Barbara's Story: bone, lung, and other cancers

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Barbara: Beating bone cancer since childhood

Hello, my fellow cancer survivors, their families, and those who help us.

My name is Barbara. I'm a 54-year-old woman, and I live in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. As a child, I grew up on a farm outside Boise, Idaho, and when I was eleven years old, I was diagnosed with a fatal form of bone cancer. My parents took me to UC San Francisco Hospital and a biopsy was performed above the ankle of the right leg. One night, while in the hospital, my father came to my room, and he told me that I would be receiving radiation, and that the leg would later be amputated. He told me that they would not be amputating the leg except to save my life, and he left the room, and I heard his footsteps down the hall, the elevator doors opened, closed, there was a deafening silence. I started to cry, and I wondered what it meant to die, and how much it hurt. I knew if I died I would be going alone, and I wondered how lonely it would be. I turned to my pillow and muffled my tears, and I prayed to God to help me. It was a very lonely night.

A religious experience

In that year, 1956, the only treatment for a sarcoma was radiation. About five months later, a metastatic cancer was found on the lung, and the decision was made to withhold further treatment. My family waited. At the suggestion of my parish priest, I was taken by my mother to the Catholic shrine at Lourdes, France. Later, I had a private audience with Pope Pius X11, and I visited the convent of the Catholic saint, St. Theresa of Liseux, outside of Paris, France. She's more commonly known in this country as the Little Flower. While I was at Lourdes, I was taken to the baths. The baths at Lourdes were cold and uninviting. All the pilgrims removed their clothes in a general area, and then two women carried me to a deep tub, where they dunked me, and raised me to pray before dunking me again.

One evening, while at Lourdes, it was raining, and my mother took me to a processional outside the basilica at Lourdes. Everyone there had a lighted candle with a paper lantern surrounding it. The Pope was visiting Lourdes and there were people from all over the world, speaking all different languages, and of all different faiths. There were even people being carried high, and wearing flowing saris. I could not understand any of them. But I stood on my crutches in the rain, and looked into the glistening eyes of everyone around me, and they all began to sing Ave Maria in Latin. It was as though we spoke the same language. It was a very inspiring time for me as a child, and I felt one with all of humanity.

The next day, while in our hotel room at Lourdes, my mother, who is not a very religious person, asked me to say a prayer with her. She told me that there were people coming there from all over the world, all wanting to be healed. She said that we can't all have what we want, and she asked that we pray for the strength to accept God's will. I have always thought that that moment of prayer was the moment I became a cancer survivor.

A few weeks later, back in Boise, Idaho, I was told that calcium deposits had formed around the cancer in the lung and in the leg, and was preventing the cancers in both places from growing. I was told that this was a rare but natural phenomenon, occurring very infrequently. In this sense, it seemed to me, miraculous. We waited several months. The cancer never grew, and it never went away. It was a medical decision to remove first the right leg, just above the knee, and then, one month later, the lower lobe of the right lung. Then we began the long wait to see if it would return.

Getting oneself back into life

One morning, back on the farm in Idaho, I sat in my wheelchair, writing on the lap desk. The morning sun was shining through the window and cast rays across the room. I can remember being inspired and thinking very deeply, and thought, "What point is there in going to school and studying or doing anything, if you're going to die anyway?" Slowly, I considered the alternatives. That would be to stay home all day, and not be involved with other people. So I made a firm decision deep inside myself to get as much out of life as I could before the cancer returned. The following week, I returned to school. I remember that year after the surgeries very well. I had been out of the sixth grade all year the year before, and was passed to the seventh grade nonetheless. I remember feeling everyone in the classroom could do fractions and diagram sentences, save for me. At first I went to school without my leg, and later I got a new artificial leg. Both were social adjustments. All I wanted was to show my friends that I was still the same me, over and around and across the leg. Gradually, I fought my way back, by consciously practicing self determination and offering self sacrifice to God, just as I'd been taught in the Catholic school. I tried to experience everything I could. I rollerskated, I rode my bicycle, I swam, I water skied, I tried it all. And my father pushed and pushed. He was very demanding that I should do my own chores at home and that I should walk smoothly at all times, not taking the easy path. My illness seemed to pain my mother a great deal. Later, she learned to accept it.

