Dancing With Cancer: scholarship essay

This past year have been almost overwhelming as I battled ovarian and peritoneal cancer.

I was tested in myriad ways, even though I already considered myself a self-sufficient person

with strength of spirit, mind, and body. This was a challenge I never thought I would have to

face. Little did I know that the composer of my life already had the melody and chord

progression in its head.

I had been working on my dissertation for a PhD in Transformative Social Change at

Saybrook University in California since 2017. I loved the challenge of research, even as I myself

was my own subject. I had chosen to study how someone with Complex-PTSD from trauma in

childhood had somehow been able to have had several successful careers and led a mostly happy

life. I had been in marketing and advertising before I went back to college at UCLA and earned

Magna Cum Lauda honors in English with minors in Music and Spanish. I then went to

California State University Northridge for a teaching credential in K-12 education, after which I

taught gifted and talented elementary school. As a writer, dancer, actor and musician, I didn’t

realize I had yet to face my biggest challenges in all domains: mental, emotional, physical, and

spiritual. There was so much life for me to live and to face ahead of me yet. So much singing,

dancing, and so forth.

After teaching for ten years in California, I was active in a Unity church of practical

Christianity. The church sent me to Unity Village near Kansas City, MO, and I went to seminary

there. I met and married my husband Richard Talley and we co-ministered together for ten years

in four different ministries around the country. We then returned to California where I again

taught school until went to Washington State. I taught there for another four years while being

active in a Quaker church. Whatever I was doing, the arts were always a part of my being.
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After my brother-in-law called us to be with him and his wife in Kentucky as he

succumbed to cancer, there was yet another challenge to come. The year was traumatic and

tragic with dysfunctional family drama as he neared his death. During that time, I would drive

six hours down to North Carolina to take a respite with my childhood friend. After the funeral in

Louisville, my husband and I moved to North Carolina ourselves and retired. We still run an

alternative ministry called PATH Ministries. I also performed in an acapella trio for ten years

which enriched my life considerably, as music was one of my passions even in my sixth and

seventh decades. Yes, you read that right! I went back to college to pursue a second graduate

degree at age seventy.

Taking everything into consideration, I chose to write an autoethnography wherein the

writer must objectively observe and examine their own life. I realized how essential the arts—

poetry and literature, music, art, and dance had been in my own recovery from Complex-PTSD.

I wanted to know how that was possible without therapy and totally self-directed. Was it

possible that I had been spiritually led to heal myself through experiences in and love for the

arts? I began to reflect, meditate, remember, and journal my life story. At times I had to re-

experience traumas in order to get in touch with the feelings and wounds of having been living in

an alcoholic, violent home in virtual poverty, moving to at least ten different cities and attended a

minimum of thirteen schools before high school graduation, plus having been sexually molested

from ages five to eight. I loved all my required classes in the PhD Program of Transformative

Social Change (TSC). The research was on a level beyond that of my Master of Arts in

Teaching, and I loved it. I was dancing the tango with academics!

However, at least two years ago I began to feel exhausted all the time, plus I had a

pinched feeling in my left abdominal area. I reported this to my primary care physician who
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attributed it mostly to my aging process. Deep within myself I knew something was wrong, but I

couldn’t convince her. I even had to quit singing with my trio because I lost my balance and fell

over on stage after a performance. I had no idea what my dance card was filled in with next.

I found out in a most alarming way when one night at home I felt terrible pains in my

abdomen, so much so that my husband took me to the Emergency Department at the nearest

hospital. Once there I began to hemorrhage and was diagnosed immediately with cancer and

referred to the HOPE Women’s Cancer Center and to Dr. Amy Alexander. Since I already had a

diagnosis before I met with her, I was already prepared to die as most people do with the type of

cancer I had. Several friends plus my brother-in-law and my father had died horrific deaths from

cancer, and I decided ahead of time that I would just face the consequences and surrender to the

inevitable so as not to suffer the same as they had; neither did I want to put my husband, my

family, and my friends through it. I wasn’t afraid of dying, but I did have fears of how that might

happen.

