healing nature – Still Life, Beyond Cancer

On Tuesday evening, June 13th, I went on a silent meditation hike with a few friends to commemorate the anniversary of my diagnosis. The hike was my friend Sarah’s idea; after reading my post “Climb Every Mountain,” she suggested that hiking down an actual mountain might be a good way to mark the end of the year-long uphill climb of diagnosis and treatment, and honor the path of ongoing recovery I’m on now and will be for a while: the (metaphorical) climb down.

Sarah and I planned to start at the top of Mill Mountain, and two friends would begin at the bottom, meet up with us on the trail, then turn back, and together we’d hike the rest of the way down. Two more planned to meet us at the bottom. I also carried several notes from friends and loved ones in my pocket, who’d shared words such as “hope,” “grace,” and “serenity,” and wishes for the coming year.

Sarah and I visited the overlook at the summit before we started down. I was almost moved to tears to see the sunset. Last year, Steve and I spent a few anxious days at the beach waiting to find out whether or not my cancer had metastasized. As I walked on the beach the first evening, the sun shone out from behind a dark cloud, its rays forming a kind of halo. In that moment, it felt like hope. As Sarah and I stood at the top of Mill Mountain, the sun once again shone its rays from behind the clouds. It felt like coming full circle.

Then Sarah noticed a smiling, shining sun painted on a rock that someone had left on the overlook sign. It was from the “Kindness Rocks” project. I snapped a picture and left it there to bring the next person who spotted it a smile.

At the trailhead I said, “Here’s to a new and different kind of year,” and then we started down in silence.

The metaphor is almost too easy; it practically writes itself. Much of the trail was rocky, though there were also smooth stretches, times when it was easier to look up and really take in the woods surrounding us. Some parts were wide and almost flat; others narrow and crossed by root-tangles. Once the trail jackknifed so hard to the left I almost missed the turn and became disoriented for a moment. One of my friends had to point the way. I walked in front, and there were times, especially when the trail grew narrow and steep, when I felt as I walking alone. But I knew I could just turn around and see people I loved were there, always behind me.

The downhill was relentless, and more than once I thought, “I didn’t think this trail was this long.” I also looked up at the slope we’d descended and thought, “That’s one big mountain. And I actually climbed it.” Metaphorically, vis à vis the physical Mill Mountain; literally, the mountain called Cancer.

At the start of our hike I mostly heard leaves rustling in the breeze, the soft thuds of my feet on the trail. In the middle I became aware of cars passing on the nearby road, the world outside the forest going about its business, unaware of our walk in progress. The closer we got to the bottom, the more birdsong I heard: owls hooting, wood thrushes whistling and trilling.

I stopped a few times to rest my cranky knees, to listen, to look. I saw a piece of glass on the trail and left it there because it wasn’t safe for me to pick it up and carry it; in my mind it represented worry, the thoughts and fears that can rob you of joy in the present. When I saw a golden glint, I bent down to investigate and found a tiny golden charm. I turned it over to see it read “create.” I laughed and put it in my pocket, thanking the Universe for the reminder and encouragement.

At the bottom Sarah said some beautiful words: “In all the noise of living, remember the silence. And in the silence hear your soul’s voice. In all the rushing of living, remember the stillness. And in the stillness feel the pulse of life. In all the living of life, remember the dying. And know in the dying there is new life.” I had gone through a kind of death in the last year, she said, and now I was emerging, stepping into a new life, a new start.

There were hugs shared all around. I wanted to say something eloquent, too, express how much the love, kindness and support of my friends and family has meant, somehow capture all the ways my heart has broken and mended and split wide open in the hardest and most wonderful ways this year.

In the moment I squeaked out a teary “thank you.”

Two words that contain multitudes. Maybe, sometimes, “thank you” is enough. Sometimes, maybe, it is everything.

Thank you to all who voted on a name change for the blog, and for the thoughtful suggestions that I consider a title without the word “cancer” in it at all. The clear preference (at 85%) of the poll choices was “Still Life, Beyond Cancer.” While I’m still on the mountain, as I will be for a bit, I think that title fits—but the comments have made me think about entertaining another name change in the not-so-distant future that reflects moving beyond even “beyond.” Thank you, dear readers and friends.

