[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 59 (Friday, May 10, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E760-E761]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        BRAIN TUMOR ACTION WEEK

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. SONNY CALLAHAN

                               of alabama

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 9, 2002

  Mr. CALLAHAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share with my colleagues a 
speech written by my dear friend and Alabama native, Adrienne McMillan 
Burns. Adrienne was diagnosed with a brain tumor three years ago and 
has served as a shining example of how to survive with grace to people 
with potentially terminal illnesses ever since.
  I have reflected on this tragic condition and Adrienne's case in 
particular during this Brain

[[Page E761]]

Tumor Action Week. It is so important to call attention to the illness, 
its symptoms, treatment, patient recovery and related issues, and I 
strongly support the designation of this week to focus on brain tumors.
  Adrienne has been an inspiration to me, her many friends and loving 
family over the length of her illness. I highly recommend her speech to 
my colleagues. I believe Adrienne's bravery and honesty in confronting 
and talking about this illness will give courage and inspiration to 
others in her situation.
  To Adrienne, I wish a continuing successful recovery and return to a 
normal life with her family.

                     My Journey With A Brain Tumor

                      (By Adrienne McMillan Burns)

       A recent Wall Street Journal article highlighted the fact 
     that a brush with death can temporarily change our 
     perspective on life for the better. Experiencing more than a 
     brush--an extended fight against a potentially fatal 
     disease--has served to sustain such a view for me. I believe 
     these experiences, both brushes and extended fights with 
     death, can ultimately be used to benefit many people. And I 
     believe that those of us with these experiences serve our 
     fellow humans well by sharing our stories.
       Three years ago, after giving birth to my first child, I 
     had a grand mal seizure. I awoke the next day in an ICU, and 
     ultimately I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The diagnosis 
     was good as far as brain tumors go, but it was still a brain 
     tumor, and the overall effect was a fast and harsh 
     realization of my own mortality. I was 32 years old.
       Life changed for me. As you might expect, I became 
     interested in brain structure and function, and specifically 
     in my own diagnosis and treatment. But life also changed for 
     me in a more unexpected way. After living a life focused, to 
     a great degree, on my own career goals and personal pleasure, 
     I came to a different point of reference. I began to more 
     fully appreciate that we have responsibilities in our journey 
     on earth, not the least of which is the one to our fellow 
     humans. I came to believe that the responsibility is simply 
     to help one another--from the heart--in whatever way we can 
     do it.
       I changed my definition of success. Ralph Waldo Emerson 
     once said, ``To know even one life has breathed easier 
     because you have lived, that is to have succeeded.'' I 
     immediately needed to know that not one, but many lives 
     breathed easier because of me. As I lay down for my surgeon 
     to cut my head open, it became amazingly clear what really 
     mattered to me. It mattered how I treated people--how I 
     developed and conducted myself in relationships, especially 
     my relationship with my maker. It mattered how proud I could 
     be of the way I conducted my life, something no person in the 
     world but me could know. My personal integrity, my adherence 
     to my core beliefs, mattered. That's it. Nothing else.
       I survived brain surgery and recovered, and I desperately 
     wanted to share my good fortune. I wanted to make someone 
     ``breathe easier.'' My husband and I left established careers 
     in Washington, DC (mine in the energy industry), and I 
     returned to school to pursue an MBA focused on healthcare 
     management. I was determined to use my experience to 
     influence what I believed to be the most significant way to 
     help others: improving the patient's experience in health 
     care delivery. Personally, I experienced exceptional 
     technical care, but I also experienced tender, compassionate 
     care. It mattered greatly to me that a nurse who handed me 
     medications in the middle of the night smiled as she did so. 
     Her tender smile assured me, as I lay in great vulnerability, 
     that the people to whom I entrusted my life cared about my 
     life. There were other smiles in the hospital, and they had 
     the same effect on me. In retrospect, I'll never know if the 
     smiles really indicated such a care. People could have been 
