So, it is done. My surgery is complete. The cytotoxic hardware has been removed from my body, and my last jagged scar has been reshaped to a gentler contour. My entire treatment path is now firmly behind me.
However, the Universe has a timing all of its own. In the same week I have surgery, my young niece is suddenly struck down with juvenile diabetes.
Through a fog of analgesia and bandages, I am excruciatingly aware of the magnitude of this diagnosis, stretching before her through all the years of her life. At the same time that I’m attempting to skip blithely away, leaving behind me linoleum waiting rooms and a succession of hypodermics, another person dear to me is entering this green-painted space. And in an enduring, not a temporary, way.
I especially feel for her for all the needles that are coming.
I have had many sharply pointed moments over the last two years. They often involve the disastrous combination of limiting food and water and then expecting to find a vein, plump, juicy and ready. I have been tended by a succession of faltering medicos, who pierce my body before losing their nerve and missing the target completely. I sense their doubt before they even begin and am never surprised when they fail repeatedly, leaving a trail of purpling pain variously up my arms, hands and even feet.
There is a solid inner wall somewhere in that moment of anticipation when the needle is poised, and only some of them know how to reach through it within themselves in order to make the necessary connection. I always know when someone will hit liquid gold on the first try. I can feel their inner guidance system merging with my body. It is as if they find the vein using a spatial sense that extends beyond their fingertips. They strike with confidence and certainty and usually cause little discomfort. I have often contemplated what this quality in my nurses and doctors is. Perhaps it is the ability to step through their own fear of pain and be fully present, fully engaged on the level of our common humanity.
Therein lies the difference between a physician and a healer. The very best, most precise, most advanced medical techniques will never be enough without the human ingredient of care, given simply from one person to another. So my hope for my niece as she starts out along a long road of medical encounters, is for treatment based on the very best of what scientific knowledge can provide, coupled with the true medicine of compassionate presence at every turn.
Sunday 31 October 2010
Monday 25 October 2010
Pink Ribbon Day 2010
"Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all." ~ Emily Dickinson
Thursday 14 October 2010
Surrounded by grace
"Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing and you were in the best possible place on the world for it - in a beautiful place of worship, surrounded by grace. Take this time, every minute of it. Let things work themselves out..."
from "Eat, Pray, Love", by Elizabeth Gilbert
These words resonated for me today. I read them while sitting in the hospital waiting room where I waited, jangled but hopeful, for biopsy results 18 months ago. I was there again today to meet the surgeon who will soon remove my chemotherapy port. This marvellous device, my “bionic vein”, has nestled inside my chest this whole time, so long that I’ve nearly forgotten it’s there. It is no longer needed, and I’m looking forward to farewelling this last vestige of treatment. Looking forward, and also looking behind me, reflectively.
I’m really feeling the 18 months that have passed, and especially the months devoted to recovery since the mastectomy. I was blessed with the space and time to be in my grief, ragged and deep and undone, and in my healing. Although at the time it didn’t feel like healing, I trusted that I was experiencing a transformative process, and not stagnating. It was overwhelming at times, and for months I was largely unable to attend to practical things. My GP tried more than once to give me antidepressants, but I wasn’t depressed. I was in mourning. And by honouring it, I found myself “…in a beautiful place of worship, surrounded by grace.”
I feel as if I’m closing a chapter softly behind me.
from "Eat, Pray, Love", by Elizabeth Gilbert
These words resonated for me today. I read them while sitting in the hospital waiting room where I waited, jangled but hopeful, for biopsy results 18 months ago. I was there again today to meet the surgeon who will soon remove my chemotherapy port. This marvellous device, my “bionic vein”, has nestled inside my chest this whole time, so long that I’ve nearly forgotten it’s there. It is no longer needed, and I’m looking forward to farewelling this last vestige of treatment. Looking forward, and also looking behind me, reflectively.
