What is #CancerRoadTrip and how did it come to be? Read this post to get the backstory!
Hawaii is my first stop for a variety of reasons. One, is simply to take care of myself; to shed the stress of the last several months in a place of incredible beauty. But beyond that, there is a fascinating history of holistic mind/body healing in Hawaii dating back to roughly 700 AD. It’s a cultural and spiritual tradition that combines elements of many eastern and traditional medicines, using energy, sound, food, psychology, herbs and movement to heal.
Hawaiian healers are known as “Kahuna” which means “Keeper of the Secret”, referring to the secret medical knowledge that was passed from one Kahuna to another, generation after generation.
The noun Kahuna extends its meaning beyond medicine. It generally refers to someone who has deep expertise in a given area for example, the best surfer on the beach might be referred to as “kahuna nui he’e nalu,” the “principal master surfer.”
In medical circles, Kahuna are wise men/women or shaman. They have no formal degree. Their training is one on one, from a master who imparts their knowledge to the student. This traditional Hawaiian medical system is a very sophisticated one with specialties in Earth Medicine, Psychosocial Medicine, Manual Medicine, Movement and Marshall arts; Music and Arts; Nutrition and Energy.
The Hawaiian word for health is ola (life). Without health,there is no life. Hawaiians view the body, mind and spirit as one. The body cannot be healed without healing the spirit.
This indigenous approach to healing faced it’s first cultural hurdle with the discovery of the Hawaiian islands by Captain James Cook. Cook visited Hawaii on two occasions. First on January 18, 1778, the English explorer sailed past the island of Oahu. Two days later, he landed on the island of Kauai. He named the island the Sandwich Islands in honor of the earl of Sandwich who was one of his patrons.
The European use of iron and the “technology” of the 18th century west had an oversized impact on the Hawaiians. It is suspected that the Hawaiians attached religious significance to Cook, welcoming he and his men as gods. But on Cook’s subsequent visit int 1779,when one of the crew members died, their humanity (and subsequent exploitation of the Hawaiian’s good will) became apparent.
Captain James Cook’s attempted kidnapping of Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the ruling chief of the island of Hawaii and the decision to hold him in exchange for a stolen boat led to Cook’s death. He was killed on February 14, 1779.
The Cook explorations would have a major impact on the geographic knowledge of the times, as well as on the Hawaiian islands where the introduction of western thought would dramatically change the culture. Missionaries outlawed the ancient medical teachings in 1820 and diseases such as small pox were introduced to the island, greatly reducing population from about 800,000+ to 180,0000 by the early 1800’s.
Today in Hawaii, elements of traditional medicine remain. Given the influx of people, practices and ideas from Asia, eastern modalities such as acupuncture and tai chi have become part of the healing landscape. And of course, the incredible beauty of the islands themselves offer restoration though nature.
This alone would be more than enough for me to head to Hawaii! But in addition, it is said that the Hawaiian Islands are the Chakra system of the planet. Each of the seven main islands represents and vibrates at a different chakra energy.
The island of Hawaii is associated with the Root Chakra which represents the earth element. The second (Sacral) Chakra is said to be on Maui. The third (Solar Plexus) is Lanai. Molokai is considered the Heart Chakra and Oahu is the Throat Chakra. The Third Eye is Kauai which is associated with our ability to find clear intuition and to follow our dreams. The Crown Chakra – Niihau Niihau – is actually a private island.
Kauai will be my first stop. It is peaceful, and I need some peace. I am terrified that the stress of the last several months is impacting my health, and I need to devote myself to better fitness and stress management. I need to devote myself to me. And Hawaii, with its beauty and traditions, is a good place to start.
One of the contributors to Anti-Cancer Club, Khevin Barnes, spent a year in a Zen Buddhist temple on Oahu. He’s putting me in touch with some people and fellow blogger Eileen Rosenbloom will be on Kauai. Through Twitter, I also have some Hawaii cancer connections, and through MeetUp I am already looking at beach based meditation get togethers.
The Chakra associated with Kauai, the Third Eye, is a fitting for the first stop of this journey. On Kauai, there is also a Hindu monestary that intrigues me for architectural reasons, and probably some spiritual ones as well. Because my healing journey knows no limits or bounds. Through this adventure I am finding my voice. Through some reflection starting on Kauai, may I find some clarity.
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
1960
I am flying, soaring down the stairs, over the railing, through the dining room of my parents’ house and into the kitchen. I swoop up and down, just under the ceiling. The air forms a cushion beneath me, and arms stretch out to catch the air, I will myself this way and that. It is exquisite, delightful freedom, soaring through the house like this.
