(continued) This treatment gave her some serious side effects, but no therapeutic benefits. He switched her to another protocol and the side effects continued, even worse than before: she threw up for three days and lost all her hair. Once again, no therapeutic benefits were ever detected. A third protocol produced identical results to the first two--failing just as miserably and completely. By now, she had suffered in this way for eighteen months and by mutual consent between the patient and the oncologist, all chemotherapy was stopped. She asked him how long he thought she had to live, and when he offered, "Three months," she agreed.

Just at this time, a HOPE group started meeting in a local hospital. She heard about it and decided to see what it might do to help her with the last of her life. A HOPE Group, of course, looks at possibilities rather than problems; so when her story came out, she was asked, "What do you plan to do for the next three months?"

"Why, I’m dying," she said.

"Well," came the response, "it seems like that is a long time to spend a dying, and perhaps you’d like to do something else for two months and three weeks, and save the dying for the last week."

"Oh, can I?" She asked.

"I don’t know; can you?" was the reply.

"How?"

"You might just take some quiet, personal time and is go in and see if there is something terribly important for you that is unfinished business. If something comes up, then I suggest that you get on with it immediately."

The next week, she was back, telling us that she was working on something. One week later, she came to the HOPE Group meeting exclaiming: "I've got it! I'm going back on chemotherapy! I know I have to do this, and I called him last Friday and told him to find me a new protocol. It took him a couple of hours, and it's fairly similar to what we've been using, but not exactly the same; so I've got an appointment with him tomorrow to begin on the new treatment."

She came back to the group the next week, fairly glowing. Her chemotherapy had caused nausea that lasted for only 10 hours and she never threw up once! Subsequently, she was nauseated for less than eight hours after each chemotherapy, without any vomiting. She grew all her hair back! She subsequently went through more that thirty treatments on a monthly basis, stopping them only because of the risk of toxic side effects from the chemo! At her request, her oncologist substituted another primary agent that should have caused her to lose all her hair, but a photograph taken that year shows the presence of a beautiful, naturally curly, slightly graying head of hair. During a HOPE group meeting around this time, she said, "The last four years have been the most wonderful years of my life. They would not have been possible were it not for the first fifty two of them, as hard as they were; so I would not trade a single one of those first fifty-two for anything." At that time, she told us what it was that had been so important four years earlier: she was deeply in love with her husband who was going though a personal struggle and she needed to be there with and for him and their children. She felt she had done the healing work and was at peace with herself and her loved ones.

Two months later, a few days prior to being hospitalized for another round of chemotherapy, she felt feverish and had a productive cough. She called her oncologist who asked her if she wanted to come into the hospital and receive antibiotics for what was probably a pneumonia. She agreed. They started her on antibiotics right away, but there was no effect on the infection. Her family came and stayed with her while she gradually slipped away over the next week. Yes, after four years and two months of living, she did spend one week dying, leaving in peace with the support of her loving family.