PVCC Puma Press: October 2003

Forty years ago, just five months before their wedding day, doctors diagnosed Silvio with a deadly brain tumor

Today, love looks like Saundra and Silvio Pustetta. It is the little red booties he wears around the house because she just cleaned the carpet and it isn't dry yet. Love is the way he sits outside of her classroom, patiently waiting to drive her home. Love is his hand inside hers. It is the way her leg wraps around his as they pose for pictures. Love their daughter, their son and their three grandchildren, too. Love is evident, here, in the lives of two people that have faced incredible hardship, and learned to find a peace beyond it.

Saundra Pustetta is a Yoga instructor at PVCC, and more than that a role model for any one who has yet to see the completed version of the person they might become, if they dare to pour every ounce of trust, strength, and power into their dreams. She stands proof that while adversity may cripple you, it cannot conquer you.

Saundra knows firsthand about adversity, as she faced it head on when her husband, Silvio, was diagnosed with a brain tumor more than 40 years ago. Since that time, the Pustetta's have overcome countless struggles that have changed their lives for the better and helped them find a kind of happiness they would not have otherwise known.

"The illness was a blessing that helped develop us into understanding life at such a deeper level," Saundra says. The deeper level she is referring to, the Pustetta's have achieve with a balance of medical and nutritional treatments, as well as practicing yoga and meditation.

Saundra has been teaching yoga for more than 20 years and practicing it for twice as long, and she has found a secret among the soft stretches and meditation that has changed her entire outlook on life. She believes that yoga can do more for you than just stretch your body; she believes that it can stretch your mind as well.

"It has a functional purpose, it's not just an exercise program," she says. The Pustetta's have adapted alternative treatments for Silvio's illness to their every day lives. When he was diagnosed in 1963, the doctor's told Silvio that he had four months to live. Today, he sits quietly on one of the blue mats on the white tile floor in Saundra's yoga class. The Pustetta's both believe that had they not discovered the benefits of alternative treatments like yoga, that the doctor's grim prediction may have been correct.

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	Photo by Kelsey Perry
	PVCC faculty Saundra Pustetta and husband, Silvio, faced tragedy after Silvio was diagnosed with a brain tumor forty years ago. Today, their love is stronger and their lives richer from the struggles they were forced to overcome because of that illness.
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"Yoga opened up a consciousness about alternative lifestyles," Saundra says, "Those alternatives along with the medical [intervention] are why Silvio's still alive."

Saundra recalls a time when a way out was not easy to see.

"We know what it means to be at rock bottom" Saundra says with a shift in her voice. She pauses and prepares to revisit the pain that is attached to their struggle. She was 20 and Silvio was 23 when they were engaged to be married. As married life lay before them, neither knew what was lurking in the shadows.

When Silvio was diagnosed with the brain tumor just five months before their wedding day everything changed. Their lives were pulled from under them and placed in the hands of doctors. Their friends and family encouraged them to postpone the marriage, but Saundra would not hear of it.

"The world is telling you logically that you should wait," she says, "but my heart and my soul and my feeling was that we should go through with the marriage."

So Saundra and Silvio were married on June 1, 1963 in a Catholic church in Hamilton, New Jersey. Soon after the wedding, they headed to Europe on an extended, four-month honeymoon, where, Saundra says, they spent all of their money.

"When we went to Europe on our honeymoon we just felt like there was no tomorrow, and we lived like there was no tomorrow," Saundra says.

It was in Europe that Saundra became pregnant with their first child. Soon, it was back to reality as the honeymoon ended and the newlyweds moved into Silvio's parents' house in New Jersey. A few months later, Silvio underwent the first of what would be a serious of brain surgeries. The doctor's were attempting to relieve the pressure on Silvio's brain.

The surgery sent young Silvio into a mental breakdown. He was completely dependent on drugs and reduced to a state of infancy. Saundra was alone, and the seriousness of his illness was settling inside her.

"I was pregnant with our child and he didn't recognize me," Saundra says.

For months, Silvio lay in a state of complete blackout. To further alienate him from his wife, Silvio was only speaking Italian. He swears, however, that somewhere inside him he knew Saundra was pregnant. He says that is what kept him alive.