When I met Dr. Alexander, however, after she outlined the proposed treatment along with

my life expectancy of less than a year if I opted out, and then at my family’s urging, I decided to

at least try chemotherapy and surgery. The medical staff promised if it was too awful and I quit,

they would see I wouldn’t suffer. Even though the doctor and her team did their best to keep me

from suffering, I was sufficiently nauseated, weak, dizzy, and bedridden for many months, but

they always encouraged me that I was getting better and would soon be strong enough for

surgery. Some days I wanted to die and begged my husband to just let me go peacefully. He held

me in his arms and called an ambulance to take me to the hospital once again. To make matters

worse, the drugs made me dizzy, and I fell twice; once I broke my wrist and then fell again and
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fractured my hip, both of which were extremely painful and required extensive rehabilitation in a

rehab facility and then at home. My dance came to almost a standstill.

Time came for surgery after my first two rounds of chemotherapy ,and I was operated

upon by three specialists robotically at the same time. The surgery was so unprecedented that it

was filmed and is being written up in a medical journal. I underwent one more round of

chemotherapy to be certain they had gotten everything. Before and after the surgery I underwent

unpleasant tests and had several hospital stays as well as infusions for hydration along with the

poisonous chemicals and the drawers full of pills. Now, I am on a strong drug to keep the cancer

from returning; it has 70% success rate, and my oncologist expects me to do well on it since I did

so well on chemotherapy. Of course, it costs $16,000 per month, however, I am getting financial

assistance from Aztro-Zeneca, the pharmaceutical company who makes it. Still the economics of

cancer, even with insurance are just hinging on catastrophic. Co-pays, tests, and prescriptions,

plus the loss of my income from singing have made it financially difficult. But we make it; every

month we manage to make it, and the dance goes on.

Through it all, I was cared for by my husband who took on all the household

responsibilities of grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning, as well as caring for all my medical

needs and appointments. The stress on him was immense and he broke down emotionally several

times; he always returned to my side to care for me. I was uplifted by my spiritual beliefs and by

my friends in and out of PATH ministries. From all over the world and several foreign countries

they wrote, called, visited, and texted, praying for me, laughing with me, and commiserating

with me. They gave me the courage not to quit treatment, and they reinstated my faith in

humankind.
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As I reported my ups and downs on Facebook and on the phone, my strength increased

and I began to realize I needed to live, I wanted to live, I still had to dance. I hadn’t yet fulfilled

my purpose for being here. I had things to celebrate with my husband, lessons to teach my

daughter and grandchildren, experiences to share with my friends and colleagues. I still had to

finish my healing from childhood; I had to finish my dissertation so my healing could be shared

with others who had suffered similar beginnings. I had to give them the hope and faith I had

gained through this experience; tortuous as it sometimes was, I had the moral, ethical, and

spiritual responsibility to pass on the possibilities, and to dance.

Now I face at least a year, maybe more of finishing my dissertation, and I have so much

more to include from my own healing, both physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I

have been treated as a family member by the Saybrook faculty with love respect, and support

that I will indeed finish and earn a doctoral decree. Before this, I used to say jokingly I wanted

my degree because “Dr. Douglas” was so alliterative and I was an English major. Now I can

affirm that I want this experience to strengthen my faith in a plethora of ways, and I want to help

others transform their lives as I believe I have. And we can dance together.

One other thing I have learned through my dance with cancer is to trust myself,

something which abused children find hard to do. After all, I was brave enough to trust that I

knew something was wrong. I had enough courage to say yes to the chemotherapy treatment

when the facts were laid out to me by wise and loving people, and I developed the strength to

come out of it with a new sense of myself and what I am to do with the rest of my life. I know it

will be a long one so I can accomplish my newly-found goals.

Verna Eileen Douglas

February 26, 2023