A spontaneous decision

For many years some friends have been asking me to write the story of my journey with breast cancer, which was very intense. I never felt like writing about it before, but now 21 years have passed since I discovered the big lump in my left breast, and so, even though I did not follow through with the advice of doctors at the hospitals then, and never got the all-clear, I hope I have survived it and can put it behind me.

I have decided to write about it with the idea that the story could perhaps help other people going through a similar cancer journey, or inspire them to make their own decisions about their treatments, as I did.

In this article I am not suggesting that a cancer sufferer refuse medical treatment as advised by doctors, as every individual case is different, of course, and what is right for one patient may not be right for another. But I personally encourage every patient to research their illness as deeply as possible and to absolutely take responsibility for making decisions themselves about their own treatments.

I know how frightening cancer is when it suddenly comes upon you as it did me. I felt I had to trust generally that whatever happens is the Will of Existence. I call it the Will of the Divine Existence. I never stopped trusting.

The Story

In January 2003 when I was 49 years old, I had just come back to Pune after working away for some months as a supply teacher in primary schools in London and Kent, in the U.K. I used to earn my money like that, as I had trained as a teacher before I took sannyas in 1976.

As soon as I had enough money saved each time, I would come back to Pune. It is my spiritual home, as it is for many of us. I always rented a very cheap room in Koregaon Park. Usually I worked in the Commune then, in between doing occasional groups. But I participated in meditations when I first arrived.

I decided to have a Zen Tarot session with Gandha at the Multiversity. It was a good session.  Gandha said to me, “You have many child cards in your spread. I recommend that you participate in the Meditative Therapy course ‘Born Again.’

I decided to take her advice, and went to book it. But Vatayana happened to be leading it, and she, for some reason, said to me, “You must do Mystic Rose before you do Born Again.” She was adamant about that. This is not normally a requirement so I was a bit surprised. But I try to trust that whatever happens in Osho’s energy field is for a reason – and it is a magical, mysterious place, as we know.

I had not participated in Mystic Rose before, and I didn’t want to do it. For some reason, I was afraid of doing Mystic Rose – I didn’t know why. But I really wanted to be able to participate in Born Again, so, reluctantly, I finally agreed to book Mystic Rose.

Devena was leading the group in Chuang Tzu. The first thing she said to us was, “This group stirs up toxins.”

So we started the first week: three hours of laughing each day. I couldn’t laugh. Perhaps I was annoyed that I was in it – I don’t know, but I felt like crying and not laughing. I had to hide my tears because we were not supposed to be crying that week. I just couldn’t genuinely laugh for the whole week. I felt that my laughter was fake.

At the end of the first week – in fact on the very last day, in the evening, I was in my bathroom and I noticed a lump sticking up out of my left breast. It was big and hard. I was shocked. My breasts had always been very smooth, not lumpy at all.

I realised I would have to go and have it checked out at the hospital, but, of course, while I was in the group there was no time. But I was afraid.

In my whole sannyas life, since 1976, I have participated in many therapy groups. And I have never walked out of any group in the middle. Even when participating in the Encounter group with Teertha, in 1978, I stayed for the whole awful thing, even though I hated every minute.

So now I was resolved to finish the Mystic Rose – I was not going to walk out in the middle. I would have felt like a terrible failure if I had.

The next week of the group was, of course, three hours each day of crying. I had cried all my tears in the first week, at the back of Chuang Tzu (so as not to draw attention to myself!) while pretending to laugh. So I found I could not cry during the second week. (I am, and perhaps always have been, a terrible group participant!)

I tried to think of sad things to make myself cry, but I was trying too hard and no tears came. I simply couldn’t help it. It all felt so intense.

Then we had the final week: three hours per day of sitting in silence. This was easier for me – but I was getting so nervous about the lump in my breast which had not gone down. I couldn’t wait for the end of the group.

