cancer and friendship

Fear of Happiness and the Nuclear Bomb

Happiness. It’s not found in nature – do bees, birds and skunks seem happy or just carefree? Perhaps there’s a powerful connection between freedom and joy. When we find ourselves free from major responsibilities we find peace easier to come by. After the following came back from my CT scan report I found my mood became less jovial and more edgy. I’m afraid of the protocol for hopefully solving this latest tumble down the rabbit hole of metastatic breast cancer:

“New moderate focal uptake within the L4 vertebral body concerning for progression of osseous involvement from PET/CT 4/12/2019. Diffuse sclerotic osseous lesions are otherwise not hypermetabolic.”

My CT Scan Report

I begin radiation treatments Tuesday for the tumor on my L4 vertebrae and in all the treatments over near 6 years since diagnosis, I’m afraid. But so many people have had radiation and come through just fine. Why such a fear of a very common treatment?

My fear of radiation began long ago in my childhood. After much soul searching into why the looming treatments scare the crap out of me I arrived at several interesting conclusions about the connection of fear and happiness.

We age and as we doubt our own hopes making the world a better place- it becomes simple. It’s a risk to take redemption to begin to see the hope where we can see darkness in the forest instead the earth calls us to see its light.

I think back to picketing against McDonell Douglas‘ huge multi billion dollar contract with NASA for what would become part of the Star Wars program begun by President Reagan’s administration. We held up our signs against nukes, U2 blaring in the car on the three hour drive home from NASA In Satellite Beach to Miami Beach – “Bullet the Blue Sky” was the song coming from the speakers in my dad’s old Celica. That song and it’s ominous countdown are etched into my memory, as are the chants of “We Shall Overcome at the end of the protest.”

I remember seeing pictures and documentaries on nuclear weapons and I think my ingrained fears about radiation causing cancer has kept me from utilizing this protocol until now.

In my dreams

I see my father in my dreamscape standing in a cool forest as I run to him not as an adult but a child. I’m afraid and I’m screaming, “no daddy! no not the bombs not the burning bombs!” Just in time I reach him before the blowback reaches me like you might have seen in film of the Bikini Atoll atom bomb tests. Then he gathered me up in his arms like a baby and we fly up without any propellant. He whispers something I cannot recall before he deposits me in a nest and disappeared leaving me safe but helplessly alone.

Is there ever going to be a time when my cancer doesn’t leave me alone? Alone in both senses of its meaning: isolated and diseased. This last week my friend told me that a relationship I’d hoped to develop wouldn’t happen. The friendship will end before it begins. She’s lost too many people to cancer in the last several years abs she cannot deal with more pain.

Where’s my happy place?

I feel okay. I have no idea when I will die. But I do know this – I also have enough on my plate but not enough human interaction- have we all gotten so used to isolation because of the never ending Covid lockdown that we will become used to doing things anonymously and alone?

I hope not, I have some frightening days ahead of me. It’s too bad I scare people away from my life just because of metastatic cancer. But her honesty is appreciated. At least I know why I haven’t seen her in six months. What’s everyone else’s excuse I’ll probably never know. Not my current friends, few though they may be, but all the ones who disappeared and left me on my own. I know they read this blog. I hope they know how afraid I am now after nearly six years of treatments.

Will I find myself in a happy place again? Or will happiness become like my mother coming into my room at night seeing my light inside. “Put the boom down and go to sleep!” Connecting fear to fun our parents do their best for us but etch away at our carefree souls for our own safety at a young age.

We thus begin to avoid risks and take fewer chances. As we get older and our responsibilities and the depth of our love becomes more important we take less risk, more work and find less fun offerings in our day for fear we cannot meet our obligations.

Do you see where I’m going? Certainly you can relate to what I’m experiencing now and what I experienced as a child leading to fears I couldn’t relate to pinpointed events until my dreams ripped a hole in my own time space continuum.

Meanwhile wish me luck.

Help – or, the musing of a magic mountain Wonder Woman

She’s not your usual human being. She’s a humane being. One single letter – e – at the end of a human changes everything. If there were more humanes, we humans would suffer less at the end.

That letter means everything. So, should you have any ideas of how to help or should you like some help, Raven’s cottage by the sea could be a place to deposit yourself or some help.

There’s an intensity to Raven’s life story. No half baked cakes, no give up, no matters of inconvenience. People of love come to our lives only once in a while. Their stories are so truly amazing they inspire by simply being. They’re not embarrassed by anything you could say, do, excrete, or eat. They’re accepting of differences and invite them into their own lives. Their kind lived on the fringes of our planet until recently. There wasn’t a place for them to ring in new seasons for us or to take the soul from the dying by the hand and help to bring them gently to the place no one of the living can possibly know.

I picture her standing on the shore of the River Styx waiting for the boat to peek out from the fog – no one for her to see as she above all understands what limits are – and her boundaries and boarders create room for us to trust her either the most important part of life – after birth – which is death.

Death isn’t discussed in my part of the world – but perhaps it would if more soul midwifery were performed and more discovered a way to find comfort without stress and guilt of leaving people to mourn so many of us can leave this pain body behind like an old cloak.

Here’s her post reaching out for some assistance. There’s a great bit of information on what she offers her clients at her free retreats to pamper people with cancer who are in or out of treatments. People who need to feel loved, touched, and like a human being. Far too often we forget, because of fear and guilt, they it’s okay to need. To need a quiet place to heal and to feel.

I think even if you don’t live anywhere near Wales, her stories alone are reason enough to visit her blog and share your thoughts. She found me on my blog – and I’m glad she did. If you can buy one of her cool gemstone pendants on Facebook every little bit gives her the resources to help one person at a time with the loving kindness that shines with every word she writes. Even if you just read I think getting a little something from her spirit is enough support to encourage her to keep on going.

