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OK kiddies, it’s time for another contest! Dancing with Pain is now sponsoring an essay contest on how the so-called Law of Attraction has been used to bully, shame, dismiss, harass, and otherwise make miserable the lives of people living with chronic health conditions. (more…)
Well, I gave it the old red white and blue try. I spent eight months on an uber pure diet, without cheating even once, not even in a teeny-tiny way. The diet didn’t work, time’s up, game over. If it weren’t cancer in consideration here, you know I’d keep exploring options until I found the one that worked. But it is cancer, so it’s time to try our friend Western Medicine.
I’ve had all kinds of conversations – live, on the phone, and in person – with all kinds of people about the choices of how to respond to the possibility of thyroid cancer. At the end of the day, I’m listening to the integrative medicine healthcare practitioners I know and respect, as well as to my inner circle of people I love – including myself. The consensus is this:
Thyroid cancer is easy: You cut it out, it’s gone, you get on with your life.
While there are a million people sending me passionate and, I might add, completely contradictory advice, and while I am deeply grateful for all the advice I am receiving, I need to conserve my time and energy – spending it focused on a positive outcome with surgery, instead of running around trying every possible Tom Dick and Harry cure.
We all know that holistic remedies take time to kick in. I’m not willing to risk that time on potentially complicating the situation at hand. If you’ve found a holistic cure for thyroid cancer, bravo! I applaud you and wish I had known about it sooner. I found a holistic cure for chronic and debilitating pain. I think that’s enough gold stars for now.
I am not excited about getting surgery, mind you. I have woken up with silent screams two nights in a row. But I figure, what the hell. It’s just another journey. I bless the physicians, nurses, my loved ones who will support me through it, and myself — that as a team, we will soar through this experience with flying colors.
When you purchase the Dancing with Pain downloadable audio classes, you’ll be hearing the inspirational global electronica music of Cheb i Sabbah — one of my favorite musicians. I have had the honor of meeting with and interviewing Cheb, whom I found to be warm, loving, and gentle.
Cheb was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 stomach cancer. And like millions of Americans, he has no health insurance, so his life is in danger. It is appalling that so many wonderful people in the USA get afflicted with conditions – pain, cancer, you name it - that potentially bring their lives crashing down, simply because of our screwed value system in this country, leaving little or no social support. It makes me furious.
If you want to find out more about Cheb’s situation, visit the Cheb i Sabbah website.
Dear loyal readers, as you know I have been diagnosed with cancer. I’ll be taking off work through the end of August, to prepare for and recover from various medical procedures, including surgery (unless I experience a last-minute miracle cure). As someone who makes a living as a freelancer, it’s a major financial setback to take off a whole month – never mind the fact that this year has been hands-down the most financially challenging of my life.
So if you believe in my work in the world, and if you want to help me get through my expenses this coming month, I ask that you either purchase pain-relief products on the Dancing with Pain store (including an e-book, “5 Steps to Successful Chronic Pain Relief,” and a downloadable audio class, “The Breakfast Mix”), or if those products do not interest you, that you send a little green love my way, through the Dancing with Pain PayPal account – which accepts bank transfers and credit cards. (If the link has issues, the direct PayPal address is loolwa at dancing with pain dot com.)
Thanks in advance, and may we all be blessed with refuah shlema umhira - a full and speedy recovery.
The thing that is making me crazy right now is that I am confident I can heal myself without surgery. But unlike in the case of pain – where it was not potentially life-and-death to decline the doctors’ recommendations for surgery – it’s playing with fire when you are talking about cancer.
Thyroid cancer is, from a Western medical standpoint, a piece of cake to treat. Remove the thyroid gland, bada boom, bada bang, case closed, cancer over. Go forth and live. Whilst taking thyroid meds every day for the rest of your life, of course. If the thyroid gland is cancerous, however, and you do not remove it, then you run the risk of the cancer Gd forbid metastasizing and spreading to the bone and brain, which are a bagillion times more difficult to treat, if at all.
In the case of pain, I felt certain there was a way to self-heal, but I didn’t know what it was. Methods that had worked for me previously – breathing into the source of pain, practicing yoga – were not resolving the chronic pain that hit in the mid 1990s and hung around for a decade thereafter. But I was absolutely, positively, 100% sure that I could heal myself. I felt like a mouse running around and around and around in a maze, smelling the exit door, sensing the exit door, but persistently unable to find the damn thing.
Then in 2005, I found it. I exited the maze of chronic pain hell and never looked back. As you all know by now, dance was my portal to instant pain relief and, over time, the resolution of chronic pain. Think about it: You tell someone in chronic and debilitating pain, “Oh, you should dance!” Non sequitur at best. Similarly, I believe that while the obvious solution to the nodule on my thyroid gland is to remove the entire gland, there must be a less obvious solution out there.
Moreover, I TRUST MYSELF TO FIND IT.
