I was able to walk through the front doors of Stanford Hospital’s Women’s Cancer Center but after taking the elevator up to the second floor, I found I could not enter the Infusion Treatment Center. I paused, then stopped, to look out the window while trying to collect myself, control my tears, and gather strength to enter the waiting room where I would join other bald - and some masked - women and men. | From Observation to Participation. OBSERVATION TO PARTICIPATION: THE MAKING OF A NON-TRADITIONAL SPIRIT MEDIUM KAREN FJELSTAD * I was able to walk through the front doors of Stanford Hospital’s Women’s Cancer Center but after taking the elevator up to the second floor, I found I could not enter the Infusion Treatment Center. I paused, then stopped, to look out the window while trying to collect myself, control my tears, and gather strength to enter the waiting room where I would join other bald - and some masked - women and men. There I would wait for another dose of chemotherapy to treat my Stage III high-grade ovarian cancer, waiting for tubes to be inserted into my chest and abdomen to deliver highdoses of medication that would poison the cancer. Although I had accomplished it many times without tears, this day was different – I could not stop crying. As I sat in the hospital bed I sobbed. I could not do this again, I thought, but I also felt I must do my part in conquering the beast of cancer. I was embarrassed at the tears and felt sorry for my husband and the nurses but I could not stop crying. Then, looking around the white room, I thought of Cô Bơ, the female spirit that serves the water realm of Vietnam’s Mother Goddess Religion (Đậo Mẫu). I imagined her rowing the boat that carries distressed humans across the waters of despair and at that moment I visualized the water as comprised of the tears of all the men, women, and children who have suffered in all times. My own saline droplets added to the immense sea upon which Cô Bơ was rowing. I was one of millions of humans who had suffered in life, and one of the thousands who turned to Cô Bơ. Comforted by the image, I allowed my own tears to flow freely.(*) I studied Vietnam’s Mother Goddess Religion for more than 25 years as an ethnographer and a scholar. I attended spirit possession ceremonies in several different regions of Vietnam, but my research focused on Vietnamese mediums in the . Over the .
