Lama, a courageous woman, terminally ill

I had the oppotrunity to interview fellow Massachusetts resident, Lama Milkweed L. Augustine, a couragous woman who was born with a rare form of albinism, is 40 years old and in the final stages of illness. Please offer a word of support for Lama. Her birthday will be December 25, and it will likely be her last.

Lama is dressed in her own hand-sewn clothing from the styles of Nepal's Tarai Forest. As a Buddhist Lama Rimpoche, Lama has always dressed in this manner, as it reflects her Buddhist spirit. She is 40 and will soon die. She is in the final stages of terminal illness.

Q: Lama, please tell us about yourself.

Well, Kathryn, I am an ordained woman of the Buddhist faith, who is endowed with the supreme title, Her Holiness: The Most Venerable Lama Rimpoche, a Professor with two Doctorates in religion, as well as a highly devout Roman Catholic who carries the sacred crucifix with my brethren, as I often perform the Holy Eucharist in select places, namely in the home and as a guest.

I have been an author, well established, but receiving barely any promotional assistance, for many, many years. But in the process I derive my inspirations mostly from both imagination as well as from surviving torture and imprisonment right here in this country, but the place had been closed down only eleven years ago; if you can believe that.

I was recognized twice by H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama, and very nearly received the famed "Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Award" at the age of 34 in 2001, for fervently assisting the Dalai Lama personally and the International Campaign of Tibet in the hopes of freeing hundreds of Tibetan refugees and fellow Lamas and nuns who have been wrongfully imprisoned.

Q: Tell us about the complications of your birth, what it was like growing up.

It was extremely traumatic. This was because I was attempting to be born on Christmas Eve in 1966, but my poor mother, who was also raised in very desperate poverty, which spilled over in my life, was not able to dilate enough for the physician to turn me, as I was entering the birth canal feet first.

Both my mother and myself almost died, so instead of being born on Christmas Eve, I was [born] the day after that. It was a dry birth, which only a woman who has undergone something like this would be able to understand, was simply horrific at best. But like my life immediately following this traumatic event, nothing was done correctly as we were both ignored.

Concerning what it was like for me growing up, was mainly medical hospitals and living in a sterile world, as I practically lived in these places for the first five years of my life. I was always in an oxygen tent, as I could not breathe very well, as they immediately discovered congenital heart problems, as a result of albinism, but aside from extreme malabsorption and bowel problems, they found nothing else - but unknowing to anyone - there existed numerous time bombs living inside of me.

But while growing up past those days in my life's beginning, was absolutely appalling. I was savagely taken away from my home and family in June 1973 at the age of six years, but only because I was almost totally blind, but earlier my eyes were completely blind, as this was explained in the book, THE MILKWEED PROPHESY: EPITAPH OF THE APOCALYPSE.

The state of Massachusetts, along with the Mass Commission for the Blind, were the entities responsible for this unspeakable travesty, as my parents were lied to about my care as a handicapped child.

[I was taken to] St. Ann's Home in Methuen, Massachusetts. It was the place where I received some of the most heinous forms of physical tortures that one could not imagine, as my skull was broken in two places, bones broke, and ligature tares which will never heal. Mostly, post traumatic stress disorder was the main byproduct of what I underwent, simply due to the fact that I was simply not allowed to be in the public school system.

Q: Tell us about your childhood, your schooling, your jobs, your training. You have held many positions in life, I believe.

To give you a responsorial answer to your question in reference to my childhood, Kathryn, it was simply the horror in which I was poorly explaining. However, there were some good times, too. However, though I was a gifted child, I was denied a good and decent education - not only the fact of this blindness - but because the place I had to be did not contain the proper learning material to suit my "superior" intelligence, which as a later teenager, it was measured as me having an I.Q. of 170, but without the math, as I will explain in a minute.

I remember going to Children's Hospital in Boston since I was born, as my mother was always right there by my side. In 1976, an electroencephalogram was done to measure brain waves, better known as an EEG. They found abnormal brainwaves, due to the skull fractures as I was experiencing terrible headaches, so bad I fell into shock and convulsed from tremendous agonies, as the result of their abuse. I was placed with people, all through life with whom I did not belong, as I was a gifted child but they did not care about this, nor had they cared about me, Kathryn.

