Godwin,
I guess we have to agree to disagree. My doctors aren't only doctors. They are also professors and scientists. They know that this disease is random, sporadic, and genetic. Genetic does not always mean that something will be inherited. This disease cannot be caused, rather, they have searched and researched and there is nothing which one can say, "aha, that's how it got in there." No. I was born with a certain gene combination. That gene combination decided everything about me. Good things such as being tall, the horizontal dimple in my chin, and maybe even my ability to appreciate complex music. Bad things such as the gene which is attempting to steal my life.
I would like your help. But why does my acceptance of your help involve accepting something which is neither here nor there? It doesn't matter how the devil arrives at your door, what is important is his immediate and permanent eviction.
Additionally, this is an area in which cancer has taught me something I could have lived two lifetimes without knowing: our people, whether African or African American, have very little acceptance of science. We favor the supernatural to the point where it is detrimental to our health, academic attainment, and success in life. "Thou preparest a table before me..." was never meant to be taken literally as the Bible also says, "If a man should eat he should work." Nothing happens unless something happens and miracles could present themselves to you all day long and twice on Sunday without being of any use at all if the individual is not ready and prepared to wield the tool the Heavens lay before our feet (or on that much talked about table).
Last week I was told that my first cycle of chemo and the first drugs used had been successful in stopping the cancer in one major organ (my liver). There was also some shrinkage of tumors. But, there was also the presentation of small lesions, in small numbers, on my stomach and lung. My body is not yet beaten down from cancer. I keep myself ready and prepared. If I do nothing else in the day I sweep my porch and tend the few potted plants I possess. I research and study a complex subject: William Shakespeare. I laugh, sing, dance and play with my children. Body, mind, and spirit have not been put on a shelf. I am also still tipping the scales a good stone to the right of 200 pounds. So, when the treatment had to switch to a drastic, two-phase ordeal involving four chemotherapy medicines I was ready to go forward. My body could withstand and did withstand the first phase which consisted of five hours of IV infusion where three drugs were used simultaneously. The second phase was a 46 hour IV drip of a drug which has the most torturous fatigue and complete loss of appetite as side effects (there are others but these are the only two I was blessed to endure). And I don't say this condescendingly! My body was made by God and I was raised by grandparents who never even allowed me to eat a pizza until I was 11 years old. I had vegetables in abundance and I only drank a 1/2 cup of soda on holidays. Yes. God made me and they protected me. I haven't even had an antibiotic in almost 30 years. So, there was protection over me before I began protecting and destroying myself.
Four days after the treatment was finished (today) I walked a half mile, I swept my patio, I tended to my plants, and I finally ate a 1/2 plate of food all the way through without stopping. I plan to bathe without asking anyone in my house to help me in and out of the tub. That's the plan, anyway, although some folks, one man in particular really doesn't mind at all tending to his lady's bathing hour. As a matter of fact, yesterday, he even brought candles and drinks into the bathroom as well.
My friend. I hate to be the one to tell you. But there is God and there is science. My God took care of me before I knew I was me and He continues to do so and will do so until He decides it's time for me to come home. My doctors were a choice for me. I chose to wait through six weeks of horrible pain until I was accepted into a teaching hospital. The cancer center is in the top ten in the nation and the university which supplies the center's research, doctors, staff is so august that even our Oga Falola thought of no other place for the education of his precious princess (smile, I am doing so myself right now).
And just as there is a God. There is a DNA sequence under which we all may gain joy and pain. I have had many years of pleasure of walking into a room and having folks tell me how cute I am. I have had many years of pleasure of being able to figure out things quickly and accurately. I have had many years of good health in which I can count on one hand the number of times I've been sick. I am a rapid healer with an immune system made of titanium steel (I once tended three children with chicken pox and didn't get so much as a sniffle and I've never had chicken pox). I've enjoyed the good. Now it's time for me to deal with the bad. Comme si, comme ca, it is the rhythm of every human being's existence. You must not cry foul at the bitter when you have taken all of the sweet.