We were told there was going to be a party for us on the afternoon after the group finished, but I didn’t go. I rushed over to Inlaks Hospital to see a consultant about the lump – for my own peace of mind.

But there was no peace of mind for me. The doctors looked at the lump sticking up high out of my breast and immediately stuck a needle in it to do a biopsy. I had to wait three or four days for the result and when I went back, my worst fears were realised. They said, “You have very fast-growing cancer. The lump is malignant and you have to come into hospital and have your left breast removed.”

This was such a shock. I couldn’t believe it. The lump had literally come up overnight, seemingly on the last night of the first week of Mystic Rose.

The doctors also gave me a CT scan to my breasts which in India at that time was not very expensive. They saw the lump on the screen – it was 4 centimetres wide, they told me, and there seemed to also be two smaller lumps lower in the same breast – but those had not stuck up like the big one, so could not be seen from the outside of my breast.

I told the doctors I would seek advice and come back.

I didn’t know what to do, so I decided to tell Anando because I remembered that Osho had said that she was his medium, so I went and told her. She told me to see Chintana, who was the Meditation Resort Nurse at that time. Chintana is from Ireland and had trained as a nurse while she was a nun in a convent, before finding Osho and taking sannyas.

Chintana told me that the best thing for me was to go back to my own country, the U.K., and have tests there and, if need be, the operation. We have the NHS in the U.K. – free medical treatment. It was all very upsetting, and I didn’t want to leave Pune, but I decided to go, because I didn’t want to have my whole breast taken off.

I didn’t feel like telling anybody else. I hoped beyond hope that perhaps the doctors at Inlaks Hospital had made a mistake, especially as I went for a mammogram there the next day and the lumps did not show up at all!

I was over the moon about that, until a sannyasin doctor called Modita, visiting from Holland, told me that the biopsy and the scan were obviously right, and the Indian mammogram machine at Inlaks Hospital was obviously faulty!

The doctors at Inlaks were insistent that I needed to have the operation immediately, as they accepted the results of the biopsy and scan too, but I decided to take the advice of Anando and Chintana and go back to London and have new tests.

At this point I just want to say that I actually felt I knew why I had developed these cancerous lumps. I had been using so much roll-on antiperspirant deodorant for nearly ten years. I perspired a lot in India. I had even bought extra strong Indian roll-on deodorants. I knew that this was a bad idea as antiperspirants are full of aluminium and chemicals, but I didn’t want to smell of perspiration, so I had kept using them.

During the 1990s I had for five years worked in the English Publications office (with Osho’s books)  when Shunyo was in charge. I had been sitting at the computer all day long there. Somehow, working on the computer, typing, made me nervous – I had never done office work before – I prefer practical work and moving around physically in my jobs. Even in the schools in England I had moved around the classrooms helping the children, and often doing physical education with them too.  In Osho’s Communes in the past, I had always chosen to do kitchen work or cleaning which I liked.

I’d found that I was perspiring a lot while working on the computer – I was so restless  –  and that was when I’d started using the roll-on antiperspirants.

I am sure that the chemicals had built up in my breast over those ten years.

But the powerful and beautiful energy of Chuang Tzu and the Mystic Rose must have stirred up the toxins in my breast and caused the lump to grow very fast. If it had not been for the Mystic Rose, I would not have found out about the cancer so early.

I feel now that the Mystic Rose saved my life.

But my cancer journey was only just beginning!

I was back in London now. The airline I had travelled to India with, gave me a seat in business class for the return journey. I had never enjoyed this luxury before!

I went to stay again with my father in Kent. He was 88 years old and living alone as my mother had died three years previously. I did not tell him I had cancer as I was afraid it would upset him and give him a stroke. He had already had some mini strokes. I didn’t tell anybody else there either.

My doctor gave me an appointment at Guy’s Hospital, where they did another biopsy of the big lump, and a mammogram – which confirmed the cancer. But they did not do a CT scan. I asked why, and the doctor said, “It is not necessary – we can see the lump and have done a biopsy, and scans are too expensive for the NHS.”

