Beating the Odds : Wellness Community Celebrates a Decade of Cancer ‘Victors’

Evelyn Neumann did a mean victory dance last week.

The 72-year-old has good cause for revelry. Diagnosed with cancer three times over the past decade, she has defied ominous statistics that predicted a one in 10 chance for her survival.

Neumann did not rejoice alone. About 1,000 other celebrants, 300 of them cancer survivors who also beat the odds, gathered at the Wellness Community in Santa Monica to celebrate not only life after cancer, but the center’s 10th anniversary.

In those 10 years, the nonprofit Wellness Community has provided its free counseling and other support services to about 14,000 cancer patients and their families.

While some of the services are geared toward simply helping patients and families cope with the disease, the underlying philosophy is that psychology is important, and that those who take a positive, “patient-active” approach to cancer significantly enhance their survival prospects.

“This place gave me life,” said Neumann, who wore red, white and blue and danced to the music of the Brentwood Jazz Band. “My (counseling group) turned into my family and taught me how to live and not think of myself as victim but as victor. Now, every time I speak to a prospective participant about my cancer, I heal myself. As catastrophic as cancer can be, we have survived it, and it has its gifts.”

The anniversary celebration, where party-goers dined on fare from El Pollo Loco and were entertained by Steve Allen at the piano, honored the center’s cancer “victors.” Also honored was Dr. Jimmie Holland, an internationally recognized pioneer in the field of psycho-neuro immunology, the study of how psychological factors interact with and influence the immune systems and health of the chronically ill.

Holland, sort of the grandmother of psycho-social cancer treatment, opened the first center in the nation offering psychological support services to people with cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York, where she is chief of psychiatry.

The founder and national director of the Wellness Community, Harold H. Benjamin of Beverly Hills, announced at last Thursday’s gathering that he was donating $1,000 in Holland’s name to the study of psycho-social cancer treatment. Benjamin opened the Wellness Community in 1982--10 years after his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. The organization has since opened 10 centers nationwide that offer free psychological support services by paid, licensed psychotherapists.

“Ten years ago, the concept of patients participating in the fight for recovery along with the physician was brand new,” Benjamin said. “I feel some gratification that the Wellness Community has been part of this new concept. And Jimmie Holland was, and is, the prime mover in the field of social oncology and brings to all of us interested in supporting cancer patients on the psychological front, her academic credibility, her desire to do good and the ability to get things done.”

Holland said that psychological support services like those offered at the Wellness Community are a “critical part of day-to-day living with any chronic illness,” but a part that is often neglected in traditional medical treatment. She added that the proactive approach to recovery helps patients communicate with their doctors, gives them a sense of control over their lives and appears to increase patients’ chances of recovery.

“Studies show that . . . people who have social support live longer across the board,” Holland said. “We don’t know what the physiological factor is, but the next frontier of research is how the mind and body are linked.”

The center, which is housed in a warehouse on Colorado Avenue, is furnished with cozy overstuffed couches, chairs and pillows. Over the years, it has gained international recognition from its celebrity participants, who included comedian Gilda Radner, actress Jill Ireland and writer Norman Cousins, known for his belief in self-willed triumph over disease. Radner and Ireland died of cancer. Cousins died about a year ago from a cardiac arrest.

But it is the center’s less-famous everyday heroes who provide compelling testimony of their success of mind-over-matter.

Judy Levenstein, who joined the Wellness Community when she was diagnosed with a malignant tumor eight years ago, stood before a crowd of about 1,000 and talked about overcoming obstacles after doctors amputated her cancer-afflicted leg.

“When I first came to the Wellness Community, I didn’t know how I was going to do with one leg and with cancer,” Levenstein said. “But pretty soon I was riding my bike at the beach and skiing on one leg. And when I first started speaking here, kids would look at me and point and say ‘Mom, mom, look, she has only one leg.’ Now I am a preschool teacher. I plan on being here at the Wellness Community for the next 40 years doing orientations.”

Still other cancer “victors” say that the center’s most valuable lesson has been to show them how to adopt a mental refusal to succumb to cancer.

Chester Cross, who was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 1980 and given a 50% chance of living two years, said, “I have a real hard-nosed attitude about cancer: It’s not nice to me, so I am not nice to it. Yeah, I am going to die someday, but it’s not going to be from cancer. I am 66, and I still race my kids across the back yard. And every time I walk into the center, I thank God for Harold Benjamin, because if it hadn’t been for him and that place, I really believe I would be dead.”