A journey of hope and recovery

In February 2023, Leta McComber was faced with news nobody wants to hear.

She had a tumour on her spinal cord, and doctors weren’t sure if they could save her life.

She had the conversations everyone dreads to think about. What would she do if she could never walk or talk again, would she go down the long and uncertain path of chemotherapy and radiation if she survived the surgery, and how long would her family keep her on life support if she didn’t wake up from the gruelling 16-hour operation.

But nearly three years later, McComber has surprised not just herself, but the doctors that treated her. Not only did she survive the operation, she’s thrived - and now, she can plan for a future with her family that she thought would never be possible.

“I just look forward to everything now. I feel like I have a bright future, and I just look forward to each day as a gift, because it is,” McComber said. “Every day feels like the greatest day of my life.”

McComber’s story of recovery is one that has one foot in Western medicine and the other in traditional medicine. It’s been a hard line to walk at all stages, with McComber initially questioning her confidence in both, but throughout her medical journey she’s consistently found ways in which traditional knowledge can complement Western medicine, rather than be its opposite.

She found solace in visiting HEAL, Akwesasne’s traditional healing lodge, where she benefited from taking natural medicines and participating in ceremonies. She felt particularly seen by workers at HEAL when she made the difficult decision not to undertake chemotherapy after the operation - doctors still weren’t certain what caused the tumour, and with no guarantee that treatment would work, she decided she didn’t want to live her remaining days suffering from the side effects of radiation.

“Their support really solidified my decision,” she said. “I didn’t want to do the chemo because it just didn’t feel right, they weren’t sure it would work, and if I wasn’t going to make it through the year I wanted to go out in the way I wanted to go out, rather than hurting myself more doing a treatment where there’s no guarantee it could do anything for me.”

After surgery, testing confirmed the tumour to be an ependymoma grade two, which according to the Cleveland Clinic are low-grade tumours. Grade three ependymomas are malignant and can grow more aggressively.

Doctors weren’t able to remove all of the tumour, meaning that it would have to be closely monitored via MRIs to ensure no further growth - in December of last year, MRIs showed that some areas of concern that had begun to shrink had become undetectable, and now her prognosis is looking optimistic.

She plans to continue taking traditional medicines while simultaneously relying on annual MRIs to ensure that what remains of the tumour is monitored.

“For me, I want to always firstly consult traditional healers and take a natural route before anything, and if I come to another point where none of that works, I’m still open to Western medicine,” she said. “You feel it in your heart, you know what’s right for you.”

The biggest healing journey McComber has been on throughout this experience has been her relationship to the tumour itself - while she felt the natural rage everyone does at the idea of facing a potentially terminal diagnosis, she said she’s benefited from approaching her health with love and care, rather than hate.

“I’m not fighting it. I changed my attitude from hating it to loving it, I’ve never fought anything out of existence and I’ve never hated anything out of existence,” she said. “I think that if people can just apply that to all sorts of aspects of their life, miracles can really happen.”

She wants her story to be a message of hope for other Onkwehón:we, who might feel as though there’s no room for traditional medicine and healing in their medical journey.

“Don’t forget that we were healing ourselves for hundreds and thousands of years before Western science was around, so give it a chance and don’t let fear make your decisions for your own health,” she said. “I’m really thankful those days are past and that I basically live a normal life now.”

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