I’m 51. I was born in Detroit and I can remember always wanting to be an actress. Oh how I wanted to be Shirley Temple! I grew to love the stage through ballet. Ballet was my life and when I was 13 years old I was asked to join a ballet company in Dallas and left home to board at a Russian classical ballet school. I stayed in Dallas from eighth grade through high school and spent two years at SMU in the dance program. I suffered a hip injury my sophomore year and was dropped from the repertory ensemble group because I just couldn’t dance as well anymore and I was gaining a lot of weight because I was depressed. I was crushed. I remember sitting in my yearly review with the dance department staff surrounding me like a horse shoe and one of the professors rebuked me calling out that I clearly was not dedicated to my dance career any longer and asked me if there was anything else I thought I’d like to do. I answered that I’d like to be an actress. The room erupted in laughter around me. The man who asked the question almost fell backward because he threw his head back so hard in merciless hilarity. I was humiliated. The Universe stepped in via an ad in the university paper advertising a 6 week summer program at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I gathered my courage, requested an application and sent it in. I was terrified and excited and hopeful!
They sent me a book of monologues and a date to show up at a local hotel to audition. I was so unsure of myself that I put away the material until the night before the audition. In a panic, I begged my friend, Julie to come to my dorm room the night before and give me all the direction her high school musical theater training had taught her. I mustered all of my courage and off I went to a part of town I didn’t know and into a hotel I’d never been to and did something I’d never done before. It was terrifying. On the spot, I was told that dancers make horrible actors and that my voice was so tenuous he could hardly bare to listen to me for the three minutes of my audition. So I went back to school and forgot about it. To my utter astonishment I got in! I was hooked! After the summer program, I got into the first year program and then second year and was invited back for the third year Academy Company.
After finishing the third year, the reality of auditioning and rejection and FEAR hit. I crumbled. I had a pretty big opportunity offered to me following a showcase that the academy organized for us that I let slip through my hands because I was scared. The disappointment of that missed opportunity has stayed with me. I got a few small gigs due to my dance skills and that was it. My acting career took a hiatus as I fulfilled my other life dream of becoming a wife and a mother. I never lost my dream of being an actress and I always spoke my truth that I would return to the craft after my children were grown and out on their own. Some people laughed at me, but not my parents. I fanned the flame of my desire to perform by teaching cardio kickboxing for 16 years and using that platform to satisfy my love of performing. I really like moving people and lifting people up so I treated each class like a show. It was a double whammy, I got fit and I got to perform, sort of.
I’m a hopeless romantic holding out for a hero and a seeker of happiness and of beauty and of miracles daily, no matter how small. I live a life of thanks. Thanks to The Lord for the gift of life, twice. Thanks to The Universe for sending me who and what I need when I need them. I engage in conversations with strangers because I love the connection that can be forged in the few moments shared in a checkout line. I am the proud mother of a 23 year old man who serves our great state on a trails crew by rebuilding and reinforcing trails, fire roads and river beds deep in our forests and a 21 year old daughter who will graduate with a degree in kinesiology this next year and has the desire to serve special needs people and people with injuries that severely impact their daily life. I have been blessed with the gift of life twice because I am a 6 year 8 months and 8 day colon cancer survivor, today, as I write this.
Through Facebook, I was drawn to a talk in LA called, Women Amaze Me: A Panel for Women in Entertainment that included my dear old friend, Sue Hamilton. Once again, I gathered my courage and I drove to a part of town that I didn’t know. That’s an easy task for most people but it wasn’t easy for me. I wanted to turn around and run home. I thought I’d just tell Sue that I couldn’t make it because there was traffic but, again, The Universe stepped in to provide traffic 10 times worse if I turned around to go home. I forced myself to forge on. I wanted better for my life and I wanted to act and I wanted to hear about it from these women.
I was reunited with my dear friend, Sue. Sue is an example to me of success and of generosity and of giving in spirit, strength and knowledge. Sue invited me to observe an acting class she was teaching and with her support, I was able to draw the courage to jump back in to acting class. The Universe has stepped in, again, and favored me with the opportunity to again pursue my life dream of having an acting career. I always exclaim, “Who gets a second chance in life to live their dream? Me! Me!” I am fighting and clawing and falling and continuing to pick myself up. “Fall seven times, stand up eight!” I must move forward to make a career in the field that I love because I am the example for my children to remember when choosing a career to enjoy or when adversity comes their way in life. Mustering this courageous attitude from a life as a doormat has been terrifying and empowering to me. I have never been outwardly opinionated, challenging or political. I avoid confrontation to my own detriment.
