O, Doctors, My Doctors

This past few years seems to boil down to ‘How to up the chances of saving yer own hide’.   My doctors are many.  How do I thank them all?  Dear Reader, you may be one of them.  I’ve received and do receive much help from many doctors – some in offices and some in toddler’s clothes; some hiding in childhood books or fairy tales; some speaking on YouTube or living nearby.   Help seems everywhere, when I seek it.  I am aware of the concept of cells as mini-bodies, a la Dr. Bruce Lipton’s explications.   If each cell is like a body with a ‘mind of its own’, how do I tell the whole trillion-celled civilization my desires?  Recent concept: First, I need to calm down, so ‘we’ are not on alert all day.  This gives frisky new cells a chance to ‘go get’m’ and the old ones a chance to decide if it’s ‘time to go’, or at least slow down. Second, I need to nutrate ‘everybody’, because it’s not fair to expect ones civilization to go without water, air,  decent food, and oxygen-enhancing exercise.

If I get the same advice from three independent sources (e.g., take at least 1,000 IU of Vitamin D per day), I usually follow it, especially when those sources are professional and/or steeped in experiential knowledge. I most likely am finished with oddball, expensive, time-consuming ‘cures’.  Thank goodness, I know a few people who, like myself,  are living with lymphomas while taking a low-grade, cancer-destroying medication.

I am saddened when friends and ‘heroes’ who seemed well a few years ago get a cancer, then die of it. This seems insanely unnatural.  I then have thoughts of guilt for being alive and relatively well.  I have no idea yet how to deal with this, other than to accept that life on earth is filled with mysteries that don’t seem solvable.

Travel is a challenge I am not taking right now; after many months of recovering from major ‘events’, I feel like I’m on vacation just walking down the street or swimming in a bay with ease.

Wishing you well, Dear Reader – ‘Til next time.

A Little Friendly Competition

Dear Reader, I began this blog as a release from the stresses of cancer and to let others know how I was faring.  Nowadays, I am drawing more and writing more poetry, yet I am blogging less. Life continues, and I lack a serious writer’s discipline.

I sometimes mentally compete with friends or relatives who are more organized or who’ve lived longer, with or without a continuing cancer story; or who listen to more complex music, or walk more, read more, have cleaner apartments,  or laugh more than I do.  This often boosts me into action. I read somewhere that we are most influenced by the five people in our lives with whom we have the most contact.  Lately, this translates into healthy living, finding a craft and an art that suit, beautifying home and appearance (when possible), staying engaged in communities, and mainly creating and re-creating a sense of calm and peace during these turbulent times.  Living with a what is considered by the medical establishment to be incurable has propelled me into the need for peace above all.

At this ‘late age’, peace includes much reflection, some grieving, and forgiving myself for having made many mistakes as a daughter, sibling, friend, wife, ex-wife, parent, and grandparent.  Peace also extends toward strangers,  politicians, and others who seem to be acting in ignorant or cruel ways.   If  God is All That Is, then we all are ‘in’ God and we all have a reason to be here. I now call “cruel” what others call “evil”.  Cruelty toward self and others – haven’t we all partaken?  Even the Dalai Lama actively forgives himself for his slights against others.

This past month, I have been ‘keeping company’ with Marion Woodman, through her remarkably accessible yet dense and rich psychological study entitled “Addiction to Perfection – the Still Unravished Bride”, so, in a way, I am competing with all her analysands.  I want to break from a trot into a gallop toward embracing life and being in my body and vulnerable-yet-strong.  I am weaning myself from too much tv and internet news and praying for the health of beautiful Earth, our very first Feminist, who speaks up for herself through climate instability.  Dear Reader, I send you love, and know I am grateful for your readership, although I rarely reply to your written responses.

 

Fell Into the Chocolate Well

Dear Reader,

These past few months, I have been full of thought, yet not writing, perhaps fearing I’d say something odd or untrue or simply foolish.

The holiday family reunion was one big blessing – long enough to bare our imperfections and fulsome enough to shine light on our love for each other.

Back home, the holidays-excuse for buying chocolate was that friends were coming over. When they didn’t, and the chocolate in the cupboard whispered ‘I’m yours’, I ate. Hence I extended my prolonged recovery from the flu a few days further. So many lessons to learn, and sometimes I am a slow pupil.   There’s a little rebel in me that could be an ally, if and when I get her out of her cute little pink dress and put boots on her. The little pink dress rebel thinks, ‘No one will know. I can get away with this’. The lady with boots on might, instead, write a persuasive letter to the editor of a local rag. So, chocolate, I officially wish you adieu until at least next winter.  I can find new ways to rebel, like writing a stinging folk song or doing tai chi at the bus stop.

