“Alternative” Medicine

After grabbing a last crepe in town, I drove us to the Portland airport. Looking back, we didn’t have GPS or smart phones at the time, and I have no flipping clue how I figured out how to get there. I must have used my computer at the hotel and written down directions. In hindsight, my ability to step up to what I consider challenges at the time still sort of blows my mind. I’m not talking about the obvious emotional challenges; I’m talking about the things like driving in new cities, always carrying everything, and just in general, being in charge of everything. Those were the things I wasn’t use to and am normally a baby about.

Anyways, we waited in the loading zone at the Portland airport, Mike’s garbage can full of puke, but tied off so it didn’t smell. We looked anxiously for this mythical, miracle-working creature to emerge from the doors, half expecting it to be an immediate spiritual experience. Finally, we spotted a tiny, grey-haired, little Asian lady in a long Hawaiian patterned dress walk out with her luggage. I called to her and waved. She looked exactly like she did in the pictures on her website, and yet somehow, I was still surprised to see how ordinary she was. I was disappointed she wasn’t emitting a blinding aura of some sort. Instead of a powerful presence of confidence and supernatural power, my first impression was she seemed fragile, disorganized, and quirky.

She hopped in the backseat and as I drove off, we began talking. Although we’d already discussed it on the phone and via email, we recounted Mike’s diagnosis and everywhere the cancer was currently located. She said Mike was already a walking miracle to be as able-bodied as he was with that much cancer throughout his body. She directed me where to drive; we were apparently going to her friend’s home outside of the city. After a while, we wound up a paved road high above the city enveloped in lush greenery. Everywhere were beautiful mansions with gates across their roads. When we finally arrived, it was a rather humble home among all the others. I don’t remember everything, but I think it was small, dark wood, with a very green yard and a view. The man who lived there came out and greeted us. His name was “Llama” – yes, like the animal. He was young, perhaps in his 30’s, and had an air of confidence and sophistication. He and Linda, as she had us call her, already knew each other. They were professional acquaintances in the world of Qigong and energy medicine.

We went into his home, which was, for lack of a better term, mystical. There were crystals and plants and books, and trinkets from around the world. The whole front of the dark wood house was lined with windows so there was a lot of natural light. And if memory serves me correct, I believe we came in and sat on pillows on the floor around a small table, where Llama served us tea. Linda told him she would need his entire living room to work on Mike. After a while, he left us alone in his house. Maybe he was outside or in the garage meditating or something, but we were alone in his house. Linda was very kind and friendly. She had a way of making you feel comfortable. She had Mike lie down on the floor with a pillow under his head. She kneeled on one side of him and I kneeled on the other. She began by teaching him a specific breathing technique where you breathe in deeply through the nose and as you exhale through the mouth, you let your voice vibrate the sounds “Ahhhh-laaaa” slowly on the way out, repeating that with every breath. I think the purpose is to refocus on your breath so as to distract from your other symptoms such as pain. And it really did seem to work. We were all doing it and it sounded like we were chanting an Islamic prayer. She told us if the sounds bothered us, because it reminded us of Muslim’s name for God, “Allah,” we could say “Abba” instead, an Aramaic reference for “father,” that Jesus used, and hence, more Biblical. She was right; it felt better to sound like we were meditating on the “Father” rather than the Muslim name for God, so we switched it up. This sounds so strange to talk about now, but at the time, the conversation was completely natural and casual, despite how foreign it felt to make the noises like we were instructed.

Linda also had us “rename” Mike’s cancer. She said the word “cancer” comes with too many negative connotations and inspires fear. We should give it an innocuous name like “Bob.” Wanting to avoid having to put a lot of thought into it, Mike just jumped on the name Bob that she had thrown out there. So thenceforth, Mike’s cancer was referred to as “Bob.”

Next, Linda did some muscle testing with Mike which entailed having him hold different types of substances like metals and then pushing on his liver to see how the pain response changed based on the substance he was holding. I’m a major skeptic; this stuff just screams “BS” to me. But I know plenty of intelligent people who would probably swear by it, so I gave it a chance. Poor Linda, she spent most of the time just trying to convince me because I was acting like I was at a magic show trying to figure out how she did her tricks. I would say, “But how do I know you’re not just jabbing him less when you use that metal?” But somehow, it was true. She was digging her hand into Mikes liver, jabbing him hard, and he wasn’t even flinching, whereas before, he’d winced in pain when she barely poked him without the metal. Linda said, “I don’t know how it works, I just know from experience that it does work, so I want to try as many things as I can with Mike.”