I had been aware through Facebook of Sue’s and her wife Heidi’s activism for equality. Their example of activism for love and with love and their steadfast belief in “E Pluribus Unum” gave me reason to pause NOT when Sue invited me to join Artist's Rise Up Los Angeles. I have never been an activist. I have never put myself out into the public arena to say I don’t agree with rule of order or the incumbent of a political office. Hell, I never ever even stood up to say I have an opinion and I must be heard! What a gift it is to me to be in the company of people who stand together to say to one another, “I’ll stand for you.” I Rise Up with ARULA because I stand for inclusion and human rights and against injustice. I have participated in marches and I have made phone calls to my representatives and I have voiced my opinion about my disappointment of our current political leader and of policies and of prejudice for the first time in my life. Of course, I had to learn how to do that from ARULA producer Jenn Liu through her tutorial.
In 2010, my kids and I were delivered a devastating blow in the sudden departure of my husband. We were crushed. I was heartbroken. My mom told me that as long as my kids had one stable parent in the house, that they would be ok and we would make it. I focused all of my attention on my kids and ignored the signals my body was sending. I was concerned and acknowledged but was afraid to address the blood and the change in my stools when I went to the bathroom. I thought my naps were just getting longer and the great amount of weight I was losing was because I was depressed and working two part time jobs and carting two kids to sports and trying to pretend I was strong but hiding in my room sobbing continuously. I would lie on my bed arms splayed open and prostrate in surrender and pray out loud to God, “Please help me! God please help me I can’t do this alone.” It was only with the strength of my faith that I was able to get up every day and carry on.
As a frightened single mother the first thing I did was get a full time job. I was rendered lifeless each day after six and half hours in special ed kindergarten. That was the hardest job physically, mentally and emotionally I had ever had. My naps grew longer. Before a training seminar on November 18, 2010 I stopped to use the restroom and was horrified to find a toilet bowl full of bright red blood. I bolted to the parking lot at the break and called the nurse at my doctor’s office and told her I needed a referral to a gastroenterologist immediately because there was definitely something wrong with me. Previous to that episode I had been told that I was fine and that I’d had 2 kids and I was too young for anything serious to worry about and that it was probably hemorrhoids. Four days later I was scheduled for a colonoscopy and twelve days after that I found myself on the table during the procedure being asked to wake and change position three times because I had a huge polyp that they couldn’t get the loop around to remove.
On the way out of the endoscopy center the nurse, with a caring sadness in her voice, told my friend, Scotty, “You take real good care of her.” I knew. Three days later I was standing in Dick’s Sporting Goods, in the shoe department with my son when my primary care doctor called, “Barbara, Jim. Barbara I’m so sorry.” he said. “Sorry for what?” I asked. “You don’t know? Dr. F. hasn’t called you?” he gasped into the phone. “No.” I replied as I looked to see if my son was near. He wasn’t. “Barbara, I’m so sorry, it was cancer.” I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was in public and with my son. I found one of the little benches with the mirror on the side that you sit on when you’re trying on shoes and I sat. Then I stood. Then I sat, again. They always sit in the movies, I thought, but I couldn’t. I had to hold it together. He assured me that he would make the necessary phone calls and that I would be taken care of by the best doctors available. Then I pretended that nothing was wrong and drove my son to jujitsu. I had to stop three times on the way home because, just like he said he would, Dr. Jim had made those phone calls. “Highly aggressive” and “Very low” were words that were hurdling at me. "I’ll see you tomorrow morning," said Dr. Howard Kaufman, Director of Huntington Hospital Cancer Center. Eight days later I scooted from the gurney to the surgical bed calmly and faithfully trusting that The Lord had me in His hands for a successful surgery. They asked if there was certain music I liked and said that I really liked Florence and the Machine’s, Dog Days are Over. As I was being prepped and as the anesthesia was kicking in everyone around me was doing their job and jamming. And I was running! Florence was stirring me with her words to run into the hands of my God. She bellowed at me to, “Run fast for your mother run fast for your father. Run for your children for your sisters and brothers. Leave all your love and your longings behind you can’t carry it with you if you want to survive.” On that table I reconciled with myself that I had to begin to let go of the hurt and the anger and the stress and the injustices that I’d been holding on to if I wanted to live.
