Life Is Sweet: A Memoir

By Anne Kearns

At the tender age of forty-nine, fit, successful, and in love, Anne Kearns was diagnosed with metastatic endometrial (uterine) cancer. And not the wimpy kind of slow-moving cancer. The most aggressive kind. A few months later, she was told she had little time left.

Life Is Sweet is a delicate, heartwarming, and often humorous look at how Anne kicked, screamed, and clawed her way through her cancer journey. A journey that introduced her to meditation and singing bowls, despite her Catholic upbringing. A journey that had her on her knees, literally, as she stumbled through one treatment after another, twice facing death. A journey that stripped her of her job, her looks, her social status, yet brought surprising discoveries. And a journey that brought her closer to her then boyfriend Tom, who asked her to marry him despite her grim prognosis.

Anne's memoir provides a poignant view into what numerous cancer patients are, or soon will be going through: the roller-coaster world of innovative treatment, gut-wrenching side effects, and tantalizing hope. It touches the heart and reveals the amazing human capacity to endure and heal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098389604

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Life Is Sweet © 2021 by Anne E. Kearns

Written by Anne E. Kearns

Front illustration by Sarah Hayden

Back photograph by Tom Johnson

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under international and federal copyright laws and treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the copyright holder.

Printed by BookBaby Publishing

ISBN (Print): 978-1-09838-959-8

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-09838-960-4

Life Is Sweet is a work of non-fiction. Some of the events and conversations have been collapsed, summarized, and/or combined for ease and clarity. The names and descriptions of medical personnel have been changed for privacy.

For Tom—my husband, love of my life, partner, soul mate,

champion, and best friend. Thank you for all that you do.

I would have never made it this far

without you and your tireless love and support.

Contents

PART I

THE MISSION

Chapter 1. Four Little Words

Chapter 2. Pearls of Wisdom

Chapter 3. Oompa Loompa

Chapter 4. So Very Engaging

Chapter 5. Surrender

Chapter 6. Self-Healing

Chapter 7. Mind Over Matter

Chapter 8. Anne Strong

Chapter 9. Highs and Lows

PART II

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

Chapter 10. Making a Stranger Your Friend

Chapter 11. Oh Lordie!

Chapter 12. To Tom, with Love

Chapter 13. Cane and Able

Chapter 14. A Little Lighter

Chapter 15. Miracle Monday, Happy Friday

PART III

RE-MISSION

Chapter 16. Be Still My Feral Intestines

Chapter 17. Dance and Sing Like No One’s Watching

Chapter 18. Spiraling Into the New Year

Chapter 19. Grace and Ease

Chapter 20. Life Is Sweet

Acknowledgments

PART I

THE MISSION

Prayer is talking to God.

Meditation is listening to God.

—Edgar Cayce

Chapter 1.

Four Little Words

April 18, 2019

I’m standing, firm-footed, underneath the magnolia tree, in the back left-hand corner of our backyard, baffled by what I’m supposed to do next. The meditation card in between my palms is getting slippery from my sweaty hands, though it’s a cool spring day. The sun has yet to peek from behind the house. I shift my weight from one foot to the other. Meditation, who am I kidding? I bow my head and try to think of calming thoughts. But my mind races and my fingers twitch. I take in a deep breath and read the meditation card aloud. It says that divine intelligence guides me.

Huh? What in the world am I supposed to do with that? How does it guide me? The very term divine intelligence is confusing to me. Is it the same thing as God? I know how to pray to God; I did that every day growing up Catholic. Though no longer practicing, I still pray to God, saying an Our Father every night before bed, just in case. And I still believe in the tenets of Christianity (mostly). But the term divine intelligence suggests something different from God. Are they mutually exclusive? Am I breaking a Commandment—you should have no other gods before me?

Relax Anne, breathe, I tell myself. Meditating isn’t supposed to make you more tense.

I study the card, hoping the answers will materialize the longer I look at it. The front of the card depicts a knowing eye. It stares back at me. Who will blink first?