I was taken into hospital within three weeks, as was the norm for cancer, and I had surgery under anaesthetic to remove the big lump. I assumed that they also knew about the two other smaller lumps.

Then a few days later the surgeons came to my bedside to inform me, “We are sorry but we have not got all the cancer out – we have to do another operation because the lump is bigger than we thought.” I sat up in bed and asked about the two smaller lumps, and the woman doctor with them, sounding annoyed, said, “There aren’t any other lumps at all. There’s only one. Just lie down.”

A few days later I was told I had to have two more operations – one for the 4-centimetre lump and one for removing lymph nodes from under my left arm.

I had been reading and researching about lymph nodes: if there is no cancer in the first lymph node,  which is the first layer, then it means that there will be none in the rest of the lymph nodes, as the cancer would not have spread any further. So I asked that they only take out the first layer in case there was no cancer in it.

After the operation I was in terrible pain. I was told that the pain was because they had taken 24 lymph nodes out from under my left arm. I was shocked and asked how much cancer was in them. I was told that they hadn’t found any cancer in the lymph nodes at all. I asked, why then, had they taken out so many lymph nodes? I was told that it was because the surgeon had felt sure that there must be cancer in the lymph nodes as the lump was so big, but then found afterwards that there wasn’t. He apologised, and the woman surgeon with him said, “Don’t worry. I’ll do the operation next time!”

I was very annoyed that they had disregarded my request to take out only the first lymph node – as then they would not have unnecessarily taken out the rest. Lymph nodes are important in the body, and now I had lost all of those under my left arm. It meant that if I were to get an infection later (which I have done since) then my arm would swell up for a while.

I came out of hospital after that third operation and was told to come back for a check-up every few weeks. I remember travelling home on the train bandaged up – and unbeknownst to me, blood was showing through my blouse! I realised only when I saw other passengers staring at me!

I still did not tell any of my relatives or my father about the cancer. I pretended I had been staying with friends. I didn’t want to hear the shock in anyone’s voice or to have to listen to the advice of people who knew less than I did about cancer. I felt too vulnerable to have to cope with comments from other people.

I soon went back to work as a supply teacher. The agency, without knowing I had had cancer, continued giving me bookings in schools all over London for a few days or weeks at a time when the regular teachers were sick. I travelled to the schools by train and taught classes of 35 children of different ages. Some of the schools were quite rough, but I was used to it. I took my own tried and tested lesson plans and creative activities, and tried to make the lessons interesting and fun for the children, with lots of prizes to encourage them – especially in the difficult schools!

Eventually, after another couple of months, I was sure that I could feel the other two lumps in my breast that had shown up in the CT scan in India. The doctors in London were dismissive of the idea when I told them. Their mammogram had not shown these smaller lumps!

During the summer, I went to Croydon Hall, an Osho centre in Somerset, for a summer festival. There I met German Rikto, and, hearing that she had had breast cancer herself a while before and had refused chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and was surviving, I confided in her about my cancer. She invited me to stay with her for a few days in her rented cottage in Somerset. Her courage inspired me.

I also met a sannyasin from Wales at Croydon Hall, who told me about a sort of mushroom called kombucha which could be used to make a wonderful health drink, which contains living enzymes and vitamins and boosts the immune system. I felt that it was just what I needed. When I got home I sent for a kombucha scoby and started making the health drink. Kombucha is an amazing mushroom that floats on green tea sweetened with sugar, eats the caffeine and the sugar both up,  and grows very fast to the size of the container it is grown in (it must not be made in metal or plastic containers as it absorbs both of those). Recently, scientists have discovered in laboratory experiments that kombucha, which is composed of friendly bacteria and yeasts, can shrink tumours. It has therefore been suggested that kombucha can help in curing early cancer.

