Dear Silence is Golden, I understand your dilemma all too well. Thirty... yes thirty...  years ago... I was diagnosed with stage four dysgerminoma ovarian cancer. I was a 34 year old mother of three, recently remarried, a high profile personality on the fast track of business in London, Ontario and about to launch my own business as a speaker/trainer. My first gig was booked when suddenly, as is the case with ovarian cancer... the disease that whispers... I was literally deathly ill. At this point there was no choice about whether or not I could share what was going on with my working peers or friends.

I am fiercely independent, a giver and prefer not to be a taker BUT it was my friends and business associates who got me through the immediate surgery and then radiation treatments. They encouraged me with their love and friendship, kept my mind off the elephant in the room, especially during the subsequent metastases first to the lung. It was my friends, church and business associates who stood with me when  which I turned down traditional treatment and chose divine and alternative treatments specifically barley grass. We were a community fighting this thing through love and prayer as I continued going to college, working on the side, and continuing my work giving back to the community as a writer/ journalist, speaker/trainer/encourager and ultimately a community investment specialist.

When I was just about to sighn the papers for a new business with two business partners I was diagnosed suddenly with a brain tumour the size of your fist sitting on my brain stem. So much for the business and my life as I went through emergency surgery and full head radiation that left me so brain damaged my oncology neurologist calls me his miracle patient... he has never seen anyone come back from such severe brain trauma. But again it was my friends and business associates and specifically my church who prayed me through it. If I had sat there... as damaged as I was... without reaching out to my friends... I probably would have died of loneliness.The interesting thing about the damaged brain is that the patient may be able to do some things so well... I took a writing course and am a professional writer... while I couldn't figure out how to find the handle to the door and still get lost in a paper bag. 

Two more brain tumours two years later acerbated the situation and when I "felt" as if I was down for the count the church gave me an all night prayer vigil and that broke it. Along with the radical healthy diet, assorted healing teas, and my own brain therapy and a radical belief in a God who heals WE broke cancer. And although it tried to come back two years later as a second primary in bladder and I still had to face that steep slippery mudslide of extreme brain damage... I am almost at the top and out of that... and for that for me silence is golden... if I hadn't shared with friends and business associates when my family couldn't handle it, I doubt I would be here. Just as it takes a community to raise a child, it takes a community to get a family member, friend or business associate through a diagnosis of a life threatening, debilitating or chronic disease. 

Ironically this month I am finally completing my transparent and candid book Inside the Healing Journey a how to type book of how, not that, I got through.With a three per cent expectation of survival... I AM an overcomer... and a zero per cent expectation of recovery... I AM an overcomer... I have earned the right to share my victory story. I suggest Silence is Golden discernibly shares her story and give them... she is a giver... give them the opportunity to be part of the solution so she does not have to get through the problem alone. They will love on her and probably, as in my case, be a source of important healing information. much hope and love,

warmest regards,

       marilynn vanderstaay

             a medical anomaly and a miracle in motion