His path from patient to healer
Evan Ross lost one eye to cancer at age 2, and then nearly lost the other.
Then, 22 years later, doctors told him he had cancer again. This time it was a tumor in his brain. And this time they told him he would die.
Ross had moved to Los Angeles from New Jersey to follow his dream -- to work in the music industry. He was working as a record producer when he started getting severe headaches, experiencing shortness of breath, and twitching. His therapist told him he was having panic attacks.
The strange symptoms persisted. He grew weak on his left side. He had trouble keeping food down. One day he passed out on the bathroom floor.
He went to the doctor. They scanned his head, and by the time he got home there was a message on his telephone answering machine.
“You appear to have a rather large mass in your head,” he recalls the doctor telling him when he called back. “It appears to be a glioma.” “I didn’t even know what a glioma was,” he says.
The mass in Ross’ head turned out to be a grade 4 glioblastoma multiforme -- a common and highly malignant type of brain tumor. Like many people who battle cancer, the experience would change his life. But it also would change his career. Ten years later, Ross has left his job in the music industry and is a licensed acupuncturist and doctor of oriental medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, helping patients not unlike himself.
Today, cancer-free for eight years, he works closely with teams of doctors in the hospital, visiting patients in the ICU, rehab unit and cancer wards. He sees about 80 patients a week, many of them cancer patients, and about three in four of them are referred by medical doctors.
A decade ago, integrative medicine was little more than talk at most medical centers. But according to a 2003 survey by the American Hospital Assn., 17% of hospitals offer complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) services.
Ross’ ties with top medical doctors at a prestigious hospital give him a badge of legitimacy in a world often unequipped to assess either the effectiveness of alternative medicine therapies or the qualifications of its practitioners.
“It definitely makes a difference having him here at Cedars,” says Dr. Edward Wolin, an oncologist at the hospital’s Comprehensive Cancer Center who refers patients to Ross. “He has staff privileges. He is able to come to the hospital room, if the person is an inpatient, and he is able to give acupuncture at the hospital. He is treated as part of the medical team. It is a unique relationship with someone in the acupuncture field.”
But it is Ross’ first-hand experience with cancer, it seems, that makes him even rarer.
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A spiritual journey
Ross’ tumor was the size of a lemon, in a part of the brain -- the right frontal lobe -- that controls movement on the left side of his body.
“I didn’t believe I was going to die,” Ross says. “From the beginning -- I have an entry in my journal -- I believed it was about learning a set of lessons. I believed it was destined to happen. And I welcomed it as a challenge.”
In May of 1995, he underwent a 10-hour surgery at UC San Francisco during which doctors were able to remove only 50% of his tumor. Doctors told his family he would be paralyzed on one side and that after the surgery he would be treated with chemotherapy. But the doctors told him it was unlikely the treatment would save his life.
Ross is 35, with the boyish face of a graduate student. He is matter-of-fact, almost clinical, when he talks about his battle with cancer. So his detours into topics of spirituality feel all the more unexpected. He frequently draws on his personal story to inspire patients, so that at times it begins to feel like a spiel. But as he tells his tale once again to a reporter, his professional veneer cracks. “It’s hard to talk about this,” he says.
Ross spent three weeks researching conventional cancer treatments on the Internet, and many nonconventional ones too. Even while undergoing chemo and other standard treatments, he went on a macrobiotic diet and meditated twice daily. He tried acupuncture, took nutritional supplements, practiced Qigong and was treated with ayurvedic herbs. He kept a journal, to allow his subconscious to speak to him and teach him lessons. He saw a shaman and consulted with a Jewish mystic.
That experience informs his work today. “I don’t practice alternative medicine,” he corrects during one interview. “I always call it complementary. There is a danger in thinking of it as alternative medicine, because it implies one kind of medicine or the other. Both types of medicine have to be used together.”
Dr. Michael Lill, the medical director of the Cedars-Sinai Outpatient Cancer Center and director of the blood and marrow transplant program, says that perspective is part of what makes Ross an asset.
“He is careful to still send people for conventional therapies, rather than trying to do everything himself,” Lill says.
Ross believes his diet and alternative therapies enabled him to withstand high doses of chemo, and endure two stem cell transplants with few side effects. He considered his illness a spiritual journey and reflected deeply on his disease. He understood that genetics play a role in his disease. But why was he cancer-free for more than two decades? What had set it off?
He came to L.A. to compose music for films. Soon, he was caught up in having a nice car, a nice place to live and trying to schmooze with famous record producers. He was hanging out at bars until the wee hours, always wheeling and dealing and “trying to make it happen.” He felt lost.
“The way I was living my life -- mentally and spiritually -- I was in a state of chaos,” he says. “What is cancer but a state of chaos? Cells lose the ability to grow normally, and begin growing haphazardly and chaotically.”
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Empathy, rapport
It is a hot, summer afternoon and Ross calls in his next patient, Amy Syrett. A nonsmoker with two young children, Syrett, 44, was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer last fall and received aggressive chemo and radiation. She was referred to Ross by her doctor to help overcome her treatments’ side effects. It meant a lot to her that he had survived cancer against long odds.
“He could relate to me,” she says. “He inspired me.”
Ross talks to Syrett about how she’s feeling and does a brief exam.. Then, he takes her into another room and places the delicate needles into her back, her ankles, her feet. With the sounds of ocean waves playing on a radio, he leaves her for 20 minutes. Ross has also put her on a special organic diet -- free of refined sugars and processed foods -- and given her herbs and supplements. Syrett says the sessions have helped her to assess her life.
“I am healing,” says Syrett, who is not currently undergoing treatment, but doesn’t know yet if her cancer is in remission. “A lot of it is traditional medicine. A lot of it is changing my lifestyle.”
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A sea change
After his battle with cancer Ross knew he wanted a change in his life. “After the cancer I was afraid,” he says. “I was scared that once [the disease] was gone I would forget all the lessons it had taught me, and I would go back to being the person I was before I was sick.”
In 2000 he received his degree in oriental medicine from Emperor’s College, an accredited college of traditional Chinese medicine in Santa Monica. He began working at Cedars in 2001.
Ross loves the challenges and opportunities at Cedars, even if he knows there may be doctors who doubt the effectiveness of acupuncture. “One thing that is frustrating is if a person sees a neurologist, and the neurologist misdiagnoses them, the medical profession will not say, ‘Neurology is a bunch of nonsense,’ ” he says. “But if someone goes to an acupuncturist, and it fails to help them, they throw the baby out with the bathwater. They will say the whole profession is worthless.”
