“Just keep coming to group.”

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© Bill Aron

Hazel Madison won’t tell her age -- just that she is a senior citizen.  Hazel is also a Hodgkin’s Lymphoma survivor, a disease that has metastasized to her brain and spine. 

Hazel was living in Ohio when she was diagnosed in 1994.  A nurse suggested that she check out The Wellness Community because she was not getting much support from her family and community in general.  As an African-American living in a white neighborhood, she felt “in-between” and uncomfortable.  Hazel was also experiencing excruciating pain and battling recurring bouts of pneumonia.  Her immune system and spirits were low.  Everything was a struggle.  As Hazel downplays, “I was not a happy camper.”  Her prognosis was so bad that her doctor made an appointment for her with a doctor at UCLA (his alma mater) and told her that she was moving to California if she wanted to live.  He was convinced that the doctors there could help her.

Hazel was not so convinced.  But she took his advice and headed to Los Angeles, certain that she was going there to die, not live.  She had just about come to the conclusion that life was not worth living.  She was not even sure if she wanted to have the brain surgery that her doctor in Ohio had so adamantly insisted upon. 

What Hazel did know was that she needed The Wellness Community to help her sort all this out and went straight to TWC-WLA when she arrived.  She already knew the drill from being part of a TWC in Ohio.  She got involved in group support, mind/body classes, and educational workshops.  The group support helped her weigh her options: should she have surgery, should she not have surgery?  She was encouraged by her group to check out everything, to consider all information carefully.  She eventually grew to realize that she had to make her own choices; she had to take care of herself, whatever that might mean to her. 

This was the Patient Active Concept in action, although Hazel didn’t know it at the time.  

At the center of TWC's program philosophy is Dr. Harold Benjamin's Patient Active Concept that states that, "People with cancer who participate in their fight for recovery from cancer will improve the quality of their life and may enhance the possibility of their recovery."  Hazel had begun to actively participate in her healthcare; she had begun to make choices.  She chose to have the surgery.   

But the pain didn’t go away.  After the surgery, Hazel was upset and feeling sorry for herself.  After being at TWC-WLA for about a year, she met Harold Benjamin. She gave him a piece of her mind.  She asked him why her quality of life wasn’t improving.  He told her to keep coming to group -- maybe it was, and she didn’t know it yet.  It was soon after this that the pain lessened and her hope increased.   

Hazel feels bad that she “got in Harold’s face” as she says.  But that’s an element of the Patient Active Concept, too -- questioning and confronting.  And after over ten years of searching and struggling as a cancer survivor and TWC-WLA participant, Hazel is still here, still attending groups, and whatever age she is, she doesn’t look it.