Photo Credit: Jack Lyons

Drifting in a sea of fatigue, like flotsam washed on the beach, I rested on the acupuncture table, my personal chemotherapy low tide. The Grandmother stood at my feet holding a wing of a large red parrot with yellow epaulets. She waved the wing down the length of my entire body, gently brushing away the disease that the chemotherapy released from my body. Then she stroked upward with the red wing, using it to draw energy up from the Earth, through the soles of my feet, into my chemically burned body.

This was the first impression I had that the cancer was losing its grip.