Next, Linda placed these little metal circular discs to different pressure points on Mike’s hands. I’ve now learned this practice is known as KHT (Koryo Hand Therapy), and is apparently a tool for pain management. The “hand map” is supposedly associated with the body’s acupuncture meridians. So Linda taped these little discs down in very specific locations and wrapped a copper wire around a couple of his fingers. It looked ridiculous. I asked how long he needed to keep that stuff on there (cause the tape was obviously just going to fall off) and she said all the time, or at least the majority of the time. We found it ludicrous and downright hilarious, but we agreed to comply. This added to our necessities, and from that point on, everywhere we went, we brought a Ziploc bag that contained a role of tape and a permanent marker. Anytime Mike showered, he’d take the little discs off, we’d mark with a permanent marker exactly where they had been placed, then we’d reapply them in exactly the same spot when he was done. It was absurd but we didn’t care. We actually had time for that shit.

Anyways, the meeting at Llama’s house drew to a close after Llama and another young guy came in and we all participated in some strange exercise I can only describe as pumping our arms rhythmically to repeated guttural sounds of “Hah!” I felt horrible for Mike because I know he couldn’t possibly feel well and we were kind of stuck here at this mystical home performing strange exercises/rituals that couldn’t possibly be doing him any good. Mike finally expressed his need to eat and rest so we used my computer to find a nearby hotel and got the hell out of there. As soon as we were alone in the car, my anxiety rose. I could tell he wasn’t happy. In fact, he was angry. One of the first things he said was that he thought Linda was downright crazy. I couldn’t help but agree, although I liked her. We checked into our over-priced Silver Cloud Inn because we were too exhausted to hunt for anything else. We got some snacks and spent the rest of the night in a state of panic, really. Mike was very stressed and distraught because he’d thought of Linda Hole as providing legitimate hope before our meeting. Now he just thought she was nuts. After receiving awful news on the “modern medicine front” just a couple days ago from Dr. Thompson, we had held onto a glimmer of hope that Dr. Hole would be able to offer some other avenue of hope, but instead Mike felt like he’d just been to the circus.

Linda must’ve stayed at Llama’s house while she was in Portland. But we had planned to see her again the next day for a second session before driving all the way home to Chewelah. She had talked about wanting to take us to some lake ranch or garden-type place. It was a ways out of Portland and would’ve made for a very long day driving back home. Mike’s cousin, Elyse’s wedding was that night at Deer Lake and we were really hoping to make it back in time for some of it.

Mike woke up at the hotel that morning and dry heaved as usual. And he was distraught over not knowing whether he wanted to see Linda again or not. A part of us felt like it went against our focus of Biblical healing and scripture, like it was evil somehow. When Linda called us that morning, she said she really wanted to see Mike again and didn’t feel like her time with him was complete. We told her we couldn’t go to the ranch; it was just too long of a day and she said she had thought the same thing. She just needed to get a ride down to the hotel. She was debating whether to call a taxi or not. She could tell we were hesitant about even seeing her again. When we hung up, she had no idea how she’d get down to this hotel from Llama’s mountain home but she would try. As flaky as she could be, we had no idea if we’d ever even see her again; we had to check out of the hotel in just a few hours.

Mike and I prayed. We prayed that God’s light would surround us and protect us from anything evil, or anything not from Him. We commanded all the works of the devil to be fruitless and to leave our presence and proclaimed only the work of God could touch us. We asserted that anything evil be banished from our room and not be allowed to enter. We truly envisioned that prayer creating a barrier of protection around us that was impenetrable by anyone who wasn’t filled with the love and purpose of God. We prayed like that for quite some time, in response to Mike’s hesitancy that Linda’s practices were not Godly. A minute later, there was a knock on the door. I opened the door and Linda walked in. She could tell we had doubts, but without any prompting by us, it seemed Linda wanted to speak only of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit the entire time she was there. I’d never heard Mike speak so candidly to someone about his doubts and concerns about her and what she believes. She reassured us that she has tools that truly work to help people; we just had to trust her. It’s hard to explain the next three hours in that hotel room, but our doubts about her were eliminated and the mood completely changed after the night before. Linda sat in a chair pulled up to the bed, Mike lay on his back on top of the bed, and I sat on the bed next to him. Linda explained that she grew up the daughter of a minister, so she had a traditional Christian upbringing. Her view of who Jesus is varies a bit from mainstream Christians, but she loves God nonetheless. It meant a lot to us that she was revealing so much to us about her own spirituality and that she shared the same basic view of a loving creator and the power of prayer. She asked us questions, had us describe feelings, and had us close our eyes and envision God. When she asked Mike what he saw, with tears in his eyes, he said, “Love.” Linda told Mike that she truly saw Mike for who he is. She told him she saw that he is so good, pure, and simple and even she couldn’t help but cry as she told him that. She couldn’t have been more right; which told me how incredibly intuitive she is. Her words during those couple hours were like a mantra that filled our souls. She was speaking words of love and healing as both of us looked into each other’s eyes and cried, telling each other how much we loved one another, how we forgave each other for any past hurts, and we were grateful for the miracle of the present moment. Living in the moment somehow became enough for us both. We both knew we were having an incomparable experience and the miracle of our love and our life together was enough to be content. For the first time, there wasn’t a fear of death or loss, an anxiety about the future, just an appreciation for the “here and now,” a gratitude for the miracle of our love, and the gift of choosing to live life to the fullest. We were all in our own little heavenly bubbly together for those few hours.