I felt immediately that it was doing me good. It became my natural medicine and I drink it every day, even now. I became very careful with my diet and I still am, avoiding trans fats and excess sugar and eating lots of organic vegetables. I have anyway been completely vegetarian since I was 18 years old, but I still ate dairy. However, during my research I read that dairy products can cause cancer cells to grow faster because of the animal oestrogen, so I gave up dairy products for five years. I still eat very little dairy now.

I was determined to keep myself calm, and I talked lovingly to my body and to the cancer too. Somehow, the fact that the cancer had come to me during the Mystic Rose, helped me to have trust in Osho and in Existence. I felt that whether I would live or die, I would try to accept it as the Will of the Whole.

But every time I went to the hospital for check-ups and consultations, I asked the surgeon if I could have a CT scan to check for other lumps in my breast. Eventually, six months after the operations, the surgeon finally agreed to it and said to me, “All right – just for your peace of mind, I will book you in for a scan. We are short staffed so it will take place during the lunch hour.”

I took a day off work and went to the hospital. The scan was a rushed affair during the technician’s lunch hour. I saw on the screen what looked to me like another lump. I then had to wait a few days for the surgeon in charge to look at the results.

A few days later when I was in the middle of a week-long job in a school, teaching a class of 8-year-olds, I got a phone call from the hospital saying I had to come in the next day for an urgent consultation. I asked them to tell me the results over the phone but they refused. I called down the phone, “Well, I know what the results are anyway. I can’t come this week because I am in the middle of a teaching job which I have committed to. I can’t let the school down.” I was annoyed.

They made an appointment for me for the following week. Of course they had found that there was another malignant lump in my breast, just as I had known and had been telling them for the past six months. I felt certain, though, that there were two! I wondered if the technician, working in his lunch hour, had done the scan too quickly, and missed something.

So the next operation was booked to have another lump taken out of my breast. The surgeons knew I did not want to have my whole breast taken off, and this was agreed. I signed the permission form for the operation.

I was lying in the hospital bed in the room adjoining the operating theatre and waiting for the surgeons. Suddenly one of them entered. I had never seen him before, but he said he was one of the team. He began to lecture me about my operation, telling me that it was very dangerous for me not to have my whole breast taken away and that I must agree to it and sign the permission form for this, then and there. He told me it was urgent and that I was in danger of dying. He persuaded me to sign the other permission form he was holding in his hand. So I agreed to sign it and did. He walked out.

I was still lying in bed waiting to be taken into the operating theatre, when suddenly another surgeon burst into the room. He informed me that he was the surgeon in charge of the team and that the other surgeon had no right to come in and ask me to sign that new form just before the operation. He tore it up in front of my eyes and threw it in the bin and told me they were going ahead with the original operation of removing the other lump.

He left the room and I was alone again.

I felt terrified as it seemed obvious to me that the team were not in agreement about my treatment; and that they simply didn’t know.

As I lay there then, I felt suddenly that there were two spirit beings standing at the foot of my bed waiting to accompany me out of my body! They were standing there so casually, as if this was nothing to them – just a routine, everyday job, accompanying souls out of their bodies to wherever they were meant to go next. I felt annoyed!

There was no embodied being in the room with me, so I shouted at the invisible ones, “I am not coming with you!”

They just turned and went away as if it was nothing – not very important to them, and they didn’t care either way – just a routine thing! Not the intense misery I was going through!

About fifteen minutes later, I was taken into the theatre and put under anaesthetic. Then it was done, and I was out again.

Some days later I was back at the hospital for a consultation and check-up, as is usual after an operation.

This time the surgeon in charge of the team was there and he said to me, “We are very sorry, but unfortunately we have again not got all the cancer out. It has started spreading in your breast now. What are you going to do?”

I didn’t know what to say. I wanted him to tell me! He then said that if I agreed to have most of my breast taken away in another operation then I would not have to have chemotherapy or radiotherapy. I thought he was promising me that.