Tomorrow I’m scheduled to undergo my final major reconstructive surgery. I’ll be reporting soon on the new bionic boobs (an improvement, I hope, over the tissue expanders, also known as “bricks in your breasts”), and sharing more stories, resources, and fun hats.

Today’s post is authored by my wonderful husband, Steve. As I approach my last chemotherapy appointment this Friday (yay!), he shares the story of Taxol, the drug at work on me.

My wife sleeps in the reclining chair of the chemotherapy treatment room. A shawl knitted by her sister-in-law, herself a breast cancer survivor, is wrapped around her shoulders. A bright fuzzy blanket made by her mother lies across her lap and legs. Two plastic bags on the IV stand feed a clear liquid through the tangle of tubes to the port on her chest and then straight into her heart. The chemical in the liquid works in a unique way to halt cell division, which stops the cancer from growing. Drop by drop, minute by minute, it flows through her veins to poison the tumor that threatens her life.

I’ve spent my career as a forester, so I’m fascinated by this chemotherapy agent which was found in the bark of a tree. An unremarkable and slow-growing tree compared to its neighbors in the moist mountains of the Pacific Northwest, the Pacific yew, Taxus brevifolia, rarely reaches 50 feet tall. All parts of the tree, except for the fleshy aril surrounding its seed, are extremely poisonous.

Seven years before Sandee was born, botanist Arthur Barclay from the New Crops Research branch of the US Department of Agriculture and several graduate students were roaming the deep forests and steep slopes of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington. They collected samples of stem, fruit, and bark from a scraggly Pacific yew and sent them to labs for study. Researchers spent decades trying to identify the compound in the bark and its medicinal properties. It wasn’t until Sandee was in her mid-teens, however, that the drug derived from the yew bark, Taxol, entered clinical trials for cancer treatment. Only in 1991 was it shown to be effective against breast cancer.

But while life-saving for cancer patients, the production of Taxol could have been devastating to the yew trees. In the early days of Taxol research, it took about 6 trees to produce the 25 pounds of bark needed to produce just one-half gram of Taxol, the amount required for a single patient. And removing the bark kills the trees. There simply were not enough of these trees to supply the needed quantities of bark; mass production of the drug could eradicate the species.

~ ~ ~

In 1999, when I moved to Blacksburg, Virginia, I met David Kingston, a tall, lean Englishman with a penchant for bowties, born in London and educated at Cambridge University. He was an elder at the church I attended, and his earnest yet compassionate and thoughtful approach to preaching made his sermons some of the most impactful I have heard.

Dr. Kingston is also a chemistry professor at Virginia Tech. He was part of the research team that tackled the problem of synthesizing Taxol so that it could be produced sustainably. The Pacific yew has a cousin, the English or European yew (Taxus baccata), with its own long and storied history. English yew has been used to make bows for centuries, dating as far back, according to Homer, as the siege of Troy, and poet William Wordsworth spoke of a yew tree “of vast circumference and gloom profound.” The English yew is far more widespread than the Pacific yew, growing even as an ornamental shrub in the US, and its needles can be harvested without killing the tree. Dr. Kingston and his collaborators found a way to use a compound from the needles of the English yew to create the molecule needed to synthesize Taxol. It is this compound, hidden away in the bark and leaves of trees, decades in the making, that is coursing through Sandee’s veins while she sleeps.

Oxford Yew Stats! — English Yew in Oxford: 370 years!

I think of the times Sandee and I have hiked through forests, sharing our love for natural spaces. I remember the hike we took in the Cascade Mountains of Washington on a day off from her writers’ conference. We may have walked right by one of these Pacific yews. I recall the 370-year old English yew in the Oxford Botanical Garden we encountered a few years ago. I think of the millenia that people have used plant products for healing.

And I marvel at the decades of patient, persistent efforts of scientists and doctors who have overcome so many challenges to bring a compound from the bark of a poisonous tree into the very heart of my wife. I’m honored to have known one of these scientists, but I am grateful to them all.

Tag: healing nature

Mountain Meditation: The Climb Down Begins

Special Guest Post: The Chemistry Professor & the Poisonous Tree

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: