Healing through the written word

Somebody's Bright Balloon by Jeff McCallum

Poetry that overpowers the emotional stress of cancer

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

In 2006 McCallum published "Somebody's Bright Balloon," a collection of poems that many cancer survivors and current patients will recognize.  He doesn’t just describe the cancer experience, he brings it to life for the reader through metaphor and imagery. 

When I watched my mother bravely struggle through two surgeries and 30 radiation treatments aimed at destroying the cancer in her urethra, I realized that only someone who has traveled the same road would truly understand her fears of the unknown. The fears come from not just physical pain but the emotional pain of  knowing your life will never again be the same expansive future you took for granted. It’s having to gather up your remaining strength and develop your will to accept and go on living well. 

Diana Burgess, a research psychologist with the Veterans Administration in Minneapolis and mother of three young children, identified with McCallum's writing, having experienced a similar cancer and radiation treatment. "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, 56, 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 Palo Alto, CA. 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 the Mayo Clinic while McCallum was a guest at Hope Lodge in Rochester. Minn. McCallum calls the American Cancer Society Hope Lodge “a home away from home” for patients undergoing radiation and chemotherapy. Hope Lodge, with almost two dozen residences around the country, provides free lodging in a homelike atmosphere. A percentage of the sales of his book are dedicated to the Rochester Hope Lodge.  

McCallum maintains a web log at http://www.jeffmccallum.squarespace.com/ where he wrotes about physician-patient interactions, politics, and more and gives poetry readings. 

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