The catch is that I need more time to do so. And I don’t want to be an idiot and, in the quest of self-healing, lose the window of opportunity to take the straight and easy path to getting rid of the thyroid cancer. Damn it! I wish I had more time. Here’s part of why I don’t:
Know how I discovered that I had this nodule? A woman who attended the Dancing with Pain company launch, in July 2010, tipped me off. After the lecture and dance class, attendees joined my co-presenter and me for a celebration at an upscale café in Santa Monica. While waiting for our order to arrive, this woman got all up in my neck. To be perfectly honest, it creeped me out. “Um, what are you doing?” I asked. “You have a goiter.” She replied. “A what?” I asked. “A goiter,” she said.
The woman went on to explain that her mother had thyroid cancer, which can be detected by abnormal growths on the thyroid gland, and the woman advised me to get the goiter checked out. At the time, I was depleted beyond words. I had spent the entire previous year working around the clock, laying the ground for the company launch. I had squeezed out even more energy and effort preparing for the launch itself. Then I had taught the class, which took every last zap in me.
I was tanked. I could not handle this woman being all up in my neck or telling me I might have cancer. I was, even at that time, very grateful for her care. But the timing was all wrong. I freaked out. I left the party – you know, celebrating my company – and walked to the beach, where I sat and watched the waves and calmed down for about an hour. Then I returned. As you can imagine, it was a messy and uncomfortable situation for all involved.
At any rate, I then went to the doctor, to check out the goiter. “Oh yeah,” he said, looking at my record on the computer, “I have a note about it.” Um, ex-fucking-CUSE me?! You have a note from some time ago, about a potentially cancerous growth on my throat, which you did not bother to tell me about or get treated?
Which all goes to say, I have had this here honking nodule for up to three years by now. It seems to me that I may be out of time for futzing around with holistic health treatments. Or maybe not. I am not sure. I don’t like it that, despite the fact that there is an 80% chance of the nodule being benign, it has to be cut out. If it were 100% certain that the nodule was Gd forbid cancerous, well that’s one thing. But to risk having a knife come rilly rilly close to my vocal nerve, without knowing if the nodule is in fact cancerous, well, to be honest, that seems barbaric and insane. Kind of like sticking leeches on a wound, back in the day.
So here is what I’m going to do: I’m going to schedule the surgery and proceed as-if. Then I’m going to cancel every possible thing in my life and get rid of every possible stressor. I’m going to go on vacation at home. Which is timely, because my birthday is in a week! I’ll drive to local nature areas and totally take it easy. I will sing, dance, drum, and make art. I will try every holistic healing method that resonates as possibly healing me. I’ll go on a detox cleanse and take herbs. Hell, I’ll do séances if need be, I don’t fucking care. Whatever.
Then a few days before the surgery, I’ll do another ultrasound of the nodule and see if any of my endeavors have had an impact. If the nodule has gotten even an eensy-beensy bit smaller, I’m cancelling the surgery. If not, I’m moving forward.
Meanwhile, if you believe in me; if you believe in my path; if you applaud my experiment of exploring whether I can self-heal this honker, then I ask for your support. I’m going to start the Help Loolwa Khazzoom Kick Cancer’s Ass Fund and request that you contribute what you can – whether $1 or $1,000.
As those of you following my blog religiously know, I poured every last penny of mine (all credit cards included) into the development and launch of Dancing with Pain. The company got off to a flying start, but right when I needed to be working around the clock to keep the momentum going, I was badly injured and disabled – which brought the whole enterprise to a screeching halt. Related to said injury and disability, I then had to move twice in three months, which in turn depleted the funds I had acquired from the company launch.
As a result, I came extremely close ending up homeless – eviction notice, cut service lines, the whole megillah. I hung on by my teeth, however, and decided to launch another company — offering media and PR to holistic health practitioners. That’s right. I started two companies from scratch, in just over one year.
The media/PR services company was soooo much easier to launch. Unlike Dancing with Pain, it did not involve creating a whole new market, in turn involving educating people about a cutting-edge (read: out of left field) service that would benefit them. Rather, it provided individuals with services they already knew they needed and wanted. The demand was already there. I just needed to supply it. Straightforward.
And so, on the verge of filing bankruptcy, I successfully and fairly rapidly hauled my ass out of a big black hole. While the business is growing steadily, however, I’m still living too hand-to-mouth to afford taking off a month or so. That’s where you come in.
I recently had a conversation with an intuitive who said, point blank, that I am always giving, giving, giving, to take care of other people’s needs, but that I do not receive what I need – rather, I have to work hard to take care of myself as well. It’s true. So here I am officially asking for your help:
Visit the Dancing with Pain store to purchase an ebook, 5 Steps to Successfully Managing Chronic Pain, or to pre-order the first in the Dancing with Pain audio class series, “The Breakfast Mix.” You get product, I get support. Or, if neither of those products interest you but you want to help out, send me a little green love directly, at the Dancing with Pain PayPal site, which accepts bank transfers and credit cards. (If the link has issues, the direct PayPal address is loolwa at dancing with pain dot com.)
Then, if I’m able to beat cancer’s ass naturally, you KNOW I’m going to turn around and teach others to do the same.
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