By Varsha Abraham.
Dawn’s voice and thoughts are crisp, organized, and strong. She describes her cancer journey with clinical attention to detail honed by years as a registered nurse. She minces no words when discussing her experience: “Cancer sucks!” She added, “I have great respect for everyone facing it.”
My conversation with Dawn was about a week into her remission. Having faced her illness and the treatments for it, she appreciated the calm of that new stage of her cancer journey. She had spent the morning on the phone trying to get her medicines sorted out with the pharmacy. She laughs as she says, “It’s ironic. I spent the morning on the phone with a pharmacy, and then on the phone with you talking about LifeSpark.”
For her, her medical treatments (such as chemo), and the services provided by LifeSpark, each represent divergent approaches to her cancer care: On the one hand, the aggressive medical fight against the cancer, and on the other, the calming, rejuvenating experience that helps her face her illness and the treatments for it.
Dawn had worked as a nurse manager and has owned a couple of businesses. But everything changed for her in November 2015. She was lifting something heavy and injured her lower cervical spine. The x-rays revealed something suspicious, and the follow-up blood tests led to a diagnosis of multiple myeloma at the age of 55.
Given her medical background, it is no surprise that Dawn started her treatment with Western medicine. After chemo and a stem cell transplant, her blood count improved. But in addition to the myeloma, she was soon diagnosed with stage 3 melanoma as well. Luckily, she had the support of her doctors, her cancer support group, her friends and her son. Dawn understands the value of a supportive community.
She remembers this stage of the ordeal as a time of anxiety and fatigue. She struggled with the chemo, which, while effective, was rough. That’s when she started to consider moving away from an all-Western treatment toward a different focus. She needed to recover her lost energy and regroup.
Dawn heard about LifeSpark from her doctor’s office and from a friend at the hospital’s blood cancer support group. She describes her LifeSpark sessions as “soft music, comfortable massage table, soft lights, and positive energy.” Her 20 sessions with Carol, a Healing Touch and Reiki practitioner, helped her through that difficult time in her treatment by restoring the energy she’d been lacking.
Dawn says, “LifeSpark’s [Healing Touch therapy] gave me the ability to keep going. … It helped me with pain, with the feeling of unease and anxiety. It helped with the chemo that just felt so poisonous.” Dawn notes that a positive attitude is essential to getting through the journey. For her, that attitude comes from having both energy and a deep sense of faith that it’s going to work out.
But despite how tough the chemo was, she now appreciates how well it fought her cancer and helped her enter remission. On the other hand, she credits her LifeSpark sessions for helping her complete her cancer treatment. Her message to others in a similar situation is this: “It’s important to keep going and face the treatments. Do your research. Stay active. Never give up!”