I was a writer, an artist, but no ordinary artist, as I painted beautiful Buddhist paintings since I was two years old. I was a religious prodigy with wisdom far beyond my meager age, but none of this mattered, because I was handicapped, but certainly not when it concerns the mind and the heart.

I was hated from the beginning, but only God knows the answer to this highly elusive question. It still gets to me, but fortunately after years and years of profound meditation and soul searching, I have found the way.


Q: You had many difficulties to overcome. Were there any people that helped inspire you, along the way?

The only people whom I can honestly say Kathryn, who have helped me along the way, besides God, Jesus, and Mary, are my mother Marguerite Augustine, and my Grandfather who was my mother's father, a WWII war hero. I mentioned my mother in all of my books to some degree, whether disguised in a character or right flat out for all to see. My grandfather, Chester Illingnworth was a wonderful man and an ever better friend, like my Mamma.


Q: What do you use to keep your hope and faith going?

Well, Kathryn, it has been very difficult o to keep my hope up, especially when nearly everyone and everything has taken it all away and without the slightest regard for my personal and inner life, and never mind the aftermath following.

But it has been my God as the mainstay who keeps me going; yes, God Himself. I pray and contemplate as well as meditate continuously and delve inward to experience something besides loneliness and debilitating pain associated with dying. I will never forget the literally countless experiences we have both shared as his sacred friendship has meant everything to me.

I had been considered as "the voice for the condemned" in the early 1990s, especially through Governor Weld's campaign, when he attempted fervently and even adamantly to get the repugnant death penalty into this state once again.

My words which, to them, suggested a great and in- depth sagaciousness, because they were learned at a very young age as my works of courage had not only created a silent movement here in the state of Massachusetts, but made non-opponents of this atrocious and inhumane law think more deeply about what they were supporting, as they often signed my petition of this lone ministry which I had been residing in for well over twenty years.

I am a self-made woman with absolutely no outside assistance, save for those people getting my very important views into the White House and to the State House Rules Committee.


Q: You have written many books. Would you care to describe them briefly for us?

Yes, Kathryn. My books are quite interesting as they are enlightening, and make one think, think, and think. (One friend told me very bluntly.)

ETERNAL I.V. POLE - is a true story of the horrific life I barely survived with not only my body, but with my very sanity intact. It graphically described my life's wonderful beginnings, outside of the hospital stays, living in desperate poverty in the back woods, then abruptly taken away from there only to be brutalized and programmed and suffering from port traumatic stress disorder, while then in my adult life I was literally destroyed in inconceivable methods in a hospital called the BETH ISRAEL in Boston, Massachusetts. However in doing so, I explained much of the differences between Christianity and Buddhism, and the Catholic faiths.

The cover of Eternal IV Pole by Lama Milkweed L. Augustine

THE CHAIN SAW MAN depicted the horrors I had endured, as well as what it is truly like to be within the mind of a serial killer, but who at first, only loved the world and would never do anything to harm it. A soul who was literally savaged, to no avail, I talk about the back woods during the time I loved the best - in the late 1960's and the early 1970's.

SONGS OF MILKWEED: A GIFT FROM THE FIELDS- is a book of criticism and poetry from my life; this actually began in 1980 at the age of 13 as the reading audience can easily view for himself how the author has suffered but grown and changed under these often petrifying circumstances.

DELL - is a sci-fi like no other, which would make ISAAC ASIMOV turn over in his grave and be green with envy. These are computer people accidentally created in the not too distant future, but there is one child who is born infected with a "computer' virus that these living ones are being plagued with, but he has brought the suffering world together by means of his own suffering, like Christ.

The structure of a family is also copiously depicted and explained, as well as with explanations concerning what it is truly like to have a dying sibling amongst you, and finally to lose him. There is courage and great personal triumph that accentuates this wonderfully heartwarming story.

THE MILKWEED PROPHECY: EPITAPH OF THE APOCALYPSE. It y speaks of prophesy seen through my anointed eyes since I was born, the Apocalypse, and the many gifts from God Himself. However, the book also loudly speaks of the complexities of faith, told through not only the eyes of this Professor who daily practices the faith, but later in the text, explains how I received enlightenment and describes my destiny, for all, and for God. It is in the Vatican and is owned by our new Pope as well, as the Holy Catholic church has accepted it as "an extension of the Word of God".

