My dear friend, Jane Straus has been fighting cancer of the brain for more than a year.  Some of you may have read one of her books, such as Enough is Enough!: Stop Enduring and Start Living Your Extraordinary Life or her world-best-seller, the Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation.

This week, Jane emailed her friends with this note.  I want to post it here, just in case others are suffering in similar or related ways.

As always, Jane's thoughts are focused on inspiring others.

Dearest Friends,
Well, I wish that I could have put in the Subject Line, "Another Bitchin' Report," but that wouldn't have been the truth. My July 28 MRI showed what UCSF interprets as new and rapid tumor growth. A few days later I lost the ability to swallow, necessitating a 3 AM ER trek to Marin General. I spent 3 days on IV, attempting to spit out the phlegm I could not swallow. This caused my lungs to fill up, an inability to speak, a constant cough, and difficulty catching my breath. Marin General felt that anything they did would simply be heroic measures and that I should call in hospice to give me morphine to calm my nerves as I lay dying.

HOWEVER, my alternative docs did not see the MRI or my difficulties the same way--they saw radiation necrosis, a phenomenon new to brain tumor patients who are surviving longer. Because western med. does not expect this, many deaths are blamed on recurrent tumor rather than successfully treated.

My docs had me start on Avastin, Decadron, and Hyperbaric chamber. Within minutes of the Decadron, I was able to breathe and swallow. The other treatments are more long term. So once again I have been pulled back from the brink, purely by my wonderful doctors' open mindedness and unwillingness to buy into the lowest thoughts. This time through, as the staff treated me like I was already past tense, I found myself both willing to accept my death yet not acquiescing to it. I could sense their limiting beliefs and not entirely buy into them.  This was a first for me; I think that the last 1 1/2 years of practice is serving me well.

I will have another MRI in two weeks. I will let you know how it reads. In the meantime, I wish for you that you trust yourself and your powers to heal as best you can. And thank you for your continued prayers and high thoughts for me. I take solace and am inspired by you.
Much love,
Jane