Eloquent Silence (45 page)

Last night I lay awake counting all the people I know who have been diagnosed with cancer in the last twelve to eighteen months. The total, just off the top of my head, was thirteen.  The breakdown was this: four for skin cancer, one for blood cancer, three for bowel cancer, two for breast cancer, one for liver cancer, one pancreatic cancer and one testicular cancer. Strangely, no lung cancer even though smokers abounded until the last decade or so.

Some of these people were in the advanced stages when they discovered their illness and have crossed over during the period mentioned.  Some have chosen to go the whole mile with radiation and chemotherapy. Others are presently well or their cancers are in remission. People with skin cancer are very much aware of the likelihood of repeated problems. While the majority of sufferers chose recommended treatments, others opted not to undergo any treatment after surgery.

I am certain that you have similar statistics within your immediate family, circle of friends and acquaintances.

My own problem began some years ago—maybe five or six.  I was caring for my aged and dementing mother. The situation was fraught with sadness and tension. I suffered bouts of depression with each stage she passed through as she deteriorated with her dementia.

Somewhere along the line I started to suffer from nausea, but I have no way of pinpointing the specific time frame at this late stage. Taking blood pressure medication and sleeping tablets meant that I was constantly under medical supervision, and on reporting the nausea, my General Practitioner wrote a script for Stematil. There is nothing wrong with this medication when used to treat a problem, but in this case only the symptoms were treated, not the cause.

Now we had a pattern, my doctor and I. Each month we had a genial little consultation, I regularly received my script for Stematil along with my other medications.

Then I became even sicker. Maxolon was prescribed. Whether I was perceived as being the victim of ‘nerves ’ or depression, having neurotic tendencies or simply suffering from a need for attention I don’t know, but no diagnostic tests were ever ordered. Perhaps I was simply a middle-aged woman with a tendency toward hypochondria? Who knows?

In January 2000 I had some bleeding from the bowel. A colonoscopy was ordered but no investigation of the stomach problem. The nausea that was by this time, often debilitating. The colonoscopy showed that my hemorrhoids, (a 40 year battle) had broken open once more. No surprises there, but no explanation of my unsettled stomach, either. My condition remained a mystery to me but my doctor was not interested. It was really the least of his worries and he plainly made me feel this.

For some years my family had been trying to persuade me to leave this particular practitioner but not knowing where else to go, I had remained with him. I had been his patient for ten years; I liked him, had faith in him and considered him to be a friend—on a professional basis, of course.

Earlier, he had practiced alone and had time to chat a little, this charismatic man with his deep brown eyes and thatch of brown hair sprouting a little gray. I had the impression he was trying to cure me even though he was not getting to the root cause of the trouble but continued to treat only the symptoms. He confidently assured me I would be better soon. Meanwhile, continue taking the tablets, said he.

A large, new medical clinic opened in a new shopping mall and he was offered the option of being in charge. After consideration, he decided to take up the proposal.  From here on our relationship went rapidly downhill as he became increasingly under pressure, spending less and less time conducting each consultation. In and out in three or four minutes with never a blood pressure, weight or blood glucose check.

I had recently remarried. In desperation, not feeling any better regardless of religiously taking the medication and not knowing what else to do, I left my doctor and went to my husband’s GP. From here on I began to receive the attention I so sorely needed. The new doctor conducted a battery of tests, amongst them a breath test. This is a comparatively simple procedure that consists of measuring the level of bacteria in the stomach by blowing into a receptacle.

A level of 3.5 is considered a positive result for the Heliobacter pylori infection. My result was 33.5 and was immediately started on a course of five different antibiotics as well as proton pump inhibitors. This was followed by a gastroscopy every six months, then annually.

My new doctor, my hero whom I firmly believed saved my life,  said the main cause of infection was usually in our drinking water, often from rain water tanks that can be full of nasties. Bird and bat droppings, dust and rotting vegetation. He claims everyone who has a rain water tank should also have a slush tank to catch the first water from the roof which should then be thrown out. Before the rain water is consumed it should be boiled for three minutes. He prefers town water which is treated and therefore less likely to be contaminated. This is what I drink at all times now.

In February, 2001 I was informed that the gastric ulcers caused by the Heliobacter Pylori infection were now showing a condition known as Barret’s Disease, a precursor to cancer. I battled on, trying to eat food that would not aggravate the ulcers. Barret’s Disease is incurable, but never before have I had to have a biopsy for which I have had to wait six days for the results.

When the results come I know it will make little difference as I will have to suffer this tension year after year. Even if the gastric ulcers heal, the Barret’s will not, and if it turns cancerous, cancer of the oesophagus is particularly hard to treat and is a very difficult, painful way to leave this earth.

So to those of you who are in doubt about the medical treatment you are receiving, I would say, get another opinion. If your doctor is not addressing the cause of your illness but is glossing over the symptoms, take your business elsewhere. Find a doctor who will run tests and who will, above all, view your case as an individual, not lump you into a category according to your age and sex, e.g. menopausal, neurotic or hypochondriacal.

Maybe I’ll be number 14 on my list and maybe that could have been avoided if I had received the help I needed before my digestive tract became severely ulcerated and so badly affected. Don’t let this happen to you. Ask, push, and demand until you receive answers. Above all, try to take responsibility for your own health and don’t be dictated to. (Oops! The cardinal sin of ending a sentence with a preposition).

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H
ow is it that some of us accept the answers to the questions of ‘Life’ spoon-fed to us from birth. Others accept them but know there’s a lot more going on than we are ever going to be told about.

When do we begin to query? What causes some of us to thrust our hand into the unseen fire, induces us to sample the forbidden fruit, causes us to rail against the authority of religion and to plunge headlong into the unknowable?

