Read an Excerpt
Say No To Radiation and Conventional Chemo
Winning My Battle Against Stage 2 Breast Cancer
By Diana Warren iUniverse
Copyright © 2014 Diana Warren
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4917-4426-0
CHAPTER 1
A Long-Standing Mistrust
My mistrust of medical facilities, doctors and treatments began at a very early age. Most of my relatives understood healthcare. My mother and grandmother were nurses, and my grandfather a doctor.
I was born Diana Rosslyn shortly before World War II in Santa Monica, California, to a mother and father who had just said their marital vows a few days earlier. I'm unsure how or when they met, but their romance carried them all across the U.S., and all throughout their lives. My mother was carefree and adventurous, taking social drinking to a higher level.
She was born Walta Irene Anderson in Dalhart, Texas. She had one older sister, a younger brother, and a busy life with hardworking and nurturing parents. Mother loved animals, music, art, traveling, adventures and men. Her father, George M. Anderson, was a violin maker with clients from many countries. I know this because my mother saved a small album with his pictures and letters. My favorites include a tiny postage stamp-sized card where George wrote the Ten Commandments on that small space.
My maternal grandmother, Allie Taylor Anderson, always believed that everyone in the family needed to work. Allie and George lived in Dalhart, rearing their three children until George became ill following a trip to Europe delivering a couple of custom violins. He died within a few months and Allie packed old car and drove to Glendale, California.
Grandma Allie rented a home located at 1125 East California Street. Her business card read: "Mrs. Allie Anderson's Private Hospital."
I don't know the year of their move, but my mother must have been about 10 years old. By keeping all three youngsters—one of whom was my mother—in one bedroom, Grandmother Allie was able to rent out the other rooms for "rest home care."
Determined to find a better place in to live and work, my grandma decided to leave Glendale. She immediately leased the former Hollywood home of old stage and film character actor Taylor Holmes, perhaps most famous for his portrayal of Marilyn Monroe's father-in-law in the 1935 film "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes."
Allie became determined to increase her income, convinced that Hollywood was full of people that wanted her services. Correct in this regard, she amassed a waiting list for "residents." Some were writers, others artists of paint and music. Grandma served the colorful residents breakfasts and dinners in a large oval dining room that opened to gardens, winding walkways and a fish pond. The home featured many patios and private nooks to rest, everything located in the shadow of the famed Yamashiro Building at 1999 N. Sycamore Avenue in Hollywood.
During its 99 years since being build in 1914, the Yamashiro has emerged as a historical landmark. The building Hollywood's "Golden Age," the difficult times of war with Japan and Germany, and the current period of intense interest in Eastern cultures. Yamashiro started as a fabulous private estate and is now open to the public, widely acclaimed for its unique restaurant and lavish public gardens.
Yamashiro means "Mountain Place" in Japanese. It was the dream of the Bernheimer brothers in 1911 to build a hilltop mansion 250 feet above Hollywood Boulevard, an ideal structure to house their priceless collection of Asian treasures. The brothers brought hundreds of skilled craftsmen from the Orient to recreate the exact replica of a palace located in the "Yamashiro" mountains near Kyoto, Japan. The siblings made their dream a reality.
I must confess that as children my friends and I went to Yamashiro and played on the black shiny floors, all of us fascinated by the furnishings. We were usually chased out by a few claps and laughter.
* * *
My well-meaning Grandmother Allie enrolled me in dance school. I took a few dancing lessons from movie star legend Rita Hayworth's uncle, Jose Cansino. His school was on La Brea near Hollywood Boulevard, a few steps from the famous old Sartu Theater. Later while in high school I briefly worked at the theater and enjoyed many exciting nights seeing various movie stars as they watched the plays.
My dance lessons were few since I never remained in one place for very long. For the same reason I also missed out on my piano lessons.
As many people today can very well imagine, Hollywood was indeed a very exciting place during the 1940s.
People would talk about the Macambo Nightclub, Ciero's, and the Garden of Allah on Sunset Boulevard, a hangout of the stars. Down the street was Schwab's drug store where Lana Turner had been "discovered." So many others flocked there to sit at the same famous soda fountain. My grandmother and I often would walk up and down Hollywood Boulevard for an exciting afternoon or evening.
There would be all kinds of goings on. Among just a handful of examples: a man sold gardenias from a tray trapped around his neck; and a dwarf with no legs on a square skateboard sold newspapers. It was always different, and at that time very safe. The small shops kept busy with pedestrian traffic, and there were no parking meters anywhere.
Grandmother Allie continued to serve as my strength, always there through the chaos for me with unquestioning love.
My mother had left home to be on her own about the age of 16 to work in the nursing field and to seek excitement. Mom had a brief marriage that resulted in a stillborn boy, promptly told by physicians after this personal tragedy that she could have no other children.
I don't know where or how my parents met, but when they did, it was passionate and exciting.