RADIATION SICKNESS - is definitely a thriller, but [also] a medical travesty that is brazed in fiction by means of the story itself, but not what truly has happened. The realization of radiation sickness is most true, as I myself had undergone poisoning by nuclear radiation over a continuous thread of events. I explain in such detail about ethics in the nuclear industry, but in the medical profession as well, especially where I was an embalmer and a medical monk in training, but mostly the happenings of when one becomes infected or poisoned.

CLEAVER - is another horror based on truth, not only as a rape victim, but my life as a farmhand and growing up in the deep woods, but later takes on a different direction, as life changes drastically. The perpetual isolation, loneliness and grief over family members who mattered most to you, and of course, [it is about] a way of life only you yourself seemed to understand, as well as to love, is quickly becoming obsolete. In the end, (through this explicit book of unbelievable horror, which can only be told from [the point of view of] a horror victim), you annihilate one's enemies to the bitter end, as you feel violated, as the author truly was.

Q: Would you care to describe your medical situation, as it is, now.

Well, Kathryn, my medical situation is very depressing, even though it is interesting.
As known by you anyway, [my medical situation] is very bad, but I do have some mild control [over my condition.] [This means] I no longer want to receive the InFed treatments, or the iron infusions through my intravenous catheter at the cancer center.

This is iron infusion, or otherwise known as I.V. iron. It has been too much mentally and physically on this one little person, as I have been catastrophically ill my entire life. I have been attached to machines for most of my arduous life, with seizures I was born with, but later became worsened because of the traumatic abuses and tortures as a child growing up, while away from home.

My marrow was defective and does not absorb iron at all, but my gut once had, although I have experienced continued iron anemia all my life.

I am a DNI, which is an order for terminally ill patients in their final stage. This means "do not intubate" or place a breathing tube into the throat or perform a tracheotomy on the patient. If I stop this iron, which I have, but have only received one more to be alive for my final Christmas, I will very definitely die.

I was born with COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which had not been noticed as a child, but I was eternally breathless upon the slightest activity, which includes my severely defective heart, as I underwent my first massive coronary with cardiac arrest 24 months after my total hysterectomy.

I am in stage 4 of the lung disease, which is the final stage. I am on 8 liters of oxygen per minute. I have air trapping in the lungs, which means the lungs cannot absorb the fresh air and bring it into the bloodstream, so the air is trapped and causes painful air pockets.

I [developed] this at the age of 31. I also have emphysema from age 30, but I never smoked anything in my life. I have the rarest form of Albinism in the world, as this was diagnosed by Dr. Murray from Brigham and Women's' hospital in Boston, which is the only place besides Children's, who likes me and cares about me.

He is a genetics expert and told my mother and I that I have the rarest form of albinism, which causes something wrong with every organ in the body. This includes the nervous system and the metabolism, as these things get steadily worse as the patient grows up.

I began menopause at the age of 12 in 1979 and I was already prematurely aging, I as arthritis began as a toddler, and ganglions in the hands appeared between the ages of 6 and through 8.

Malnutrition cannot be quelled as my due to the malfunctioning body. I am a geriatric patient, although at the same instant, a pediatric patient. I have a mild form of Progeria, which causes you to literally grow old before your time.

But like the character Dell, [from my book] I have become a medical icon, because there are only three types of albinism in the human species; mine is the rarest of the rare, as there are less than twenty people worldwide who have this. This is the culprit for my disease, my terminal illness and why I will be receiving an ileostomy bag, where the colon is removed and one defecates into a bag.

You are a very strong and courageous woman. I applaud your strength in the face of the difficulties you face and I congratulate you on your many accomplishments in life.

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Please take a moment and click on these links from Lama and aoffer a word of support for her.

CHAPTER EXCERPT FROM 'ETERNAL I.V. POLE

LOOK INSIDE THE MILKWEED PROPHESY; NOMINATION FOR THE PULITZER by Lama Milkweed L. Augustine PhD Prof. H.H.

Copyright  © 2007 Kathryn Esplin-Oleski