Not silent, just industrious.
I have been busy having my own little Ultimate Australian Adventure!
Monday, 15 November 2010
Thursday, 4 November 2010
Clear And Present Danger
One clear and sunny afternoon, I am hurtling home along the eucalypt-green corridor of the busway. I am listening to music, and checking in on my favourite online communities, when this song drops into my ipod (click play to listen):
I open a post from one of my breast cancer sisters. T is a delightful woman who I know to be witty, compassionate, strong, honest, funny and always completely supportive. As long as I have known her, she has been living her biggest life, seizing the day, and following her joy, and encouraging us to do the same. So I am shattered to read that she is has been diagnosed with secondary disease. A scan has revealed metastasis to her humerus. A very un-funny bone.
While many women are able to live with secondary disease for many years in relative good health, it is considered to be a terminal health condition, with the attendant physical decline and pain, life limitations, and the unfathomable anguish of knowing the sorrow that will visit your loved ones. I don’t really know what this diagnosis means for T, and for all the other beautiful women who face advanced cancer, except that it will distil the best and worst of life experiences into a premature timeframe.
As I sit there, stunned, staring out the window but not seeing the world rushing past, I am washed with impotence at the onslaught of suffering. Cancer spreads, a child runs in front of a car, a house burns down, a gun goes off. So many people in so many lives, all open to the scathing wounds of disease, grief, injury, personal tribulation, or acts of unspeakable violence. We go about our daily industry, completely unaware that our fortunes, our health, our most crucial relationships may be upended, suddenly and irrevocably. We teeter at the brink of our own vulnerability and none of us are immune.
Sorry for the hurt
Sorry that the destiny
Seems to be the ever
Clear and present danger
I open a post from one of my breast cancer sisters. T is a delightful woman who I know to be witty, compassionate, strong, honest, funny and always completely supportive. As long as I have known her, she has been living her biggest life, seizing the day, and following her joy, and encouraging us to do the same. So I am shattered to read that she is has been diagnosed with secondary disease. A scan has revealed metastasis to her humerus. A very un-funny bone.
While many women are able to live with secondary disease for many years in relative good health, it is considered to be a terminal health condition, with the attendant physical decline and pain, life limitations, and the unfathomable anguish of knowing the sorrow that will visit your loved ones. I don’t really know what this diagnosis means for T, and for all the other beautiful women who face advanced cancer, except that it will distil the best and worst of life experiences into a premature timeframe.
As I sit there, stunned, staring out the window but not seeing the world rushing past, I am washed with impotence at the onslaught of suffering. Cancer spreads, a child runs in front of a car, a house burns down, a gun goes off. So many people in so many lives, all open to the scathing wounds of disease, grief, injury, personal tribulation, or acts of unspeakable violence. We go about our daily industry, completely unaware that our fortunes, our health, our most crucial relationships may be upended, suddenly and irrevocably. We teeter at the brink of our own vulnerability and none of us are immune.
Sorry for the hurt
Sorry that the destiny
Seems to be the ever
Clear and present danger
It is our normal urge, when faced with evidence of someone’s suffering, to want to turn away, to escape the terrible details. We insulate ourselves from the fullness of pain in our midst, by ignoring it, by diminishing it with stereotypes, by drowning it out with distraction or noise. I am torn between turning away and turning up. In the context of online community, this is the difference between opening a thread and absorbing it and replying from the heart, instead of clicking away. Those true heart-felt words are a conduit of energy and support that reach into real lives. I hope that sometimes I am big enough to stand with another person in that place of their pain, and really acknowledge the truth of their experience, so that they can let it be. Our only defence against suffering is our acceptance. Our only weapon against our fragility is our love.
Sunday, 31 October 2010
Pointed moments
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.
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.
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.
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