The Art of Mindful Healing

 

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The fatigue came first, not the usual halfway-through-the-school-year fatigue, but a depth of fatigue that Peavey had never felt before.

 

I can tough my way through this, his inner voice told him. I have things to do. I have a family. People are counting on me. I don’t have time to be sick.

Then came more symptoms, none pleasant. Then came an urgent trip to the doctor, then a blood test, then another, then another. The results of each lab proved worse than those of the last. His kidneys were failing rapidly. Ninety percent functionality became 80, then 70, then 60.

 

“It was a Friday morning, St. Patrick’s Day,” Peavey recalled, “that the doctor literally sat me down and said, ‘You need to go home, get your wife, and check into an emergency room. We’re getting to the weekend. I don’t think we can wait until Monday.’”

 

After a stop at the ER at Johnston-Willis Hospital, Peavey was transferred to the critical care unit at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center where, over the ensuing week, he underwent a series of procedures that saved his kidneys which had ebbed at 40 percent capacity.

 

That Friday, he went home, slept most of the day, then watched South Carolina, a newcomer to college basketball’s elite, defeat Baylor in the NCAA men’s tournament. He has family ties to the state and the university. The Gamecocks’ unprecedented success buoyed this long-time, hard-core hoops fan and successful coach when his life seemed to be spinning out of control.

 

“Watching them play was an escape,” he said. “It was an hour-and-a-half window that my family enjoyed through this entire process.”

 

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Peavey is a familiar figure around the Collegiate campus. He serves as the Upper School counselor, the school’s mindfulness guru, and an assistant varsity boys lacrosse coach.

 

From 2004 through 2016, he headed the boys basketball program. His varsity teams, often undersized, earned a reputation for competitive play, pluck and determination, fearlessness, and a never-quit mentality, especially when facing more physically imposing adversaries. They succeeded, if not always on the scoreboard, because Peavey taught them how to face tough challenges without flinching, to ignore the odds, and to stay in the game until there was no time left on the clock.

 

Now, he was practicing what he has preached. This wasn’t a game, though. It was real life, up close and very, very personal.

 

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On March 29 after another week of tests and procedures, of uncertainty and suspicions, and, yes, of imagining the unimaginable, he received his diagnosis.

 

“Stage 4 prostate cancer,” he said. “It had metastasized to the lymph nodes around the kidneys. They were failing because the lymph nodes were blocking them. The metastasis had also gone to the hips and the lower portion of the spine. It’s not operable. It’s not curable. It’s treatable.”

 

What intrigued and baffled his urology, nephrology, and oncology teams was that there was no precedent for Peavey’s case because of his relative youth. At 39 years old, he became, in essence, the road map.

 

“None of the doctors we called all over the country had met in person or read about in all their schooling somebody my age who had prostate cancer that had metastasized as much as mine had,” he said. “All the statistics they had to guide them were for men 30 years older. That made the decision-making challenging. I have a diagnosis, but I have no prognosis. We step into the complete unknown but do the best we can with the treatment that we continue at the VCU Medical Center.”

        

Peavey lost 25 pounds in 10 days. Shortly after his doctors pronounced their diagnosis, he began chemotherapy. He had the last of six rounds on July 26. He receives steroids to balance the chemo. Every three months, he receives an injection of a hormone suppressant to quell the testosterone that fuels the cancer.

 

On that transcendent St. Patrick’s Day, his PSA was 377. Normal is 0-4. After his final chemo treatment, it was 1.9. His kidneys were functioning normally by June.

 

“They did a genetic test,” he said. “There’s no genetic explanation. I have virtually zero cancer in my family. Thank goodness for my children there’s no genetic component to this. There is no ‘Why?’”

 

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Over the past five months, Peavey has altered his diet. Now, he eats only vegetarian fare. He’s cut down appreciably on sugar and salt. He’s limited his fluid intake to water and – his splurge, he says – a bit of tea.