This was all Pearl’s fault. Ten days ago, at her insistence, I agreed to dabble in meditation. I succumbed just after four little words, you have uterine cancer, fell onto my lap like a wet, woolly blanket, changing my life forever. My young oncologist and surgeon, Dr. May, told me, with the conviction of a newly minted doctor, that having a hysterectomy should be a surgical cure. Well, she said as she squirmed in her chair, that’s the hope, anyway. We won’t know until the surgery. I internally shrugged off her ambiguity. But later, in the blink of an eye, she changed her tune with the precision of a rapid-fire sniper. But if it spreads beyond the lymph nodes, it’s fatal. The end. Bub-bye.

My life was going along merrily, thank you very much, before this whole cancer business. I finally had hit my stride. I had recently landed a huge new client for the law practice I had started a couple of years earlier after leaving my law firm of almost twenty years. I’d been elected to the board at my local Rotary chapter. And, I was in love, happily living with Tom, my boyfriend of six years (and his son for part of the time). We had planned on going to Sedona for my fiftieth birthday, for God’s sake. Life was good. No, it was better than good.

But now, I was looking death in the eye. Sadly, Dr. May’s first prediction was wrong. There was no surgical cure for me. A biopsy of my removed uterus revealed that the cancer was aggressive (grade 3) and had spread to my lymph nodes. I have stage IIIc2 cancer. She had removed many of the affected lymph nodes during surgery, but, she told me, it was likely that microscopic cancer cells were still floating around. In layman’s terms that means the cancer could spread, and probably would spread. In about a month, Dr. May said, after you’ve recovered from surgery, we’ll start you on a chemotherapy cocktail, every three weeks for six rounds. Limes and cherries are optional.

The hope is that chemotherapy will eradicate those microscopic cells. There is a fifty-fifty chance the chemotherapy will work. Or if you’re a glass half-empty kind of person, there is a fifty-fifty chance it won’t.

In an instant, nothing mattered. All those hours at the law firm. All that money saved for a rainy day. All that time planning the future. The curtain was quickly closing in on my life. I needed something above and beyond. I needed a miracle.

Chapter 2.

Pearls of Wisdom

April 8, 2019—Ten Days Earlier

What you need, my friend Pearl said while sitting tearfully at my kitchen table after I told her of my diagnosis, is a good dose of meditation.

Pearl is my good friend and my own personal mystic. That day, she looked the part, wearing a rose-colored fringe shawl over a sparkly pink shirt, black leggings with strategically placed vents above and below her knees, and shoes adorned with medallions. She carried crystals, meditation cards, and lotions and potions in her bronze metallic tote bag. Her wavy brunette hair was tied in a loose bun, and gold glitter lined her eyelids. And as my Tom will tell you, glitter doesn’t come out of shag rugs easily.

Her attire, her aura (as she would say) was in stark contrast to my very being—a strait-laced, preppy lawyer, sporting square reading glasses, and basic yoga pants and a sweatshirt—my go-to outfit since my surgery. My fine, long blonde hair laid limp, roots glaring. My oval face sullen, shaken from my recent cancer news. I sat tall and lanky, Pearl, short and curvy. Despite being complete opposites, we get along with ease, and our senses of humor mesh well. Importantly, we don’t judge each other.

Pearl’s not actually a mystic, of course. That’s her side hustle. Dewy, ageless Pearl has a flourishing skin care business. A mutual friend introduced us about fifteen years ago. At the time, Pearl had a small studio in San Francisco. Although I wasn’t into facials, she seemed so friendly, I made an appointment. She eventually moved her services an hour south of the city, near where I live with Tom in Los Altos. Though small, her new space is ethereal. Soothing music pipes from a small speaker, charcoal sketches hang on her pale sage walls, and thick, champagne-colored carpeting coats the floors. Several crystals sit prominently on a side table, and rose-colored blankets warm the massage table. I remember my last facial with Pearl distinctly. She sprayed my face with a rose spritz, which made my skin tingle with energy. I smelled fragrant for days.