I agreed, and the next operation was booked. I went into hospital again after some days to have it done and was out again, and then back again after more days for the consultation and check-up.

While in hospital, I was always the only patient on the ward who had no visitors! The staff were surprised, but I didn’t mind at all! I didn’t want visitors – I hadn’t told anybody about my cancer. I felt that I couldn’t cope with anybody giving me advice or worrying about me. I wanted to make my own decisions about the treatments without being influenced by anybody else. My father thought I was staying away a lot with friends!

After this last operation, when I later went for the consultation, there was a different surgeon there, whom I had never seen before. I asked him how much cancer they had found this time, and he replied, “I don’t know. I was not present at the operation.”

I was shocked and I said, “Well, haven’t you got the notes there?” He said, “No, I haven’t, but I’ll go and get them and have a look if you like.”

He went out and came back with a file about my treatments. He had a look inside it and then said, “There is no mention of how much cancer they found in your breast during this operation.” He paused and said, “But the whole team has had a meeting about you. You have to have chemotherapy and radiotherapy to your breast-bone and take Tamoxifen tablets for five years.”

Something snapped inside me and I said, “No, I am not having any more treatment.” It just came out of my mouth. I just felt that I couldn’t face any more, and I had been told before that if I agreed to this operation I would not have to have chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

He was shocked, and said in what seemed like desperation, “Well, if you don’t believe me, then please talk to one of the other surgeons in the team. You must.”

I said, “No, I’ve booked a seat on a coach to go up north to the Lake District tomorrow for a holiday.”

I left the hospital, packed a suitcase, and next day got on a coach at London Victoria, travelling up to the mountains in the Lake District in Cumbria – my favourite part of England. I looked for a room to rent in a house up there and found one in the beautiful village of Grasmere, where the poet Wordsworth lived two hundred years ago.

The rent was quite expensive in this beauty spot, so, having little money, I managed to get myself a morning job as a chambermaid in a vegetarian hotel there in order to pay my rent – and give me free time to walk in the mountains in the afternoons.

I was sure then that I was going to die, but I wanted to die in a beautiful place. I love mountains and lakes.

For six months I worked in the hotel and walked in the mountains every afternoon. The scenery was so beautiful and I felt very well in the fresh air there, but I had not enough money to live on. The minimal savings I had had were now gone and the wages at the hotel only just covered my rent.

On a library computer, I noticed by chance that an email had arrived for me from my teaching agency in London telling me that one of the schools I used to work in, was asking for me, and would I like a teaching job again with 7-year-olds, for three weeks while the teacher was away?

I was desperately in need of money, and so I reluctantly decided to go back to London, stay with my father again, and accept this teaching job – and others that would no doubt be offered me there as well. Teaching was, of course, much better paid than the chambermaid job in the mountains. But I had loved it there, so I missed the mountains when I first left.

I realised, though, that I was also desperately missing Pune, my spiritual home, and that now I would perhaps be able to save up money to go back again for a while.

After a few months of teaching in schools in London, I had happily saved enough money to come back to Pune.

At the resort, I chatted over lunch to a couple of women who were recovering from breast cancer – one was from Holland, called Supriya. They both told me they had endured several weeks of chemotherapy and radiotherapy prescribed by their doctors. They were shocked that I had refused the treatments. (A few years later,  I was upset to hear that both the women had died. The chemotherapy and radiotherapy did not cure them after all.)

That was 20 years ago though. Now, scientists have discovered a new method of targeting only the cancer cells in the body with the chemotherapy and radiotherapy and not the wider area around them. However, I am so glad that I chose to concentrate on boosting my immune system rather than destroying cancer cells. But it was a risk, and I never really thought I would survive.