After my father died when I was fifteen, she became my sole support. She taught me to dress myself and the leg in the most nonconspicuous way, and she encouraged good grooming and good self-esteem. She spent many hours with the limb makers, seeing that my artificial leg was carved exactly, and that I had a leg for every heel height, even very high heels. One of the biggest turning points in my life came when I was seventeen. My stepfather forgot to pick my leg up from the limb maker, where it was being repaired. I had a date that night, and I was very upset. I locked myself in the bathroom, cried on the tile floor. I realized then that I probably would not die, and that there would be no way out. I was going to have to live my whole life with this thing, and I wondered how I would support myself, if I would ever marry. I cried, because I had been told that due to radiation, I would probably not have any children, and if I became pregnant, there could be a mutation. At that time, I was more prepared to die than I was to live with the reality. At seventeen and a half, I left home for college. These were difficult years, made more difficult by getting around on a big campus in a harsh climate. I graduated from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, and the following summer, married a law student. Eleven months later, I had a little girl. She was born perfectly normal. And I named her Amy Theresa, after St. Theresa, the Little Flower, whose shrine I had visited in France. Today, we call her Rosebud. She truly is.

Lifelong learning and experiencing

I took a job as a caseworker in the Department of Social Services, and I had a second child, and finally, a third. I carried all three pregnancies to full term, wearing my artificial leg, and walked home, carrying my babies in my arms. When all else is taken from you, only love remains. Because of my experience with cancer, I believe love has been the primary motivating factor in my life. My love for family life, especially for my children, has driven me to go on, in spite of many other hardships. I have experienced the death of a child, both marriage and divorce. I have experienced other benign tumors and surgeries, but I have never had cancer again. I have worked in various aspects of social work. I attained both a Master's in Social Work and a doctorate. I have lived in Idaho, Utah, Washington, Virginia, Oregon, Arizona, and South Carolina. I have met many cancer patients, some lived, and some died. At first I felt what is known as "survivor's guilt". My life seemed such a miracle and I felt unworthy.

One day someone told me, "Don't you know, Barbara, miracles happen to ordinary sinners." That seemed to make sense to me, for I knew that I was an ordinary sinner. Maybe in the last, it is saints who are taken home, because their work is finished. Maybe I survived because there is so much more I still mean to do.

This year, my youngest child will leave home. I presently practice as a clinical social worker and teach counseling at a local university. When I work with cancer patients, I tell them. "Life is like a pilgrimage. Like the pilgrimage in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and if you live to walk and talk awhile, the telling of your story you may come to know its meaning." One thing is clear to me, if you live to survive cancer, you live to suffer again. To go on in life, you need passion, and passions need to be nurtured. Life is difficult for everyone, and it requires some discipline. I have a passionate interest in people and in learning and in teaching. I've studied many religious faiths, many philosophers, and many psychologists. I believe the whole mystery of life is greater than the sum of its parts. We are all part of something that is too big for our little human minds to comprehend. I don't know when I will die. It may be tomorrow, or it may be a long while in the future. But until then, I'll keep making commitments, new commitments, to life. Commitments like seeing that my son practices cello today, and helping him to be the best he can be. I'll commit to my family and friends and to my patients, and students, a semester at a time, an hour at a time or for the rest of our lives; whatever I'm called to do. Most of all, I hope I can go on learning and go on loving all kinds of people in all kinds of ways. Some day, maybe I'll have learned to make my bed when I first get out of it in the morning, for in the end, it seems to me, it's the little things that are really hard.

God be with all of you. God bless. That's it.