Point Reyes Light - December 9, 2004
Ex-resident of Bolinas appeals for help in cancer fight
By Jim Kravets
Baulinas Craft Guild’s first apprentice, Silena Heron, continues her four year struggle with ovarian cancer, an illness that has left her bankrupt and has spawned an outpouring of support from herbalists nationwide.
Heron, 57, moved to Bolinas in 1972 to study weaving at Tom D’Onofrio’s new guild for apprentice craftspeople.
"I was the first applicant to send in my check," she told The Light via phone from Sedona, Arizona, where she has lived since 1990.
The 2002 exhibition celebrating the Guild’s 30th anniversary at the Bolinas Museum featured a picture of Heron weaving the macramé playground that existed for a time on Elm Road.
She built a studio near Bolinas’ Duxbury Reef and taught weaving, natural dyes, and health education at the Faultline Institute of Very Higher Education, Bolinas’ unique adult-education program.
Studied herbalism in Central America
In 1975 she sold her studio and, with the proceeds, went to Central America where she began studying herbalism. She returned to West Marin in 1976 to practice and teach herbal medicine. On "herb- walks," like one on Mount Vision, she would teach students how to recognize and use local plants. She volunteered as a docent at the Point Reyes lighthouse and was featured in The Light’s Coastal Cook column in April, 1978 where she sang the praises of wild "optimal salads."
Heron left the area again in the 1980s to attend naturopathic medical school. Since 1988, she has been a full-time practitioner and teacher of naturopathic medicine until April 2000 when she was diagnosed with metastatic ovarian cancer.
She told The Light in 1977, "The whole Western concept is that you need a [conventional] doctor. My concept is that you only need the doctor in very extreme situations."
Heron, who started out in New York as a registered nurse, was forced to turn to Western doctors for treatment and underwent both surgery and chemotherapy.
A recurrence in 2001 left her so debilitated that she could no longer practice. A third recurrence was detected in 2002. She declared bankruptcy in July 2003.
Heron has Medicare, which helps pay for the conventional medical treatments but does not provide for any alternative or herbal therapies.
She receives disability payments from Social Security which she says are insufficient even to cover the mortgage payments on her double-wide trailer. Heron also relies on the disability payments to help support her 18-year-old son.
Her latest blood scans, Heron said, are "clean." But ongoing chemotherapy treatments have left her with heart arrhythmia (palpitations) and she is still unable to work or even care for herself. An assistant helps her wash her hair.
"Doctors don’t like to use the term ‘remission’ anymore," Heron said. "Instead they say ‘cancer survivor.’" Heron is cautious about this label and its connotation that the game is won, especially in light of her recurrences.
Herbalist Guild sends support
In an effort to assist Heron, the American Herbalist Guild in 2001 established an Herbalist Health Trust. "Its function," said Roy Upton, Guild Vice President, "is to help provide financial support to those within the herbalist community who are facing a healthcare crisis and may otherwise not get the care they need."
Upton said a board of trustees directs the use of funds, particularly important, he noted, in the field of alternative medicine fraught with admittedly unproven and costly treatments.
"We would not consider a distant Buddhist prayer from Tibet for $1,000 a legitimate healthcare need," he said. "But paying an aid for a bath when Silena’s too weak to do it herself, that’s legitimate." The trust also helps Heron with her mortgage payments.
The Trust, in a 2003 fundraiser, raised about $18,000 for Heron’s non-conventional treatments. "At present," Upton said, there’s $500 left in the fund."
"It’s actually about $95," Heron corrected. The discrepancy, she said, is money Upton recently put in the fund himself. "He just didn’t want me to think we’d run dry," she said.
Those wanting more information about Silena Heron’s situation can contact her friend Sherry Hirsch at 510 220-3191 or email <support4silena@sbcglobal.net>. Those wishing to make tax-exempt contributions towards Heron’s care can send checks specifying Silena Heron to the American Herbalist Guild at, 1931 Gaddis Rd., Canton, GA 30115.