True believers
For patients like Laureen DeAngelis, no legitimization is necessary. First introduced to the Zakim Center and its staff before undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer in the fall of 2000, DeAngelis was intrigued by reiki therapy — a hands-on treatment designed to manipulate energy fields within and around the body to release its natural healing powers. She began arriving early at Dana-Farber before each chemotherapy session to meet with Mary Jane Ott, MN, MA, RNCS, an Institute nurse and trained "reiki master." Lying down, DeAngelis closed her eyes and visualized the cancer cells in her body disappearing as Ott moved her hands gently over her body. By the end of each visit, DeAngelis says she was infused with energy, cleared of tension, and "mentally prepared for the reiki to work in conjunction with my standard chemotherapy drugs."
Later in her treatment, DeAngelis began weekly sessions with Zakim Center acupuncturist Weidong Lu, LicAc, and she credits this technique — in which very thin needles of varying lengths are inserted into the patient's skin — for helping clear up the severe arthritis-like symptoms triggered by her chemotherapy. "Before the acupuncture, I was walking like an 80-year-old woman and had severe spasms in my hands," she says. "Over the course of several months, I worked back to my previous wellness and started going on two-mile walks. People were saying, 'You look like yourself again.' "
Now returning to her career as a special-education teacher, DeAngelis is so convinced that complementary therapies work that she is training to become a reiki master herself — and hopes to use these techniques with her students at Matunuck Elementary School in Wakefield, R.I. She is also a member of the Zakim Center's clinical services committee, displaying what Medeiros calls "the Lenny spirit." So is Joyce Zakim, Lenny's widow, who this year raised funds for DFCI by cycling in the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge bike-a-thon and co-chairing "Team Lenny" in the Boston Marathon® Jimmy Fund Walk.
"We have a long way to go, but there is finally recognition that this type of treatment enhances people's ability to feel less anxious, more relaxed, and more in control," says Medeiros. "Patients are able to say to their doctors, 'While you take care of my tumor, I'll attend to the other aspects of my cancer that control my quality of life.' In that way, there is no doubt that Lenny still watches over us."
