How I Overcame Cancer by My Will

Cancer! That treacherous disease which medicine has so far been powerless to conquer, which attacks women more than men, and whose spread in this age has taken a form that has bewildered the doctors...
Here a mighty lady, of mighty will, tells its story with her—the will by which she was able to overcome this malignant disease...

Six years ago I was stricken with cancer, and the doctors decreed that I would not live more than six months. Six months in which to finish my affairs on earth and take leave of those I love. I accepted the unjust sentence as best I could, so as to bear the hard days through to the end.

My sister, however, did not believe the doctors' word that I would die of cancer. And at last, by a mercy from God and by the care of my sister Dorothy, I rose again and began to live. And in six years I have lived more than in all the years that went before.

Personal theories about cancer are like that unscientific system of navigation known among the traders of the Atlantic. The captain would stand on the bridge and order the ship to stand off or draw near, his beacon in this being the barking of a dog on the shore! More than forty-five percent did not know where the ship was. Yet for all that it gave good results.

Perhaps the observations in my illness were likewise of unknown position, and so I came through safe across black waters and without a chart. I look back at that anxious voyage and ask myself: how fine it is to help the fearful with our trials and our experiences.

★

I go back to a day in July of the year 1946. The air was mild, as it usually is in Colorado. I had no leisure to shut myself up in my own thoughts as I sat with my sister in the car; we were talking about the other passengers and about the towns we passed through; and, at the last, it was an ordinary thing to call at the doctor's office.

My health had not been good for the past seven months. But was I to expect to be full of life and motion while I bore the responsibility of a family—a double responsibility indeed, since I have been mother and father both to four children since my divorce in 1938?

I calmly ignored the threatening signs of illness, and found myself in need of rest, for I would grow angry over trifling things, and a constant anxiety had settled upon me.

I am convinced that medical care is necessary. But the idea of cancer is not one we can accept easily, so I persuaded myself that what ailed me was an upset of the gall bladder or the liver. My surface thinking refused the existence of cancer; nevertheless I awaited the dreadful verdict with all my natural strength.

The doctor was the kindest a human being can be when he told me the news. Had he been less weary, he could have disclosed the illness better; and I went out with a gleam of hope in my eyes.

Cancer. I walked like a blind woman under the rays of the sun, finding rest whenever Sharon stopped to gaze, smiling, before one of the shops, as though her warm hand were the most precious thing in the world. We went into the drugstore, which was like a cavern, and I took a spoonful of the sticky white-and-red confection; and there I discovered that the distress was not in my mind alone but in all my members, in my body slowed by the shock. I could not swallow, and I chewed the stuff, wondering how a human being can be so sluggish and dulled on the one side and, on the other, quiveringly sensitive to the most trifling things—the sound of a leaf, the smell of strawberries, or the taste of death in the mouth.

I roused myself on that hard day, telephoned my brother in Columbus, Ohio, and told the children that we would leave Denver in a few days.

The next morning the situation invited despair. The children went off to school and no one was left in the house but me. I went out into the street, walking under the staring heat of the sun, until I reached the lake that reminds me of the countryside. There I found no boat, and no strolling parties as is usual; the surface of the water was calm and clear, as though nature were sharing my grief.

I was overcome, not so much by the strength of the disease as by my bodily weakness. We had no family and no friends in Denver, and I would not confess my weakness before I had sent the children to a safe place. I knew that in Ohio, in our home, they would find those who would care for them—I mean my own people, who love them as I do.

I have committed no sin in my life; why then, I wondered, had the fates descended on me so, and forced me to leave life? And suddenly I shivered, in that spot under the heat of the sun, and felt that I was walking over my own grave; and on my way to the house I saw nothing, for I was blind of heart.

I made ready everything required of me for the move to Ohio, and awaited Dorothy's coming. I worked like mad, preferring any labor to sitting still. Then the car carried us off on our way to Ohio.

I still remember some of the sights of that night: I saw the stars hung in the sky, and I felt in those moments my own nothingness and weakness before this great world.

There were small fertile farms among the woods and the hills. And in that stretch I saw that the children were very happy. Little Dick's head was propped against the window, and I thought how his father's gaze had passed down to him. Jerry was the handsomest of them; Dean was a dreamer; and little Sharon delighted us all. They are a sweet, lovely bouquet that I shall leave behind me, to be my excuse, so that no one may say: why did you take up a patch of earth and give us nothing!

The memories came back to me as soon as we drew near the house, and fear took hold of me, and my eyes brimmed with tears; and I turned to the children, and there they were, playing happily.

I entered the house—the parlor had been decked with flowers—and my two sisters surrounded me with affection and tenderness, so that I felt an inward ease; and the children gathered to acquaint themselves with everything new.

The next morning I went to visit the specialist in cancer, who is called Scott. He said: "The cancer has gone very far, but we shall treat it with all the rays and all the knowledge we have been given." I asked him: "Is that enough?" And he promised me he would not be slow in using every means of cure with me. I felt some measure of reassurance, and went into the X-ray room, and marveled at the machine which I was seeing for the first time in my life, and which later became an ordinary thing.

"If there is a way of cure, I shall cure you." So said the doctor; and while he left me alone in the room, I heard him outside saying to his wife, who assists him as a nurse: "It is too late; no way of cure is left. Whatever we give her will do no good—on the contrary, it will set her back. All we can do is to treat her with radium; that treatment helps in some cases, but it does not cure, and for all the smallness of its profit it is very expensive."

And when the picture had been taken, Dorothy asked the nurse: how much longer does medicine reckon that I shall live? She answered: "Not long—six months only!" And I heard the answer...
Six months!! Only...