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Dave: Hi, this is Dave Bernstein and welcome to our interview. Today, we’re speaking with Connie Green. She’s a writer from Los Angeles, California. She’ll be telling us about her own personal story of survival; how she not only survived cancer, but thrived in its aftermath. Welcome Connie.
Connie: Thank you so much, Dave.
Dave: I want to thank you very much for being here today. I know our listeners are going to gain a lot from this interview. First, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background as well as your original diagnosis and prognosis.
Connie: I lived in Florida for a while and I was a teacher. I have lived in Los Angeles, and I still live there now. In 1992, I was in Florida and I had just gone through hurricane Andrew. It was very traumatic for me. In the weeks after that, I had to decide what I was going to do; was I going to return to California? Was I going to stay in Florida? What was I going to do?
My job sent me away for about five days for a training session. During that week, I was so sick. It was a very boring training. In the morning I would say, “Gee, I don’t feel good.” In the beginning of the week, they thought that I was just pretending. I would go to the room and the next thing I knew, it was the end of the day.
They realized by the end of the week that I wasn’t pretending; I had been very, very ill. When I got back from that training, I went to the doctor immediately. I said, “Something is not right. That doesn’t seem right. I don’t get sick like that.”
The doctor did a few tests and said, “I believe you have cancer.” I was quite shocked by that. I didn’t want to believe that diagnosis. They based it on blood work and all kinds of things.
I ended up going to two other doctors during that same seven to ten-day period after that. They told me the same thing. Finally, one did an ultrasound. He said, “It started in the lymph nodes, but it’s gone to the breast, and we must do surgery immediately.” I was quite shocked.
Dave: Obviously, this must have been devastating news. What was going through your mind? Were you staying up at night? What were you thinking about?
Connie: I was thinking so many things. I just didn’t want to believe it. There was no history of cancer in my family. I had always been very healthy, had never had any type of major surgery or anything.
In the beginning, I really thought it was a mistake, but when the two other doctors that didn’t even know about each other – I paid for that on my own, when they
told me the identical, same thing, I thought, “Gee, I guess I’m going to have to accept this.”
I remember thinking, “Even if I had a million dollars cash, it wouldn’t get me out of this. This is something that I’m going to have to deal with. There is no way that I can fix this situation.” I also remember thinking, “I’m glad I don’t have small children at home that I’m raising.” My kids were already grown at that point, but it was very, very frightening.
Dave: When you learned about this, did you do any research at all on cancer; were there any books that were especially helpful to you?
Connie: It was 1992, so we didn’t have the Internet like we do now, to do that type of research. I guess I was in such shock, and they wanted to do the surgery within a week. I didn’t have a whole lot of time to do anything. It was just people that I knew. In my experience, people that I knew with cancer usually lived about a year and then passed away. They didn’t survive from it. That was my personal experience.
Dave: You mention that you didn’t want to believe that this was true. Obviously, we’ve heard about denial in patients, but we don’t often hear about denial in doctors and professionals. Did you have any conflicting attitudes with any of your doctors? Were they “on your side”?
Connie: No, I didn’t really feel like they were on my side. They were very determined to do the surgery. They wanted to do a radical mastectomy, and I ended up doing that. They knew their way of doing things. Their way was to do operations and to do chemotherapy. That’s all they discussed with me.
Also, when I first went in, they did the initial surgery and I wasn’t supposed to know what was in my records. I didn’t know they kept that a secret from the patients. I was in radiology and a man there who must have been new said, “Would you take these reports down to oncology? I know that’s where you’re headed.” I said, “Of course, I’d be glad to.”
I went into the ladies room and I read them. It said I had three to six months to live and that they would try to make me comfortable. I had not been told that. I was just in disbelief at this point.
Dave: Are you trying to tell me they denied you in knowing everything about your own body?
Connie: Yes, that’s right, and when I went into the office of the oncologist, I really just kind of threw the papers across the desk at him. I said, “Were you going to tell me this?” He said, “No, we’re not under any obligation to share our opinions with the
patient. That’s just our opinions.” He said, “Your outcome could well be different, but that’s what we believe and we don’t share that.”
Dave: What treatments did you ultimately decide to undergo?
Connie: They gave me a radical mastectomy, which in 1992 they told me they had made great advances over the past ten years. What they did then was very different from what they would do today. Basically, they removed all the lymph nodes on the right side. They removed the entire breast. They also removed muscle tissue so that when they were completely finished, I was hollow on the right side of my body.
Dave: How about alternative treatments? Was there anything available at that time, any herbs, supplements, or such?
Connie: Right at that time, I was still recovering from the surgery. Now, they were talking about chemotherapy and everything. I said, “You know, I really spend most of my time in Los Angeles. I am going to go back there,” so I returned. They wanted me to stay there and do more treatment but I came back. When I came back to Los Angeles, that’s when I started looking into alternatives; someone along the way mentioned that there might be something that I could do. I didn’t have any experience with this. I started going to health food stores and asking them. I heard very different information from the nutritionists and people who worked at health food stores.
