Help Gert financially survive brain cancer.

This might find you surprised to hear from me. It seems a lifetime has gone by since we last spoke – but I write to you with the firm belief that my “lifetime” has not gone by – yet. You know me a little by now – I am an optimist.

Some months ago I was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor: it resembled the size and shape of an ostrich egg: 6cm by 8cm taking up a third of my right hemisphere of my cranium.

The diagnoses was done by group of doctors and a sample of the tissue after the resection showed it to be a Glioma Grade 3 which is an aggressive primary brain cancer. After they broke the diagnoses to me I asked the leading doctor how long I had to live should I not sign up for the “standard care,” on which I was not too keen, having watched two of my best friends die painful deaths because of the side effects of cancer treatment and not of the cancer itself. He said, between three months and a year.

The doctors were very perplexed that I was as high functioning as I was and continue to be after the operation. Medication took care of seizures that started years ago but that lately increased from one a month to one a week, to one a day and before I collapsed in the hospital foyer the one seizure would blend into the next, often putting my diaphragm into a spasm and making it impossible to get a breath of air for minutes.

As I am unable to concentrate on my creative work temporarily, I find myself in a challenging financial position at present and am reaching out directly to friends, family and previous clients for some assistance through GoFundMe.com to survive till I am back on my feet and can generate an income again.

I took six months before agreeing to the surgery, working with alternative remedies, some more exotic than others to try and shrink the tumor. Also, doing substantial inner work to try and establish the origin of the cancer. It was comforting to learn that the tumor did not increase in size. That positive effect is one of the reasons why I am foregoing radiation and chemo, in an effort not to risk any of my faculties that made it through the surgery unscathed.

I know that this tumor was literally like Richard Bach explains in his fine book ILLUSIONS, a messenger, a call to introspection and internal work - which I have pursued and continue to work at with the greatest vigor I can muster and which I hope to see through. Bach writes; “We seek problems because we seek their gifts. No, the problem comes without a gift in hand.” 

I also believe that if my body has grown this tumor, it can also take apart the remnants of the tumor which was left behind because it was too close to critical parts of my brain to remove surgically. My body is part of this unfathomable Universal wisdom and energy that regulates my body, even when I am sleeping, so I am going to trust this wisdom, this perfection. If I suddenly keel over dead, I am still not a “loser.” Rather, as Ram Das once said, “Death is perfectly safe” 

I am working with very innovative healers applying everything from sound therapy to state-of-the-art technology. 

But more than anything I know, it will be in the stillness of my daily meditation that I will find my way home, wherever my next home prove to be –may it be on this earthly side: with mortal beings like my current self or on the other side where no tumors are present and wisdom more abundant.

THE COURSE IN MIRACLES defines a miracle as a shift in perception. I am working hard at seeing the truth and to see things anew. If I get through this, in time, the benefit will circle out wider to others as proof that the old method of scalpel and radiation and toxic chemotherapy do not need to be the only hope for people diagnosed with cancers and brain tumors – even as it continues to save some but damage others. We all need unique healing. 

I do believe that I am a walking miracle right now and that a second miracle (apparently there are not degrees in difficulty when it comes to miracles) will not be too much to ask.

Even as I have come to realize part of my learning in this part of my life is to ask for help, it has been one of the hardest things for me to do.

I live in a tiny cottage, in the middle of a tranquil forest. I chose the cottage where my financial needs are at a minimum and my meditation can be done in silence