Simple Gratitude

To pit it simply, I am feeling supported, carried and loved. This week has felt different than the other last weeks of treatment. It's the last chemo, so there is the excitement surrounding the end of what has been the most difficult 3 months of my life. There is also the anxiety surrounding the end of chemo and diving into the unknown. Some of my side effects have gotten a little unnerving. My fingernails are separating from my nail beds. It's unsettling, but pretty common, and it will probably get worse but then it will get better. I am missing my work. Where there have been moments around the halfway mark of chemo that I questioned my ability to withstand anymore of it, I am certain now that I can do this. Mentally, I am already skipping a little ahead. I'm starting to practice gobs of visualization. I visualize a healthy body. I visualize my muscles becoming strong again. I visualize a body without pain, that I can move, lift weights. I visualize myself running. A body with no limitations. A cancer free and thriving body. visualize myself doing things as simple as smiling and laughing, my hair grown into a nice pixie cut, my boobs are soft and squishy again. I visualize a life with my wife of joy and laughter and community. I visualize the wealth and wisdom that I will acquire and I visualize giving/serving...financially and spiritually.

In that powerful visualization I have found the strength to take two long walks this week. At one point yesterday my body was ready to give out. Kayla and Linda wanted to go home and get the car and come back to get me but I refused. I made a joke "I just have to keep swimming." That that came out of my mouth at the moment that I was hobbling along stiff legged with snot running down my face cracked me up. We all giggled uncontrollably. I was able to make it home and I felt accomplished. Then last night I felt sick but the serotonin I had worked up from that walk had me giggling all evening. That felt amazing. But today I'm feeling it. I pushed myself and it was good, but it cost me my ability to work this morning. I felt hung over! I'm in this teetering in between two worlds of where I reside in my health realistically at the moment and where I believe myself to be headed.

My friends are organizing a fundraising event for me post chemo, pre reconstruction surgery. I am touched to the core that they are putting so much effort into this. Humbled. My coworkers donated a days earnings to me back at the beginning of chemo. One of them is going to assist me on a busy day next week, so that all my clients will be taken care of despite my current limitations. I was introduced to a new yoga instructor via a new dear friend of mine gifting me with a private session. This turned into a new beautiful situation where I am receiving healing by somatic counseling on a regular basis. I have received healing sands, candles, bracelets, sage, cards, books, food, scarves. There is so much love infused into all of these things. I can sit with them and feel the warmth of the well wishes. These are the things that keep me going. I have these insanely supportive and loving people in my life and I didn't even ask for them.

Like I said, I feel supported and carried and loved. Gratitude!

Rhythm

"Pierced by a keen sense of my own mortality, I was much more interested in discerning the small miracles embedded in each moment than I was in catching the 9:03 Midtown Direct to Penn Station. And there was a part of me that was disappointed when the time came to once again catch that city-bound train." From Losing a Comforting Ritual: Treatment
By DANA JENNINGS.......in regards to the "letdown" at the end of treatment.




It seems like a rhythm is beginning to develop in the process of treating and dealing/living with breast cancer. I think I am deciding to take a much more active part in the rhythm of my life. I have always been self observant; I was a broody teen with sexuality/identity/trust and abandonment issues. I recorded every thought, memory and musing with an obsessiveness. I used to imagine that I would use the art of language to serve. I was consciously aware of an ability to supply a source of insight to others. Perhaps the insight is a result of all of the paying attention. The self observation. The gift of expression. I think it's common for people like me to abandon an important artistic practice once they leave adolescence or early adulthood. But that need to create, to express never ceases. It's that need that can be awakened with practice or abandoned, bringing us at times struggle, at times peace. Hopefully a balance is met. I think that's what I mean about the rhythm. This cancer has reminded me that I need to pay attention.

I'm observing quite a bit right now, after playing the active passenger in the autopilot that can become your life in a tragic situation. I am a little goat, head down, horns charging at the bull. You can't be touchy feely all the time. You can't be in a constant state of meditation. At least not in my level of spirituality, which I am working on, but its also part of that rhythm. Sometimes you are a goat and the cancer is the bull. Sometimes you are the muse and sometimes you are the gatherer of inspiration. You can bend and sway with it, become more accepting of the different ways of existing. You began to recognize it when you pay attention. In my spiritual path I recognize this as Awareness.