What do you mean? I asked Pearl, bright-eyed, yet tentative.

You need to be one with your spirituality, Anne! That’s the only way you’re going to get through this. You need to meditate! she said, gently pounding the table.

What I needed was to be cancer free, but that wasn’t happening. I was open to trying something new, beyond my recent begging for God’s mercy, which seemed to yield zero returns. Okay, I shrugged, unsure of what I was getting myself into. I’m open to it. I’ve never really done it. I tried it once and couldn’t sit still. I paused a few seconds while gazing out the kitchen bay window to the backyard. The last time I tried meditation for real was thirty years ago when I was in college in Boulder. I remember our teacher well. His name was Asimo and he had dreadlocks and smelled of patchouli. His round belly drooped as he sat in a cross-legged lotus position on the matted floor in his small studio, and he would breathe in slowly and exhale out loudly, gutturally. He seemed so mysterious and intimidating to my young eyes. I got a little wigged out by the whole thing, and never went back.

Not wanting to repeat that stifling experience, I had an idea. How about, I asked, pointing my finger, we stake out six meditation spots out back, in the fresh air? One for each of my six chemo sessions. I’ll say something different at each area. Having a plan for meditation seemed right and logical and ritualistic. If I was going to delve into spirituality, something that I’d only ever glanced at in passing, then I needed a routine, a to-do that I could put on my daily calendar and check off, just like my triweekly infusions.

That’s a great idea! said Pearl, clapping. Your yard is so zen-like.

Our backyard had become my secret garden. Tom and I had let it die a few years ago due to the drought. Once the drought threat eased, we built it back up. We added a crushed stone pathway leading to a two-tiered fountain and filled the empty spaces with native grass and colorful flowers, peach-colored lilies, pink hydrangea, white chrysanthemum. We also uncovered and raised the large stone path which follows alongside the fence and had been buried over time. The landscaper we hired designed the garden so that a variety of flowers would bloom at different times during the year. The stunning design was life-affirming.

I’ve got another idea, I said, straightening up. Did you happen to bring your Louise Hay meditation cards? Louise Hay, a self-help author and spiritual leader, markets colorful meditation cards with catchy, soul-searching sayings. Pearl had shown me her meditation cards years ago, when I was going through a rough period. Probably a breakup with some unworthy fellow. I remembered I liked them then, when Pearl would read them to me.

Smiling, Pearl rummaged deeply through her tote bag, pushing aside an angel statue and other sparkling trinkets, and pulled out a small square box waving it in front of me. Of course I have them! She fanned them out on the table. Each card was noticeably different—one side depicted brightly colored, child-like drawings, and the other side had text. Perfect, I thought, these will keep my interest going, and help me to unzip my stilted view of meditation.

What if I pick a card for each of the meditation spots? I asked, eyebrows arched in anticipation. Then I’ll have something to say, and it won’t seem so tedious. I didn’t know if Pearl would want to give me her cards, but perhaps I could borrow them.

That works! Perfect for a beginner. Pearl smiled and her doe-like eyes crinkled.

Grab your cards and follow me, I stood up, gesturing for Pearl. I have an idea where each meditation spot should be. We’re on a mission!

I led Pearl to what I thought would be a good starting place, the back left-hand corner of the yard under the magnolia tree, surrounded by a patch of blue irises. Whenever I felt out-of-sorts, I went there to breathe in the sweet surrounding aromas. We both took a whiff of the jasmine vines crawling up the surrounding redwood fence. God’s nectar, I mused.

Thunk. She dropped a rock near my foot close to the blue irises. Now you’ll remember where to stand. You’ll want consistency with your meditation, said Pearl studiously as she waved a clear crystal over the meditation cards like a magician setting up a card trick. She handed them to me and said, Shuffle, and think of an intention. I quickly straightened up and got into serious mode.