The doctors wanted to put Silvio into a mental institution, but his mother, thankfully, refused. Saundra knew she had to do something to save her husband.

"He had no quality of life. All he did was sleep and eat," Saundra says.

Saundra decided that she needed to decrease the amount of drugs Silvio was taking and wean him from the paralyzing medication. She went to a drug store and bought empty capsules and gave Silvio only half of what the doctor had prescribed. She knew it was dangerous, but she was desperate and saw no other way.

"I wanted him back, so I was willing to do anything," Saundra says.

Slowly, Silvio began to recover, with his wife beside him every step of the way, re-teaching him such simple tasks as using the restroom and eating. It may have been a decrease in medication that was healing Silvio's mind and body, but it was Saundra's devotion to him that began to awaken his soul.

"I think he realized I wasn't going anywhere," Saundra says. Silvio recalls the day he woke from the breakdown.

"One day I woke up and said, ‘What happened?'" Silvio recalls. "I said, ‘Where's my wallet?'" Money was very important to Silvio before his illness. It was something the Pustetta's had very little of. At the time, their only source of income was from Silvio's disability.

Saundra knew it was time to get out of her in-laws house so that they could get a place of their own, but with their new baby girl, a sick husband and no money, it seemed impossible. She found a job with the U.S. Post Office, pitching mail for the Vietnam War and earned enough to afford a small apartment that the family of three called home.

The next eight years would prove to be very difficult for the Pustetta's as they struggled to make ends meet and deal with the emotion and physical pain of Sivlio's illness. Every year brought another surgery, and every day was another fight. Saundra remembers feeling powerless against their problems and feeling so sorry for herself and their situation.

Then came the turning point in her life. It wasn't much of a climax really, just a change in attitude.

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Yoga gets you in touch with the wisdom inside of you. . .It’s a way of life. . .It’s a journey
—Saundra Pustetta PVCC Yoga Instructor
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"I just decided one day that I was going to survive this," Saundra says. She believes that when she let go of all of the self-pity inside her and stopped trying to rationalize why this had happened to them, she was instantly freed.

She had found hope again, which was never really lost, just a little out of place.

Saundra knew the importance of a college education, but without the money to attend college, earning a degree seemed impossible. She wanted it enough, however, to find a way. She applied for an Equal Opportunity Grant, and because, at the time, she was considered "culturally deprived" she got it. At the age of 30, Saundra became a college freshman. She studied hard and earned a master's degree in speech pathology and ideology with a minor in psychology.

During her junior year in college, tragedy struck the Pustetta's again with the death of Saundra's younger sister at age 22. Her sister left behind a little boy who was 3-years-old at the time, and Saundra and Silvio adopted him; the adoption of their new son, brought joy into their lives during a difficult time.

Soon after graduating from college, Saundra began career in administration. The job brought nothing but stress into her life, and the long hours and demanding workload kept her away from her family. Silvio approached her one day with an ultimatum.

"He looked me in the eye one day and said, ‘You're not with me,'" Saundra says. He told Saundra she must either quit her job or leave him. She decided to seek a job as a speech pathologist, but on one condition, that Silvio allow her to practice yoga under a man named Yogi Shanti, a yoga instructor in Ocean City, New Jersey that Saundra had heard about through friends. Silvio agreed but decided to accompany Saundra to the class.

"I was like ‘Who is this guy?'" Silvio says with a laugh, so he went with Saundra and they found yoga together. Silvio started very slowly because he not physically strong enough to do very extensive stretches.

"I couldn't move…everything was stiff," recalls Silvio. Soon Saundra and Silvio began to incorporate yoga into their everyday lives. It became more than just a stress relief.

"Yoga gets you in touch with the wisdom inside of you," Saundra says. "It's a way of life…it's a journey."

So the Pustetta's began their journey, and through a balance of yoga, meditation and nutrition, they found peace and a missing piece of their lives.

Today, although the tumor is still there, Silvio has control of his life again, and he plans to keep it that way.

"As long as you are young and beautiful," he says to his wife with a smile, "I want to stay around.