October 7, 2011

'Every day is a gift'

 By Alex Marciello
 Correspondent

For Denise DeSimone, the day she was diagnosed with stage 4 throat and neck cancer and was told she had three months to live was the day she truly started living.

That was six years ago.

"Cancer was my best friend, and I looked at it as a good time to usher in a paradigm shift," said DeSimone, 56. "I don't like to think about battling anything, so I decided to embrace my cancer rather than looking at it as my enemy. I didn't accept it as a death sentence. I gave my pain a voice, gave it permission to be there. I gained a lot of insight from the conversations I had with my pain."

Defying the odds and beating everyone's predictions, DeSimone, now an author and motivational speaker, treated her illness with a blend of traditional radiation and her own self-healing techniques.

She not only survived her terminal diagnosis, she is now thriving.

And she's sharing her experience with others through motivational speaking appearances and a recently published book, "From Stage IV to Center Stage," about her choices and her journey.

After her illness, she walked away from a lifetime of experience a high-tech saleswoman for the medical industry, sold her office and finished her interfaith ministry degree — something she had been pursuing for some time.

"I've been on a spiritual path since the early 1980s, or my whole life, depending on how you look at it," said DeSimone, of Newburyport. "I'm a reiki master, I've studied polarity therapy, I've done reflexology. When the diagnosis came, I thought, 'I'll heal myself.'"

She opted to forgo chemotherapy, to the astonishment of her doctors.

"You're your own best decision maker. I firmly believe that," she said.

So, along with 40 straight days of radiation treatment, DeSimone also spent a lot of time focusing on healing her mind and her soul.

"I focused on accepting reality, rather than getting angry with it," she said. "It doesn't mean that I thought, 'Oh, this is great.' I was mad, but I expressed it, got it out and made more room for the happy, healthy part of me. I loved the diseased part of me into healing."

Her recovery was a tough one.

After living with a feeding tube in for nine months, DeSimone began the long process of learning to eat again. She began with baby food and slowly moved up to protein shakes.

"I still have to be careful what I eat. I need water with everything, since I don't have saliva anymore, but I can't take too much in at a time, or I choke," she said.

Her esophagus has already been stretched twice and will soon be stretched again.

While the experience has indelibly changed her, her spirits are high. She looks at her cancer as a rebirth, with her feeding tube scar serving as her second belly button.

"Life is different now. How could it not be?" she said.

Cancer will always be a bleak point in DeSimone's history, but she doesn't spend long dwelling on the negative. Her outlook is upbeat, and her busy schedule doesn't afford her a lot of time to stew in sorrow.

She is on the road constantly now with her motivational speaking experiences, a pleasant outcome of her cancer experience, and the promotion of her book.

After keeping a journal during her experience and telling her story to amazed friends and family, DeSimone decided it was time to broaden her reach. It was a story she felt compelled to share.

She started the book a few years ago, and when it came time to get serious, she flew to her second home in North Carolina and focused her thoughts.

"The writing experience, for a story that has so much emotion embedded in it, is a vulnerable experience. It opened me up to be raw and honest. It was a quest of spirit, to tell the truth. I focused on writing it in an honest way that people can relate to," DeSimone said.

Her new nonprofit organization, Alternative Cancer Therapies and Treatments, which promotes alternative cancer remedies, is also keeping her busy.

Along with her writing, DeSimone said it was her family who helped her get through.

With her roots in Newton, she is part of a large, loving family. Her 51 nieces and nephews kept her spirits up, and her sisters took her to Italy a year after her ordeal — a great goal at the end of the rainbow for DeSimone. The trip was originally planned for her 50th birthday, which fell just two weeks after her diagnosis.

"They knew what a great motivator it would be," she said.

When her diagnosis came through, her doctors told DeSimone she may lose the ability to sing.

The news was heartbreaking for a woman who came from a family that loved music and loved to sing. At 25, she bought herself her first guitar and taught herself to play.

"The idea of not being able to sing just crushed me," she said.

Never one to simply accept bad news, DeSimone refused to make peace with the idea that she could lose the ability to do something she loved so much. She not only kept singing, but she performed the national anthem at Fenway Park.

DeSimone has competed in the Pan-Mass Challenge, a bike ride that benefits The Jimmy Fund, and performed at the opening ceremony at the request of organizers. When PMC Day came around at Fenway Park, they looked to her once again.

"At first I said no. But my sisters kept asking me, 'Why wouldn't you do this?' You want to help and inspire people, so put your fear aside," DeSimone said.

And so she sang.

"It was scary and awesome at the same time," she said.

For DeSimone, who is soon heading to Italy once again with her sisters for a return visit, each moment matters.

"Every day is a gift," DeSimone said.

To learn more about DeSimone, log on to her website, www.denisedesimone.com.