My father, Edward Rosslyn, was the only son of native Romanians, Doctor Isadore Marcu and Sophie Rosslyn. Grandfather Isadore's school papers are dated 7th of July (Julie) 1903 from a medical facility in Romania. I don't know anything about grandfather's life until he immigrated to the United States. I was told that when unrest began across Europe before the outset of World War I, this grandfather—often affectionately called "Doc"—took Sophie and made the trip to Chicago. En route they went through the famed Ellis Island with so many others.
Their Certificate of Naturalization is dated 10 December, 1914. Isadore was 27 years old and Sophie 27. The certificate also indicated that the couple "resides with one minor child of five years of age, Edward. Address is 3515 W. 12th, Chicago, Illinois."
The couple eventually became U.S. citizens following several years of study.
Grandfather Isadore's Romanian medical documents were translated and certified in Chicago, which allowed him to practice medicine. He continued schooling in order to fulfill the needs of patients who required dental and prosthetic care. To his credit, while living in a railroad car that he had "fixed up" for his family, grandfather completed courses at the Chicago College of Dental Surgery in May 1907. They were later able to afford a tiny apartment and Sophie gave birth to a daughter, June Rosslyn. Sadly, she died of breast cancer at age 43 in about 1956.
At some point in time Doc and Sophie moved to Los Angeles, where he continued to treat patients in hospitals and from home. He never felt the need for an office.
Wise and money conscious, Grandfather Isadore invested his earnings in mid-size apartment houses in the Silver Lake neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles, and in other mid-LA neighborhoods.
A frugal and crafty spendthrift, Doc never purchased a traditional home. He felt that an apartment was just fine, especially if you owned it along with the building's 30 other units. I often stayed with my Grandma and Grandpa Rosslyn at their various properties, discovering that you can quickly skate in and out of older elevators. Funny, I still have one of my skate keys; no one I know has any idea what this is.
All of Doc's life he practiced mixing medicine with commonsense cures. He continued to make house calls in Los Angeles to the day that he died in the late 1950s.
Needless to say, Grandfather Isadore was a great contributor to my passion for investigating and questioning generally accepted methods and what was being taught. He had a delicious sense of humor and often played jokes on his family members. I remember saying goodbye to him at Los Angeles International Airport in the early '50s, as he departed for France on a TWA plane that had three tails. Everyone in my family became worried whenever he made a long trip, all of them terrified of flying. Doc made several trips to Europe and always returned safe. Yet my father never flew on a plane.
Grandfather Isadore's loving wife, my Grandmother Sophie, outlived him by 10 years and remained a kind, silent woman until her death. She never drove a car, flew in an airplane or wrote pants, always dresses.
* * *
My father Edward Rosslyn studied in Chicago at Northwestern and that's all I know about him until he married my mother a few days before I was born. Trouble erupted and continued from the start of their young marriage. Mother was reared an Irish Catholic, a sharp contrast to father's lifestyle from a Romanian Jewish family. Neither parent followed or practiced either of their religions as adults. The in-laws remained in a constant uproar most of the time.
My parents decided that they could work together owning and running a sanitarium, boosted by experience and knowledge honed from their separate but fairly similar backgrounds. Doc loaned them funds to purchase Mount Gleason Sanitarium in Sunland, California. My folks brought me there to live as a baby.
Looking back today, odd memories float to the surface of my mind. The most memorable characters included Barbara, a bizarre old patient who tiptoed around the patio area. (She is featured in the photo section of this book; she's the tall person wearing a robe in a photograph of nurses and patients.) The woman would grunt sometimes carrying a trashcan while looking for something.
One day while shaded by overhead grapevines hanging from a trellis, Barbara looked in her trashcan and grunted. Curious, I went over and peaked inside. I saw a long speckled length of scales, a large rattlesnake that Barbara had captured.
The hospital staff quickly killed and buried the snake. They were always warning us to remain on the lookout for such creatures. The sanitarium's personnel and residents often encountered rattlers, coyotes and deer that had ventured from the surrounding hillsides.
Another of my disturbing memories involved a patient whose agonizing howls and screams erupted early one morning. Her gown had somehow caught fire, ignited by a floor heater—before the woman ran down a hallway while engulfed in flames.
The nurses and my mother caught the woman, wrapped her in blankets and rolled her on the floor.
Ghost hunters today still say that some of the deceased patients continue haunting Mount Gleason Sanitarium.
When World War II erupted I remember hearing the initial details with family and friends while sitting around a radio. I failed to understand what was happening but everyone became upset while some cried.
Now all of our lives were going to change and disruptions would be the norm.
Drafted right away, my father became convinced that my mother could manage Mount Gleason during his absence while serving as a soldier. Our family realized that my young mother faced a formidable challenge in managing a full sanitarium without father's support. I doubt they could foresee the strain that this decision would put on all of us.
Mother spent long hours working valiantly pushing herself to the limits. I was told later that she had curbed her drinking while really doing a stupendous job. Determined to earn as much as possible, she took extra shifts at local hospitals whenever such opportunities emerged. Many hospitals during that period were short-handed, while lacking the type of stringent government-imposed restrictions enforced today.
