Lift. Carry. Step.

Hi everyone,

It is 5:46pm as I start this post and there is still light in the sky! Yay, for the light staying longer. I am watching my hummingbird friends come to the feeder that hangs right outside of my bedroom window. Hummingbirds have always brought me tremendous joy and it is one of those rare things I have in my life that never fails to send a little thrill up my spine when I see or hear one. I feed them religiously at both my houses.

This week has been interesting. I have been focusing on finding and putting together my pack of healers. My dear friend, Julie (who I did my Waldorf teacher training with and is a non-FB user) wisely told me a couple of weeks ago that is is me who makes the medicine whole. This statement has become one of my mantras. It has helped me embrace the wholeness of this journey. It is not just black or white, alternative cancer treatment or conventional cancer treatments. For me it is a combination, I will even call it a balanced approach, at lest for who I am. So...

I had my first ever acupuncture treatment and the woman treating me noticed several blocks in my body. She suggests that we first work on those blocks before we begin the chemo support and cancer acupuncture. I agreed to let her treat me aggressively, she explained that there are generally three ways to approach a condition with acupuncture and three general healing reactions to accompany the level of treatment. It breaks down simply to least aggressive, moderately aggressive and very aggressively. Wow that is a lot of usage of the word aggressive...

Anyways, my the first treatment, which included cupping, scraping, acupuncture, and herbal heat pots placed on the backsides of both of my breasts, let's just say there was a deep expansion into some very old emotions. I got pissed. I was a walking tea kettle full of boiling hot water after my session.

My mom received a lot of that direct steam, and it was really good, even though it was yucky and awkward and uncomfortable and super freaking hard at first. She and I are in the midst of working on, and through, a whole bunch of stuff that I know will strengthen, and help to authenticate our relationship even further.

I went with my daughter on her class nature walk and was really surprised at how winded I got. I didn't like that much at all. I am so used to being strong and fast, it is quite humbling to feel weak and slow. I am feeling drawn to try Tai Chi. I have seen it a lot, but never tried it.

When we moved to Fremont, CA when Sylvan was six months old, we spent our days around Lake Elizabeth. So did so many other people including groups of older folks doing Tai Chi. I watched, fascinated at the patience these people were demonstrating. The only thing I do that helps me slow down like that is Eurythmy. Now, being in Cancer College, I think it may be time to give Tai Chi a try.

It is really amazing to me how full my week can get when my main focus in nourishing and nurturing myself. My days are formed around various doctor's appointment, both east and west doctors, and somewhere in between with my anthroposophical healers falling into a category of their own.
I am currently practicing eurythmy for about an hour a day. I seriously do three-fold walking for a long time.

Three-fold walking is essentially a walking meditation. I learned it from the dear woman who is teaching me different curative eurythmy moves. Three-fold walking entails lifting your foot, carrying your foot, and stepping your foot. Lift. Carry. Step.
The meditation that I use is to think spring, summer, fall, winter. For me it goes like this: lift (think spring), carry (think summer), step toes down (think fall), and step heal down (think winter). And on to the next foot. I do that for a while. Like a half-an-hour while. It goes really quickly.

The woman who is teaching me these eurythmy moves told me that Rudolf Steiner had a beloved friend who was diagnosed with breast cancer. He suggested that she do three-fold walking for an hour a day. Oh, Steiner, you crazy cat....but, whatever, I'm three-fold walking it up over here for 30 minutes a day. As the chemo progresses, three-fold walking may be my biggest form of exercise each day. Perhaps I may one day soon, find myself doing it for an hour a day. I'll keep you posted!

My son is gone on his big, fourth grade overnight field trip to Ft. Ross. He is almost as tall as his most awesome teacher, Sylvia, who I know is enjoying her self something fierce camping out with her class tonight! Thank you Sylvia for all that you do and taking such good care of my shining star.

My daughter had her first day of gymnastics today and LOVED it!!!!! She could climb the rope. I was so proud because that was always something I struggled with and it was a thorn in my side since my nemesis in elementary school could do it. I just did never had the upper body strength to succeed at elementary rope climbing.