I’m really feeling the 18 months that have passed, and especially the months devoted to recovery since the mastectomy. I was blessed with the space and time to be in my grief, ragged and deep and undone, and in my healing. Although at the time it didn’t feel like healing, I trusted that I was experiencing a transformative process, and not stagnating. It was overwhelming at times, and for months I was largely unable to attend to practical things. My GP tried more than once to give me antidepressants, but I wasn’t depressed. I was in mourning. And by honouring it, I found myself “…in a beautiful place of worship, surrounded by grace.”
I feel as if I’m closing a chapter softly behind me.
Thursday 7 October 2010
Ridiculously happy
I am ridiculously happy today.
No particular reason, but my heart is soaring and my spirit is singing.
I’ve had a smirk on my face all day long. It started this morning, after a meeting with my boss who gave my project the go ahead. I had to excuse myself and go and smile hard in the toilet for a few minutes, because the degree of my smiliness was out of proportion with the result of what was actually a fairly mundane encounter.
It continued after a powwow with my new supervisor. For some reason he couldn’t sort out the lighting in the meeting room, so I was grinning about the hilariousness of the “mood lighting” encounter.
After another meeting this afternoon, more smiles. Left work early, sunshine still blazing all around me. The bus was late, commuters all around me were getting tense. My happiness bubble was intact. And so it went on.
And then I remembered something. On the bus this morning, I was listening to my ipod, when something unusual shuffled itself in to my aural space. I was nearing the end of my journey, so I didn’t listen for long, but I did shut my eyes and let the sounds swirl around me and soak in completely.
It was The Gyuto Monks of Tibet ~ The Jewel in the Lotus ~ A Guided Meditation for Healing the Heart.
I think it worked.
No particular reason, but my heart is soaring and my spirit is singing.
I’ve had a smirk on my face all day long. It started this morning, after a meeting with my boss who gave my project the go ahead. I had to excuse myself and go and smile hard in the toilet for a few minutes, because the degree of my smiliness was out of proportion with the result of what was actually a fairly mundane encounter.
It continued after a powwow with my new supervisor. For some reason he couldn’t sort out the lighting in the meeting room, so I was grinning about the hilariousness of the “mood lighting” encounter.
After another meeting this afternoon, more smiles. Left work early, sunshine still blazing all around me. The bus was late, commuters all around me were getting tense. My happiness bubble was intact. And so it went on.
And then I remembered something. On the bus this morning, I was listening to my ipod, when something unusual shuffled itself in to my aural space. I was nearing the end of my journey, so I didn’t listen for long, but I did shut my eyes and let the sounds swirl around me and soak in completely.
It was The Gyuto Monks of Tibet ~ The Jewel in the Lotus ~ A Guided Meditation for Healing the Heart.
I think it worked.
Wednesday 6 October 2010
I am rich!
I am rich!
Recently, while I was having treatment and healing myself, I wasn’t working. Through circumstance alone, I fell through a hole in the system. Not the one about women who don’t get diagnosed because their doctors think they are “too young” for breast cancer (yep, whistled straight through that one too). I fell through the other hole, the one about sick pay, superannuation, insurance. The safety net that’s supposed to pay the bills when you’re a diligent income-earning citizen who has happened upon a period of ill health. So we made do without - for a long time. It has placed our household in what I will refer to politely as “reduced circumstances”.
So I finally started back at work. Part time hours, but it’s a pay packet every fortnight. Suddenly it seems like we have fewer dollars than ever. Partly this is due to a visit to family which we couldn't afford, but went anyway because it was The Right Thing to Do. And partly it’s because of "acceleration". In order to go back to work, I have had to activate more energy. I am pushing a bigger flow of it through the physical parts of my life than I have for some time. Money is just an expression of energy. So it’s not surprising that it’s whooshing straight through my system like a dose of salts.
