Complementary Therapies are offered through Sunstone at the following locations.

Sunstone Healing Center
2545 N. Woodland Road
Tucson, AZ 85749
520/749-1928

Sunstone Resource Center at TMC
2625 N. Craycroft, Ste., 101
Tucson, AZ 85712
520/324-2840

Sunstone Resource Center at NMC
6500 N. La Cholla Blvd.
Tucson, AZ 85741
520/469-8342

Check the Sunstone Calendar for dates and times of of classes and workshops. Call ahead to reserve a space. For individual therapies, call the location to make an appointment.

Hope Is, By Far, Best Therapy for Survivors

By Chris Anderson - Former Sunstone Programs Coordinator
SPECIAL TO THE ARIZONA DAILY STAR


With another victory clinched at the Tour de France, Lance Armstrong has much to celebrate. But this celebration is so much more than his sixth consecutive win.

It is also because this remarkable feat was carried out by a cancer survivor. Armstrong's having "beaten" and "survived" cancer have been referred to by the media as reasons why this victory is so much more poignant.

While cancer survivors join the celebration, we are once again reminded of the wedge that the simple term "survivor" can drive between those currently in treatment and those in long-term recovery.

The unfortunate reality is that the mainstream medical community defines a cancer survivor as an individual in the post-treatment phase of the disease, who has been in remission for five years. As someone who has only recently wrapped up radiation treatment, having struggled with all that does to me and my body, how can anyone say I am not a survivor?

I am a survivor.

My diagnosis has put things into perspective for me. It has been a wake-up call on life. I look into my future and see my little boys maturing into young men. I see high school proms and tennis tournaments. I see weddings and, yes, even grandchildren. I see my husband and me retiring to the mountains to spend the rest of our lives together.

I see this future for my family every day, a family of survivors.

Along my cancer journey, I have come to understand what a powerful role that hope plays in my healing. Hope has enabled me to take better care of myself. It has given me the chance to assume a more active role in my own healing process, working more closely with my doctors and therapists instead of simply following their orders. Hope has encouraged me to explore the world of natural therapies, which I have used to complement my conventional treatments. Hope has encouraged me to actually acquire a taste for green tea, and not to feel embarrassed when talking to my doctor about the benefits of meditation. Hope has paved the way for what Tucson's Sunstone Cancer Support Foundation calls the "Hero's Journey." It has taught me how to love myself, and to truly savor every moment of being alive.

Hope has taught me how to survive.

I am well aware of those who might encourage me to neutralize my hope, and balance it with what they call "reality." What a shame. To stake my own life on what some call reality is to surrender my own soul. Their reality doesn't include my children, my husband, the tennis tournaments, or those high school proms. Their reality is based on nothing more than statistics.

Statistics don't have souls, but survivors surely do!

I celebrate each day with my fellow survivors - from those in long-term recovery to those who were diagnosed just last night. We are all survivors, and need to share a common goal to grow and heal together - physically, mentally, and spiritually. This notion about it taking five years of being "cancer-free" to have the privilege of being called a "survivor" pulls apart the very community we all need to be weaving together for healing to ensue.

Today I celebrate life. I celebrate hope. And I celebrate the day that has yet to come when all of us touched by cancer can unite for the sake of healing.

Chris Anderson is programs coordinator at the Sunstone Cancer Support Foundation in Tucson.