Cancer on Five Dollars a Day* *(chemo not included): How Humor Got Me through the Toughest Journey of My Life (13 page)

And so begins a series of alternative, sometimes far-out
distractions
.

I try acupuncture. I go to a Chinese woman in Phoenix who asks me to lie down on a table covered with what feels like butcher paper, then sticks about a thousand little needles into my legs, arms, stomach, ears, neck, and one in the middle of my forehead, the unicorn. She turns off the lights, fires up a couple of incense-burning candles, and puts on a Yanni CD.

“See you soon,” she says and leaves the room.

Immediately my thoughts turn dark, resting in that place I try to avoid, the place where all I can see and say is,
I’m gonna die if this shit doesn’t work. Never gonna see my kids, never gonna see my parents, never gonna—

And then she’s back. “How you doing?”

“Okay.” She begins pulling the needles out and I manage a peek at the clock. Over an hour has gone by. “
What
? Are you kidding? You were gone for an
hour
?”

“Yes. You were sleeping real good. Sorry I have to wake you up.”

This may not sound like much, but between the throwing up and the worrying about dying, I don’t get a lot of sleep. It turns out that acupuncture is more than a distraction.

It’s a gift.

I have less success with meditation. I try various deep-breathing exercises from yoga. Nothing works. My mind sails off into thoughts of death, darkness, and despair, resulting in horrifying bouts with the Big A, anxiety.

My parents want me to keep trying. Both are devotees of Transcendental Meditation and have been for years. They try to teach me how to block out everything in my mind and find nothingness. I close my eyes, focus on the color blue, and—nothing. I can’t do it. I’m a TM failure.

“Ma, it’s not working.”

“Try again, honey. It’s so worth it. Believe me.”

“I’m sure it is. But I’m just not one of those people. I can’t clear my mind.”

My mother looks around the room furtively, as if she’s a spy.

“Okay, look, I’m not really supposed to do this,” she says,

“but I’m gonna give you my mantra.”

“Your mantra? Ma, I’m so touched.”

“You can’t tell anybody because, well, you know—”

She looks around again, peeks over her shoulder.

“Why do you keep looking around like that? You think there’s secret mantra police? ‘Hey, where’d you get that mantra? That sounds an awful lot like the stolen mantra we gave your mom.’”

“This is serious, Robert.”

“What do think I’m gonna do, sell your mantra on eBay? I promise, it’s safe with me.”

“I trust you,” she says. “Okay. Here.” She whispers her mantra into my ear. She steps back and gives me a knowing little nod. I nod back and mouth, “Thank you.”

And then I try meditating using my mom’s mantra.

Nothing. I just can’t block anything out. The next day I say to her, “It didn’t work. Your mantra.”

“You’re kidding. I don’t believe it. It never fails.”

“Well, for you. For me, no.”

“I’m so disappointed.”

“Yeah, me, too. So, okay, how do I give it back?”

“You can keep it. I got another one.”

“Really? That’s so weird. I feel like we’re talking about a jacket.”

Of all the conversations I’ve had with my mother, this one is by far the strangest.

What does work, surprisingly, is guided meditation, also known as visualization. A friend tells me about a series of natural healing CDs that Dr. Andrew Weil has put out. Dr. Weil talks about the value of taking a cleansing breath, then following that by visualizing something that you really, really want. Which in my case is to live.

Dr. Weil himself narrates the CDs in his soothing baritone, managing to sound urgent and folksy at the same time. He makes you
want
to listen and then makes you feel as if the information he has to impart is vital. I’m hooked. After getting the breathing down, I try a visualization, guided by his voice, following his instructions.

“Close your eyes. Picture this. You’re down by the beach, and the ocean’s crashing onto the sand, and you can smell the salt in the air—”

I’m pulled in by his words and caught up in the picture that I paint in my mind. I am swept up and carried away. For the next hour I’m gone, sunk into the sand by that beach, lost, out of my head and cocooned away, far from my worries and my cancer, as close to being physically transported to some exotic location as I could possibly be without leaving my room.

When I come back from my hour at the beach, I feel relaxed, soothed, lightheaded. I start thinking,
Being at the beach felt so real. But it wasn’t real. It was all in my head.
So, then, what is reality? Isn’t the world you create in your mind reality,
your
reality? Do things really look the way they do? Or do we
create
things to look the way we want them? That’s called perception. Man, I am
tripping.

I do visualization every day. For me, it’s necessary. It amounts to a mini mind trip, a mental vacation. I always come back calmer, refreshed, and armed with new insight. My attitude shifts. I honestly feel that I am a lucky guy. The cancer has obviously upended me, thrown me for a loop, but it has also opened me up to so much that I could never have seen before.

I begin to reorder my priorities. I see that all my relationships are shifting and deepening, and I accept that. And my perception of life changes. I don’t look at cancer as a punishment for what I have done or not done in my life. Cancer just
is.
As crazy as it sounds, if I get through the chemo and kill the cancer, I will be grateful to it.