This situation has granted me the precious gift of time with myself. I am allowed to cultivate, if nothing else, thoughts and inspiration about how to bide the rest if my time in this body. I want it to count. In what ways though? What is it that I'm here to do? My instinct is that it is to preserve the practice of observation and expression. Somehow that notion will guide me to better serve, love and honor. What that means after treatment is certainly not clear. Right now it means to do this. Share what I can honestly part with, infusing every word or action with an intention of honesty and light. Move in my body, connect with and keep loving it, nurturing it through its restricted state. Listen to music. It also means that I make lists. To do after cancer lists.


I began this entry yesterday. I was emotional. I do cry almost every day, if only for a fleeting moment. Perhaps a 30 second downpour during my 10 minute drive to work, a few minutes in the shower, an hour sprawling and bawling on my bed. I often find myself sitting in my driveway after I pull into it, bawling it out before I can go into my house. So, I cried and then I started to move. My body aches from the medication, the stiffness and numbness can be disabling. But there was music playing and I began to choreograph the ballet in my head. It was the cancer ballet. The movements were rigid and inched slowly toward a stretch. In my imagination we were dancers in a room, on a stage dancing out the rhythm of this disease. It is raw and beautiful. In my bed it was me, swaddled in my PJs, surrounded by my dogs, trembling with each stress of a movement, but finding ease and breath eventually delivered to my abandoned limbs. I recognized the music then as a source of inspiration. A way to connect with inspiration. Gratitude for the gift. I was compelled to pay attention.

Today has been nice. I had to go for my weekly blood work. It's usually the first time after a chemo treatment that I leave the house alone, or at all. It was cloudy but the sun came out when I got home. I sat with the garden. I talked to my Granny on the phone. She told me a joke. I appreciate that she always has a joke for me. I feel my spirits lifting. I'm moving into a new step. It's the rhythm. I want so desperately to keep paying attention.

These are Just some of the Things

Our wedding anniversary is in 15 days. No one is banking on us being able to do much, as I will be one day closer to my last round of chemo infusions, and I have gotten more sick with each one. Kayla's mom is here again, just like last year, to help. This time she's not making pies, helping sew finishing touches on our wedding clothes and preparing for family and friends to be here for our magical weekend. She's cleaning our house and maintaining our yard. She is touching things we haven't been able to reach for lack of time, money, energy. It's nice to have her here. It's comforting to feel like someone is taking care of Kayla. It hasn't been easy. For me, that's a given. As for Kayla, I've seen her coping right before my eyes. Like an extension of my brain and like clockwork she makes the world still go round. She works constantly. Sometimes I think I am disappearing. She often reminds me that I'm not. For me it takes a lot of reminding. This cancer is like quicksand. It's difficult to muddle through. I reckon I will find a way to keep afloat, and that I will reach a place of normalcy in my life. Maybe even joy. I hope so...

Because, I am suddenly consumed with worry about my prognosis. I have managed to get this far into this cancer journey without asking too many questions about my chances of survival or recurrence. When I asked my oncologist at our last appointment, "So, how do we know that all this worked?" He kind of chuckled and shook his head. "We will know in time. There aren't any blood tests that are going to show us. We just have to wait and see." Without getting into too much detail about the cancer itself, I will just say here that there are two characteristics of it that exist simultaneously and are also slightly opposing and that make my cancer slightly rare and more aggressive. I think it's something like 35% of breast cancers have both of these characteristics. This means that there are two different ways of looking at my survival rate, but those two percentages have to be considered in lieu of the other. I find it confusing so I realize that as a reader this might not make a lick of sense of it at all. Due to this sudden lack of certainty I feel a little trapped in this state of mind that is a whirlwind of what ifs, and why even bothers. I will find a way to tie all of this confusion into a neat little bow eventually. It's just that right now I'm in pain. I'm sick. Im sore. Im stiff. Im lonely. I hardly recognize my own face. Im scared. And there is a little taste of bitterness in my mouth.

Sometimes the effortlessness of existence that people crank out around us astonishes me. It's just that when Kayla and I managed to pull out our wedding from scratch last year, it symbolized the building of a foundation from what we were determined to build upon. We were hunting for an ease, a bite of that effortlessness. We spent so many of our efforts rapidly weaving our safety nets and our home into a happy nest. We built. But then the diagnosis. I just look around at the ease and effortlessness that I imagine in the lives around me and wonder if I will ever feel a part of that momentum. Like I'm not expecting to be denied or to lose or to die, even. These are the things I'm supposed to be learning not to fear. Loss, denial, death. These are just some of the things.