It would be too easy and greedy for me to ask to be cancer-free from the get-go. I needed to reach down, deep within my soul to find an intention that was appropriate for a first-time user. So, I asked for a simple sign that my guardian angels were looking after me on this journey.

And so it was. The card that I chose, which depicted a swirly blue flower and eye, said that divine intelligence guides me. I was a little spooked that the words on the card matched my intention. But, I thought, like horoscopes, all meditation cards have similar messages that can fit any situation. Then Pearl pointed out, her earrings jingling, Not to get all woo-woo on you, but the blue colors of the card match the blue iris flowers at this spot. That wasn’t the only similarity. Both the card and the spot had an iris (flower and eye). Woo woo indeed.

Following the stone pathway, we landed at the second spot, a grey teak bench with a slatted back, and a small, circular wrought-iron table, which overlooked the backyard and faced a gurgling, grey fountain. I didn’t think of any intention, paralyzed I’d get it wrong. So much was at stake! I simply sat on the bench and stared blankly at the back of our Tudor-style home while shuffling the cards. Like the spot, the card I chose depicted furniture, a green recliner decorated with red blossoms, with text about blessing my home with love. Pearl and I shared a knowing glance. Woo woo.

We strolled to the third spot where a big patch of purple, spindly flowers with green leaves billowed onto the ground. I didn’t know what kind of flowers they were at the time, but knew I wanted the next card to be purple and green. The card I randomly picked was yellow and showed a lady dressed in all purple riding atop a green big leaf like a magic carpet, with a theme of forgiveness and understanding. Things were getting weird. I felt like something bigger than me was happening. Perhaps strange coincidences like these are gifts, a kind of two-way conversation. Or was I reading too much into it because I desperately wanted to believe? I wanted something to sink my teeth into, to hold onto, while being spun around the uncertainties of chemotherapy and a cancer diagnosis. And, it seemed, the similarities of the cards and meditations spots were satisfying that itch. I think I’m going to like meditating!

Buoyed by a sense that we had entered another realm, we scurried to the fourth meditation spot in the right-hand corner of the yard, near the back fence, lemon and orange trees, peach-colored lilies and white roses. The chosen card had similar blocks of color—yellow, orange, green and white, and declared power over my body. I gasped at the similarity, but then sank. I had to wonder if I had any power over my body. It seemed that cancer was holding all the cards now, and I was merely a foot-soldier under its command, powerless. How was I going to regain control?

The fifth spot was on the pathway, nestled in between the bamboo plants on the left and a Japanese maple on the right. The card I chose similarly portrayed a curvy pathway lined with trees and instructed that the past has no power over me. I smirked at Pearl as I showed her the card. Let’s be real. The past does have power over me. It dictates who I am, and to some extent, where I’m going. Isn’t past behavior the best predictor of future behavior? Pearl with her ever optimism shrugged and said to give it a chance. Anne, these cards are speaking to you, you must listen to what they are saying.

We arrived at the sixth spot, a circular area of the pathway that borders the side of the house, meant for patio furniture, though none were present. I chose a card depicting a circular green spiral that said that I was at peace and felt tolerance for all people. I had to chuckle. I told Pearl that just the other day I envisioned walking in a spiral in the circular pathway like they do at meditation retreats. She grabbed the card from me and started walking in a spiral, nodding to herself. I think you have something here, Anne. This is the perfect ending to your six-card meditation walk.

Back in the house, we plopped down at the black, oval kitchen table tucked snuggly in the bay window overlooking the backyard. The kitchen is one of my favorite places in the house with its crisp white cabinets, bespeckled black countertops, center island, and walnut wood floors. Mossy green and blue slate tiles behind the stove give the kitchen a modern farm look.

We were both a little shaken that the cards so aptly mapped out my spiritual journey. The first card represented spiritual guidance, the second, gratitude, then forgiveness, power over my body, being in the now, and finally, acceptance. We agreed I would meditate on each of these tenets for three weeks, coinciding with each chemo infusion. I had my work cut out for me but could hardly wait to begin.

