Hi.  This is me.  Babz Chula speaking.  I’m curled up with stomach distress from what I imagine chemo does to the intestines and general digestive tract.  Yet, despite, and in spite, of stomach cramps and chemo and cancer and all the discomforts of sickness and old age, my spirit is soaring.  And this is because I am buoyed and bouncing from your good will and your unabashed…well…love.

 

 I don’t know if any one of you can imagine what it is like to be me right now.  I mean, on paper this situation looks fairly dire.  I certainly would not have believed you if you told me a year ago what my life would look like today.  And as dire and dreary as it looks in black and white, you must believe me when I tell you that it is not quite my reality. Not nearly.

 

I have a treatment every morning.  Three mornings a week it is Ukrain, and on Tues and Thurs I have an extensive colonic with an implant of coffee and herbs.  Once every three weeks I have chemo in an IV, followed by two weeks on and two weeks off of a series of oral chemo drugs.   This is all to address my breast cancer.  Once every three months I have a “smart” chemo drug called Rituxan, for my blood cancer.  It is often accompanied by an IgG treatment.   During the day I take as many as 40 pills, some are medications, and some are supplements.  I drink, on any given day, from two to ten powdery mixtures ranging from greens to various clays.

 

Every morning, before I leave the house, I sit in a far infra-red sauna for an hour, and follow that with a cool bath.  I try to do this nightly, as well.  There is dry skin brushing, supplements, massage, when available, juicing when I’m really together….and all sorts of small and constant little attentions that healing demands.  The difficult part, however, is not this.  It is getting from place to place.  Somehow, this just takes the jam out of me.  All the driving.  The getting in and out.  Going up stairs and down.  The waiting, the gas prices, stupid drivers, and road construction.  I often weep at the wheel….even at the simple thought of being home, in my bed.  Please understand, I never weep out of self pity.  It is always sheer exhaustion.  Tears of fatigue.  More like sweating is to exercise.  I just cry.  For all of it.

 

Often I nap when I arrive back home, but eventually, I get down to what has become the business of my life.  Perhaps some day soon, when it becomes clearer, I will be able to call it a livelihood.  Right now it is the period of transition that comes with the Transformation that this challenge of cancer demands.  I often wish I could pick and choose the things…the qualities.. .the values…of my former life.  I wish I could keep some things and discard others.  But the reality is that it all goes up in the air, and you don’t get to keep the things you like about yourself, and lose the things you don’t.  It all goes up in one big smokey cloud, and all you can save from the fire are bits and pieces…often not even things that seem to fit together.

 

I get thru my afternoons doing the Babz Chula Society business.  I receive another  very lovely letter of support, and I maintain that my life is the luckiest kind one could ever wish to live:  A life busy with the business of healing, and currently filled with letters of support and loving thoughts from people all over the world.  

 

Throughout this week, of all weeks that have come before in my 61 years, I’ve been deeply stirred by a kind of magic.  Magic, but real.  OK.  Magic realism, if you like.  It has crept into my world.  Many candles are burning in our home and flowers are arranged in gorgeous array.  Several strangers and casual acquaintances, as well as dear old friends and family, dear family, have come forward to offer support.

 

Miraculously, one of my liver enzyme counts, raging some 400 points above scale a mere 14 days ago, has lowered to just above 200.  And my sweet boy, my lovely youngest male child who suffers currently in respect to a dark and ugly episode from his past that has returned like a recurring bad dream, most amazingly has found a kind of grace and dignity as he faces its evil memory.  I am floored by what I believe is love, manifest.  

 

I mean, despite and apart from the powerful dose of chemotherapy I received at 2pm this afternoon, I am floored. That is, laying on the floor, unable to move, except for my fingers clicking along as if on automatic....and, I guess, my brain, for it is all true what they say about chemo and brains.  Stupid. And tired.  Stupidly tired.  A bad combo, this chemo brain.

 

So.  This is what I mean to say:  we never forget an act of kindness.  Even if we cannot quite place the face or circumstance, our body memory has registered the gesture and it is in a sparkling moment of reflex that one recognizes what is familiar.  I must remember that wanting credit for these gestures dilutes the power that they generate, and neutralizes the very act of generosity itself.  

 

The ego just wants to win.  No matter what.  And it will win at any cost, even by trickery or cheating.  No qualms.  No conscience.  Our hearts swelling with pride at our own goodness is really nothing more than smug satisfaction.  There is a big picture.  A really big picture.  It is not about good or bad, or right or wrong.  It is just this:  Nobody gets to go home until we all get to go home.  

 

There's no first place or last place.  No win or lose.  So, I think, that if l am able to get there at some point that I should not worry about whether or not I am "well enough" or "strong enough" and that I need to simply get to India as soon as I can, or Southeast Asia, or Eastern Europe or Main and Hastings, and that, I must begin to speak to and do for others and attempt to inspire in them some sort of generosity...small gestures that move out and up...tiny acts of courage and humour...moments of lightness and mirth.  This world can seem so damning.  So dreary and sodden.  Healing is needed in every corner.  A finger to point the way home.  A light to shine upon the path.  