Dave: The realization of cancer has now hit you. What are some of the things that you started to do in your everyday life to bring the mind and body connection together?
Connie: I usually meditate anyway, so I made sure that morning, and evening, I had that quite time. Just complete silence works for me, so I went back to the meditation and sometimes did it for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. I found that to be very, very calming. Also, my feeling was that it was much more difficult for people around me than it was for me. People around me tended to believe what the doctors had said, even though I was sure, all of this time, that I was going to live through this.
Dave: Connie, I think one of the most underutilized methods would be support groups; I think very few people realize the power of support groups. Did you have any peers or support groups that you would talk to on a continual basis?
Connie: The first thing that the hospital did – they did this down in Florida; they sent a representative from the American Cancer Society out. She was a very lovely woman, but she was in her sixties. I was thirty seven at the time. I really could not relate to her and I felt like she could not relate to me.
I had asked her about reconstructive surgery, and that type of thing. She said, “Oh no, I would never do that,” because she was older. I remember thinking at the time that when I do survive, and as soon as they allow me to, I wanted to be one of the volunteers because I thought they needed younger women to do this.
That was my first form of support. After that, I did go to a support group, but my feeling was that I was going to be the youngest person there. I went, and sure enough, everybody seemed older. I was talking to one woman. She was very friendly and she was probably in her forties. We were talking and it turned out it wasn’t her; her daughter came in and her daughter was about twenty two and she had just had breast cancer, so finally I realized that the age range was going to be very wide and that I wasn’t going to be the youngest person.
Dave: I certainly think you were ahead of your time. If you were to fast forward this a few years, there would be so many more outlets for you to talk with people your own age who are going through cancer. Unfortunately, back in that time, you had what you had.
Overall, the tradition, the alternative, and the spiritual treatments – would you do anything differently than you did back then? Why or why not?
Connie: Yes, I think I would not have rushed into the surgery. They made me feel like I had to do the surgery within a week or there was no chance that I was going to live. I don’t believe now that it was the truth. I would have definitely waited. Even though I probably would have still had the surgery, I probably wouldn’t have done it for a month so that I could find out more information, I could really educate myself about what was out there and what I could do. I found out that you really have to be your own advocate when you’re involved with the doctors and the hospitals on this level.
Dave: Fast forward to today; what are you doing, right now, to keep yourself healthy and cancer free?
Connie: I do quite a variety of things. I make sure I walk every day. I am very careful about what I eat and drink. I believe the diet is huge with all of this. I am very, very careful. One thing that I was told was that I had to keep my estrogen levels low. Back then, this was before menopause, so there was the whole question of what do you do about that. Why do you keep the estrogen levels low and how do you do that?
I was in the grocery store and there was a tabloid there. It talked about birth control in ancient times. I picked up this magazine, something that I never would have purchased at that time. I looked through it and it said that women needed to keep their estrogen level low so they wouldn’t become pregnant. That was
their natural form of birth control many years back; I don’t remember what years exactly.
I bought that magazine, that little newspaper. I took it home and I read it and I went to the health food store. To this day, I still take these same herbs. Some of them are alfalfa, black cohosh, fennel, wild yam, red clover; all of these keep the estrogen levels low. Sure enough, about six weeks after I started, they couldn’t believe it. They said, “Gee, we can’t understand your estrogen markers. Everything is so low. It’s below normal.” I told them I was taking some things and they completely disregarded that. They didn’t think it had any connection.
Dave: Ultimately, cancer takes far too many of us, way too soon. Why do you think you have survived? Why do you think you have thrived since beating cancer?
Connie: I believe that it was just in my mind, from the very beginning, that I was not going to die from this. I believed that I was going to still live and that it was going to be very uncomfortable, the treatment was not going to be pleasant at all, but I believed that I was still going to be living years later. Sure enough, I still am.
Dave: I tell you what, Connie, you are absolutely an inspiration to many of us out there, and I want to definitely thank you for joining us on the interview today. We have just a few moments left, and I want to ask; do you have any final thoughts, any words of hope and encouragement for our listeners?
Connie: Yes, I think before people receive a diagnosis of cancer, you have to be aware of what you’re doing, what your work situation is; don’t be in a stressed situation. If you have a lot of stress, do whatever you have to do to change that, even if it means making less money or doing something very different from what you would do.
Also, once you have dealings with the doctors, you have to be an advocate for yourself. Find out as much as possible. Ask questions, and don’t just accept everything that they say without questioning it. You must question everything.
Dave: Those are wonderful words from an amazing woman. Connie, once again I want to thank you for joining us today and spending a few moments with our listeners.
Connie: You’re welcome.
Dave: We’ve been speaking with Connie Green, from Los Angeles, California. She is a writer, and she’s been telling us about her personal story of survival. I would like to thank all of our listeners for joining us today. This is Dave Bernstein. We’ll see you soon.