OVERCOMING CANCER: A MYSTERIOUS RECOVERY

While Bill's and Jerry's cases illustrate the differences that the individual's personality can make, the mysteries of recovery are even more dramatically illustrated in the case of Bob Gilley, a highly successful insurance executive from Charlotte, North Carolina. Bob had always had near-perfect health and, as a result, had never thought much about illness. For years he had been an avid racquetball player. However, in the months preceding his diagnosis Bob was aware that he was "down" emotionally, feeling discouraged and depressed about some relationships in his life. But when he went in for his annual physical examination in 1973 he was "feeling good" physically: in fact, he had played a rather strenuous hour of racquetball the morning of his exam.

By virtue of his business, Bob was very conscious of the value of regular physical exams, although he usually approached them with boredom since they had rarely turned up any signs of illness. The EKG, the X-rays, the blood work were all normal, but after a thorough examination, a lump was discovered in his groin. A surgical biopsy was scheduled for the following week.

Bob described his experience recently in a presentation to cancer patients and health professionals interested in our approach:

I was told that there would be a very small cut, perhaps an inch in length, much like the incision in an appendectomy. However, when I woke up several hours after the biopsy, I found that they had opened my whole abdomen, both vertically and horizontally.

When the surgeon arrived, he told me it was very hard to diagnose the particilar kind of tissue he had removed. It was some sort of a malignant mass, but I had a good chance of pulling through it. Early the next morning the chance was changed to 50 percent.

When my own doctor arrived on the scene, the diagnosis was changed again. I was given a 30 percent chance of survival.

After much debate, the pathologist, the oncologist, and the surgeon finally called it a "secondary undifferentiated carcinoma." The chances for my cure were dropped to less than 1 percent.

Bob was then sent to a very large cancer clinic for chemotherapy treatment:

It was a bizarre experience. I arrived there very weak from surgery and for an entire day sat in a waiting room with hundreds of other cancer patients. Everyone seemed to be treated very impersonally, but I'm sure it was just because of the incredible case load. I became "Undifferentiated Carcinoma in Room 351-A."

When I was strong enough, I got passes for everything: passes to go for a walk in the park, passes to go to breakfast, lunch, dinner—I even got passes to go to the bathroom at the service station across the street, because it was very important for me to remain a member of the outside world and not become a patient entombed in a cancer hospital. I got more passes than anybody in the history of that clinic. I also ran my office from my hospital bed.

The chemotherapy types and dosages were finally decided upon, and I was introduced to another stressful aspect of cancer. Three-quarters of the time I remained deathly ill. I lost all my hair, my appetite, and a considerable amount of weight. I was constantly nauseated, had diarrhea, burned veins [veins irritated from chemotherapy], mouth blisters, and was pallid and weak. In a very short time I looked like a reject from a concentration camp.

I could tell that in the eyes of all but a few people—a very precious few who mattered—I was a dying man. During my months of intense chemotherapy, I was on a miracle chase, working with nutrition, vitamin therapy, faith healers, psychic readers, and so on. Many times I would scream, "Damn you, cancer! Get out of my body!"

Bob made several trips back to the cancer clinic, receiving intensive chemotherapy. At the end of a ten-month period he had reached the point where continued chemotherapy held little promise and high danger of causing deterioration of the heart muscles. And the mass in his groin had not diminished in size.

Bob heard about our program and attended one of our patient sessions in Fort Worth. Prior to the meeting he was sent some materials describing our work as well as a tape recording that taught him the mental imagery process. Although his initial stay was only for a few days, the first session gave him renewed hope. In Bob's words: "When I got off the plane in Charlotte, my wife said, 'You look different.' And I was different. I had hope. I had returned home full of enthusiasm and new direction.''

Bob's chemotherapy was discontinued and his local oncologist evaluated him monthly. Bob found the discipline of practicing mental imagery regularly to be difficult but he kept it up. He also began to exercise regularly and soon was able to play twenty minutes of light racquetball. He began to build up slowly, regaining some of his weight. But the spectre of cancer still hung on. As he reported:

No medical differences showed up for two, three, even four weeks. But I kept holding on to the belief that this system would work. After six weeks, I was examined by my doctor in Charlotte. As he began probing my body, I can't begin to describe the absolute terror that carne over me. "Maybe it's spread!" I thought. "Maybe it's five times bigger than it was before." My doctor turned to me in amazement and said with a very tender expression, "It is considerably smaller. As a matter of fact, I would say that it's shrunk 75 percent in mass size." We rejoiced together, but cautiously.

Two weeks later—which was only two months after I had met the Simontons—I was given a gallium scan and various other tests and examinations. There was absolutely no disease present, only a residual scar nodule about the size of a small marble. Within two months of beginning relaxation and imagery, I was cancer-free! My doctors in Charlotte didn't believe it.

Over the next few months Bob's energy and vitality continued to increase, until he felt his energy and vitality were as great as or greater than they had been before his diagnosis.

Bob still had a good deal of work to do. In subsequent sessions with us, he began to resolve many of the personal problems that had caused him to be emotionally "down" before the onset of the cancer. He also worked hard on changing behaviors that were interfering with his relationships. At this writing, he continues to show no evidence of cancer. In fact, he reports that:

Today my vitality is greater than before the cancer. If I had no medical records, I could pass any insurance exam in America. I don't want to sound overly confident, because I have many down moments. Fears of the disease return when I have abdominal pain from indigestion, for instance. Sometimes I even doubt that all of this is a reality, and my logical mind says, "Maybe it was a delayed effect of the chemotherapy, or maybe it was the vitamins. Maybe there was no cancer there to begin with." But most of the time I feel very confident that this was the way for me, and it can be a way for many, many others.

Bob has done much to educate people in Charlotte about the role patients can play in overcoming cancer and has instituted a cancer counseling service known as Day spring. He sums up his experience by saying: "I've learned a lot about my responsibility for my disease, my responsibility for healing, and about the techniques for unlocking powers that can be found within all of us."

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Cancer