I fly back upstairs to my bedroom. Then I awake. But I knew that I could fly. It was more than a child’s dream and it has stayed with me all these years.
1997
Nearly four decades later, I feel the push of air beneath my body and I soar in it, climbing thousands of feet to the base of the cloud. It is wonderfully cool at this altitude. And it is silent.
I stop below cloud base and look up at the building mass above me. Soft tendrils hang, swirling in the sway of the air. Ten thousand feet below, I see the warm, rich browns of the desert, the curve of the mountains agains the blue of Tahoe. I check the flow of my oxygen and I push out, down the mountain’s spine, over the desert in my motorless plane.
***
Is there more to our dreams than we think?
Should our dreams perhaps be or guides, rather than the societal “must do’s” that we all know too well?
Khevin Barnes recently wrote this for our sister site, www.AntiCancerClub.com. It seems that I am not alone in recognizing the power of childhood dreams…
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
Mid-life impulses are triggered by a variety of emotions. Sometimes it is the boredom of a fifteen year routine. The unfair imposition of limitations, of age. Sometimes it is regret over paths not taken. For me, it was betrayal.
To understand some of the decisions I made, you have to know that I love to travel. It is the sense of adventure that appeals to me: the idea that you don’t know what will happen, but whatever happens you will cope, one way or another. It’s as if you are suspended in time, in this cocoon of uncertainty and possibility, which is quite removed from the routine of day to day life. Of course it’s all in your head. Those possibilities always exist. It’s just unto you to see them, and for me, travel helps with that perspective.
I suppose I come by this wanderlust naturally. My father sold specialty oil products, often spending part of the year overseas. Business trips spilled over into multi-month traveling safaris, and I saw the world with a child’s eyes. It was a world of adventure and discovery, a world made up of the magic of change and chance.
Against this childhood, it seems natural that when my adult world started to crumble some decades later, I took to the road. Because when the going gets tough, I go traveling. And in a roundabout way, that is how I stumbled into the most incredible adventure of all: soaring.
Soaring is pure sport aviation. It’s about taking to the skies in a glider, a sailplane, and flying, soaring like a bird, on the breath of the earth, at the whim of the sky. You can climb tens of thousands of feet, and fly for hundred of miles. All without an engine, all in the silence of motor-less flight. It is an adventure that humbles, amazes, astounds and intrigues. It is an adventure that forces you to look both within and without for answers to your flight.
I never planned to fly; it just happened. Perhaps it was a childhood dream; perhaps it was just the adventure of it all. All I know is that when I stumbled into this incredible world of motor-less flight, something deep inside of me clicked, and my future was forever changed.
How does an otherwise sane, intelligent, nearly forty year old woman find herself willingly aloft in an airplane without an engine? Chance and fate, and no doubt destiny, the seeds of which were sown some time ago, for it took several years for all the pieces of this tale to unfold.
Perhaps the best place to begin is in New Orleans.
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
New Orleans 1988
New Orleans presents its beautifully sculpted face and history to the public, but for me, I always felt an undercurrent of dark malaise that I could never quit put my finger on. Part of that dark undercurrent was undoubtedly a reflection of the rot taking hold in my personal life, another year looking for the future, in lieu of living in the present. Tomorrow it will be better. The call schedule will improve. This endless, powerless position of residency which thwarts life will be behind us. The illusions of medicine are many, and they start early.
That year in New Orleans, New England seemed impossibly far away. I watched the weather map each morning on the TV news, and yearned for the site of the Long Island Sound and the smells and sounds of the Connecticut shoreline. I missed the breeze that brought the cooling scent of the sea, and the evening air that warranted a comforter mid-summer.
In New England, history has a certainty, a clear cut rational that directs the story. This happened then. He stood for that. Positions were clear. It is an intellectual progression of time.
Not so here.
Here you feel the emotion of human history, the fragility of life along the mighty Mississippi. And the web of past emotions seems to linger, in the heat, in the architecture, and in the people. In New Orleans, time meanders as if caught in the backwaters of the river itself.
The town is in may ways a monument of historic excesses. Of great successes and beautiful houses. Of economic hardship and poverty. Cycles of boom and bust created enduring pockets of wealth and poverty, sided by side, in geography and in time.
Ultimately it was greed and visions of world domination which settled New Orleans. If we were honest, it was visions of greed and domination that lured us there as well.
Michael was a bright and ambitious man. He actually score a perfect 1600 on his SAT’s. Magna cum laude at Harvard. Then to medical school (Penn) and Yale for his residency.
