Author turns pain into healing hope for cancer patients

Jeff McCallum's ability to describe the pain of cancer – both physical and emotional -- was called a "dark gift" by one caregiver. His ability to do so may have played a large part in his healing.

In "Somebody's Bright Balloon," a collection of poems published this fall, Jeff McCallum offers an experience that many cancer survivors and current patients will recognize.  

Diana Burgess, a research psychologist with the Veterans Administration and mother of three young children, is all too familiar with McCallum's experience.

"These poems captured my experience in a profound way," said Burgess. "I could not believe how much he captured -- from the mundane details to the emotions."

McCallum, 55, is a commercial building contractor in Minneapolis and serves on the board of directors of Mixed Blood Theatre. He was born in the Yukon Territories and moved to Minneapolis in 1964 when his father, Sandy McCallum, became a resident actor at the newly opened Guthrie Theatre.

McCallum's cancer experience began in 2003 when he was diagnosed by doctors at the Mayo Clinic with cancer of the salivary gland. Along with surgery to remove the cancer from his parotid gland and masseter muscles (those used in mastication) along his jaw and neck came painful daily radiation treatments and a history of low survival rates among patients with similar cancers. McCallum says the diagnosis and difficult treatments brought his life into focus. The enhanced perceptions of life and death prompted him to write about the experience through poetry.

"I often think the impulse to write and express is like an immune system function," says John Fox, director of the Institute for Poetic Medicine, based in Tacoma, Wash. Fox, who lectures and gives workshops on the healing aspects of poetry, believes writing may have contributed to McCallum's own healing. By writing about his experiences, McCallum was "involved in what was happening to him on his own behalf. He stayed in touch."

The healing aspect of writing has been the subject of numerous scientific studies, with neurologists, psychiatrists and other health care experts studying the physiological benefits of poetry and other expressive writing. Research suggests that repeated writing may help eliminate negative emotional responses to traumatic memories, and reduce physiological stress.

 "Writing about traumatic, stressful or emotional events has been found to result in improvements in both physical and psychological health, in non-clinical and clinical populations," wrote Karen Baikie, a clinical psychologist in New South Wales, Australia writing in Advances in Psychiatric Treatment in 2005.

Cortney Davis, a Redding, Conn., nurse and published poet, joined McCallum at a writing workshop at Sarah Lawrence College that brought patients and healers together to explore writing about medical issues.

"As a nurse I have cared for cancer patients, and have often been amazed at their ability to face pain, disability and suffering with hope, joy and a never-failing desire both to live every moment and to share their lives with others," said Davis. "As a writer, I know how difficult it is to write of such suffering without lapsing into sentimentality. Jeff writes with honesty and clarity about his own journey through the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. He chronicles both moments of despair and moments of triumph; most of all he digs deep into the illness experience to make it accessible to all."

Howard Spiro, professor emeritus of medicine at Yale University and founder of Yale's Program for Humanities in Medicine (its journal was one of the first to publish some of McCallum's poems), observed: "McCallum writes from the perspective of one instructed by illness and pain. If such instruction brings the kind of compassionate insight McCallum demonstrates in these poems, then suffering might be called an awful gift.  We cannot escape, in life, the reality of suffering.  We can only hope that we might offer our suffering and our recovery, as McCallum does, for the benefit of others."

Many of the poems were initiated during 45 days of radiation treatment at Hope Lodge in Rochester, a home away from home for patients undergoing radiation and chemotherapy sponsored by the American Cancer Society. A percentage of the sales of his book of poems, "Somebody's Bright Balloon," are dedicated to the Rochester Hope Lodge.

Somebody's Bright Balloon is available at Magers & Quinn Booksellers, Minneapolis, and through Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com

Kathlyn Stone

Kathlyn Stone (email stonekat@comcast.net) is an independent journalist in St. Paul. She maintains a health and science news site at fleshandstone.net.