Thank you again,
La Vonda R. Staples
On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 7:17 AM, Godwin Okeke <sol10ng@yahoo.com> wrote:
Dear Lavonda,
I do hope you'll find time to read this piece. I have been following your story with keen interest and I feel empathy for you. I want you to disavow your mind that the cause of your cancer is hereditary. You may have to read the case of Myrtle and Charles Fillmoor (I hope I got the spelling correctly). You can visit the Unity School of Metaphysical Christianity online, to read the rest of the story.
However, if you can affirm to yourself that your ailment is not hereditary, and tell God in your innermost heart that you want normalcy to return to your body leading to perfect health, then we can assist you. YOU ARE NOT PAYING ANY DIME for this. I send this message with the greatest sense of responsibility. If it works for you, go to any place of your choice and show God gratitude. All we want to prove to you is that GOD is great. You can call: 234-8056654570, 234-8096377702, ask to speak with Nnanna for details of what you are to do. I have to repeat that you are not paying anybody any dime for this, but be serious about it. It shall be well with you. GOD is great.
Thanks,
Godwin
From: Oluwatoyin Adepoju <tvadepoju@gmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, August 3, 2013 12:16 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - La Vonda R. Staples: Medical Update
Wow! La Vonda.I cant add anything right now.I'm moved by your openness over the years, helping us fellow humans to share the intimacy, the pain and beauty of your joureny in life in a manner that many of us are afraid to do.Thank you very much.God bless you.ToyinOn Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 5:04 AM, Segun Ogungbemi <seguno2013@gmail.com> wrote:
Vonda,We share your joy and sorrow but you know nothing is stronger than faith in oneself.No matter how difficult and unimaginable the pain is, your resolve not to give up, is in itself a healing process.The theology of healing that Africans and Africans in the diaspora must have is faith in the power of the ancestors and the tutelary deities who are always willing to come to the aid of their children no matter where they reside. In this regard, Vonda, I call on the power of Osanyin, the Yoruba deity of herbs, leaves, and medicine, Ogun, god of iron, metals, science and technology, that modern doctors use his instruments in the practice of medicine and all the Irunmole of this world to grant you the cure you need.We love you and your beautiful children who are very close to you. They add to your therapeutic healing process.With love and best wishes,Segun Ogungbemi.
Sent from my iPhoneHello to you all,Thank you, first and foremost, for all of your assistance, love and compassion. When I receive a card in the mail, especially on a 'bad' day (since any day I'm alive is a good day I hesitate to call any day a bad day), it lifts my spirits and my heart. I thank you and the word "thank" cannot comprise the true nature of my feelings. My gratitude is without fathomable depths.There has been a new setback which has caused a change in my treatment. The initial double chemotherapy plan of cisplatin and gemzar were successful in stopping the growth of cancer in my liver. Added to that, there was even some shrinkage in size. This is remarkable if you've taken the time to read the always fatal prognosis of my genetic cancer. Within six months of onset of symptoms (which come at the end instead of the beginning) 57 percent of the souls who suffer expire. I have survived that time by two months. I am in good mind state. My blood pressure is still like a child's with a reading of usually 110/70. My weight has only decreased by a much needed 40 pounds. I weigh 225 and at a height of five foot nine I can hardly be called svelte! My lungs are still operating between 96 and 98 percent oxygen volume. However, a little evil sneaked in with all of the goodness. In the last four months the cancer has spread in the form of small lesions, very few but they're there just the same, on my stomach and my lungs. I have responded by no smoking at all. I had re-started to deal with stress but not so much as a 1/2 a pack a day. Now, I sit here in the hospital, taking a new treatment which comes in two phases. I also have a nicotine patch firmly affixed to my hip. I'm doing everything I can to facilitate this next seemingly drastic step the cancer team at Siteman Cancer Center (a division of the Center of Advanced Medicine at Washington University) has taken to obliterate these new lesions. In phase one of my treatment I go to the regular outpatient chemo lab and they use a combination of three types of chemotherapy medicine simultaneously. This