A matter of mind over breast cancer

An Oldsmar woman says that imagining the destruction of her cancer produced results.

By MONIQUE FIELDS

© St. Petersburg Times,
published May 31, 2001

Each day, Jan Segers Ballantine attacked her inflammatory breast cancer with thoughts she conjured up in her mind.

She erased the words "dying, died and dead" from an imaginary blackboard. She envisioned her breast cancer as a cabbage, and she peeled away its layers until it no longer existed.

She says she saw results almost immediately. Her right breast, which had become hard, seemed to be softening.

"I felt like I was killing the cancer," said Ballantine, 52, of Oldsmar.

She didn't immediately tell her doctors about the mental imagery technique taught to her by her uncle, David Segers, a retired psychologist. And she went ahead with chemotherapy and a mastectomy.

Now, some 13 years later, the acting coordinator of international education at St. Petersburg Junior College is writing a book about her experiences. She will lead a free seminar at 7 p.m Friday at the Tampa Bay Research Institute Library, 10900 Roosevelt Blvd. N in St. Petersburg. Among other things, she will show how the technique can be used to cope with stress and improve relationships.

In December 1988, a biopsy showed that Ballantine, then 39, had inflammatory breast cancer, which presents itself as an infection rather than a lump in the breast. The prognosis was not good. Ten-year survival rates were less than 20 percent.

After doing mental imaging, she noticed that her breast felt better. But she followed doctor's orders and underwent chemotherapy anyway.

By January 24, 1989, a doctor who examined her in San German, Puerto Rico, wrote to Dr. Denis Johnson, a general surgeon in Tampa, and said "the inflammatory changes of the right breast disappeared completely."

Despite such findings and Ballantine's own conviction that she had rid herself of the cancer, she had a mastectomy that March.

She feared the disease would spread if she didn't have the surgery. She also was sure doctors would discount the mental imagery technique she used if she didn't follow through.

The techniques stimulate endorphins, or natural pain-killers, in the brain, Ballantine said.

"Does it work for everyone? No. Does it work for everything? No. What it usually does is take away stress," she said.

After the mastectomy, a pathologist's report confirmed what she already knew: The cancer had largely disappeared.

There was some residual carcinoma in the removed breast, but only in one part of it. Her lymph nodes were free of cancer and it was not in her skin, said Johnson, who performed the surgery and diagnosed Ballantine's condition.

Ballantine wasn't surprised by results of the test.

Johnson, however, was stunned.

"Tell me about this brain thing you're doing," he said at the time.

Even today, Johnson can't offer an explanation.

The cancer could have responded to chemotherapy, but he has never seen such a quick response to treatment. It usually takes about six months to see some results; Ballantine saw them in less than three.

Johnson said he encouraged Ballantine to continue using imagery because he saw no harm in it. But he is quick to say it's not a cure-all and should be used in conjunction with medical treatment.

Seven years after her surgery, doctors found cancer in Ballantine's left breast. She had a mastectomy in 1996. She said she didn't have time to use mental imagery.

The technique is more accepted today in mainstream medicine than when she used it. Small pilot studies have been conducted to determine what effect relaxation and guided imagery have on stress.

"I can't say if you sit down a couple of times a day and focus on an image it is going to cure you of a disease," said Irma Bernales, a breast program social worker at the Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute in Tampa.

But guided imagery, such as imagining that chemotherapy is a medicine instead of a poison, can help in other ways.

"There is no question that any kind of relaxation, guided imagery, or using healing metaphors does substantially reduce stress and anxiety," Bernales said.

As for Ballantine's case, Johnson notes doctors often see things that are not readily explained. And after all this time, it is not important to find out exactly what happened.

All that matters, he said, is that "We have a person who is alive, viable, healthy and willing to share her experience."

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