At Yale, he took a year in the lab, doing research on poor unsuspecting rabbits. The rabbits would scream and fidget whenever a white coated figure entered their room. I was recruited to play anesthesiologist for a rabbit one Saturday and it was a profoundly disturbing experience. The rabbit is captured, crying, terrified, then anesthetized. The fur is shaved and the flesh prepped for slicing. My job was to maintain a lack consciousness and to spare the rabbit the pain being inflicted upon it.
From that point on, I vowed to stay away from hospitals. I found medicine to be intellectually interesting, but the practical aspects of it all were quite appalling. Flesh and hair and blood. Pain and drugs. I could not live in that theatre. I preferred the tools of money and markets, strategy and decision, to scalpels and drugs.
***
New Orleans is segregated in ways that I, as a Yankee visitor, do not fully comprehend. It is a town separated by neighborhood, genealogy, race, money and personal inclinations. It is a big small town where everyone knows the house you grew up in, versus where you live now. That so and so’s grandfathers’ mistress fathered your best friend’s husband. And that your brother in law has kept a succession of male lovers in the building he owns in the quarter.
And overlaying all the human commotion is a sense of celebration. Indeed the year we were in town, the symphony went bankrupt, as people continued to spend tens of thousands of dollars on the celebrations that define the city.
Michael spent his days with Monsieur le Docteur Henri, a renowned spine specialist. The unspoken laws of medical hierarchy were universal, and they applied here in New Orleans as they did elsewhere. Until your training was done, you were at the mercy of your superiors. As an intern, as a resident, as a thirty five year old fellow, you were essentially the property of your master. It was a feudal system of apprenticeship and abuse, perpetuated for the benefit of the powers that be.
Henri, rest his soul, remains larger than life even in death. The eighties were the days before medical cost containment and Henry would run three or four operating rooms at once, staffed by fellows (earning $30,000/ year) . Each surgery would yield in the range of $15,000 and he would oversee two to three rounds, two or three days each week. Needless to say, Henry lived comfortably if not happily.
I mention the latter, because Henry lived a double life. A male lover at the hospital, a gastroenterologist if I recall correctly, and a wife and children at home. Henry’s wife was a hardened but attractive red haired woman, a nurse, who was rumored to have pursued and married Henry for his money. She had no illusions about the human condition based on her own experiences. She grew up poor and her father lived in jail for the murder of another man.
It all seems an uncomfortable alliance at best, once whose secrets were best not revealed. So they were hidden beneath a veil of southern hospitality, New Orleans style. Whatever their shortcomings, Henri et famille were true New Orleanians.
When I think back to New Orleans, I always come back to one evening that set the tone of decadent absurdity for the entire year.
Henry, like any affluent New Orleanian, owned his own policemen. John guarded his office from theft by the enterprising locals interested in narcotics and ventured forth into the seedier part of town to pick up the the most succulent, decadent, marvelous fried oyster po’ boys for lunch on Fridays. John I believe also worked for the New Orleans Police Department, but I could be mistaken. Such details were never discussed. Nevertheless, it was from John that I learned certain key facts about the Big Easy.
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
New Orleans 1988
The Zoo To Do is a huge party to raise money for the Audubon Zoo. Local restaurants and entertainers are staged throughout the zoo grounds, and you eat, drink and dance yourself silly ’til dawn. With the exception of the alligator pits ( for obvious reasons) much of the grounds are open and young docents wander the crowds introducing a range of docile creatures to potential donors. It’s a great evening for everyone.
Not to be eclipsed by the celebrations of a mere institution, Monsieur le Doctor offered pre-party nuptials and hired private transportation for the evening. In this manner we would not have to deal with the indignities of public parking, nor would the ladies needlessly expend their energy hobbling on fashionable high heeled shoes from some remote parking locale.
So in our finery, we were delivered to the ZooToDo and we played in the steamy evening air. We ate bananas foster, jambalaya and trout meneure under the stars. We danced, we drank and we had a wonderful time. And at the end of the evening, we were driven back to Henry’s house on the park for the obligatory nightcap.
In the wee hours of the morning, filled with food, drink and exhausted by dance, we piled out of the house, profusely thanking our host for a memorable evening. Henry climbed drunkenly onto his front stoop singing the French anthem, the Marseilles. It was time to call it a night.
We started to search for the car. Where had we left it? Would it still be there?
Just as this quandary permeated our sluggish brains, John appeared from the shadows.