"What a shift! I'll be darned if the doctor wasn't near drunk and two of his nurses smelled like they joined in, too. I was the only one who had any sense today."
She witnessed many errors at the hospital, and as a result became increasingly jaded. Aware of how such negligence and malpractice could impact her loved ones, mother imparted a lesson to me that I never forgot.
"Diana," she said, stooping down and placing her hands on my little shoulders, her impassioned dark eyes staring at me. "I want to tell you something. If you are having an operation, mark that area yourself with a pen. Understand all the meds you are given before you take them. People die in hospitals due to careless mistakes."
The terror of that possibility stuck with me at the impressionable age of four.
* * *
My young mother found herself wanting more pleasures in life. She began working too hard at nursing while also managing Mount Gleason.
Apparently mother had grown weary of my father's absence and his letters from different locations in the U.S. She became interested in our new produce delivery man, Sol, a strong, blond, blue-eyed polish gent who delivered our orders twice weekly.
Sol had two brothers. The youngest, Bennie, collected bugs, beetles and butterflies from around the world. Somewhat gross-looking due primarily to his bad teeth, Bennie often scared me with his giant beetles. I sometimes watched him stick pins in the butterflies before placing them in his many little drawers.
The oldest brother, Max, was an oil painter. His most memorable works featured cockatoos and jungle scenes. I always stayed away from Max, wary of his continual bad moods.
Sol and mother went out in the evenings, and most of the time they had to take me along. I vividly remember the Brite Spot bar in La Cresenta, California, on the south side of Foothill Boulevard. Sol, mother and I spent many nights there. I remember sleeping in the car, and if I had to go to the bathroom I would walk in the bar and use their restroom near the ski ball machine. I really didn't like those nights; there were too many of them.
Mother and Sol were now in a relationship and I was part of it. Even today nearly 70 years later, I still recall numerous occasions when mother would dress up and put a gardenia in her hair for the night. This surprised me since until then I had only seen her in a white uniform. I felt glad to see mother happy, always beautiful in my eyes.
Throughout the later years when I occasionally saw mother, she usually wore a black skirt, wedgies and a white or black blouse. She usually either smelled like a gardenia or Jergens® Crema.
This turn of events failed to surprise father. He wrote to mother and said she should sell Mount Gleason if she wished and do what was best for her. He promptly followed up with a letter enclosed with a power of attorney. The letter was dated January 17, 1944. Upon returning to life as a single woman, she was free to do as she pleased with what my parents had owned when married.
Today, I still have the letters that father wrote to her during the war. Reading them makes me sad. Upon getting divorced, mother sold Mount Gleason. Yet mother either refused to or perhaps neglected to repay my paternal grandfather, Doctor Isadore Rosslyn, the money that he had given mother and father to buy the sanitarium. Instead, she and Sol used the funds derived from the sale of the facility to try several business ventures.
One was a banana stand on Victory Boulevard in Burbank, California, purchased along with Bernie and Gene Gelson. One time I ate too many bananas and got sick as a result, avoiding that food to this day. I often enjoyed riding to the Los Angeles Central Market when they purchased fruits and vegetables. I always became scared when riding in the back of the big green truck with tall gates, especially on one particularly windy day when the gates rattled loudly.
Boosted financially by the success of these initial ventures, my mother, her boyfriend and the two brothers expanded the banana stand into the lucrative Victory Market.
Soon ready to move onward into other business ventures, mother and Sol sold their interest to Bernie and Gene Gelson, who gradually expanded the increasingly prosperous enterprise—which eventually became the statewide Gelson Market. More than 60 years later today, the chain is described as "one of the nation's premiere supermarket chains." Sixteen outlets operate in numerous highly populated and notable Southern California communities including Hollywood, West Hollywood, Pacific Palisades, Century City and Santa Barbara.
Today, I have no bitterness whatsoever that mother sold out her substantial holdings in what undoubtedly would have meant a significant sum. Like each of my parents, I've always been a motivated person eager to launch and manage successful business ventures with the help of other carefully chosen professionals.
Anyway, back then another business venture involved importing souvenirs from Mexico and subsequently selling that merchandise in the front yard of our little rented Burbank house on Victory Boulevard. On weekends people would stop and buy everything from feathered pictures, bandoleers from the bullfights, leather items, maracas, alligator purses and other odd items.
Sol eventually imported bananas directly from Mexico to sell in our front yard. The Mexican driver would arrive in the big banana trucks late at night, parking in the back yard with the vehicle's bright lights shining high toward the pepper trees. Working seemingly non-stop on an almost a 24-hour basis, they often would unload and leave before sunrise.
* * *
My mother prohibited me from going near the back yard, proclaiming that the banana stocks had black widows, which she feared. Signaling her love, she always checked my shoes for the spiders before allowing me to put them on.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Say No To Radiation and Conventional Chemo by Diana Warren. Copyright © 2014 Diana Warren. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