Where do we find the path that we can walk along with greater surety than is shown to us through the confines of the churches? Where does that gut feeling come from that the church is eclectic about the information that it is feeding to us? Does it really matter in the long term? Is there anything else that really matters by comparison?

Why not back off and go along with the crowd?

Why do we have to
know
, to probe, to delve, beat around until we finally come up with the feeling that we have found a set of values we can take comfort in? That sit right with us? Why can’t we simply be like everyone else? Why be driven to investigate a matter that would once have had us burnt at a stake as a heretic or a witch?

Around my mid-twenties the notion settled upon me that life was never going to be the cut and dried, happily ever after set up that I had imagined in my girlhood dreams. Reality hits us all in the face in it’s own good time and each of us reacts differently, both outwardly and inwardly.

Always conscious of a strong God-presence in my life, at that time I was attending church regularly and teaching Sunday School—and for a further ten years or so. But deep inside there was a feeling there was more to Life and Death than anyone was telling me about, nor would they let on unless I ascertained the truth for myself.

For me it all began with Egypt. Forever with my head in a book, I was going through a non-fiction period, a phase which alternates with fiction every three or four years. The Egyptians knew something that I didn’t. I don’t remember now exactly what it was except that it had to do with the immortal soul. The whole structure of their civilization cried out to me to
KNOW
. I wallowed in Egyptology for the next couple of years, then decided there must be other avenues to explore.

Next came Automatic Writing triggered off by a woman named Daisy Roberts. I decided to try to see if automatic writing worked for me. The first contact made was with my Uncle Alexander who wrote, ‘Know Yourself.’ This was some forty years ago but I can still the words plainly in my mind’s eye, as clearly as if it were yesterday. He remained my contact for some time. When my cousin Young Alexander commenced automatic writing his father left me to go to him. Young Alexander’s mother, my Aunty Nell, replaced Uncle Alexander.

I came across a book called, ‘Reincarnation—The Phoenix Fire Mystery.’ Bells rang, lights flashed. So maybe there could be more than one chance to get it right? Maybe there was more than one short lifespan of 70 to 80 years to learn all there was to know about how to think, how to communicate, how to reconcile Darwin and the Bible?

So much else has to be fitted into this allotted term, even if we get to live that long. Go through childhood, get an education of a greater or lesser degree.  Find a mate, produce a family, earn a livelihood. Rear the children, perhaps suffer a lengthy illness or spend the final years in a cloudy haze of Neverland. There is not time in one existence to learn or to even sample all there is to ingest.

While playing about with all sorts of writings about evolution, I studied Old and New Testament material. Seemingly, every Tom, Dick and Harry has a theory about this. I read of miracles both ancient and modern, the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church, its power and the corruption of certain early Popes. I even read the theory that Christ and his disciples were part of a magic mushroom cult! You name it, I read it.

The Spanish Inquisition got me hooked and the French sect who were slaughtered by the hundreds for the same reasons that the Spanish were stretching people on the rack. The belief that we have lived in human bodies before and will live similarly again.

The books I read led me to believe that the theory of reincarnation is an extremely ancient credo, existing well before Christ and acceptable for hundreds of years within Christianity. Ultimately, some Pope took it into his head that it gave the masses too much hope for the future. The belief that there will be another chance at life allowed the hoi poloi to believe that there was a better concept than Purgatory or the Hellfire and Brimstone scenario. There would be another chance to experience the diversities of life, another chance to learn and grow.

Therefore the Pope decided to knock this theory on the head, outlaw it and wipe out all its followers and to start with a clean slate, to put it in a nutshell. People were forced to accept that they
must
get it right the first time because it was the only chance they had. There was no tomorrow, no second chance for the soul.

Over to the East now, dabbling around with the Buddhists and Hindus, who, of course, hold the doctrine of reincarnation to be as natural as breathing in and breathing out.

Next came a love affair with Theosophy. I fell heavily for Edgar Caycee and his long distance healing, all based on the cause and effect law named Karma. None of this was news to me by this time but I enjoyed it all tremendously just the same.

The leader of the local Theosophical Society, a man named Harry, knew all the society rules. I had reason to believe at that time that my son was presently carrying the soul that had previously inhabited the body of my grandfather. My son’s personality resembled that of my grandfather, his great-grandfather, while his physical appearance mirrors my father’s, his grandfather’s. They could have been twins born seventy-seven years apart.  His mannerisms, expressions and even at times, his speech, are identical with my grandfather’s. Such is the complexity of family bonds.

My son knew details about my childhood home which he could not have identified had he not been there to see them, things I had forgotten but was reminded of by him when he was a small child. He told me where certain pictures had hung during the years of his grandfather’s life, where items of furniture had stood, all of which had been removed many years prior to his birth but were there when my grandfather lived in the house.

When my son was a little boy sitting alone watching television, the ghost of my grandmother would come to sit with him. She had died in that house and my son was the only one of us who ever saw her although we all heard her rattling around at night, especially when the house was sold and we were about to move away. She must have objected strongly to our departure and a couple of years later we were able to free her soul to go peacefully on its way.

For a variety of reasons, I believed that my Grandfather’s soul had returned to live another life within our family.

My Grandad lost his mother when he was seven years old and had suffered severely at the hands of his stepmother. She was a very pious woman who firmly believed in ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child,’ especially when the children involved were her stepchildren and not her own flesh and blood. One of her descendants from the children of her own body, told me that Granny was never seen without a Bible in her hands. I almost snorted at this statement, remembering the pain she had caused my grandfather and his sister.

All his life my Grandad spoke with sadness about his early deprivation of mother love and would shed tears even in his old age, about his mother’s loss. To me it was perfectly logical that he would be born to myself, who had loved him so dearly. In actual fact he would have two mothers this time around, as my children and I lived with my mother in my old childhood home for many years.