“May I help you find your car sir?” he asked in his unmistakable New Orleanian drawl. And he escorted us to our vehicle and made sure we got headed off in the right direction. The rest was up to us.
There is a lesson in this story of NOLA fun and excess circa 1988 or so: Apparently in New Orleans, if you can find your car, you are not considered too drunk to drive.
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
I think some of my most joyous days flying were early on, when everything was fresh and new and full of potential It was all such incredible endless fun. First to fly, then to solo, then to fly new airplanes. I felt invincible as I moved from one task to another.
Same for flying cross country, to a destination away from my home field. I took off, sure that I would go wherever it was I intended. I had no doubt that I would find the lift I needed or that I would return to my home field at the end of the day. I soared the air, oblivious to any consequences. Consequences were not yet a part of my vocabulary.
Of course my wanderlust was tempered with some awareness. A strong headwind would absolutely prevent the small sailplane I flew from making any headway and I factored that into my consideration. A day of bad weather dictated the soaring possibilities. A big deck of clouds meant no lift and there was no arguing with that. But all in all, if there was even a bit of lift, I was game to go fly.
As long as I remained oblivious to reality, the reality of the weather, the risks, my own skill level, I moved forward. I knew no fear. I had no experience. I knew no bounds.
What is #CancerRoadTrip and how did it come to be? Read this post to get the backstory!
Once upon a time, decades ago, I graduated from Wharton. I worked in the private placement market in New York–the smallest deal amount was a quarter of a billion (that was real money in those days); I worked on the first billion dollar leveraged buy-out (Congoleum).
I rather got Gordon Gecko. After all, I moved in that amoral world of money and finance. There was no room for feeling or care. Numbers, numbers, numbers. No room for error. No need for human contemplation.
I’ve been away from the corporate world for a long time now, but it seems nothing much has changed. The numbers have gotten bigger. The leverage greater. I wonder if it isn’t all primed to blow like the building in my dream last night.
If it is, it’s a good time to sell the house. If it isn’t, oh well! I’ve never been very good at tactical decisions. Strategic movements and trends are more my forte. I listened to an interview with Jim Rogers the other day.What an interesting life he has led. His aw shucks southern drawl may mask a brilliant mind to those not in the know, but his reputation precedes him. I admire him. If you don’t know who Jim Rogers is, here is the interview (Jim Rogers comes in at 13:22):
Jim Rogers has had two amazing #RoadTrips. One around the world on his motorcycle: Investment Biker: Around the World with Jim Rogers; the other around the world in a bit more comfort via automobile. An adventurer, in capital markets and in life.
“Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.” ~William Dement
I wake up terrified. A heaviness sits on my chest. I feel paralyzed.
In the dream, a team of men in black run through a building laying small charges along the floor, then splashing everything with some sort of flammable liquid. The building is empty. Concrete floors and metal furniture.
I see this happening yet I am at an outdoor cafe with friends. One of them had just been diagnosed with breast cancer and she was sitting, topless, enjoying the sun. She swung her beautiful long hair from side to side. I clamored out of my seat. I had to go. I had to leave.
I collected my things in a brown paper bag and I started walking away. I left behind a blue and white chinese porcelain pot that I just love. I couldn’t carry it with me. I could just see it sitting there, one of my favorite possessions, and I had to leave it. I crossed the street, walked along side of the stone building and quickly turned the corner.
I walked more quickly; I ran; another block and another, putting buildings between me and the coming explosion. When the building blew, I wanted to avoid the debris that would fly through the air.
But nothing happened.
We were expected to go back to work tomorrow in the building that was primed to blow.
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What is #CancerRoadTrip and how did it come to be? Read this post to get the backstory!
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
New Haven, CT 1981-1987
If I could put my finger on a time when things were good, it would have been the days in Connecticut, at Yale, when we were young and all powerful, out untested futures unlimited in our limited egocentric minds. The path was straight and clear. The arrogance of youth is such great, self absorbing fun.
Fun may not be quite the word one associates with a surgical residency, but coastal Connecticut was probably about as good as it gets. Yale-New Haven Hospital is an inner city hospital, with its share of gunshot wounds and drugs, but it’ s not quite as brutal as say Bellevue in New York or Charity in New Orleans. Enough gore to learn surgical technique, without your patients being a constant threat to your life. Except for AIDS. That threat was a continual apparition never far from mind.
We lived in a rented condominium near the water. (Michael told people we owned it; we didn’t) Our deck faced a marsh which swayed with the seasons, harboring wildlife and served as a passage for their migrations. The view off land’s edge was simply spectacular.