To be alive and reasonably well in 2017 – This is a dream I barely allowed myself to hope for in 2012.  Perhaps you, too, feel how miraculous it is that, even with wacky traffic, and global weather instability, and daily fears shouted from the media, we still are here, able to dream, to hope, to reach out to each other, and, sometimes, even to feel how we all are One with the Indescribable.

I still don’t know how or why I am alive, but at least I know it’s part of something bigger than I can perceive, and it’s definitely not just to eat more Chocolate.

Sending you love, Dear Reader.

Add Bedbugs and Stir?

Last month, I ended up in emergency on a Friday night, with a grave mystery threat: what turned out to be a strangulated indirect inguinal hernia. This had struck me ‘out of the blue’,  about a week into the new chemo pill regime. No rest for the sick’ed?  For some reason, my body lasted a day and a half, all told, ’til the actual operation.  I could’ve died, due to a genetic flaw that I had lived with all my life. The general surgeons did a brilliant job, and I recovered easily and well and was released from hospital four days later. A perk, during those days of discomfort, deprivation, and many procedures, was observing, through the only window,  a seagull family on the hospital roof deck.  How brilliant they were at planning, cooperating, adapting, coordinating, and ‘having each others’  backs’.  The inclement July weather delayed, but did not daunt, their scheduled flight lessons for the ‘children’.  By the time I was released, I was enchanted by all five of them.

About a decade ago, Ani Di Franco recorded a melody that accompanied a Utah Phillips story about a man who was supposed to, but didn’t, die- until, of course, he did.  Maybe lots of us unconsciously live with this same scenario. We know it’s gonna happen sometime, and maybe it already almost did – even more than once – without our knowledge.  Maybe a good physical way to deal with this uncertainty is to keep doing our best to and for our bodies, so that, if a crisis strikes, we’ll be somewhat ready for it. I do my best to take care of maintaining an underlying level of decent health, ‘just in case’. Comes in handy.

Two years ago, for instance, in the midst of a cancer crisis I found myself in a second one. An army of bedbugs, having migrated from who knows where in my building,  had happily encamped in my home.   I mobilized my body-mind and went to ‘war’ on the critters, apologizing to them all the while for my human race’s having created their scourge in the first place, by eliminating many of their natural predators.  I washed, dried, threw out, monitored, searched,  and otherwise did my best to destroy the bedbugs’ ability to live and procreate within my ‘borders’.  Finally, they did expire, with the  expert help of a bedbug-fighting company.  I felt exhausted yet triumphant. No little blood-loving insects were gonna get me personally or interfere with my chemotherapy regime- even if the species did deserve to remain on the planet in bearable numbers.

Where did that reserve strength (or resolve) come from? God knows.  Maybe it’s similar to the vigour with which those parent seagulls followed through with their obligations, sleep-deprived and underweight as they were.

Summer now truly is ‘in session’. The seagull family- even the ‘runt’ – most likely is  cruising city skies.  Maybe one was eyeing me and my grown son yesterday, as we gazed at it from a damp beach towel.

Come what may, there’s much to enjoy, including writing to you, dear Reader.

Waltzing with Cancer

Mantle cell lymphoma still takes centre stage, and I was angry and fearful for a few days. Radiation had markedly reduced, but not obliterated, the tumour.

With the help of friends and family, I changed my attitude and looked again at the diagnostic report. Odd how a new perspective helps one see better.

All else on the scan seems to have been stable for the past two months.  My gracious oncologist had offered the choice: ‘Have fun, take a gamble, and enjoy your summer, or begin the medication a.s.a.p.’ He leaned toward the latter, and so did I.

By the good graces of his advocacy in March, plus a compassion program for patients, plus decent insurance and the clinical trials company policy, I now have the ‘real’ pills.  I have joined thousands of people who take anti-cancer medication ‘indefinitely’.  Yes, I am waltzing with cancer, and, once again, I am tempted to close my eyes and be led, but that way lies difficulty, so I am asking that cancer at least be polite and share the dance floor.  Even with physical and travel limitations,the results of a four year cancer waltz plus present medication,  I much prefer being incarnate to being in a vase, not able to complain OR give thanks.

