often, as my immune system is particularly susceptible to potent kid germs. When they did come by, they were the best medicine in God’s world.

Watching the strain build in my family over several months is heart breaking. Angela remains loyal and determined, but I know she is exhausted. The girls began having nightmares that I died and was buried out back where we had interred our first Dog, Jazmyn and subsequent critters.

I went from a playful bald guy to a grumpy, sick, old man. The girls pitched in, but they had lost mommy¹s attention to me, and they had lost me to the Cancer Bear. It has not been easy for any of us. So, I ask them to help me find gifts in the foul jaws of the monster bear. We look for what we¹ve been given, not what we lost. Chloe said it best: “We really know now how much we love each other more.” Melissa experiences it, naturally
enough from a twelve-year-old perspective, and thought the best thing about it all was that she got to spend more time with her girl friends. Both of them know I may die, and it is very difficult for them. They both know I may live and they have decided to “love me to life”.

This illness has taken me closer to the bone of my beliefs, tested me in ways I was unprepared for, brought me closer to a spiritual understanding of life and, at times, reduced me to a state of complete, sobbing numbness.

The crooked paths through depression, hope, faith, and mystery have all expanded my awareness. I now see that grieving is a crucial part of life’s celebration, and the rhythm of healing includes misery, laughter, tears, joy, and suffering: it includes how those elements blend our lessons into a ritual dance of caring or collapse Those lessons are what I¹ve tried to bring to my website and the products offered there. Despite the flat-line
stories told by my monitors and machines, I have had no near death moments, I have had only near life experiences.

C.W. Metcalf

Sunday, December 21st, 2003

I am writing this from the hospital room where I’ve spent most of the past seven months. After two, unrelated, major brain surgeries in 1996 and 2002, I thought my lessons were learned: evidently not, as I have been in treatment for AML, an advanced form of Adult Leukemia. I have just finished my last of five chemotherapy treatments, and in a few weeks, we’ll find out who drops first, the Bear or me. The press knows me as a Change and Stress Management expert, whose most popular presentation has been “Humor, Risk and Change,” Now, having been offered the gift of practicing what I preach, I’ve learned a good deal more than I ever expected or wanted to know. NEW FRIENDS In this ward I have experienced the death of patients who had became friends. I have seen and been through a dozen lifetimes of miracles and torments. Dilly was 76 when she was diagnosed with inoperable, terminal cancer and was given six months to live. I met her when she was put in the bed across the hall. She was 86. Grinning despite torturous pain, one of the last things she said to me, was: “Tell you what, Charlie, the last ten years have been the best, damned six months of my life.” I have watched families laugh together at unexpected good news, while others have been stunned into near paralysis when confronted directly with the reality of death. One night, I held tight to a railing so that I could support a man who cried until he passed out from hyperventilating: his wife of thirty years had died suddenly, while he was out having dinner. Then there was the shaking, slack-jawed alcoholic they brought into the cancer ward to dry out. The only empty bed in the hospital was right next to mine. I’ve been sober and clean for nearly 23 years. He was just what I needed; I had not worked with a new person in months, and doing is so is critical to my own sobriety. He was also from my same little town and I would be able to continue working with him.

Friday, November 21st, 2003

I have finished the last of my chemotherapy treatments and now it is a waiting game to see how long it takes for my blood counts to return to normal.

The process has been agonizingly slow. My concerns of late have had more to do with mental rather than physical challenges. Seven months of daily doubt, wonder and an unending variation of complications has dented my perspective and spirit. Hope, meditation, and prayer have been my surest allies.

For the Holiday Season, I offer you all hope meditation and prayer when the world, or just another individual, poses a threat to your serenity.

It is a time of rebirth, moving from darkness to light and remembering that your “To Do” list is not nearly as important as your “To Be” list.
Charley (AKA C.W.) Metcalf