Just down the coast the Yale Yacht Club ( a misnomer if ever there was one–it was a somewhat run down seaside structure where sailboats are available on a first come, first served basis) sends its regattas off into the water. It was inexpensive sailing, and if you didn’t mind the wait, it was a great way to play on the water.
Our friends in New Haven formed an interesting circle. Authors, academics, students, Chinese exchange students and my favorite neighbor, Eva. Eva was a big girl-over two hundred pounds-and a bit on the garish side. But lovable and fun beyond reason. We were exact opposites and we soon became fast friends. I have one picture of the two of us in Newport. It was a beautiful clear Saturday morning and we’d driven up to see the mansions. I was rather blasé about the whole trip, but Eva, who had grown up in Czechoslovakia, left in 1967 and emigrated to Canada was life’s perpetual tourist and I had to honor her enthusiasms. There is a picture of us- it is a study in contrasts and I love it dearly. I am standing oh-so-preppy-proper in my boots, herringbone skirt, turtle neck and tweed blazer. Eva is towering over me in stretch lycra, leather and hair. We both smiled for the camera under blue skies. I will always remember that picture when I think of sunny Connecticut days.
Overall, New Haven life seemed to agree with us both. Connecticut was a wonderful combination of people, places and events. I think of those days as eclectic, but proper, preppy protected days. Evenings at Griswold Inn in Essex, munching popcorn and ordering carpetbaggers (filet mignons, grilled, split then stuffed with deep fried oysters). For New Year’s there was champagne along the Connecticut River with Chip and his girlfriend du jour; island parties for the fourth of July; boating and squash; football games and tailgate parties; and a wonderfully isolated world of privileged young adulthood. If only those days could have continued. But all things end, and with the completion of Michael’s residency, people dashed off in different directions to start fellowships. Having selected the locale exotique of the class, everyone promised to visit in New Orleans.
What is #CancerRoadTrip and how did it come to be? Read this post to get the backstory!
I have spent enough time grumbling. I am determined to be joyful and embrace this adventure.
Thus:
I am grateful for the freedom to pick up and go.
I am grateful to have the options I have.
I am grateful that the tech creeps showed their true colors now rather than later.
I am grateful that I have a good home for Chanel to go to.
I am grateful for my relative health.
I am grateful for my friends who continue to be super supportive.
I am grateful to have a house to sell, in a strong market with little inventory.
I am grateful for the amazing people that are part of my life through Anti-Cancer Club.
I am grateful for having learned to meditate.
I am grateful for knowing that a sense of completeness lies within me, not without.
I am grateful for the adventures before me.
#Gratitude
#Namaste
Last night I had dinner with Vanessa who is a concert violinist. She once sold everything she had and hit the road for a series of concerts and competitions she organized. She understands the emotional tug and pull of such an adventure.
“One day I was high, the next day depressed,” she confided. The import of letting go of routine and embracing adventure is not a pure path.
“Good things are coming down the road. Just don’t stop walking.”-Robert Warren Painter, Jr.
And a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
Inspiration, joy & discovery through travel. Oh, did I mention with supposedly incurable cancer?
What's on your bucket list?
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CancerRoadTrip is about making lemonade out of lemons.
As you read my story, you may want to start at the beginning to "grok" how CancerRoadTrip came to be. You can click here to start at the end (which is actually the beginning) and read forward! The posts are chronological, with the most recent posts appearing on the front page.
This indigenous approach to healing faced it’s first cultural hurdle with the discovery of the Hawaiian islands by Captain James Cook. Cook visited Hawaii on two occasions. First on January 18, 1778, the English explorer sailed past the island of Oahu. Two days later, he landed on the island of Kauai. He named the island the Sandwich Islands in honor of the earl of Sandwich who was one of his patrons.
That year in New Orleans, New England seemed impossibly far away. I watched the weather map each morning on the TV news, and yearned for the site of the Long Island Sound and the smells and sounds of the Connecticut shoreline. I missed the breeze that brought the cooling scent of the sea, and the evening air that warranted a comforter mid-summer.
neighborhood, genealogy, race, money and personal inclinations. It is a big small town where everyone knows the house you grew up in, versus where you live now. That so and so’s grandfathers’ mistress fathered your best friend’s husband. And that your brother in law has kept a succession of male lovers in the building he owns in the quarter.
Jim Rogers has had two amazing #RoadTrips. One around the world on his motorcycle: 
; the other around the world in a bit more comfort via automobile. An adventurer, in capital markets and in life.
