The waiting room and the aftermath.
It is worth noting the enormity of pre and post treatment times. Not the gap between cancer treatments, that’s not what I mean. That’s a fairly peaceful place, wrought with life and living. I’m speaking of the immediate anxiety fuelled lead up to the unknown treatment event, and the inevitable fall out just as its finished. These are both tricky places and I’m still without all the necessary tools to keep from drowning.
Being a practitioner of various body work disciplines and a meditative soul one may assume that I have it all covered. The cancer charities offer classes that are not so dissimilar to all the things I already practice on a daily basis, but somehow that’s not enough. Or rather the overwhelm from both sides of the cancer treatments is similar to the petrified horror a friend related to me about watching a Tsunami sweep in. You have no time to act. The water is moving at an inconceivable speed, if you’re lucky, as she thankfully was, you can find a place to hide from the storm. A place not guaranteed to save you, but its all you have.
And sometimes the emotional water will take you. Irrespective of how peaceful your moment of yoga or breath work was, in the next you are upside down, swirling in abject fear. Its taken me a while to see the pattern of it. Through the mastectomy and now radiotherapy there is a commonality, albeit different in terms of how the body is affected. I now understand, up close and personal, an accelerated version of the fear all of us have for the unknown when facing our futures. And the shuddering effects of post traumatic stress response after a cataclysmic life changing event. Its just polarised in my particular journey. But we all know this land, don’t we?
As I write I can feel the weather changing on my horizon as the time draws near for me to start chemotherapy. There is a strange new rustle in the leaves of my psyche. My waking from sleep now comes from a sensation in the pit of my stomach. The storm is brewing. And yes for all those who want to tell me to go into nature or breathe or do yoga. I am. It helps like a pair of sandals in a torrential downpour. Footwear, but only just. This will take me whatever I do.
There are no techniques for us sensitive souls that can help us bypass the feels. I know a few who seem to shrug and get on with it, wandering through their cancer lands with no apparent fear. I’m sure they are as bewildered by my tides as I am by their dessert dry stoicism. We each have to navigate in ways that suit our temperament. This is the only path I know of. And as much as I may distantly admire your ability to not be ripped apart. I have to continue on my track, where hard won positivity is rolled up with messy reality.
I will keep documenting the journey for you and for me. Its a long one this next one. Six rounds about 3 weeks apart. Each round will bring the same crisis in different flavors. I’m scared. And yet I also know you will keep on sending out lifelines and offer soft towels to dry my battered bones. I live in hope that I may find more relevant navigation kit when I start the treatments. I suspect each round will offer as many opportunities for growth as it offers challenges.
Such is life.
