The bumper sticker "Bloom Where You're Planted" could very well be the story of Rozzy Keanna's life. While a designer for a calendar company, Rozzy's close relationship with her mother was suddenly threatened by the medical diagnosis in her mother of colon and liver cancer. "My favorite picture of her is when she was standing together with [Super Woman] Linda Carter at the Clinton Innaugural. That's how I saw her," reminisced Rozzy. But as her mother's condition deteriorated after colon surgery and chemotherapy, Rozzy became more and more alarmed. Her alarm turned to disgust, when she suggested to her mother's treating physician that they look into alternative methods of treatment. The doctor sarcastically retorted, "So what are you going to do--look in the back of The Star [tabloid] for a doctor?"

Spurred on by a combination of righteous anger and desperation, Rozzy began her odyssey to follow up and track down the referrals she was given, sometimes traveling hundreds of miles on the promise of a brochure, only to find upon her arrival that "Oh, we don't do that anymore." She once again had to break the news to her very sick mother and traveling companion that they'd reached another dead end.

As time continued to run out, Rozzy felt more and more pressure to find something to turn her mother's cancer around, but kept running into a vacuous lack of good referrals from her doctors. Finally, and mercifully, Rozzy's mother passed just a few short months from her initial diagnosis. Now filled with shine-eyed intent, Rozzy undertook a six-year research program to find the very best of the best resources that cancer experiencers could turn to as an option to conventional, and statistically unworkable, cancer treatment.

With her work in the field of calendar design and printing, a calender was the natural place to consolidate the labors of her research in an accessible and highly useful way. Rozzy had already quite a head of steam going in using calendars to change public perceptions prior to the cancer fiasco. She had designed a calendar to dispel the myths and stereotypes associated with aging, featuring such senior characters as a 77-year old woman race-car driver. So it was obvious to her that a campaign about cancer treatment options fit perfectly into the calendar format.

From her extensive research, Rozzy narrowed down her calendar candidates to the required twelve, and it is an impressive group of outstanding professional practitioners. Because many of them are outspoken about their passion for health care options, they've often been under attack by their own peers for rocking the professional boat in the highly regulated theater of cancer treatment. Many of these people work with teams of experts in nutrition, psychology, naturopathy and other disciplines to bring out the best healing capabilities of the patients they serve.

Each calendar month is adorned with attractive full-color photo portraits of each practitioner along with their story and quotable quotes. Gone are the white lab coats of the medical priesthood. "I wanted these people to be seen as regular people," says Rozzy--caring, loving people, who care more about their patients than their bank accounts. Rozzy's artistic approach was motivated by finding out from her insurance company that each cancer patient represented on average $170,000 to a conventional doctor engaging in surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.

Calendar featured doctors
Susan Silberstein, Ph.D., Executive Director for the Center for the Advancement of Cancer Education, is still saddened by conventional cancer treatments that were given to her now deceased husband. "He did not die from his tumors," She says. "He died of a heart attack and malnutrition." His treatments ignored his nutritional and immunological needs. Silberstein has declares in the calendar: "Our goal is to combine the body's own natural healing potential with advanced in medical science."

Jesse Stoff, MD,HMD, Director of Medical Education Immune Therapies, says, "The thoughts, attitudes, emotions, beliefs and physical condition of the patient are integral to the healing experience."

H.L. Sam Queen was one of 10 health experts tapped by President Clinton's Committee on Alternative Medicine to reintroduce a nutrition curriculum in medical schools. "Medicine is what doctors do for you; health is what you do for yourself."

And from the mission statement of the Cancer Treatment Centers of America: "We work together as a team, and the captain of our team is the patient."

Get the calendar
"I just want to offer these examples to open people's minds a little bit," declared Rozzy in our interview, "I'm hoping that the calendars will get people talking. And so all those doctors who are on the fence--doctors who are in conventional hospitals and see that it's just not working right--would say, hey, wait a minute, this is a good idea. And it would become like a slow revolution and there then could be change."

She plans to do another calendar for 2004 with a whole new set of caring doctors offering blessed options to cancer experiencers.