Heroes are everywhere.

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I need help. There I said it! I run a cottage retreat offer free breaks for cancer / end of life patients. Im a soul midwife end of life companion and advocate for anyone who needs me. No charge free. Therapies visits support all free. Im also a wedding and funeral celebrant this service is…
— Read on ravenwordsmith.wordpress.com/2019/11/07/help/

Absolutely Late, Lately: Adding up the Moment(s) of Terminal Cancer

Everyone’s got the right to question the respectfulness of someone who’s perpetually late. Or do they?

I recently commented on a blog post with regards to feeling disrespected by people who don’t respect his time because they cannot arrive on time. Ignorance of individual consideration for specific situations never whispered beneath his indignation. My question back to him: perhaps there’s a few reasons that have nothing at all to do with you at all. Some people have limitations and one of those may be effecting someone very close to you either now or in your future: people with metastatic cancer.

Time Stand Still

In several blog posts, I raise points about what changes with a metastatic breast cancer diagnosis. My self inquiry never ends with the conclusions of the posts. I still question the change from (t) time=unknown to t=0 (death=0) due to the incredible number of factors associated with our mortality. The factors are further confused by the many interpersonal relationships in our lives. It’s in those intersections between people one question stands out. It’s a question that no self respecting breast cancer blogger won’t eventually ask themselves publicly.

Probably more self deprecating than self respecting, looking back on my four years here on WordPress reveals a number of mentions of this particular affectation. The most well- meaning of us with metastatic breast cancer finds themselves running behind the clock more than we’d like. I think I may have come up with a couple of reasons, not excuses, as to why we’d get sent to the principal’s office for our tardiness.

1.”It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” (Lewis Carroll, Alices Adventures in Wonderland)

Most people enjoy the freedom to make plans. Normally everyone lives without having to think much about plans they make day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year. With terminal cancer, one lives on less than 24 hour notice. If you have a diagnosis of MBC or another metastasized cancer, you’ve probably had plans for the the day, and for which you have had to send the dreaded text or make the embarrassing call to say, ” I’m sorry I can’t make it, ” or “I’ll be two hours late.”

Why? There’s no time to catch up with yourself, looking at the current moment wondering how I got here and wanting to drink in all of what’s surrounding me. I can’t quench a thirst that’s infinite yet has an absolute end somewhere in sight. Trying to grab ahold of everything I drop my minutes like rain in a thunderstorm and I cannot get them gathered back up around me into a reasonable explanation. Not a satisfying one to the party receiving my lame cancellation.

  1. Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-Day. And yesterday things went on just as usual.” (Ibid.)

Nothing being the same yet all things being equal, you’ll find out just how strange life can get in a split second. People disappear who you held dear and you’ll have no reason why. People who you never thought would come through in a pinch, do. And over the fullness of time new people will find a place in your life.

For me, many of those people are either ethereal online support friends, people who are older and for whom age has presented the question of death many times, people who have similar prognoses, and those who have also brushed up against death. Aside from my older friends and not knowing the lateness of my online friends, everyone else who has stayed the course with me forgives my lateness.

If the attention you have ran at a deficit prior to a cancer diagnosis, post diagnosis you’re probably in for a special treat. If you also suffer from fatigue, this seems like a dichotomy.

  1. We’ve no time to wash the things between whiles.” (Ibid.)

Theres now the phenomenal time travel that happens while I take entirely too long in the bathroom.

I spend hours on end with good reason in the brightest room in the house: the potty. I am engaged with the toilet straining against constipation, trying to stop it’s devilish alter ego – diarrhea, vomiting from chemo or any number of reasons, or for the more pleasurable bathing to relieve pain and taking time to relax and practice self care. Additionally finding better ways to wear my bizarre post chemo hair or to cover your my of hair; and, doing my makeup and drawing in missing eyebrows can take up hours of my life, however limited my time may be.

No one wants to look sick. But the less sick you look the more people doubt your level of illness. It’s a catch 22, but a fact.

  1. I forgot.

  2. I remember!

6.”Not all who wander are lost. If you don’t know where you’re going any road can take you there.” (Ibid.)

Wanting more time before it’s all over leads me down the rabbit hole into a place where I get lost. Lost inside a book, a song, a sunrise, a hug, a poem I’m writing, a memory, or a hope for something in a future that can at any moment be cut like a scene in an editors office from a films final print. I’m not lost on my path, though. It’s winding and it’s convoluted and full of time that I’ve somehow let slip by.

Measuring the importance of what I’m up to at one moment versus doing something pedantic like the dishes or the laundry. Writing my next sentence rather than sitting in the living room where my friends are and not having any reason to sit out there with four guys who love me and take me seriously although I’ve been late or a no show on many occasions to appointments with all of them.

One gets where I’m coming from because his constant pain keeps him pinned to the bed for days on end. One has attention deficit that’d knock any 5th grader off his Ritalin. One suffers the continual strain against depression. Ones seen too much to care about time as a concept but cares so much about the people in his life you can count on him in any situation with a one word text message, “help.”

  1. “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.” (Ibid.)

I’ve come to realize it’s so simple. If those who cannot understand make a little room to fit the different senses of what time we have to expend and not take it so personally, they may even learn something. My life before cancer was so filled with the stress of time and being punctual I have to wonder if it didn’t contribute in some way to my metastatic diagnosis.

Perhaps if I slowed down a little I might have even noticed my physical changes prior to the disease falling like a domino into stage four. But I won’t look back. I’ll simply look at the moment and breathe in all the possibilities right now has to offer. And I hope your time with me was well spent if you have cancer or not. I certainly respect your time as you read and even comment on my blog. It’s your gift and I cherish it.