Author Cousins Stresses Role of the Patient in Recovering

Having undergone nine operations since 1973 to stop the spread of skin cancer, Walter Smith, 73, was ready to follow author and self-healer Norman Cousins’ philosophy of combating disease through positive emotions.

“I said I wasn’t going to let this cancer thing bother me. I’m just going to go on living,” Smith said Tuesday. “When they told me I had cancer, I said, ‘The hell with it.’ ”

Smith, a Van Nuys resident, was in a crowd of cancer patients gathered at Sepulveda Veterans Administration Hospital to hear the message that Cousins, a former Saturday Review editor, has promoted throughout the country in recent years.

Panic Is the Enemy

Don’t panic because panic is your enemy, Cousins told the audience of 150 patients and hospital employees. And don’t think of yourself as an invalid in coping with your disease, he said.

Hospital officials said they hoped that Cousins’ talk would generate enough interest among patients like Smith to begin a program modeled after the Wellness Community, a center in Santa Monica. The Wellness Community teaches people with cancer to fight their illness through techniques such as stress reduction, meditation and nutrition.

Richmond Johnson, chief chaplain of the VA hospital and the program’s organizer, said staff members have agreed to volunteer their time to run workshops for patients. What the hospital needs now are patients--both those in the hospital and outpatients--to participant in the program, he said.

“We want to encourage people to use their spiritual and mental resources to get well,” Johnson said. “We want people to ask themselves if they are going to spend their time living or dying.”

Johnson said the hospital hopes to begin its program within three months.

In the last decade, doctors and psychologists throughout the United States have shown a growing interest in approaches similar to the one advocated by Cousins. Cousins has been on the faculty of UCLA Medical School since 1979, when his book, “Anatomy of an Illness,” was published.

In the best-selling account of his mid-1960s fight against a rare, usually terminal collagen disease (collagen is protein found in the body’s bone and other connective tissue), Cousins told how he refused painkilling medication, as well as other standard medical procedures. He said he attacked the disease with laughter--provoked by Marx Brothers movies among other things--relaxation techniques and a special diet.

In a 1983 book, “The Healing Heart,” Cousins said he also used the wellness philosophy to recover from a heart attack in 1980. He refused recommended bypass surgery and opted for changes in his life style to reduce stress.

‘Reach Inside Yourself’

“When you are ill, you reach out for the most medical science can offer. But just, as you reach out to science, you have to reach inside yourself for the best you can offer,” Cousins told his Sepulveda audience in a hospital auditorium.

Along with Cousins, seven clients from the Santa Monica Wellness Community told the group how they believe they have participated in their own recovery or remission from cancer.

Leonard Ginne, 66, of Northridge said he was diagnosed as having lung cancer in early 1982.

“My first reaction was to let the doctors do everything because my body was so out of control,” Ginne said. But, through group therapy, “I decided to take control. I retired from my job and began relaxing, and I realized that I wanted to fight this and live.”