
{"id":9406,"date":"2010-03-18T12:20:50","date_gmt":"2010-03-18T20:20:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=9406"},"modified":"2011-07-07T12:11:47","modified_gmt":"2011-07-07T16:11:47","slug":"her-own-terms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2010\/03\/18\/her-own-terms\/","title":{"rendered":"Her own terms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure id=\"attachment_9418\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9418\" style=\"width: 750px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/ashley-osmet.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/ashley-osmet.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"ashley-osment\" width=\"750\" height=\"502\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9418\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/ashley-osmet.jpg 750w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/ashley-osmet-113x75.jpg 113w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/ashley-osmet-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/ashley-osmet-360x240.jpg 360w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/ashley-osmet-119x80.jpg 119w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/ashley-osmet-120x80.jpg 120w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9418\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ashley Osment at home Photo by Ava Barlow<\/figcaption><\/figure><em>Ashley Osment confronts cancer and the merits of positive thinking<br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\n<strong>BY TAYLOR SISK<br \/>\n<\/strong><em>Staff Writer<br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\nAshley Osment isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t by nature a book-burner. In fact, last month the Chapel Hill-Carrboro branch of the NAACP presented its Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Award to Osment, a civil-rights lawyer, for having spent her adult life defending the constitutional rights of any and all to live, work and express themselves reasonably undeterred.<\/p>\n<p>But Bernie Siegel, author of the 1986 bestseller <em>Love, Medicine &#038; Miracles<\/em> and coiner of such mass-consumed aphorisms as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The simple truth is that happy people generally don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get sick,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d makes Osment want to undo it all. After reading one of his books, she says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I just wanted to have a book burning, of Bernie Siegel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s positive thinking.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Not that she ever would. But that she would even consider book burning is testament to the anger Osment sometimes feels, unapologetically, at the twisted victimization to which people with cancer are routinely subjected: The suggestion that if you aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t getting better, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s your own fault, and the attendant commercialization, the commoditization, of her cancer. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There are just all these demeaning, very gender-based symbols,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Osment says of all the pink ribbons and cuddly bears. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHold this and think positively, because, damn it, you caused your own cancer by not being positive.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 That really [ticks] me off.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think that you can be miserable,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a mistake to let your misery define your last experience on Earth.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>There are ways, Osment believes, to express the pain and fear, the despair in contemplating the very real possibility of your 13-year-old daughter growing into womanhood without you along to witness and guide \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to carry all those things and allow them to comingle with, and better inform, the joy and wonder and vast awareness of yourself that has emerged from this experience. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s room for it all.<\/p>\n<p>And while Osment \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 46 years old and two years, eight months now with cancer \u00e2\u20ac\u201c can appreciate the good intentions behind the admonitions she receives most every day to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153keep fighting,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she would like to make it known that despite how she may verbalize it, she <em>is<\/em> fighting \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that six rounds of conventional cancer therapies, chemotherapy and radiation; and the alternative treatments, the high-dose intravenous vitamin C, massive ingestions of nutritional supplements, the fermented soy and repeated fasting \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that these should be pretty clear indications that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fighting like hell.<\/p>\n<p>She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll smile when she can and when she pleases. She smiles quite often. But she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll grimace when the pain in her hip, where the cancer has now spread, overwhelms her, as it has persistently for months now. Sometimes positively, at others pessimistically, she ponders her reality, and here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s come to see it: <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You can take two identical cancer patients, with the identical cancer, have them do identically the same thing, and their outcomes will be really different,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Osment said in a video produced by the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, where she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s received much of her care. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The most positive person in the world could kick over in two months and a curmudgeon lives for 20 years. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153So this whole thing about mind over matter, I think, misses the mark in terms of the complexity of the enemy here.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m furious.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\n<\/strong><br \/>\nCancer fights dirty. On July 2, 2007, when Osment was first diagnosed with carcinosarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of ovarian cancer, she was told her chances of recovery were nine in 10. On July 30, 2008, her CT scan revealed a metastasis to her lungs. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The summary is that the news of my cancer recurrence brings a statistically bad prognosis and an indefinite future of cancer treatment,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she wrote to friends at the time. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I have too many tumors for surgery, so chemotherapy \u00e2\u20ac\u201c carboplatin, taxol and avastin \u00e2\u20ac\u201c are the conventional things I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m throwing at this.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The news was unexpected,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said recently, in the Chapel Hill home she shares with her husband, civil-rights attorney Al McSurely, and daughter Sunny. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s propped gingerly on the living room couch, an unsuccessful attempt at alleviating the incessant pain in her hip. Her eyes burn \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the fire of Ashley Osment that everyone who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s known her knows well, now refined. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They had told me I had a better than 90 percent chance of no recurrence, because my cancer was caught very early.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>In the Lineberger video, Osment spoke of the occasion of learning she had cancer as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153discrete\u00e2\u20ac\u009d event.<\/p>\n<p>That was the lawyer in Osment speaking. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In the law,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she explains, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a discrete fact is an isolated thing.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Being the practical, purposeful person that she is, that would be the way she would view it \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as a thing to be dealt with and discarded. <\/p>\n<p>But it would pretty much change everything.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I basically don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even remember life before cancer,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she says. In fact, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no longer even certain who that woman in the Lineberger video is, the Ashley Osment of several treatments ago. <\/p>\n<p>Is she angry? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m furious.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d How so? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You name it. I mean, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stolen everything. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to steal me from my daughter.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>Sunny is fully aware of what her mother is living. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no hiding it. She knows how many milligrams of Oxycontin her mom takes. She and her mom are very connected. Osment couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t deceive her if she wanted to.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I used to be a little more confident that it was just making her stronger,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Osment says of Sunny\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s experience with her mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cancer, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m worried that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s getting traumatic. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gone on too long, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just getting beat up. And I worry. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not like a household with domestic violence, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s traumatizing.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>But Osment wants her daughter to learn from this that she can survive cancer \u00e2\u20ac\u201c she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want her to think everybody with cancer dies \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a complicated message to convey. The everyday, concrete things are salvation. There are bookshelves, built by a friend\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s husband, soon to be lined with books that influenced Osment and her friends between the ages of 13 and 23. And anticipation over whether Sunny will make the McDougle Middle School soccer team; no easy feat. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Exploring options<br \/>\n<\/strong><br \/>\nCancer arrived in Osment\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life just as she was coming into her own in her work. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I had figured out how to be a lawyer at McSurely &#038; Osment, and had really reached my stride when I moved over to the law school.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>In 2005, she took a position at the UNC Center for Civil Rights, where \u00e2\u20ac\u0153my marching orders at the Center for Civil Rights were general and massive.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Osment was charged with building the center into a regional hub for advocacy, litigation and research in addressing school desegregation in the 21st century. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So there was just so much work to be done, and I was just one person, so you have to get really skilled at prioritizing what you do and who you do it with, and I was just starting to figure all that out. So that got stolen from me. It was a job I was born to do.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>Perhaps she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll yet recover. But Osment equates the probability of being cured by the modalities currently being used as roughly \u00e2\u20ac\u0153equivalent to spontaneous combustion. I hate to say that. But I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe my saying it makes it so.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>Osment\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s assessment of her prognosis doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t keep her from volunteering for clinical trials. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s open to the possibility that some new therapy will be discovered that will save her life or lead to treatment that saves lives in the next generation, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be all over that like a dog on a bone.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>And there are places she sometimes goes to explore her own healing potential.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153A friend of mine brought over an anatomy book full of beautiful drawings by this Japanese artist of body parts. And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve looked at the body parts where my cancer is.\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 And so when I meditate, I think about those places getting well, and not hurting.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>She acknowledges there are contradictions to her approach. On the one hand, she says she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe we yet understand the relationship between the brain and healing. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There are plenty of people who are very skilled meditators who die of cancer. I guess what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to do is not be hampered in any way in my exploration of meditation practices, and at the same time not be asked to give up my utter disdain for any blame being put on a cancer patient for their condition. I think everything is dumb luck. Even if maybe you figure out some meditation technique or connection that heals you, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dumb luck. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just so much opportunity to blame the victim, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no more vulnerable population than people who have cancer and are suffering\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The idea that you would be flat on your back and then be blamed for it at the same time is just unconscionable.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>And the notion of going gently? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You read, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcEmma Grace died of cancer \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and not once in five years did she ever complain.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 How is that possible? I just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get it. I cannot imagine not complaining about all the insults and injuries of cancer. What would lead you to not complain?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>In the Lineberger interview, Osment said: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My personal style is not to repress the anger or the depression or the fear, but to not let it become the defining quality of how I live my life as a person with cancer. I really do my very best to acknowledge those feelings, but then do what I can do, right now. So that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s different. Because it used to be I think I would indulge my emotional extremes, before cancer, more than I indulge them now. Now I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have time; I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have time and I also don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the space for the emotional hit of living in the bad moments. They do happen. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to happen. I let them happen.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWhat is the fight?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<br \/>\n<\/strong><br \/>\nAwhile back, Osment wrote to friends, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I will do anything and everything I know to do to stay alive for as long as I can. But I also want to prepare for a peaceful death, whether it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s this year, next year, or years far in the future.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Once you have cancer, you have a full-time job,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the Ashley Osment of seven months ago told her Lineberger interviewer. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But on top of that, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got the reason you were put on this Earth. I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t put on this Earth to fight cancer.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What is the fight?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Osment asks today. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think the presumption is that if I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a strong will, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to get me; but if I do have a strong will, it slows the cancer down. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s any evidence to support that. At some point, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just being kept alive to be bullied around some more with another medical procedure.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>For now though, bullying it will be; the treatments continue. There will be days of rage at what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been taken, and days of elation for what life yet holds: Sunny made the soccer team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ashley Osment confronts cancer and the merits of positive thinking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":9418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9406"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19533,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9406\/revisions\/19533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}