 

I am so often lost and alone.  So often swooning in fear and terror and lacking in faith. I pray for the strength to leave my ego behind.  And it is surely strength I need, because the ego is a muscle to be thrown down and wrestled to submission.  I ask to be spontaneous.  To simply trust my impulses.  To "do" and not to think about "doing"..  I pledge to you that I shall set aside practice time each morning so that I may become a gentle, peaceful warrior, skilled and adept at service.  For one day it will be my great honor to support you as you have so generously given support to me.

 

I am so grateful for my challenges.  They inform my life.   They make it worth my living it.   They give the inevitability of my death great value and meaning,  Unlike before, when I chose not to contemplate dying. 

 

These challenges bring color to my cheeks and a hearty robust contradiction to all the things that cancer threatens to do to a body.  I laugh more than ever.  Deep laughter. Belly laughter.  I cry, too.  More than ever.  Deep crying.  From my soul.   And more often than ever for the other guy.  Really!  This is truly the blessing.  I just find myself losing the ability to separate myself from another.   From the "other".   Just more looking out.  Less "me me me".  

 

I used to spend more time looking at myself and now all I can do is look at you.  You are so beautiful.  I cannot turn away.  How can I possibly stop looking at you? I love you so dearly.

 

 And I thank you for the all the beauty you’ve brought to my life.

 

 Babz Chula

I do not know how to clearly relate to you my most recent
experiences...with this whole ordeal. My body's response to the
combination of chemo, Ukrain, and Real Life is profound. There is a
treatment of some kind every day. Three days a weeks I have Ukrain,
where the procedure is what takes my energy, for the after effects
are minimal, except for crushing fatigue. Chemo, on the other hand,
takes only an hour or so, and I leave feeling the same as when I
arrived. It is only after a few hours that my body starts to "get"
that something has happened to it. And, my o my, what a something
that is!

I will be far more articulate in explaining it all, once I get my sea
legs. For now, I would like to send a message to those people who
supported me with emails, donations and ebay bids. I would also like
to thank all those that organized events in my honour, and continue
to do so.

I am in the midst of intense treatment. I'm afraid there is very
little more that I can do besides get up in the morning and get to
another doctor's appointment, and subsequent treatment....and then
get home to bed. Please excuse me for not being able to attend some
of the events, for not answering my telephone, my emails, and for
being generally unreachable and unresponsive.

I kind of hate the way I feel right now. Puffy and swollen, I think
my skin shines a bit greenish these days. It's as if I'm Superwoman
and someone's trying to kill me with Kryptonite. Something is
definitely zapping my strength. Something that feels like nothing
else I've ever known before. Something from outer space. Something
that fell to earth, perhaps. Whatever it may be, I intend to fight
back. I intend to smash it out of my way in one last superhuman
attempt to rise above. Rest assured. I am going to win this
battle. I am going to survive this latest challenge.

Make no mistake. I will survive because of you. You have given me
the healing power of Love, and it is the greatest weapon of all.
Healing lives in this Love you have given to me, and it allows me the
power of Transformation. It has made me stronger than I've ever been
before. Strong enough to withstand the fear, the pain, the tears.
Strong enough to become someone I thought I could never be. My
gratitude is forever.

I promise to keep you abreast.

See? I haven't lost my sense of humour!! Even with thinning hair
and a puffy, green face, I can STILL be funny! Cancer, schmancer.
Let's have some fun! Promise me. From now on...no feeling sorry for
one's self...no "poor me"...and definitely no "poor Babz". I just
won't have it. My life is abundant. I am the luckiest person in the
world! That is because of you. Thank you. So very much. You fill
me up. I could not be happier, and I will never stop telling you that.

Love. Babz Chula

Two and a half years ago you saved my life. You gave me two and a half more years to live. To breathe…in and out. In this amazing, miraculous world. To love…for two and a half years MORE. I got to stay alive and be in the world! You did that. For me.

I worry that you do not know what that means to me. I’ve been concerned because I was not able to thank you all properly. You need to know that I am thanking you by being alive today. I never forget you. You did this.

I am in trouble again. It’s bad. It’s dire, actually. Having two cancers simultaneously is complicated enough, but this is crazy: maybe even so rare that you will never know another person in your whole life that has this happen to her or him. That doesn’t make me feel one bit special, incidentally. If it did, this wouldn’t be so difficult. This business of asking for help.

In August, throbbing pain and tenderness led me to discover three new tumours in the mastectomy area. My breast cancer was back, and I started taking injections of a very potent estrogen blocker to augment the other blocker I was already taking that was no longer doing the job.  Conventional chemotherapy and radiation treatments were only briefly considered at that time, as the effect either procedure would have on my bone marrow, and consequently, my blood cancer, would have a serious negative outcome. Treatment, therefore, consisted of extremely high doses of Vit C and Lipoic Acid administered intravenously three times weekly, two colonics a week, with coffee and herbal implants, twice daily far infrared saunas, an austere and restricted vegan diet, and specific supplements. Basically, the same stuff I’ve always been doing…only more.