I was diagnosed with Stage I Colorectal Cancer in the form of a 40 millimeter polyp in my recto sigmoid curve. I was recently astonished to learn, via research for a voice over assignment of all things, that the average femoral head of a natural hip joint is 40 millimeters. That finally gave me a reference of just how big that was. A diagnosis of Stage I was a miracle for me because I had been bleeding for four years and had been too embarrassed to mention it.
If I answer from my heart, I knew when I walked out of the endoscopy center. The prompts to move into different positions on the table during the colonoscopy, the nurse’s surprise that I was getting two copies, not one, of a full color photo collage of my colon and polyp and the tone of the nurse telling Scotty to take good care of me all told me to prepare. Sure there were tears, but I never overreacted. I called my parents which was terrible. I had to wait while both of them got on the phone and assured me they were sitting down. I’ll never forget the moment of silence right after I said, “I have cancer.” My Dad was first with a giant exhale in disbelief and choked out, “Awe man. That was not what I was expecting.” My Mom was next with no hesitation, “We’ll come!”
My poor kids! My kids didn’t know how to react. They were in eighth grade and tenth grade and still suffering from the sudden departure of their dad from our home. They just sat, I believe in mute shock, and pretended to believe me when I said I was sure everything would be ok and then they went to their rooms and closed the doors. My best friend, Irma, literally fell off of her chair onto the floor when I told her over the phone. The only other time she fell off of her chair was when I called and told her that my husband had left us. That had only been eight months earlier. Most people wondered how in the world I was going to be able to handle this so soon following that loss but for me the process of dealing with it had already been in the works. I was already eight months into my deep soul digging and my resolve in my faith in God and His love and goodness. I had already decided to walk with the faith of Job who lost everything. I had already sought out the benefits of well practiced meditation. I had already been lying in bed crying out to God, “I need help!” And, “I’m listening!” And then I would listen. My Mom told me her Dad always told her to, “Keep moving forward, no matter what!” That became and still is my mantra.
I will forever and always be grateful to my friend, Scotty, for taking me to my colonoscopy. That was a big deal because I had no husband and my kids did not drive nor were they old enough for such responsibility and I had no family because my family lives in Michigan and Canada. It’s an odd thing to ask someone who is not family to take you to a colonoscopy. Who knows what could happen with that situation and the drive home and the getting into the house and the …list goes on! The fact that the process has to do with your butt makes the entire situation uncomfortable. My best friend, Irma, took days off of work to attend my appointments with the doctors and to be present at the hospital with my parents and my children during my surgery. Another best friend, Susie, took me to my pre-op appointment. It was two weeks before Christmas and my parents dropped everything at home and work and flew out to take care of me and my kids. People brought food and flowers and baskets full of inspirational books and gifts and strangers signed me up to be the recipient of prayer at churches. People I didn’t even know were praying for me! How powerful that is! One of the most memorable and sincerely touching moments was when my 86 year old friend, Ben, who had been one of my kickboxing students for 12 years, said to me, “Barb, you know I’m not religious at all, but I’m gonna say a prayer for you.” He may not be religious but that was a “mustard seed” moment of faith for me!
I had a grandmother who died of brain and lung cancer when I was an infant but she was also a chain smoker so the doctors discounted her. I had two 90 year old grandfathers who had colon cancer, among many other ailments, when they died but the doctors discounted them as well due to age. The doctors say that they don’t know why I got colon cancer and throw around ideas like environment and processed foods. I think there are two possibilities and most likely the first gave my body the chemicals and the second allowed my body to run with them. The first possibility is pesticides. There were a couple of seasons when my home would be invaded with ants and I would mix up some pesticides in the spray container and go all around the outside of the house following and spraying the trail in my bare feet. That’s what I think gave my body the chemicals. What allowed my body to run with the chemicals was stress and worry. Although I exercised and tried to eat healthily that was pretty much all I did for myself. I killed myself trying to be the perfect wife and the perfect mom and the perfect team mom and assistant coach and so on and so on. The more things began to deteriorate in my marriage, the harder I tried to be better. The more I tried to be what I thought he wanted, the more I lost myself and my sense of self. I was literally killing myself by ignoring myself. The last year of my marriage was especially stressful and I was a wreck. That is the year that the burning sensation in my lower left pelvic area increased and the length of my incontestable naps grew to two to three hours a day and the bleeding increased. But, I put myself last on my list and when you’re last on everybody’s list nobody says hey I’m concerned about you let’s go get you checked out.