 

“I treat food as a medicine,” he continued. “I do acupuncture. I do a lot of other supplemental things that I believe, even though I have Stage 4 prostate cancer, I’m the healthiest I’ve ever been in my life. I wasn’t unhealthy before, but my intentionality of making sure everything I do is a form of medicine, whether it’s laughter or what I eat…that, I think, has had an impact on the process. I’ve thought a lot about the line in that Grateful Dead song ‘Althea’: ‘…Ain’t nobody messin’ with you but you.’”

 

The chemo, though, messed mightily with his blondish, floppy, surfer-dude hair.

 

“Every day you wake up, you don’t know which side effect will come next,” he said. “One morning, I ran my hand through my hair, and I had a hand full of hair. I decided right there that chemo and cancer weren’t going to determine when my hair was coming out. I was. Throughout a lot of this, you feel a loss of control. I want to be able to control what I can.”

 

So Peavey summoned his wife Sarah and brother-in-law Lee Morck, went to his back porch, draped a towel around his shoulders, and smiled as Sarah and Lee sheared his locks. His hair remains short and has turned white. He has a bit of an Anderson Cooper look.

 

As he tells the story, he hesitates a bit. His voice catches. He looks away momentarily, then smiles as he composes himself.

 

“The first time I had a buzz cut…,” he begins again, then hesitates again, then continues. “It was surreal…”

 

Then, he reflects back to a day in February 1990 when he was 12 years old, living in Charlottesville, and a diehard UVA basketball fan.

 

On the afternoon of the Cavaliers’ home game with Duke, Matt Blundin, their “enforcer” inside and now the athletic director at Woodberry Forest, arrived at the pre-game shoot-around sporting a newly shorn flat top, a look which drew the immediate bemused attention of his teammates.

 

Jokingly, Coach Terry Holland, actually a long-time friend of the Peaveys, commented that if his team beat the Blue Devils, he too would get a flat top. After the underdog Cavaliers won 72-69, Holland upheld his end of the deal.

 

The “bet” created such a stir around town that Staples Barber Shop offered free buzz cuts before an upcoming game with N.C. State to anyone brave enough to climb into the chair.

 

“I snuck into the arena,” Peavey recalled. “I was the only non-student there. I was sitting in the barber’s chair and out of the visitors’ locker room comes Jim Valvano.”

 

He hesitates again, then continues, his voice thick with emotion.

 

“I remember he put his arm around me and said, ‘You sure look good with that haircut. I would look like a rat if I ever did that.’ He had that big ol’ smile on his face. I thought, ‘That’s cool. That’s Jim Valvano.’ Now…it’s so surreal, the notion of ‘Never Give Up.’”

 

Emotion has been Peavey’s constant companion over the past five months. That emotion is multi-faceted, however.

 

“All the times I’ve cried, it hasn’t been due to pain or sorrow,” he explained. “It’s been the result of gratitude and compassion and overwhelming grace. When I have tears about Jim Valvano, it’s not tears of sadness. It’s the linkage to that event. When someone does something kind for me, that’s the blessing. The kindness that exists in the world is so abundant.”

 

He pauses yet again, then continues.

 

“Wow! There’s so much good in the world, and all we hear about is the bad. It’s simple acts of kindness that somebody knows mean something to me. It’s those acts that make you cry not because you hurt but because you feel so loved. That’s one of the blessings of cancer.”

 

Meditation has enabled him to manage his heart and mind, even in the days of unreality and incredulity and now, as his life has evolved into its new normal.

 

“As a mindful practitioner, it was always there,” he said of his understanding of the importance of thoughtful quietude. “This revs it up to 11. All day, you’re presented with choices. Here’s the situation. How do you deal with the situation? Mindfulness is a practice, but it’s also a set of attitudes. This is the application in a very real setting.

 

“As the result of the kidneys, they did surgery, and I still have these tubes sticking out of my back with bandages over them. Every single morning, I wake up, and I’ve been lying on my back because that’s how I have to lie.

