Some of you may recognize the term "Thriving in Many Voices" from an innovative 2003 MOCA conference. The conference focused on helping survivors to address the question, "how do we move beyond surviving with cancer to thriving with cancer?" The conference explored different creative strategies that became the "voices" to aid survivors in their journey. The conference focused on positive ways for survivors to enrich their lives and the lives of those around them. The dream of "Thriving in Many Voices" was to build a better quality of life for each person who attended, so each survivor could "live life to its fullest length and its deepest breadth."

The mission of the "Thriving in Many Voices" conference is now being extended to our website. It is important that survivors and their loved ones continue to have a place to creatively express themselves and give "voice" to their journey.

Please share your experiences, fantasies, coping, grief, joy etc. through poetry, stories, humor, visuals or any other creative means, and we will post your submissions for others to see and enrich their own journey. Email Constance at cwhite@mnovarian.org or call MOCA, 612/822-0500.

As the tests and scans were ordered, I moved in a fog. The spinal surgeon had “seen something” he wanted my doctor to ‘check out. She scheduled tests at the hospital. My husband and I moved from one section of the hospital to another. I joked to him if they tell me my doctor would like to see me at her office… I’ll know. They did. I did. As if in an instant, the Lord read my heart, my fear, my love. As I reached out to Him - He reached down and encompassed me in His love. I then knew that no matter what the outcome – It would be okay.

I’ve been writing poetry all my life and giving it to friends. They would say that my poetry would make them cry, but that it always made them feel better. The last few years prior to diagnosis, I had more and more friends ask me to put my poems together and talk to a publisher. I was in the process of doing that.

The morning after “knowing” I had ovarian cancer, I was trying to tell my friends about the night before. About the stabbing pain of hearing my husband sobbing in the living room and not being able to give him any comfort – not to be able to say “It will be all right.”

The Lord has always guided my writings. That morning I was on line with my friends and no regular words were coming. I decided to simply put it in a poem. Then I would get ready to go talk with the surgeon. My husband read this over my shoulder, as I wrote it.

The surgeon removed it all. The new chemo technique had my last CA125 at 3. PET/CT scans show clear. I know this all can change. But in the meantime I am living each day. I am grateful to my family and my wonderful friends and He has not let go of my hand.

I Have Become More Forgetful
by Jane Levin

I have become more forgetful.
Friends laugh
tell stories about
     misplaced keys
     forgotten names.
A few gently ask if chemo did this to me.
My doctor refers me for an MRI.

You don't understand.
For just one moment
I forgot that I
have/had/may have
     cancer.

I have become a magician
watch in amazement
as fear drops away.
Sounds of audible delight escape
as the faint outline
of hope
materializes.

and as hope takes shape
memory returns.

Jane Levin began writing poetry as a creative response to a terrifying ovarian cancer diagnosis. Her poetry has appeared in The Minnesota Women’s Press, Conversations!, poets against the war, Surviving Together, worldwidewamm, and Coping with Cancer. In addition, she has poems forthcoming in the December 2006 issue of Subterraneans: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Writing and the January 2007 issue of alongstoryshort. She is a recipient of a 2006 Intermedia Arts/Jerome Foundation Writer-to-Writer mentorship.
Jane can be reached at: levin015@umn.edu

Recurrence
by Astrid Slungaard

I don’t know how to get rid of this thing.
Tear it out with a silver knife and
sharp-edged surgical tools,
or put it to sleep with
plastic bags of poison
seeping in at regular intervals.
Days, weeks, months.

I don’t know how to get rid of the fear.
It slips over into most days,
pinches moments with a residue of surrender.
Surfaces during a morning walk around the lake
when only the icy quiet should distract me,
or in a harsh flash just before the school bus
spills kids onto the sidewalk in the late afternoon.

The tumor is a magician’s handiwork,
sneaking away, reappearing
playing out its own dance, its own indiscernible pattern.

Cells lie dormant
hibernating,
then go to work
doing the arithmetic’s job
of multiplying and dividing.

Just below the surface
they hide,
dodging the radar of scans and sturdy gray equipment.

Just above the surface
I breathe.

Astrid Slungaard, a reference librarian and Norwegian–English translator as well as a poet, lives in Minneapolis. Several of her poems appeared in Dust and Fire, an annual anthology of women’s writing and art (Bemidji State University, 2005).

She says, “I have been living with ovarian cancer for nine years, with several recurrences. I wrote this poem in response to the uncertainties of dealing with this unpredictable disease. During a visit to my oncologist, she drew circles on a scrap of paper to illustrate how cancer cells divide and multiply. It struck me that these cells are like worker bees, simply doing the job they’re programmed to do.” Contact author: astrid@stribmail.com.