By: Gwenn Kafka, CMH, MH

I was in a dressing room in Nordstrom’s, when my cell phone rang. I had been distracting myself with retail therapy while waiting for this call. It was my cousin Kandy from San Luis Obispo. “Hi cousin…how are you?” she asked softly. “Hi cousin…how are YOU?” I asked with great concern. “I have breast cancer!” she suddenly sobbed into my ear.

There have been only a few times in my life when I was rendered speechless, and the time before this was only a month before, when another cousin called to tell me my aunt, had been filled with cancer and that she had maybe 2 months to live. She died just 2 WEEKS to the day of diagnosis. She was only 10 years older than I. Now only three days after my aunt’s memorial service, my cousin Kandy, who really was supposed to be my sister, but the stork made a terrible mistake and dropped her off at my mother’s aunts house (she was 45 at the time, hence the mistake) and so Kandy became my cousin, three years younger than I, and we have been like sisters ever since.

“Honey I don’t EVEN know what to say, I was SO positive you would call and say you were fine.” “But YOU are the BIG cousin and you are all knowing, and you always have the right words to say,” she responded. I never felt so helpless. Saying my old standard that “everything happens for a reason” just wasn’t going to cut it for me this time. I will explain why.

You see, only eight months before, Kandy was out walking her dogs when she tripped on a railroad track and did a face plant on the opposite track, fracturing her orbital bone under her eye, broke her jaw and split her lip all the way up to under her nose. She had to have the other side of her jaw broken in order to put it all back in place using two plates in her jaw and another plate in her fractured cheek. If she was supposed to die, it should have happened THEN and not have her experience breast cancer, in stage 3 no less (and there are only 4 stages) just a few months later do you think? We heard of 2 other people doing the exact thing on a railroad track and they didn’t live. We knew she was not supposed to die.

Kandy found the first lump in her armpit while showering. Her doctor thought it was a common thing, no doubt an infected poor and he started her on antibiotics. The lump did not go away.

Before she could get further testing on it, she tripped over a large dog food container in her garage and landed on her breast. Upon examining herself, she felt another lump but wondered if it was from falling on it. It wasn’t. Amazing that three lumps were not detected in a mammogram just three months before.

When Kandy had the surgery on her face, I went to stay with her and used my hypnosis techniques and energy work to help her with a speedy recovery. You would never even dream anything had happened to her face, she healed so beautifully. So, I knew that I would do similar work with her regarding breast cancer. By the way, I did help her with her new fear of falling, incase that crossed your mind.

Kandy has a strong belief in the power of thought and has seen the results from the work we have done in the past. I forgot to mention that at age 43 she had a stroke. She recovered from that without a trace, so we know this is just going to be another challenge in her life to prove the power of positive thought.

Please understand that I don’t want to minimize this by having it sound like all you have to do is think positive and everything will be ok. It is much more than that. We can’t have a thought without some physiological response. Example think about the date September 11th and you get a pit in your stomach. Think about your new grandchild or your puppy, and you get warm fuzzies. Thoughts change what is chemically going on in your body. If you already have something “chemically wrong” like cancer in your body, how you think about it is definitely going to make a difference in many cases.

A doctor friend of mine down in San Luis Obispo had a patient who had been diagnosed with multiple cancer tumors in his stomach and lung, the size of baseballs. He had been given about 2- 4 months to live. He had all of his affairs in order. He was only 51 years old. She refused to see him just give up and write off the rest of his life like that. She drove him from Santa Barbara to Belmont to spend the weekend in my home so I could work on him for 3 days. When he arrived, he was taking morphine every 2 hours for the pain. He had not had chemotherapy. Before I even began my work with him, I needed to know that he really DID want to live. It turned out that this death sentence had come at a very convenient time, when there had been a divorce, his business was failing and his business partner had just committed suicide the week before, and he was not having an easy time with child support for 2 children.

This way, if he died, he was no longer stressing about all the terrible things happening in his life, AND no one would or could be mad at him for not supporting his children. After much discussion he decided he wanted to live. So my work began.

After helping him to align his thoughts and energies and using guided imagery, by Sunday, he had gone 8 hours without any morphine, and he was amazed! His CT scan the following Wednesday showed that he was in FULL REMISSION! His doctors couldn’t believe it! What on earth could have changed this dying man full of cancer? They strongly suggested that he still get chemotherapy, so he did. He continued to improve.

I know my cousin is going to do great. She already has a great attitude (she no longer has bad hair days and her new wigs look great!) and she has hardly missed work since her surgery. She is half- way through with her chemotherapy treatments and is using positive guided imagery and energy work to help her through this time. Understanding the mind/body connection is a most beneficial tool in helping all life challenges.

Learn how hypnosis can help you: “Change Your Life by Changing Your Mind!”

Addendum: It has been 10 years since I wrote this article and my cousin did great and is still cancer free. She continues to see herself as perfect, well and whole!