Recently, I learned from a specialist that immuno-modulatory substances – even too much vitamin C or D -can stimulate cancer. I also learned that lymphoedema is exacerbated by certain yoga poses and that walking through cool water is excellent. Once again, I need to modify the regimen.  The new medication creates a new watch-list. First, I am to avoid foods that thin the blood – and there are many, even walnuts and grape-seed oil. Second, I must take care to avoid any cut or scratch or bump.  Third, I am to be on guard for possible headache, bleeding,  tingling – the list is long, and possible events scare me, yet I have been through this before.  Long live hope – and a soupcon of ignorance.

Dear Reader, I now look up at a new learning curve regarding enjoyment. How do I enjoy, within new limitations, “Life Appreciation 101”? Yesterday I chatted on the bus with an adorable boy of about eight years.  We covered topics ranging from Instagram to garter snakes and buying island eggs on the honour  system. Certainly, chatting seems a pleasant community service option at present.

Tomorrow, I and a friend take a little day cruise on a converted paddlewheeler. Only the Cosmic Planning System knows what’s in store after that, other than many medical appointments.   Pema Chodron writes that we help ourselves when we learn to be comfortable with uncertainty.  I can live with that.

 

 

Let’s Hear It for the Basket List

Fluid times call for airy solutions. Buckets weigh a fair amount, even when empty.  They are made for carrying solids or relatively heavy liquids. Buckets often are made of plastic or aluminum – not the most cuddly  of materials.  Bucket lists seem to demand solidity and determination.  I choose, instead, to create a basket list. Baskets are relatively lightweight and airy. They leave lots of room for ins and outs, for changing ones mind with the changing times. Baskets are ‘Easterly’ and remind one of April bunnies and gathering nuts in May, peaches in July, or pine cones in November.  Baskets allow the little stuff, stuff of less importance, to fall out the bottom or get wisped off the top. I love my basket list.  It looks like a clump of dandelion puffball desires and is subject to change, based upon realizations that come with age.  First comes dancing to the Beach Boys, then a river day cruise, and now Irish monolithic stones.

Here’s to eternal Basket Lists, hoorah, hooray.

Flyin’ with Brian

Decades ago, I sat in a yoga pose and smiled as I contemplated a scene in which the heroine does yoga while letting her newly painted toenails dry.  A few years later, I watched that scene while sitting in a movie theatre. It was part of a Jamie Lee Curtis comedy.  Today, during morning floor yoga, while the Beach Boys explained “That’s Why God Made the Radio”, I found tears on my cheeks and the realization that ‘This is the always accessible Now that we sometimes call Heaven on earth.’  I felt music healing my bodymind, then remembered that I needed to turn off that millet cereal I’d left cooking on the burner.  It was all good and all in good time – until the phone rang.

Is this a multi-tasking universe, no matter which era we live in?  Possibly so, yet multi-tasking without devices is a world away from multi-tasking with them.  I can enjoyably sweep and talk, or cook and dance, but add one telephone or email, and it’s Fun Over, Fun Undone.  I’ve tried talking on the phone with friends while cooking. I get burnt food and a disjointed conversation.  This is not progress.

Flyin’ with Brian Wilson is more enjoyable.  Music again heals the cook,  doing so this time in a yoga and millet party of one.

 

Thus Far

What did I do right while I was on the clinical trial placebo?  Maybe I did what so many of us do in order to live as well and long as possible, given our limitations. If all that good stuff is a pie (a sugarless one), the wedges are something like Body -sleep/food/exercise;  Mind – friends/community/creativity/adventure/learning; and Spirit -communion/prayer/reception.

As of today, I feel well and am awaiting a CT scan, blood test, appointment with my oncologist, and clearance by insurance policies and pharmaceutical company to begin taking the actual pills that I thought I was taking.

Basically, I now am in “standard of care”, which seems to mean I’m in line for medical appointments like everybody else.  I have been without treatment since April, so hope and discipline are in charge of me now.

Perhaps we all can benefit from assuming that cancer, similar to many chronic diseases, is always ‘around the corner’, and that we have the right and responsibility to discourage it.  It appears to spring from too much inflammation over time. We can do our best to avoid chronic inflammations – from poor diet, lack of sleep and exercise, and intense mental stresses that interfere with our natural stop-go systems of rest/repair and action/building.

I soon will be branching out, into other subjects, dear Reader.  I never could stick with “cancer”, anyway.  Certainly, one blog will be ‘lazy ecologist’s meanderings’, and another will tackle “ageism”, which I perceive in political campaigns and in the media ‘everywhere’ – especially in North America.

