“The diagnosis came as a shock to me. I had gone with my family to visit the monastery that I grew up visiting as a part of my Buddhist faith,” says Tsang, a trained psychotherapist and former marketing executive in her mid-thirties, who was born in Hong Kong, grew up in St Louis, and now divides her time between the two cities with her husband.

“There had been signs that something was wrong,” she recalls. “I lost my peripheral vision on the right side a year before I was diagnosed and ignored it. I had a blackout in Sheung Wan MTR station [in Hong Kong] a few months before.”

Tsang’s doctor warned that after surgery there was a chance she would be unable to walk or talk again, and could suffer memory loss.

“I felt numb listening to my doctor while my family tried to make sense of it. I had to make a choice to go forward with the surgery or not,” she says.

“I had waited too long to listen to my body, and without the operation it could have been immediate death.”

Fortunately, after the operation the only brain damage Tsang has experienced is a 10-second word-recall delay. It takes her 10 seconds to understand and/or remember a word after someone says it.

Her senses are heightened too. When someone speaks, she perceives the volume to be a lot higher than it actually is. She also has neuropathy; sometimes the right side of her body has tremors.

“I was able to walk and talk a few days after surgery, much to my doctor’s surprise,” she says.

When the mind is calm, the body is calm

A Buddhist nun encouraged her to shave her head, which she did, and to focus on her Zen Buddhist practice and her return to health.

These, she says, “allowed me to accept my diagnosis with a calm mind”.

“When the mind is calm, the body is calm, thereby creating healing cells without fear and anxiety.”

George Dovas, the head of the Iyengar Yoga Centre of Hong Kong where Tsang practices, says her years as a practitioner enabled her “to be sensitive to the effects of the different postures and practise the ones that gave her the most relief”.

In the past two years, Tsang’s stamina has grown through her daily yoga practice, and she can do standing poses with the support of a wall.

For 30 to 45 minutes daily, she does a Buddhist meditation that focuses on practising loving kindness, compassion, altruistic joy, and peace towards oneself and others.

Martial arts, art therapy foster healing

The new graduate says the course “helped me to express myself beyond words. It allowed me to rebuild my understanding of my internal and external worlds”.

“It gave me a community of women to connect with when I was vulnerable and fragile, and transformed me from being broken to becoming whole again.”

Plant-based diet caters to recovery

Tsang, a trained psychotherapist with a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy, used her psychology background to research medical journals and clinical trials before she settled on a standard of medical care.

As a patient she believes in self advocacy. “I have a choice to make my own decisions. Whenever I felt that my mind and body were not in alignment, I asked the doctor to reduce the duration of my treatment,” she says.

Having an ongoing discussion with your doctor is your right as a patient, she says.

Regular doctor appointments with scans every five months or so suggest she is now disease-free. Her doctor encourages her to do exactly what she is doing.

Husband Geoff – the two were married in December 2019 – has been a great source of strength.

“We both made changes to our lifestyles for my recovery and health,” she says. “I was able to get through the hardest time in my life with the support of my family, my Buddhist and yoga communities and their prayers for my recovery. Faith carried me through.”

“I have learned to be patient and have unconditional positive regard for myself and others,” Tsang adds.

“I consciously choose life and love over fear of death. Being truly compassionate to yourself, with all the changes in your life, is the highest expression of your soul.”