 

“The first thing I feel is those bandages, and I always feel it’s something else: the sheets, something in the bed. Then I remember, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s the bandages.’ Then it’s, ‘Oh, yeah, I have cancer.’ So really, every morning, I wake up and totally forget for a brief moment until my senses kick in and I feel these bandages. Then I remember the surgery. Then I remember the cancer.

 

“It’s like being diagnosed all over again. I lie there. I experience frustration or sadness or anger. Then it settles down, and I have this moment of choice where I can drag this experience out through my entire day or I can choose joy or gratitude or humility or grace. With so many beautiful options, why would I choose anger? It’s not denying that anger’s occurring. It’s bringing full awareness to the experience of anger – the Why Me? Moment – and then – it feels like maybe eight seconds – it passes, and I feel joy.

 

“This has been the most amazing experience. I’d never wish cancer upon myself or anybody else, but the opportunity to experience the good on a daily basis is truly a blessing. Cancer isn’t the blessing. The other part is the blessing. I choose to focus on the blessing because focusing on the frustration doesn’t make the cancer go away.”

 

Peavey spent as relaxing a summer as one could dealing with Stage 4 cancer could. Just after graduation and a day after a chemo treatment, he delivered a presentation on mindfulness at the Independent School Health Association conference in Boston. He visited Camp Rivers Bend for a weekend. He read, studied, listened to music, enjoyed the outside, and spent as much time with Sarah and their children Bodhi and Jane as possible. He vacationed with his family at Pawley’s Island, SC.  

 

He’s gained back 10 of the 25 pounds he lost this past spring and has returned to school full time. He’s counseling and teaching mindfulness. He’ll assist with lacrosse in the spring. Mainly, he’s setting an example of strength and courage, and, though he knows not to get too far ahead of himself, he’s viewing the future with total optimism.

 

“Mindfulness in hospitals is considered participatory medicine,” he said. “You’re participating in your own health, not just hoping for the best. You’re doing for the best, being for the best. It doesn’t mean you don’t have hard days. You cry when it’s time to cry. You laugh when it’s time to laugh. You’re frustrated when it’s time to be frustrated. But you don’t let those emotions define you. The choice is not being defined by your emotions. It’s being defined by your vitality and your peace of mind.”

 

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Peavey understands fully the gravity of his situation. He knows the road ahead will be challenging and devious and fraught with obstacles, some predictable, some that might blindside him. He’s taught resilience. He’s taught positivity. Now, he’s living his words as he never could have imagined.

 

“How do I look to the future?” he said. “It’s like, ‘Why not?’ Mindfulness is a process of presence, but I also always try to understand what has informed me. The first thing that informed me to go to the practice of mindfulness was a trip – Teens’ Camping Tour of the West – that I took when I was 15. We did all kinds of things to challenge ourselves for self-discovery.”

 

Several weeks ago, as he knocked around his house during another sleepless night, he pulled out a box of mementoes from that adventure. In it, he found a two-page reflection he had written that was based on the book Now That All I Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough: The Search for a Life That Matters by Rabbi Harold Kushner.

 

It defined – succinctly, clearly, poignantly, and candidly – his dreams, his goals, and the impact he hoped to make along the spiritual, lyrical journey upon which he was embarking.

 

“I want to leave a mark on the world so I will never die,” he wrote that summer 24 years ago. “When I die, I won’t really be dead because I will have left behind enough to live for me. Hopefully, I will have affected for the better as many people as possible. And those people will affect others so that I, then, can live forever.”

 

His voice wavered once again. He collected himself and his thoughts. He smiled. His countenance reflected inner peace.

 

“That’s where the fearless optimism comes in,” he said. “It’s not, ‘Oh, no, I’m gonna die one day.’ It’s ‘What am I gonna do for others while I live so I never die?’”

      -- Weldon Bradshaw