There are days when Melva Lenox has to drag herself to her cancer therapy program. But she never has to drag herself away.
“Sometimes, when you get up, you don’t feel that great. You have to push yourself to go. And after I’m there, I feel better, emotionally, psychologically, whatever it is. It seems to energize me,” said Lenox, who has been attending yoga and nutritional sessions at Stanford Hospital for more than two years during her battle with ovarian cancer.
The yoga sessions avoid “some of the crazy stances most of us couldn’t do anyway,” said Lenox, 75, a resident of Palo Alto, where she is a member of Congregation Etz Chayim. “It’s a gentle form of yoga and not uncomfortable. And if something is uncomfortable, you don’t feel guilty at all not participating.”
The sessions Lenox attends every week are held at the Stanford Center for Integrative Medicine. They are part of the Cancer Supportive Care program, created by Dr. Ernest Rosenbaum nearly four years ago.
Rosenbaum — an oncologist at UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion and a clinical professor at both Stanford and UCSF — has woven nutritional counseling, exercise, financial guidance, yoga and even art and music into an all-encompassing program at Stanford Hospital.
Rosenbaum’s multifaceted program has been adopted by a half-dozen hospitals across the nation as well as medical centers in Hong Kong, Singapore and now, Israel.
Rosenbaum, a longtime congregant at Emanu-El of San Francisco, has developed a number of innovative cancer therapy programs around the Bay Area. In the late 1980s, he co-developed the Art for Recovery program in San Francisco.
During the past 15 years, program participant Nancy Mendoza has endured countless sessions of chemotherapy and radiation treatment in order to combat her breast cancer. But nothing has helped her in quite the same manner as grabbing a paintbrush and crafting a portrait of her cancer cells being devoured by Pac-Man.
“People express themselves through their art. You can see their anger in the colors they use, the vibrancy of their drawings. You don’t have to ask them about it; you know they’re in anguish, or feeling hopeful — or wanting to feel hopeful,” said Mendoza, 55.
“It’s hard to describe, but it’s like you’re peeling off layers of yourself. When you look at a piece of art or writing, it’s coming from the heart, not just the mind. It’s really your soul coming out.”
This all corresponds with Rosenbaum’s thesis: While treatments like chemotherapy may save one’s life, much more is needed to maintain one’s quality of life.
“The major thing is that people who have cancer or need help, whether they’re here, in Singapore or Tel Aviv, need information and guidance and there’s not enough time anymore to provide all of those services,” said Rosenbaum.
“I try to give people the opportunity to express themselves, to meet the various needs they or their families will have.”
Mendoza has expressed herself in ways she never thought possible. After her good friend and fellow program participant succumbed to breast cancer, Mendoza wove her companion’s headscarf into a quilt.
Elaine Costello decided to enroll in a yoga session at Stanford Hospital after hearing about the program from a nurse during a chemotherapy session.
“I realized that yoga really did make me relax. My blood pressure had gone through the ceiling after I had been diagnosed, and it started to come down. I started to feel more calm,” said the fiftysomething San Mateo resident.
The yoga class is “made especially for people who are going through a cancer treatment… I found the more I did it, the better I felt.”
Rosenbaum’s 3-1/2-year-old program will soon be adopted at Tel Hashomer Hospital just outside of Tel Aviv, and the doctor is negotiating with officials at Hadassah and Sha’are Zedek hospitals in hopes of incorporating his program there as well.
Rosenbaum’s programs are free, and he receives no compensation from them. He also directs a Web site — www.cancersupportivecare.com
For Mendoza, the Cancer Supportive Care program represents the first opportunity she’s had to fully express herself in a support group situation. In the past, she often found herself as the only person in a group experiencing recurring cancer, and frequently kept quiet “because I didn’t want to be a downer.”
When making a quilt or a painting or penning a letter to a 12-year-old at Brandeis Hillel Day School — as Mendoza has — even a reserved person can open up.
“One of the problems with conventional support groups is they’re so wrapped up in cancer. You’re on a merry-go-round and you have trouble getting off. I kind of burned out on that,” she said.
“Really, what you’re doing is expressing your pain or any particular emotion in an artful way. You’re talking through your art…moving ahead in life, not just standing still.”