feeling gratitude.
I'm watching a video by a woman very much like me who came down with the same disease as me around the same time, and had the same initial treatments. I sit here scarred and weaker but healthy and building back to fitness. She is in palliative care and going down with little hope of future. She's fifteen years my junior but looks older by that. She won't see my age.
I am so astonished I can still dream of camping and travelling and biking and kayaking and so on. I still can dream of working for income and living. I am feeling so deeply moved by this. And so much love and sorrow for those who aren't so blessed. I wonder, how much of this was my agency and could I teach the world? I mean, there was some amazing nutrition involved and I know the medical system completely disregards nutrition these days. They pay lip service to it using the same stupid home ec rules we learned from corporations in the fifties. But they don't actually include nutrition as part of the treatment or patient education. When is the last time someone explained how broth and garlic include the ingredients your bone marrow uses to make white blood cells? Why is that? They suggest various vitamin pills and factory formulations of sugar and fat and artificial flavours and vitamins, but you can't get so much as a fresh orange in the hospital.
So the more I listen to her, the more I hear how much she got too scared to face chemo. I know that fear, I felt it, but I did not give it a seat at the decision council. I can sit down next to it right now, at a whim, and feel the shiver over my body.
She, OTOH, let her fear drive her from treatment, and even now it is part of her decision making as she gets steadily more ill and picks and chooses her treatment options as though she had the medical experience to choose and wasn't working from ego, fear, and emotional subconscious. And she's dying because of that too.
I guess that's what people meant about my strength and courage. I couldn't really understand. All I did was submit myself to the doctors and let them guide the regimen. I said yes to everything, and then on my own, exerted what force I could to ensure proper self care. I got my rest. I balanced pain killers against pain tolerance. I stayed strict with my diet. I learned quickly that one misstep in food would cause my chemo to turn mean on me, but that with just clean organic sugar free low carb food, the chemo was most agreeable. Nevertheless, like the radiation, it did eventually impact me and put me through some suffering and the body always remembers. That is the fear that takes courage to deny, I guess. Or well, being able to say no to that fear and move yourself in that direction, to use discipline as one's courage, that's what people see and call strong and brave. I could sit and talk about all the cruelty that made me strong and all the novels that made me brave, but it never seemed extraordinary to me except in that I could not see it going on other people the way it was in me. I knew it was not ordinary, but extraordinary?
Not that it raises my value one whit, mind you, I'm still a member of the human race that's slowly strangling it's mother earth. I'm still all the faults and failings I ever was. But I guess I better understand how my own miracle of survival happened and why I still look towards another fifty four years of life in spite of how dreadfully sick I was. I was neither resistent to my doctors, nor passive to them. I took an active role in my own care on my own level, feeding myself carefully, paying attention to things like not exposing my neuropathy to cold because that was the thing that did the actual damage, researching everything so I could pay attention, and resting and staying cheerful about it. I did that by focusing on how fascinating the tech was. You could also focus on trying to be a cheer to others. I did that too. I tried to raise the cheer level whenever I could muster the energy. I didn't always, but it did give me a goal.
Well, anyway, I don't want to brag, I want to just feel proud. That's one reason it's here, not on facebook, LOL I did tell my husband but you know, he needs to be told because it's the only way that it becomes real. He's locked away in that special little head of his and only stories get through. So back to my day.
oh ok, quick mundane update. Stoma revision surgery was without complication and they let me come home, it's been 3 wks now I think? In 3 more I'm supposed to see the surgeon with it. It still hurts like an SOB now and then. I am trying not to stress it so my work load is light and it feels like I"m being lazy. So I work a bit too hard anyway. Today I'm smoking a chicken more or less as soon as I quit typing this blog. Yeah, so, I have work to do....
I am so astonished I can still dream of camping and travelling and biking and kayaking and so on. I still can dream of working for income and living. I am feeling so deeply moved by this. And so much love and sorrow for those who aren't so blessed. I wonder, how much of this was my agency and could I teach the world? I mean, there was some amazing nutrition involved and I know the medical system completely disregards nutrition these days. They pay lip service to it using the same stupid home ec rules we learned from corporations in the fifties. But they don't actually include nutrition as part of the treatment or patient education. When is the last time someone explained how broth and garlic include the ingredients your bone marrow uses to make white blood cells? Why is that? They suggest various vitamin pills and factory formulations of sugar and fat and artificial flavours and vitamins, but you can't get so much as a fresh orange in the hospital.
So the more I listen to her, the more I hear how much she got too scared to face chemo. I know that fear, I felt it, but I did not give it a seat at the decision council. I can sit down next to it right now, at a whim, and feel the shiver over my body.
She, OTOH, let her fear drive her from treatment, and even now it is part of her decision making as she gets steadily more ill and picks and chooses her treatment options as though she had the medical experience to choose and wasn't working from ego, fear, and emotional subconscious. And she's dying because of that too.
I guess that's what people meant about my strength and courage. I couldn't really understand. All I did was submit myself to the doctors and let them guide the regimen. I said yes to everything, and then on my own, exerted what force I could to ensure proper self care. I got my rest. I balanced pain killers against pain tolerance. I stayed strict with my diet. I learned quickly that one misstep in food would cause my chemo to turn mean on me, but that with just clean organic sugar free low carb food, the chemo was most agreeable. Nevertheless, like the radiation, it did eventually impact me and put me through some suffering and the body always remembers. That is the fear that takes courage to deny, I guess. Or well, being able to say no to that fear and move yourself in that direction, to use discipline as one's courage, that's what people see and call strong and brave. I could sit and talk about all the cruelty that made me strong and all the novels that made me brave, but it never seemed extraordinary to me except in that I could not see it going on other people the way it was in me. I knew it was not ordinary, but extraordinary?
Not that it raises my value one whit, mind you, I'm still a member of the human race that's slowly strangling it's mother earth. I'm still all the faults and failings I ever was. But I guess I better understand how my own miracle of survival happened and why I still look towards another fifty four years of life in spite of how dreadfully sick I was. I was neither resistent to my doctors, nor passive to them. I took an active role in my own care on my own level, feeding myself carefully, paying attention to things like not exposing my neuropathy to cold because that was the thing that did the actual damage, researching everything so I could pay attention, and resting and staying cheerful about it. I did that by focusing on how fascinating the tech was. You could also focus on trying to be a cheer to others. I did that too. I tried to raise the cheer level whenever I could muster the energy. I didn't always, but it did give me a goal.
Well, anyway, I don't want to brag, I want to just feel proud. That's one reason it's here, not on facebook, LOL I did tell my husband but you know, he needs to be told because it's the only way that it becomes real. He's locked away in that special little head of his and only stories get through. So back to my day.
oh ok, quick mundane update. Stoma revision surgery was without complication and they let me come home, it's been 3 wks now I think? In 3 more I'm supposed to see the surgeon with it. It still hurts like an SOB now and then. I am trying not to stress it so my work load is light and it feels like I"m being lazy. So I work a bit too hard anyway. Today I'm smoking a chicken more or less as soon as I quit typing this blog. Yeah, so, I have work to do....