Although I was able to hold the cancer back, I was not able to keep it away. My breast cancer has moved to my liver. A small lesion was removed by ablation about three weeks ago. We HOPE the ablation was successful. Won’t know for two months or so when it is safe to do another CT Scan. Yeah. It was awful. Very scary and painful. So now I’ve metastasized…it’s on the move. This damn cancer is on the move. Fuck.

The good news, though, is that my blood cancer seems to be resting right now. Oh, it’s still there. I feel it: restless and uneasy. A beast in fitful slumber. So, time is precarious and very precious. I have to jump on this immediately. Keep my head. Stay clear. Do not panic.

You see, at this point, there is really not much available for me to do. I think I’m already considered kind of a miracle case…a success, at the very least. No one really expected me to survive this long. First breast cancer, involving my lymphatic system, and then, three years later, an indolent, incurable blood cancer displays, having been there all along, hiding way beneath the surface, for probably, oh, ten or fifteen years. Another positive aspect, however: You cannot imagine how much this explains! Mostly that I’m NOT crazy!!

That’s when the first fund raiser went up. So amazing. I’m still reeling from it. You are amazing and I love you.

I am not the person who fears death so much that I would travel into the jungle to find the guy I read about in the National Enquirer who reaches into your abdomen and pulls out a chicken liver. I mean, I want to live, don’t misunderstand. I want to live so badly and I will be so sorry to leave this world when it is my time to go. Life is fantastic. It’s not always easy, but it’s fantastic. Isn’t it? Isn’t this one amazing ride?

I don’t think it’s time yet for me to go, yet. I still have so much to do. Maybe everyone feel that way. It’s never the right time, is it?  But…I really do have so much more to do. I have a one woman show to write and a film I want to make about how my Dad died in a fiery car crash when he was 27 years old. I have grandchildren, a new one coming in the summer! I teach them things. Things no one in the world can teach them, but me. They need me. My mom is in her 80's. She has become a child again. She plays with the same stuffed animals that my grandchildren play with. She needs me, too. My kids, my Larry. How will I ever leave them? How do you get to a place where you are all right to go? What does it take? Who do I think I am, anyway? Someone special? How come I get to live when so many others do not? I will never stop asking these questions. I will die asking these questions.

So, there is a treatment that my naturopathic oncologist, Dr. Walter Lemmo, and I have discussed, that we think can work. CAN work. We don’t know if it WILL. Think of it this way: Cancer likes sugar. A lot. We make the cancer vulnerable by starving it, and then we lure it with sugar and then we kill. Kind of sneaky. It’s war, though. All’s fair in love and war. Yes?

Once you get cancer, I think you always have it. I mean, you had it before, but your immune system was strong enough to fight it. If an immune system is weakened, the mechanism that usually fights the cancer breaks down. Then you get it. The issue, then, is how one LIVES with cancer. My own experience has taught me that Transformation, and nothing less, is what is necessary if one desires to stay alive. And, even then, there are no guarantees.

For me, there were many transforming moments. I know that I am not the same Babz that had a mastectomy six years ago.

I spend a lot of time thinking about Death. Life and death. This is a great gift. I never allowed myself to think about it before. In fact, I avoided it. Who wants to think about death? But, now, I find I’m grateful to be able to contemplate my death. It has informed my life, and I’m glad for so many things that have happened. The abundance in my life is staggering. I’m even, well, especially, grateful for the challenges and difficulties, for I’ve been blessed with so many insights and revelations.

These treatments are very expensive. I will need three treatments a week. For a year or two. We are going to start with three months, and then re-evaluate the situation. Do some diagnostic tests and assess things. I will share all my thoughts and observations with you. Involve you all as much as I can. There will be miraculous things that happen. Imagine being involved in a miracle! I believe in things like that. Maybe we will discover a way to cure cancer. I am hopeful. I believe that if I can get these treatments, then I can survive. I want to be able to teach what I know about cancer, what I’ve learned, to others. It breaks my heart to know that some people are terrified when they find out they have cancer. I was there, and I know how that feels. If only there had been someone to help me then. I would have suffered so much less. I want to be the person that says the right thing to a newly diagnosed parent, frightened by the idea of leaving children behind when death comes.  I think I can be of some help to that older person…the one who is in their eighth decade and is all alone. So frightened. I think I can help the person who fears death and lives with stress and panic.

This “Society” will be my legacy. I know that true Healing lives in the gestures of generosity that we make to alleviate the suffering of others. I know this because when I am speaking to one of the many people that call who have somehow received my number from someone and need counsel, I can feel myself getting better. I know this because I can actually feel my pain subside when I am speaking to a cancer patient who fears death. My hope is to become well. Then I can use the Babz Chula Society for the benefit of others. Artists who find themselves , like me, suddenly dealing with a critical illness. I never thought something like this would happen to me. I always figured I could sing or dance or act my way out of a crisis. Symbolically, of course.  I don’t know another artist who doesn’t feel the same way. And I know of no one who anticipates that something like this is going to happen to them. I pledge to be there for those who find themselves facing illness and death. I pray to be able to live long enough for that pledge to reach fruition. I thank you all for your support.

Babz Chula