After calling the front desk to get a late checkout, we started to wrap things up as quickly as possible. Linda was making a list of stuff for us to do as “homework” (Mike’s prescription for healing/enlightenment) which included certain books to read, herbals to try, and videos to watch on a regular basis. Most of these things, we never even got a chance to do. But among them was a video called “A Good Day,” which we did watch as frequently as we could. Mike eventually mentioned he thought it would be a good video to play at a memorial, which I never forgot. To this day, I still have people tell me that they watch that video regularly. We quickly packed our stuff up and hurried out of the hotel, hugging Linda goodbye in the hallway. I imagine she went and got a cab.

Mike was almost a different person that day on our drive home. If there was one most powerful spiritual turning point for him, it was that day. The whole car ride home he was on an emotional high, love and appreciation for life exploding from him, and our connection deeper than ever. Mike seemed to have had an experience with God. His attitude towards Linda was completely different. He loved her and trusted her. She never gave any unrealistic expectation that he was going to be physically healed from his cancer, but she made sure he was as whole and content as possible, both spiritually and emotionally, in the short amount of time we had. Mike had expressed his reluctance to use marijuana to her because he felt like it stunted his spiritual growth and numbed the whole spiritual “experience.” She completely agreed with him and encouraged him to refrain from using it as much as possible. That day Mike wouldn’t use his vaporizer at all, and could only force himself to eat a few baby carrots all day.

We stopped in Kennewick to get gas and Mike bought Band-Aids to reattach his little pressure point discs where the tape was starting to fall off. He was also getting really sore riding in the car that long so we took a little break and lay in some grass by the gas station. Anxiety and emotions were already starting to creep back in a little for Mike since he wasn’t feeling very well and he was attempting to not smoke any pot at all. We took some time to talk it out and refocus on the concepts that eased Mike’s fears: trusting in God and living each day like it was our last.

On our way home, we were late for the ceremony, but we made it to the tail end of Mike’s cousin, Elyse’s wedding reception at Deer Lake. I grabbed a plate of food while Mike was greeted with love by so many friends and family. He was only able to pick at a few grapes; he just didn’t have the appetite to eat without using the vaporizer. We stayed for a while then before leaving, Mike got into a deeply spiritual conversation with his Christian uncle, Chris, who we’d stayed with on Whidbey Island the previous month. I was rather shocked to hear some of the things coming out of Mike’s mouth. He was telling Chris he could “see” the holy spirit in him, and he was so…into it. The Mike I had known before would have evaded this type of conversation and been uncomfortable with it. But he was asking questions and enthusiastically listening and talking. It filled my heart to the brim to see that new side of him.

When we got home over the next couple days, Mike continued to surprise me with the way he wanted to attend church, the way he talked to his family about God and living life to the fullest, and trying to experience the full range of emotions that this journey presented. He wasn’t using his vaporizer so in an entire day, he may have eaten only a few carrots or snap peas. We began regularly praying first thing in the morning and when he would have significant pain, we’d incorporate the “Abba” breaths that Linda had taught us, and it really seemed to help. Mike continued to wear the taped on tabs on his fingers and the copper rings just for the heck of it, even though we thought it was silly. It was finally July, and we were looking forward to Mike hopefully feeling well enough to enjoy the summer. We were waiting to hear from Dr. Thompson on that trial in Tacoma and hoping to get started with that soon. Of course, we should have learned by now that our plans could change in the blink of an eye. What we did learn, was that a miracle is not always in the form you hope or expect it to be in. Maybe what we already had was the miracle. Mike was the miracle. Our love and time was the miracle.