I tell you these things to let you know that even with cancer, my life goes on. Not everything in my life can be about cancer. How Debbie Downer would that be?? That is just SO not who I am. I know it is one of the reasons why losing my hair scares me so much. A bald head pegs me an obvious cancer patient. Then people will know just by looking at me. Strangers will walk up to me and tell my about their loved one who had cancer and died. Yeah, people do that. It has already happened. As a wannabe therapist, usually I would enjoy helping someone process their grief. But right now, I want to hear about those loved ones that lived.

This morning, after all had settled down after the morning buzz of the people in my household going to school and work, I was left with just me and the cancer. It was a cold, gray sky and I was feeling the shift of the weather in my own body. I was wondering so hard about how my body can have these numerous and major blockages (says the eastern doctor) and cancer in various locations (say the western doctors), but I don't feel sick. The chemo made me feel sick, for sure, but before the cancer diagnosis I had said something that I didn't feel like I was at my regular 100% energy and mental level. I am shocked that I can have serious health issues and not really feel it. It makes me question everything about my own instincts and feelings.

As I sat by the window looking out at the sky today, I came to this thought. All this deep and serious questioning about my own sense of self, is like the sloughing off of skin that a lizard has to do to grow. Of course cancer is a death process. It is a process that is determined not by whether one lives or dies, but by how one grows and changes while staring death in the eye. So, even on the cold, gray days when I absolutely don't want to have cancer, I am learning to stare back.

Be well dear ones. Much love and light,
Georgia

First days of chemo

Okay, so Cancer College just got mightier. I am going for a PhD now. This is a darker and twistier journey than we all first thought. The PET scan has revealed that the cancer has spread, a lot. I will know more next week after my team (I now have a team of oncologists and radiologists) meets to discuss the best course of action for what the PET scan revealed. I guess the radioactive sugar can reveal a lot. I am not invited to this team meeting even though it is me that is bringing them together and me they are discussing.

My body. My liver. My bones. My breast. My lymph nodes. My life...

A dear friend listened to me bemoan the western medical system. "I am not whole to them. I am only the sickness. They don't want to hear that I am a mother. That I am here to help people. That I work with so many children. They don't want to know how much loss I have experienced the past year of my life. They don't want to connect emotions to sickness, that is not tangible to them."

She texted me later and said she was thinking about what I had said and she suggested that it is me that makes the medicine whole. Me. Yeah, me. That is where I first need to start on the wholeness thing. I feel like it did start to happen on the first sleepless night after the breast cancer diagnosis. I am not ready to write about that yet. I have tried to explain it to friends and I feel like they are hearing me, yet it is not coming across right.

Yes, I will. I will make the medicine whole. I trust this cancer has already made me more whole than I have ever been in this life. The fucking paradox...again and again.

And I will fight this and I will survive because I am a survivor. I will transform this into hope and light and love. I am in the abyss. Indeed, I have landed at the bottom. The chemo is coursing through my body. I just had to quietly make my way to the bathroom thinking I was going to vomit. Nope, just dry heaves, which are a million times better than actually puking. I will soon start to notice my hair on my pillow is no longer attached to my head. The nausea is almost constant, but mostly bearable with the meds.

I am not telling anyone about this blog yet. I need it just for me. In the wee hours when I wake with that tangy taste of almost vomiting and reach blindly for my anti-nausea pills, I know I have gotten my sleep and there is no going back to magic dreamland for me tonight. Trying to feel my feelings about all of this when nauseous is not a good freaking idea. It just increases the nausea, so I write for my own self. I write to pass the time and attempt to catch some of my buzzing thoughts without actually crying. It sounds stupid I know. I should want to cry a fucking river right now, but crying seems to intensify the side-effects of the chemo and definitely makes the nausea turn into dry heaves or puking. So, I write to gently vent off some of the strong feelings churning inside of me. Maybe I will find that crying until I puke is what I need to do. Not yet though, I have not yet discovered that to be helpful. So, I write. And I wait for the dawn of the coming day, where my babies will open their eyes and say, "Mama, I love you."