     smiling for any number of reasons. But I believed it was the 
     care, and that made a difference to me. There was an overall 
     feeling of compassion in the hospital, and I know it had as 
     much to do with my healing as did the expert hands of my 
     surgeon.
       My plans focused on systemic change. While not attributing 
     health outcomes solely to smiles (!), I wanted to foster 
     compassionate health care delivery. I wanted to provide 
     hospital environments that allowed doctors, nurses and every 
     other employee to deliver compassionate care along with the 
     very important technical care. I believed that basic respect 
     and appreciation of all employees was at the heart of 
     inducing the much appreciated smile and compassionate care.
       With a newly found passion, I set an ambitious goal. I 
     believed systemic change could primarily be effected from the 
     top of an organization, therefore, that's where I wanted to 
     be. I envisioned personally catalyzing movement to a higher 
     health service standard by which every patient in the world 
     eventually would be treated!
       Two years later I had a recurrence of the tumor. Again, my 
     surgeon expertly brought me through surgery, and this time I 
     received radiation therapy in hopes of being done with the 
     patient side of the health care world! Other than the affront 
     to my vanity from lost hair, brain radiation wasn't all that 
     bad, and getting to know other patients in the waiting room 
     was a blessing.
       In the interim two years, I worked towards my goal. I 
     completed half of the MBA, and I worked at a major academic 
     medicine center. What I learned most during that time is that 
     there are a lot of compassionate, smart people out there 
     working to make patients breathe easier. I learned that we 
     are a fortunate people to have so much effort directed at the 
     goal of improving the lives of others.
       I'll finish school this year and, God willing, I'll work to 
     effect smiles and compassion in health care delivery! But the 
     recurrence gave me another, perhaps more important, insight. 
     Not only can I improve lives through systemic efforts in 
     health care delivery, but I also can improve the lives, in 
     small ways, of the people with whom I come into contact each 
     day. I can look people in the eye and smile. I can give 
     people the respect we each deserve. I can seek out the good 
     in all people; if I'm looking for the good, perhaps it's what 
     I'll see, and it will probably influence my relationship with 
     that person. That person probably needs to experience a 
     relationship based on that view of him or herself. M.K. 
     Gandhi once said, ``Be the change you want to see in the 
     world.'' I can do that, and I can do it now. That is 
     significant.
       In my experience, appreciation of mortality becomes a 
     filter through which everything is forevermore received. This 
     appreciation brought an amazing shift in my perception, and 
     it's made the world seem an even better place to me. I look 
     for and I find more serenity, compassion, and integrity in 
     the world. I find things more beautiful, and I find more 
     beautiful things. I looked up--to God--and I remembered that 
     He is my compassionate and tender caregiver. After 
     experiencing acute depression, He (and a very good 
     psychiatrist!) led me to rediscover pure, unaltered joy--the 
     kind my three year old seems to feel when I allow him to 
     choose any one thing he wants in the bakery near our home.
       So, that tumor, as unwanted as it was, changed my life for 
     the better--forever. It's been said that it's easy to forget 
     a lesson from a brush with death, and I do catch myself 
     taking life for granted on occasion. Yet, there's an 
     underlying permanence to the shift in perception that cannot 
     be reversed for me. I've talked with other patients--brain 
     tumor and otherwise--who've said the same thing. It amazes 
     me. It takes something terribly frightening to make us 
     appreciate all the fortunes we have.
       I'll close by going back to my thoughts on responsibility. 
     It seems that many of my friends are searching--soul-
     searching or otherwise--and it seems that others are too. I 
     want to do my small part to help someone in their search, or 
     to make them breathe easier. Perhaps we all can help. Perhaps 
     those of us who have had the occasion to contemplate 
     mortality, at any level, can perpetuate the important lessons 
     we each learn from the experience. We can tell our stories, 
     thereby reminding ourselves and informing others of what 
     we've found when everything but the basics of life are 
     stripped away. By telling our stones, maybe we help each 
     other to help each other. Maybe then we all breathe a little 
     easier. What a success!!

     

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