A way of dignity and grace
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 04/15/07
RUMSON

She remembers she was carrying a case of seltzer up the steps, and she felt something strange in her leg, like it was going to give out on her. She remembers thinking she might need a hip replacement. No big deal, she told herself. She was young. She was strong.

This was August. In September, Pam Callahan was still playing tennis. Then it started getting worse. Soon, she was thinking about her father. He had ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), a terrible disease caused by the degeneration of motor neutrons. Lou Gehrig's disease, we call it in this country. Pam took a year off from college to care for her father. He died on his 49th birthday.

Now, she was worrying that she, too, might have ALS. "I knew there was a good chance, because I saw my father go through it," she says, thinking back to how she felt in October. "I just didn't want to believe it."

ALS is not usually passed down from family member to family member. Pam did her research. Five percent chance, she found. The odds were in her favor, she figured, 95 percent in her favor.

In November she got the diagnosis. It was true. She had ALS.

Pam Callahan is 46 years old. She has four kids, four boys ranging in age from 12 to 4. Her husband has a big job on Wall Street. They live in a big house in Rumson. She and her husband met when they both worked at Goldman Sachs. She was an equity portfolio manager there. She went to the Wharton School.

"I'm a little bit of a bulldog," she laughs, "but I'm a nice bulldog."

Pam gave up the bulldog life once she started having kids. Since then, she has concentrated on being a mother. She doesn't want her boys to miss out on the magic of childhood. She wants them to grow up to be strong, to be independent, the kind of people who are not afraid to speak their mind.

Her friend Tracy Turi says Pam talks about her own magical childhood, and about passing this on so that one day her boys might also have a little bit of the bulldog in them, should the occasion ever call for it.

This is what Pam Callahan wants more than anything, for her boys to grow up well-nurtured and self-confident. For the past 12 years, since her oldest son was born, she has thrown herself into this personal mission of hers, keeping the magic of childhood alive as long as humanly possible.

I will spare you the details here. They would break your heart, trust me. Let's just say she is not "one of those mothers who simply buys presents for her kids and checks them off the list," as her friend Tracy puts it.

Not without a fight

"My boys know I have a serious disease," Pam Callahan says. "They know that Mommy's trying very hard to get better.

"I'm not going down without a fight."

Once you've spent a couple of hours with her, this goes without saying. She may not be able to walk now, but she remains relentlessly upbeat.

She refers to her condition as "this so-called tragedy of mine."

This brings us to the other thing Pam wants to leave behind. She wants to help the world conquer ALS. She is determined to do so. Because she has the means to fight the fight, because she has the will to do whatever it takes, Pam is in a position to be "the perfect lab rat," as she says.

"Anything for science," she adds.

She is laughing, but she is quite serious. So much so that she will not suffer pessimists. When she was first diagnosed, she told one of her friends she was going to beat this disease and the friend told her she was delusional. That was the last time Pam spoke to this friend.

"When I need to cry on a person's shoulder," she points out, "I have to cry on a positive person's shoulder."

She was saying all this before her yoga session the other day at her home. Pam swears by yoga, and by her teacher, Swami Shantimurti Saraswati.

Shanti, as he is known, has been teaching yoga since 1978. He is a swami, a master, a teacher of teachers. He is originally from Sydney, Australia, but now lives in Auckland, New Zealand, "just across the ditch" as they say.

Periodically, he comes to New Jersey and teaches in Sea Bright, at the Brahma Yoga Spa run by one of his disciples, Murray Dow. Pam and her girlfriends had been taking classes with Shanti and Murray for about a year before she was diagnosed with ALS in November.

In December Shanti flew in to be with her. "Who has a swami come out and visit them from New Zealand?" she says. "But here I was, sitting in the living room, hooked up to an IV pole, with the nurse checking on me every few minutes, and Shanti and Murray and I are trying to meditate."

"It wasn't your standard ashram scene," Shanti has to admit.

Then again, neither are the sessions they have when the kids are home, when they're downstairs in the basement playing their rock n' roll, the electric guitar wailing, the drums rumbling, the house vibrating.

"I've learned how to meditate around them," Pam says. "You have to."

Keeping hope alive

Shanti stayed for two weeks in December and developed a program specifically for her. Pam was astonished by the results. Emotionally, she felt better, stronger. Her outlook was as bright as it had ever been.

"I said 'Shanti, we can't keep this to ourselves,' " she recalls. "It gives hope when there is no hope. It keeps hope alive."

"Some of the techniques I was reticent about putting out there, because they're so strong," he explains. "They do things to people. They bring out emotions and introduce people to new areas of their mind.

"One of the main causes of cancer, for example, is suppressed anger. I do know quite a few medical doctors who are comfortable with that."

Relaxing the mind is what yoga teaches you. In order to overcome anger and fear, you must "go into another space," as he puts it.

"I am so happy that we are able to share this," says Pam. "That is the whole magic of this thing. That's his gift to the ALS world.

Pam is on her third round of experimental drugs. There are other cutting-edge drugs ahead. The scientists believe they will be able to test the latest drugs on humans in 12 to 18 months.

In the meantime, Pam Callahan remains fiercely upbeat. It turns out she still has a little bit of the bulldog in her. Yet she still laughs and greets the world with a smile, her outlook as bright as ever.

As her friend Tracy says, "That's a tough broad."

"You can go two ways with it," Pam has concluded. "Either seize the day, or drive yourself into depression. Which way do you want to go?

"I'm at the stage in my life . . . I have to keep laughing.

"I am a really lucky person."

Lou Gehrig, the great baseball player, once stood at the microphone at Yankee Stadium and spoke of his disease as "a bad break."

"Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth."

Gehrig said this on July 4, 1939. It inspires us to this day, knowing that as human beings we are capable of such dignity, of such grace. It doesn't always work out this way, but when we see it, we are always moved.

Some day Pam Callahan's children will understand.

Bill Handleman is an Asbury Park Press columnist. E-mail: handle@app.com
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art...09/1022/NEWS01