Hola Amigos. I'm back. I've actually been back and feeling fine for about a week now, but have not blogged because what I wanted to say was not "ripe" yet. I think the whole idea is still a bit green, but I'll talk about it anyway. I'll start with what happened last time in terms of treatment. Yep, it was every bit as bad as I thought it was going to be. As enlightened as I am trying to be about this whole experience, I came out of that last one dripping wet and mad about what this is doing to my body. I thought, "is this really worth it??"
I respectfully questioned my doctor as to whether or not the toxic sludge being pumped throughout my entire system was really "vale la pena" (worth the pain) in light of the potential long term side effects of heart damage, osteoporosis and neuropathy. I wanted an evidenced-based cost/benefit analyis. My main question was: since my "sentinal lymph nodes" were clean, did I really have to have that fourth whopper chemo? To my surprise, he said "Nope." I guess he had just been following protocol by prescribing those initial four big ones.
As it is now, I will begin a different chemo cocktail and a smaller dosage, but given every Monday, for 12 weeks starting Feb. 14. I doubt very much that I will "love" the next go around, but my hope is to make peace with the present tense, no matter how tense my "present" may be.
I respectfully questioned my doctor as to whether or not the toxic sludge being pumped throughout my entire system was really "vale la pena" (worth the pain) in light of the potential long term side effects of heart damage, osteoporosis and neuropathy. I wanted an evidenced-based cost/benefit analyis. My main question was: since my "sentinal lymph nodes" were clean, did I really have to have that fourth whopper chemo? To my surprise, he said "Nope." I guess he had just been following protocol by prescribing those initial four big ones.
As it is now, I will begin a different chemo cocktail and a smaller dosage, but given every Monday, for 12 weeks starting Feb. 14. I doubt very much that I will "love" the next go around, but my hope is to make peace with the present tense, no matter how tense my "present" may be.
This brings me to what I really wanted to talk about. "Embracing the Full Catastrophe" is a quote from Zorba the Greek and the basis of a book I am now reading called Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn. This book gets at a question that I have held in my heart for a very long time. In the face of so much pain in our world and in our own lives, is there a peace that actually transcends our circumstance of suffering? I am not interested in some kind of mystical "other worldly" detached kind of peace. I am looking for a very incarnate and engaged way of being in the world (and in my own skin) that "embraces" all of what life is about in its pain and joy, its ugliness and its beauty. I'm not sure yet, but I think I might be on to something in the exploration of what this book calls "mindfulness." Here is a quote from the book:
"We practice mindfulness by remembering to be present in all our waking moments. We can practice taking out the garbage mindfully, eating mindfully, driving mindfully. We can practice navigating through all the ups and downs we encounter, the storms of the mind and the storms of the body, the storms of the outer and the inner life. We learn to be aware of our fears and our pain, yet at the same time stabilized and empowered by a connection to something deeper within ourselves, a discerning wisdom that helps to penetrate and transcend the fear and the pain, and to discover some peace and hope within our situation as it is, [here and now]."
Soon I will begin an eight week course of guided meditation. The roots of this tradition are Buddhist. Some of my Christian friends might be alarmed by such a thought, but I am not. I spent eight years in China and Hong Kong exploring the dialog between eastern and western ways of thought and I am convinced that "faith has nothing to fear from reason" (Martin Luther). This book and this practice are very western in that a whole body of empirical evidence suggets that when we listen deeply to our bodies and engage in our own healing, we get better faster. Aside from the physical benefits, I see this kind of meditation as deeply complimentary to my own Christian tradition. "Empowered by a connection to something deeper within" has everything to do with my faith in a God that loves us all more deeply than we can now understand. Besides, with my new hair doo, I look like a Buddhist, don't you think?I try not to waste too must energy "hating" anything because I believe that more is accomplished by loving than by hating. Even so, I still hate chemo. The big ogre with the big stick (former chemo) is being replaced by a smaller ogre that is going to hit me more often (the chemo coming up). I want to grab that stick and hit him back. I doubt that the way of "mindfulness" would recommend that, but I still want to. Here's me: breathe in peace, breathe out pain, fear, aggression...WHACK!" I guess I have a ways yet to go.