was very scary. I felt as if I couldn't walk. My jaw tightened and it felt like some hulk was preventing me from breathing by holding both sides of my chest. The first time I took this treatment a nurse had to sit in the room next to me. I felt safe but her presence in the room so close to me let me know how close I was to being in danger.The second phase of the treatment involves a 46 hour continuous IV flow of a very serious (all forms of chemo are serious but this is one with so many side effects that I got tired of reading the list, fears mounted as well so I just set it to the side, treatment had to be taken no matter what) and also requires hospital stay. I am 28 hours into the first time of receiving this drug. The combination of all four has had a 2 out of 10 success rate for getting rid of these small lesions. It also has a 30 percent success rate for stopping additional lesions. It also has a fifty percent rate of no change at all. I am looking more towards being in the positive side of this drug. That's all I ever do since this ordeal began. I look to the sunshine and not the sunset. I know that no one has survived more than three years. I intend on being that someone who does.I have a new address and I would be so pleased to receive any tokens of love you might decide or be able to send. More and more, because of the drugs I take to counteract the side effects of my chemo, my world is smaller. Soon, I fear, I will no longer be allowed to even go to the library. I continue to write and do research. I don't even care about publication or recognition. I keep doing what I love because I love it, no other reason is necessary. For example, for the last three weeks I have been deeply ensconced in discovering a 16th century lady known as "Lucy Negro." She is, she just has to be, the dark lady of Shakespeare's sonnets numbered 127 through 154. A. D. Cousins has referred to the lady of these sonnets as a, "tawdry affair" and another scholar (first name is Germaine I can't remember her last name) in her two chapter discussion of Shakespeare's wife's feelings regarding the sonnets completely ignores the sonnets regarding the dark lady. Why is that?I've found Lucy Negro in very close proximity to Will's first theatre the Rose. I've found her so many times in Elizabethan history. She was a dancer at the court of Queen Elizabeth and somewhere along the way also entertained at court playing the harpsichord (see sonnet 128). She's a dancer, a prostitute, a property owner and proprietress of a brothel. And she's the force of nature which seemed to have driven the Bard quite mad with desire. And then, poof, she be gone! I'm working on writing a play about the two of them. But cancer seems to get in the way. I brought my materials to the hospital but I can't seem to stay awake long enough to get my momentum going.That's enough for now. Please think of me, write to me, send me a card and it doesn't have to be a card which contains anything (although if you do it will be more than appreciated as I still have yet to secure insurance to help with the cost of my home medications), just let me know there are people out there in the world who care. As I started to say before, I am not allowed, due to my compromised immune system to go to any public places. I cannot go to most people's houses because of various reasons such as children going to school, elderly relatives, and quite frankly the level of cleaning the homeowner executes on a daily basis. I sit on my front porch and read for hours on end. And to be brutally honest, I've never felt so alone in all of the forty six years I've been on this earth. My Sarah is my only joy. My sons attend to me when their schedules allow. I was not ready, not in the least, to be confined to such a loving jail. Please keep me in your prayers. I believe that your prayers worked the miracle of my liver. This is so rare with my disease. You cannot possibly know, unless you've looked it up, the fatality of this disease. Your prayers and my hand in God's hand has brought success to the doctor's treatment. Be proud of yourselves. I am.Thank you all. Here's my new address and I've also attached some photos of all of us. They were taken moments before my hospitalization of this week.La Vonda R. Staples5906 Boulder Creek DriveApartment 2006Hazelwood MO 63042My new telephone number314-7310-1176--
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La Vonda R. Staples, Writer
BA Psychology 2005 and MA European History 2009
"If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough."
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, This Child Will Be Great; Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President.
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