But I feel rich. I look around my life and I want for nothing. OK, so I'm itching for a new lappy (I'm visualising a pink one) and I would love to upgrade my iphone. But in my very centre I know this abundance – and more - is already coming to me. Even though the dollars seem to be limited this week, I have already connected with the wave of golden incoming energy.
Too easy.
It is difficult to explain the physicality of it, but it is a sensation I feel right in my very centre, in my solar plexus. Unsurprisingly, this is the area that governs our financial relationships with the outside world. It is also one of the areas that govern creativity in the realm of ideas, thinking, learning. And writing.
I am rich in many ways.
Recently, while I was having treatment and healing myself, I wasn’t working. Through circumstance alone, I fell through a hole in the system. Not the one about women who don’t get diagnosed because their doctors think they are “too young” for breast cancer (yep, whistled straight through that one too). I fell through the other hole, the one about sick pay, superannuation, insurance. The safety net that’s supposed to pay the bills when you’re a diligent income-earning citizen who has happened upon a period of ill health. So we made do without - for a long time. It has placed our household in what I will refer to politely as “reduced circumstances”.
So I finally started back at work. Part time hours, but it’s a pay packet every fortnight. Suddenly it seems like we have fewer dollars than ever. Partly this is due to a visit to family which we couldn't afford, but went anyway because it was The Right Thing to Do. And partly it’s because of "acceleration". In order to go back to work, I have had to activate more energy. I am pushing a bigger flow of it through the physical parts of my life than I have for some time. Money is just an expression of energy. So it’s not surprising that it’s whooshing straight through my system like a dose of salts.
But I feel rich. I look around my life and I want for nothing. OK, so I'm itching for a new lappy (I'm visualising a pink one) and I would love to upgrade my iphone. But in my very centre I know this abundance – and more - is already coming to me. Even though the dollars seem to be limited this week, I have already connected with the wave of golden incoming energy.
Too easy.
It is difficult to explain the physicality of it, but it is a sensation I feel right in my very centre, in my solar plexus. Unsurprisingly, this is the area that governs our financial relationships with the outside world. It is also one of the areas that govern creativity in the realm of ideas, thinking, learning. And writing.
I am rich in many ways.
Monday 4 October 2010
The Human Condition
So after my huge blog debut, it seems that no one is reading.
I have had 5 page visits – ever! I suspect they are mostly my own, as I tweaked. Along with a couple of drop-ins from North America – of the crawling kind, perhaps. Or maybe just more of my own visits, via some far-flung trail of servers. My understanding of that mystery called the internet is as gauzy as a real spider ‘s web. No matter, there is plenty of entertainment in speculation.
I find myself pondering that essential quality of the human condition: aloneness. Ultimately I am the only person inside my skin. With the rare exception of conjoined twins, where two separate people, two different consciousnesses, share connected bodies, we are all alone.
This aloneness connects us. We reach out to touch each other, to bridge the yawning space between us, to catch a glimpse of ourselves in someone’s eyes. Just as the internet gives me a glimpse of myself reading my own page, via a brief transfer of energy, a trail of light from machine to machine across the globe, so too do we light each other’s lives.
I have had 5 page visits – ever! I suspect they are mostly my own, as I tweaked. Along with a couple of drop-ins from North America – of the crawling kind, perhaps. Or maybe just more of my own visits, via some far-flung trail of servers. My understanding of that mystery called the internet is as gauzy as a real spider ‘s web. No matter, there is plenty of entertainment in speculation.
I find myself pondering that essential quality of the human condition: aloneness. Ultimately I am the only person inside my skin. With the rare exception of conjoined twins, where two separate people, two different consciousnesses, share connected bodies, we are all alone.
This aloneness connects us. We reach out to touch each other, to bridge the yawning space between us, to catch a glimpse of ourselves in someone’s eyes. Just as the internet gives me a glimpse of myself reading my own page, via a brief transfer of energy, a trail of light from machine to machine across the globe, so too do we light each other’s lives.
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