Love, laughter and mindfulness techniques helped support Ros Ben-Moshe through a diagnosis of and recovery from bowel cancer.
At 42 with a promising career, two beautiful boys and a childhood sweetheart husband, life was going pretty well. Ever since a parting gift of a giardia parasite from a family holiday in Thailand, I’d grown used to the occasional sight of blood and mucus in my stools and found it more annoying than alarming. A stool test around 12 months ago had returned normal, so my naturopath thought I’d probably picked up another parasite. What else could it have been? Yet when I stared back at myself in the mirror, something seemed different: my eyes more distant and a little less bright, my face slightly gaunt.
Just to be on the safe side, I once again presented at my GP, who casually referred me on for a gastroscopy and colonoscopy. She wasn’t worried. I left the recovery room, the gastroenterologist’s words still fresh in my ears: “You’re one lucky woman. I removed a polyp from your bowel but it all looks fine.”
I went back to my life when, four days later, the call no one ever expects, least of all me, arrived. It was a nasty cancer and some of its cells had spread beyond the polyp wall. I was presented with three options:
1. Do nothing more.
2. Have a partial bowel resection.
3. Have a full bowel resection so that the lymph could be tested to see if the cancer had spread.
I couldn’t live with the fear and uncertainty of what may be lurking within, and was also the mother of two boys aged 12 and 15, so I chose a full bowel resection. This entailed being fitted with a temporary ileostomy and brand-new rectum. As soon as I made my weighty decision, I promised myself not to look back or regret it. I embraced it wholeheartedly.
Yet, even at this hugely traumatic time, it was as if a band of genies magically appeared to support me. I received so much love from friends, neighbours, family, hospital staff and even strangers. I also felt deeply connected to an encompassing and powerful universal love. So, rather than succumb to the harsh, disorienting fall I feared, it was as if I landed on a pile of life-sized marshmallows.
Then signs appeared that all would be well. On the day of my first CT scan to detect if the cancer had spread, I signed a permanent work contract as a lecturer in health promotion. And highlighted in my diary was a longstanding booking to facilitate a laughter yoga party scheduled three days before my operation.
Somehow I knew this health crisis was connected to my laughter wellness journey and it would involve growth — lots of it. I had always wanted a powerful story and that’s what I was getting!
While surgeons and doctors attended to my physical condition, laughter, mindfulness and other positive psychology techniques helped bring my mind and body to a state where optimal he