You should place the cards in a special place in your house, like a healthy alter, instructed Pearl. An Alter? I imagined turning our living room fireplace into a shrine dedicated to the meditation cards, complete with candles and crystals and little Buddha dolls surrounding them. And then I imagined Tom’s reaction, what the ….?

Chapter 3.

Oompa Loompa

April 18, 2019

And now, here I am, ten days later, back at the first meditation spot, stumped. My first chemotherapy infusion is this morning, and I can’t get a grip on what I am supposed to be meditating about under this glorious magnolia tree in my backyard. I re-read the card which says, in part, that divine intelligence guides me.

It seems too short, like a director yelling cut before the scene is finished. I read it aloud again, with a little more drama and gusto. Nothing happens. Okay, now what? Am I supposed to fall to my knees and yell, Dear God, why have you forsaken me?

I continue to ask, what or who is divine intelligence? God? Spirits? Perhaps, I think, when I repeat the words at each of the six meditation spots, I’ll understand better. I slowly stride to the next spot, past the fountain, along the crunchy stone path, where the bench and side table await me. I stop, take in a deep breath, and read the card aloud again. So, what form does guidance take? Will I know it when it happens?

Feeling frustrated, I visit each of the remaining spots, repeating the card. I try to let go, to feel divine intelligence guiding me. But I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like. For a short moment, though, I forget that I am getting my first infusion later today. I feel calm and centered. Maybe that’s it. Meditating is working! That is until Tom yells out the window that we need to get a move on.

Do you have everything you need in your bag, m’love? he shouts. I can see the shadow of his tall, athletic frame moving around in the kitchen. He fills up his water bottle, wraps up his computer cords, and double checks his list of items to bring. Tom woke early this morning, getting everything ready for us. He’s trying to make today easy for me given my trepidation over the past few days. He’s walked me off the ledge a few times, as I cried in his arms about how scared I am. Look Anne, he said during one of my meltdowns, if I know anyone who’s going to master the art of getting chemo, it’s you. You’re a true warrior. Look how well you’ve done recovering from surgery. I’ll be there sitting next to you every step of the way. I’ll even let you squeeze my hand as hard as you like. He took my hand and kissed it, his beard tickling my fingers. You got this, okay?

Tom hopes to do a little work during the infusion while he sits by my side. We’ve been told it’ll take about six-hours. We’re lucky that Tom’s company, a Sacramento-based human resources firm, lets him and five other middle-aged cohorts work virtually from home. They code software, use Slack and Zoom, and talk in computer-speak. Well, I should say, I’m lucky. He’s taken the lead on making sure that I’m where I’m supposed to be (the lab! The oncologist’s office! The lab again! The infusion center!), and that I’m taking the right pills at the right time. His handwritten chart on graph paper is the stuff of legends. I fell in love with that guy who masterfully combines his nurturing nature with an engineer’s brain. I landed a good one.

I come in and examine my Team Anne tote bag, a gift a good friend gave me, full of food and drinks, and other necessities like earphones, earplugs, a small fuzzy blanket, socks, chargers, an extension cord, my iPad, my computer, a coloring book, and watercolor pencils. All there.

To memorialize the occasion, Tom and I take selfies on the staircase before we leave, as if this is a special event. I can only imagine the description in my cancer scrapbook: and this is the day I got infused with poison. We’re both dressed comfortably, wearing our daily uniforms: me a grey swoop-neck shirt and black yoga pants, him a blue collared shirt that brings out his blue eyes, tan shorts, and a hoodie.

•••

Tom and I have no idea what to expect for the first chemotherapy infusion. Everything I know about chemo is from the first season of Breaking Bad. I remember the main character, Walter, reclining on a brown leather chair against a dreary wall, in a row of closely seated, very ill-looking cancer patients. Each patient was hooked up to a bag of bright yellow, almost glowing liquid. It looked like death’s waiting room.

The Palo Alto Medication Foundation infusion center is close by, only twenty minutes away. We arrive early. It’s nothing like what I imagined. The building is new and made