I Am Special...and Inspirational

I’ve always enjoyed attention and feeling special.  Is it weird that one of the perks of cancer treatment is receiving lots of special attention?  Even getting my blood work done at the lab I feel special saying, “I have a standing order.”  That’s right, I’m a regular here.

With a lower dosage, I had no side effects in round two of chemo.  Six more rounds to go.  Both my prognosis and prescription allow me the specialness factor of being a cancer patient while mostly feeling physically well.  Meeting other patients who look sick, feel exhausted and have lost pleasure in food, I imagine that feeling special is not so special.

Friends tell me I’m an inspiration.  They’re surprised and delighted to see me looking so well, which makes me feel like a proud peacock.  We all like to see someone ‘winning’ and it’s easy to let cancer fall into the realm of win-lose, especially when it makes you feel like a winner.  But living and dying is not a win-lose reality, it’s just our human reality.

Though I think mostly people are responding to my ‘inspirational’ acceptance of my life circumstances.  On one hand acceptance is a choice that I am indeed choosing, and on the other hand it feels like a gift I am receiving.  I’m not putting effort into accepting my reality, it’s just happening.  Mom is accepting that she is dying.  Most days I am too.  This gift of acceptance allows our home and our time to carry a quality of non-anxious openness to whatever each day holds.

Of course, this makes it sound like it’s all idyllic.  Last weekend at a wedding I had an emotional meltdown, grieving that Mom will not be at my wedding and that all family gatherings will feel incomplete when she is gone.  The truth that she will always be present with us was not comforting in that moment.  I want her here in body.

This path is not easy, but acceptance and gratitude are what continually rise to the surface.  Life is winning.  Life is special and inspirational.

Me, Kirk, Davis & Mom at Point Roberts in April.

Life, Death, Sugar & Flour

Highs and lows from the past few weeks...

• A nearly perfect weekend at Hollyhock retreat centre on Cortes Island with old and new friends.  Sunshine, food that tasted like heaven, running into more old friends in the ferry terminal, and an inspiration-filled bus ride back to the Okanagan.

• One night of chemo hell.  I’ll spare you the details, but it sucked.

• Walking into Rhizome Cafe and finding it half-full with an assortment of friends.

• A celebration of appreciation for Mom at St. Andrew’s United Church in Enderby, including beautiful words, her favourite hymns and a cake with a pig on it.

• Consulting with a naturopathic oncologist who has helped me prioritize the overwhelming amount of natural cancer treatment info that is out there.

• Committing to (pretty much) give up sugar and flour.  Time to yank my sweet tooth.

The dosage has been reduced for Round 2 of chemo.  Half-way through this round - so far so good.

I’m appreciating a book called ‘Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death’ by Joan Halifax.  As my imagination warmed up, the following writing exercise became very powerful...

• “What is your worst case scenario for how you will die?”  Write from your most uncensored, uncorrected state for about five minutes, paying attention to physical and emotional feelings as you write.

• Repeat the exercise with the question, “How do you really want to die?”

Allowing myself to freely imagine my own death, especially in beautiful ways, has helped me to imagine beautiful ways of being with others in their dying.

Less fear.  Less sugar and refined carbohydrates.  More openness to death and to life.