I never went back to Guy’s Hospital in London again, not even for check-ups. I was afraid that they might try to persuade me to have the chemotherapy and radiotherapy. I wasn’t even taking the Tamoxifen tablets that they had wanted me to take. I had thrown them away because the first time I took them, they made me feel so ill and gave me very heavy periods. I read also that Tamoxifen, when taken for a long time, can cause liver cancer. I later met someone whose sister had died of that after taking Tamoxifen tablets for ten years.

As for my kombucha scoby, I took it with me after that whenever I travelled, in order to make the kombucha health drink wherever I was.

I still make it, and drink it every day, even now – 21 years later – with the same kombucha scoby that grows but never dies. I have so much faith in it.

That, and the Mystic Rose, must have saved my life, I am sure.

There is a second part to this story. A year after the surgeries, I did contact Guy’s Hospital by phone to ask if I could have a reconstruction of my left breast, as I had read that fat from another part of the body can be put into the breast to fill it out again. The surgeons refused to do it because I had not followed their treatments of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

I therefore paid for a private consultation with a woman surgeon far away in Norfolk who was specialising in reconstructions of women’s breasts by taking fat and muscle from their hips. She was very sympathetic to me, and strongly criticised the surgeons at Guy’s Hospital for refusing me the reconstruction operation. She told me she would happily get me the operation free on the NHS in a year’s time as she had a waiting list.

So it was all booked for me in Norfolk. Just before the operation was due, my father died and I arranged his funeral, cleared out his rented house, and gave everything in it to charity shops. I then had to leave and had nowhere to call home, so I took his cat and rented a caravan on the beach in Norfolk, not far from the hospital where I was soon to have the operation.

After finding the cat a good home (with the wonderful help of Cat’s Protection Charity), I was admitted to hospital and had the reconstruction operation on my breast. I convalesced in that caravan for eight weeks afterwards, walking on the beach every day and enjoying the stormy November weather and high waves on the Norfolk coast.

It was after that, that I applied for live-in carer jobs with a big U.K. care and nursing agency, looking after old people in their own homes, so giving me places to live for weeks on end, and enabling me to save money again to come back to Pune… to meditate in Osho’s beautiful energy field again.

In between jobs I then sometimes stayed for several days with my sister, who is twelve years older than me and lived with her second husband in Surrey, quite far away. (My older brother lives in Canada.)

I was alone but I felt very cared for by Osho. The very first carer job the agency gave me was for an 87-year-old woman, who had once lived for two years in Jabulpur, in India, as a nurse in the hospital there – from around 1948, at the same time that Osho was in that area! Her dementia was very advanced but she could remember India with great love. I stayed caring for her on and off for many weeks at a time, for nine years altogether – until she died. I cared for other clients in between, and saved money for my trips to Pune for six months every year where eventually I did participate in the Born Again meditative therapy.

I still accept bookings from that carer agency now, after twenty years. They give us practical and online trainings every year.

Over the years since then I have completed hundreds of carer assignments, and was invited a few years ago to a special lunch-with-champagne with other carers, organised by the agency to celebrate twenty years of our caring for their clients.

I am very grateful to Osho for giving me so many more years of my life. Of course, all of us are going to die someday, but for now, Existence has allowed me to spend a little longer on this Earth, and I have recently, magically, found a lovely little cottage to rent on a very, very beautiful Scottish island.

I am so grateful for the monthly state pension that I receive, that I had to pay into as National Insurance and taxes from my wages while I was teaching in schools for all those years, and which now pays my rent for my cottage, and enables me to enjoy such wonderful walks and meditations in the mountains and by the sea, here in this beautiful, beautiful place where I live. I have another lovely job here on the island now as a Relief Warden in a Sheltered Housing Complex for people who need care.

Finding this island is another story of magical stepping stones that it feels that Osho has managed for me – that’s what it feels like and the only way I can describe it.

Every day is a bonus after you have had cancer. Every day of surviving cancer feels like a miracle and a gift and a blessing from the Divine.

It has, I feel, all been part of my spiritual path.

Photo of Goat Fell, Island of Arran, credit to Glen Sloss with many thanks