Today is my birthday… Yay! I had a blog ready about my experience in the hospital but it needs to wait because I have an overwhelming urge to be thankful.
First, I am thankful for my friends and family who have showered me with love from all around the world. Seriously, it’s the best medicine… I asked Bruce the boob doctor and he agreed. Okay, I didn’t, but it’s something I’m sure he would. Just like he would approve of his name which I would have told him had I not been in “oh shit, I’m having surgery on my boob in half an hour” mode.
Here is what I’m really grateful for: hoping this is a very expensive and scary wakeup call to action for me or what I like to call “okay universe, I get it!”
What cancer has given me: total and complete paradigm shift. All those things I’ve been thinking of changing (which I’m sure helped make me a cancer greenhouse to begin with)… I have no more excuses. In fact, if I had to sum it up, that would be it. I can no longer use excuses… FOR ANYTHING.
Rationalizations: forget it. Can’t rationalize cancer. You can figure out how to fight it, how to make your body a anti-cancer zone and how your mental and emotional states can contribute to your all around health and balance… but rationalizations, forget it. And so, I find I can’t rationalize anything.
One thing that happened to me after the shock wore off of having cancer was evaluating my life. A natural stage is to be “Blah blah blah ( a lot of statements basically saying poor me)……….. and, now I have cancer!” You can whine all you want and feel sorry for yourself, but it doesn’t change the fact you have cancer. You can’t be a victim and fight cancer.
So I had to make a choice and because this is a huge thing, it had to be made. Either I fight like hell or try to rely on coping devices that no matter how natural they are for us are lame and make us a passive character in our own story. And that’s what I’m doing. I’m figuring out what I want my story to be. So all my mistakes, they are mine. It doesn’t matter who said what or did what or didn’t do… I own it.
Same with blame. Cancer doesn’t care who you are, I have found in my research. Yes, if you have a history, you are more susceptible but I barely had any. No breast cancer at all. No place to hang the blame card.
What I can do is look at the last few years and realize that it’s not a coincidence that I have developed cancer now. Here’s the ingredients I think led me to become this greenhouse of ill; no sleep, massive amounts of stress (99% created by myself with a superwoman complex of not asking for help and thinking I need to carry things all by myself), trying to please everyone and ending up not pleasing anyone, especially myself. Most of all, not being true to myself or following my instincts. Oh yeah, and I also ate tons of red meat, drank like a 17 year old gay sailor (don’t know what that means exactly but it makes sense to me) drank massive amounts of coffee and if you looked at my overall diet, it would be in a pro-cancer diet book (very acidic: more on that later)
The biggest gift I have is the present moment. When I was going being prepped for the surgery, I looked at my adm sheet and it said “wide incision.” I asked what that was and the nurse said “they keep going until they don’t find anymore cancer.” Well, that’s what this whole journey is. It’s test after test after surgery after test… and you just keep going until you run out of cancer.
So, it’s impossible to live in the future and ridiculous to live in the past. Because you just don’t know. For instance, I still have my lymph nodes… for now. Two were taken out during surgery and now are being tested. I'm going in today to find out about the more intense tests of where other cancer might be... everytime I walk into a doctor's office it's an answer to something with leads to another test. So I have a choice: go insane or just go with the flow. I choose flow as insanity hasn't worked well for me in the past.
So my friends, I ask you to do this: think of 5 reasons why you love yourself (yes, it’s self-helpy but indulge me, I have cancer… or might still have cancer… or could be cancer free at this moment), forgive someone who has done you wrong (don't reach out if it's not the right thing, but in your heart) because everyone is doing the best they can and having that anger and resentment floating around inside hardens your heart, I'm convinced of it. And then drink some stars for me.
They are testing my liver, so I am detoxing and can’t enjoy any champagne right now. But here’s something I learned zonked out on Vicodin and watching travel shows with the kittens. Champagne was invented by a monk named Dom Perignon (yes, seriously, or so says Rick Steves) and when he made his discovery, he ran down the monastery stairs and said “Brother’s, you must join me. I am drinking stars.”
So, please drink some stars for me. And, I’m glad you were all born too!
xoR
Next time: who let the staple gun into the OR or What the hell happened on the fourth floor?
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