Vicki suggests that I try crystal therapy. She knows someone whose cousin is like the third-best crystal therapist in the Southwest.

“What do I have to do?” I ask Vicki.

“That’s the best part. Nothing. She comes to you. She brings everything, candles, music, and the crystals, of course. This could be very good for you, Robert. It’s all about connecting to your inner place of healing.”

“I don’t know. I’m open to almost anything, but this sounds wacky.”

“It’s not. Crystal therapy goes back thousands of years, to the ancient Hindus. Oh, one thing. She’s really booked up so the only time I could schedule her is tomorrow at two, and that’s when you’re supposed to be at the clinic.”

“Yeah, no problem. Let’s cancel my appointment at the clinic so I can spend the afternoon with some crazy lady and her rock collection. Like I would ever do that.”

So the next day at two I’m lying in bed with candles burning on my nightstand, while Inez, a woman in sandals and a flowing floral robe, hovers over me, her fists closed and bulging with crystals, Yanni singing from her portable CD player.

By the way, I’m pretty sure I’ve discovered the cure for cancer.

Yanni.

If I beat this thing, it’s because the cancer cells couldn’t stand Yanni anymore. They packed up and got the hell out of my body as fast as they could so they wouldn’t have to listen to any more of that music.

“How you doing, Robert?” Inez speaks in a superhigh voice loaded with sympathy. Her voice is birdlike. She chirps.

“Fine. Doing great.”

“That’s wonderful. Okay. What we’re going to do is locate your seven chakras. You know what a chakra is?”

“An ice cream flavor?”

Inez chirps, “Not quite. Your seven chakras are the areas in your body that need to be aligned and in balance to promote health and healing. They’re your meditative spots. Including, by the way, your third eye. Your disease blocks your chakras, clogs them up, so to speak. The crystals, specifically the one you choose, will help in the unclogging, alignment, and balancing. Understand?”

I don’t have the vaguest idea what she’s talking about. “Got it,” I say.

“Great. Robert, you’re very spiritual.” Chirp, chirp, chirp.

“Okay, now close your eyes.”

I do. I smell a whiff of strawberry wafting over from the candles. Behind me, Yanni’s yowling as if he’s got somebody’s thumb up his ass.

“Now, I want you to hold out your hands. At the same time, I’m going to hold out a selection of crystals. With your eyes closed, pick one.”

“What am I feeling for?”

“The right one. For you.” She pauses. “I don’t have to say anything more. You’ll just know.”

I shrug and close my eyes. I wonder how this would look to Dr. Lugo if he walked in now. Not sure I’d be able to explain the crystal lady to him. I might just go with,
Okay, doc, here’s the truth. I’m an easy mark.

“Robert,” Inez tweets, “the main thing is to clear your mind. Don’t think.
Feel.
”

I nod and reach out my hand. My fingers fumble through the crystals in Inez’s hand, four or five cool, smooth, jagged little torpedoes. I touch each of them, and then I feel my fingers involuntarily closing around one near the hook of her thumb.

“This one,” I say. “Yeah. This is the one.”

“
Per
fect,” Inez trills.

I open my eyes and observe the pale blue stone pressed into my palm.

“You’ve chosen kyanite,” she says. “Kyanite is the absolute best stone for aligning the chakras. And it helps you communicate with your spirit guides and angels.”

“Sounds like I’m already dead.”

“Not quite,” Inez says.

“Just curious,” I say, rolling my crystal around in my fingers. “How much does one of these cost? Roughly.”

“The kyanite is one of your less expensive stones. The top price is only about eighty dollars. Then, of course, you can always add a setting, for a ring, say, or a necklace, and that’ll drive the price up. I actually brought a catalogue. We sell the stones, and accessories as well.”

“Eighty bucks, huh? Seems like a bargain for something that allows me to communicate with my spirit guide.”

“I
know.
Good thing you didn’t choose amethyst. Those can run you over two thousand dollars.” Inez laughs. Then shifts into a tone that’s all business. “Okay, Robert, I want you to lie down, close your eyes, hold your kyanite stone to your chest, and try to focus only on your crystal. Concentrate on it. Give it your full attention. Can you do that?”

“I’ll try.”

“I’ll guide you through it,” Inez says.

I happily go with her. She, too, chooses to send me off on a sandy beach under a soft, soothing blue sky. Fine by me. I love the ocean. I feel connected to it. In fact, I make a promise to myself right then, an instant before I drift off to the melodic sounds of Inez’s chirping.

If I make it through this, I’m going to buy a house on the beach and I’m going to live there for a year, no matter what it costs. I don’t care if I have to sell my car and everything else I own. I’m going to do it. I owe it to myself. And I’m not going to put it off, because one thing I’ve learned, you never know what the future holds. You have to give yourself permission to live life to its fullest. Living on the beach. That’s the one thing I have to do.