Here’s a taste of what’s to come – a sort of prosey-poem:

Happiness Is Called to Court

Happiness, We are given to understand that you have been claiming your existence, with no supporting evidence.

As yet, we have received no documentation regarding your assertion – no tweets, no selfies, no videos of celebratory activities – not even a photo of your most recent dinner table dishes. You appear to exist with no witnesses,  no corroborating evidence.

With no hard copy, electronic update, social network posting, or even human witness, your existence lacks credibility.  Happiness, we don’t know what to do with you. House arrest seems to make no difference for you.  Until further notice, we reluctantly release you, while we confer amongst ourselves regarding how to more stringently apply the continually evolving Happiness policy.   Please be aware that, even if true, your existence is no excuse for lack of community service.

Sincerely,

Committee of the Whole, Conventional Wisdom, Inc.

 

The Joke’s On Me

This blog began its life with the topic of living with cancer and hoping it would go away. The posts then morphed into cancer plus philosophical meanderings and a few one-liner, semi-wise sayings. Last week I learned that, to the surprise of my oncology team, and the happy shock of myself and my children, I had been on the PLACEBO – and doing very well – for approximately eighteen months, until a tumour grew.  The joke’s on me!  For eighteen months, I coddled that pill bottle, kissed it, kept it the exact temperature on the instruction label, took the pills at a certain time and in a certain way.

Happy shocks are still shocks.    Many lessons to ponder here.  To be continued, dear Reader,  when I gain a bit more equilibrium.

Some of This May Be True

I have friends in high places. They’re called birds.

Living well with cancer through all seasons is the new black.

Is water the elixir of life?  Are we, therefore, actually composed of the elixir of life?  Is the search over?  Hooray!

Is Second Innocence the real fountain of youth?  Are we actually full of Innocence?  No more Botox? No more micro-dermabrasion?  No more trying to pass ourselves off as young on the outside? Is the search over? Hooray!

A rest is as good as a change.

A nearby, loving sibling is good medicine.

When afraid, I  sometimes start pointing to everything I see, saying, “This is good, and this is good, and that is good…”, and so on.  Soon, I feel more confident.

I stopped eating – at least intentionally – cane or beet sugar, about three months ago. I don’t need to eat any more sugar. I am sweet enough- and so are you, dear Reader.

I still like honey and maple syrup. They don’t grip me like a vise, as do cane and beet. A day without cane is a day with less pain.

Cancer is not actually a gift, yet sometimes I conceive of it as, the outlandish deliverer of potential gifts.  I want the gifts, and I am asking the deliverer to kindly leave, for at least several years, so I can enjoy these gifts.  I am getting a kick out of being alive, and I want more. Just think – If I had died three years ago, I would have died not yet appreciating Gilbert Gottfried, or the music of Queen; or Paul Dano, or Justin Trudeau, or  Republicans of integrity, or the joy of eating sushi with brown rice. No sarcasm here.I don’t do sarcasm. Irony, yes; sarcasm, no.

I like contemplating “the regression of the disease”, as opposed to its conventional “progression’. Did I create this phrase? I aim to experience, once again, regression of the disease, as I have twice before.

The non-fiction book “Malignant Metaphor” gives insights as to why we tend to fear, avoid, pity, and/or disrespect people who are dealing with cancers.  Cancer is one big receptacle of our era’s fears, as other diseases have been in human history. We do not know, and we may never know, how cancer sometimes regresses.   I live with the intention of keeping my body/mind open to this possibility.  I believe that my cells are innocent and they want the best for me. Some of them love me so much they are willing to die for me, and that’s a good thing.

For me, there is no enemy, no battle, no invasion. There is no cure, no war. There is no fight. There is no full understanding.  There is only, as says Eckhart Tolle, acceptance,  approval, or, at best, enthusiasm.

Vitamin C is mysterious and friendly.  I like drinking it in crystals, dissolved in fruit juice.  It may help, and it can’t hurt.  A little bit of something, though, can be better than too much.  I have paid the price for overdoing: kale, sunshine, exercise, turmeric, and trying to control ‘the course of the disease’. I only can live as if river-rafting,  remaining as vigorous, appreciative, and aware as possible.

I can be confounded, but I cannot confound. Only the Great Spirit and/or spirits that move us all can do this.

I welcome your comments, dear Reader, and I hope that to have clicked the right buttons on this blog to allow you to post them.