Because my cancer was Stage I and there was none that had spread to my lymph nodes or my liver, the only treatment was surgery called anastomosis. Anastomosis is a bowel resection. I did not require chemo or radiation. The issue that debilitated me was the effect of the surgical margins. My tumor was so low in my recto sigmoid curve that in order to ensure that the doctor removed absolutely all of the cancer, he had to remove 3/4 of my rectum and 20% of my colon. The rectum and all of the surrounding nerves are sort of the communication center between your bowels and your brain. I lost my communication center and therefore lost my control. Bouts of severe constipation from the anesthesia and from my body not knowing how to work anymore were followed by the opposite. I couldn’t eat without immediately having to run to the restroom. I couldn’t even take a drink of water without running to the restroom. Everything I ate was a crap shoot. Literally! The nutritionist told me to eat chicken and rice and that stopped me up. Then I’d try a little bit of something else and find myself in a mad dash to the bathroom. My kids and parents knew when I was running to get the heck out of the way. I literally couldn’t leave the house and I sat on the toilet for hours at a time. After my eight week recovery time, I had to return to work. I had to find a way to get through the day without eating to set off my bowels yet not feel the pangs of hunger all day. I discovered that I could eat Ritz Crackers and take the edge off of my starvation without inducing too many trips to the bathroom. My friends and coworkers lovingly joked about the sleeve of crackers I carried around with me for a year.
I was referred to a acupuncturist who I credit with saving my life as much as my surgeon because he helped give me back my control which gave me some freedom. It was not an instant solution. It took years for me to be able to eat outside of my home. I thought of my bowels as a muscle. Muscles only get stronger if you work them. I started not allowing myself to run to the restroom immediately and holding that muscle as long as I could. At first I could drink a little water and be ok. Then I could eat a tiny bit of food and be ok. But sometimes I wasn’t ok and those days were horrible and humiliating. And they were many! When I first started venturing to eat out whomever I was dining with was compassionate towards me when I ran to the restroom twenty-five times but it was just so embarrassing passing the same tables over and over again. Eventually I was able to strengthen my system to function at near normal. That process took years and continues to improve still with attention and control over what I eat and how much I eat. I continue to move forward no matter what.
Friends and family were my support group. I never branched out to find a cancer support group that fit into my schedule. Everything I found conflicted with my work schedule or my kickboxing classes. I actually became a support group. Shortly after my return to work, I ran into a gal I’d met but did not know well who approached me with concern for symptoms she was experiencing. Tammy was 38, a wife, a mother of three girls and through a colonoscopy found out she had Stage IV colon cancer. I was able to help her with her fear of what was ahead of her and how she could manage herself post operatively and I was able to help her find the belief that she could and would beat it. She did. I’ve been able to help people I don’t know through the requests of family and friends.
Mostly, people are suffering because they don’t know what and what not to eat and they’re in distress because they’re eating things that are making their system rebel. I know that these people think I’ve helped them but the truth is that they’ve helped me. They have allowed me to start small on my mission to spread awareness for prevention and early detection. I came upon a book written my Mother Teresa in which I found a passage that says, “…perhaps we will realize that what we sometimes consider a stumbling block is rather a rock we can step on.” I’m standing on my rock to save lives. You can’t beat colon cancer if you don’t know you have it.
I received help from the chef at Project Angel Food. My best friend, Irma, worked there at the time and asked him to suggest foods that I could eat that would provide the most nutrition to me. I had been surviving on Ensure. He put together a list for me that helped me begin to strive and survive.
The most important thing I’d like you to know is that COLON CANCER IS PREVENTABLE! It is treatable and 90% beatable when detected early. To live with the freedom of an unrestrained life is a gift that is taken for granted by all who have never experienced a bowel crisis. You must pay attention to your bowel health. Be a snoop! Check your poop! Never be embarrassed to say that there is something wrong with your bowel habits. Insist that the doctors follow through with investigation into your concerns because only you know your body and know when something is not right. If I had not insisted I would not be alive today.
Project Angel Food for the lives they nourish. I have supported the American Cancer Society through Relay for Life events. I was honored to be the opening speaker at the Upland RLFL event in 2012. The Colon Cancer Alliance is an awesome organization because it is dedicated to the fight against colon cancer specifically. The CCA features patients and survivors and supporters and their stories their struggles and their triumphs. They are continually informing the public of new treatments and they provide easy access to valuable information, facts and forums.
I am proud to be a member of ARULA! I am honored to stand with the AMAZING and diverse human beings in this group!
