Perspective and circling

I was rear ended last week and perhaps the good thing about rear ending someone who has recently been diagnosed with cancer is that (in my case anyway) they might not sweat it. Yes my car needs fixing and going to the police station and calling insurance took up half my day,  yes my back and shoulders are sore but my girls who were with me are a okay (thank you car seats) and we are all alive. I hugged the lady who hit me, she was shaking, apologizing over and over and I told her, it's okay, they are just things. Things can be fixed and at the end of the day they don't matter as much as we think they do, beyond food and clothing and shelter to keep us healthy and dry and warm.

It is a little like cancer. Perspective. As far as cancer goes I have it pretty lucky. Low grade is in some ways better than high grade or heaven forbid aggressive. Caught relatively early and I had my colonoscopy yesterday and there weren't any lesions in my bowel or colon: also pretty lucky. Having my main tumor removed without complications already is lucky. *Possibly* not needing chemo also very fucking lucky. Being able to live without everything there is growth on right now - lucky.

This doesn't mean it feels easy or that I feel lucky. Even yesterday after the happy colonoscopy result I felt pretty numb, likely in part from the colonoscopy prep which involves over 40 hours without solids and crapping out about 30 cups of fluid followed up by getting a camera put where the sun doesn't shine (I will laugh about this one day but that day is not today) but also because whenever a test or procedure or call happens, it is there again. A reminder. Real. Something growing in your body that shouldn't be. Before the colonoscopy results could really sink in I got a call from my other doctor (I have a bowel oncologist and a gynecological oncologist) telling me she was moving ahead with scheduling ovary removal. Again good news(ish) but also hard, a reminder of what is still to come.

Every time I feel positive and well and like "by the grace of God I got this shit handled" I think that will be it. I will be strong and positive and happy each and every day until this is over with. I will be grateful and zen and drink my green juice and take my supplements and essential oils and pray and say my affirmations and see my acupuncturist from now until forever if I need to.

Until I'm not feeling that way anymore.

I had a moment of supreme irritation last week thinking ahead to the colonoscopy and again yesterday getting the call from the gynecologist where I felt so angry at myself about my emotions. About how I was feeling scared again. I'm incredibly grateful in a logical way for the positive colonoscopy yesterday, but the week before it really settled in that this was happening because they might find something else. 

I was mad at myself that I was feeling negative feelings again. But more than that I was upset because I realized that this process will continue until this is done and that makes me feel so, so tired and also beat down. I realized I will circle through  feeling like good will come from this, that I will be refined in ways I both knew I needed and in ways I had no clue and how beautiful that will be and between feeling not so redeeming things like anger and fear and general bitchiness and self-pity.

The harder parts of the circle seem to trigger another round of 'I shoulding' myself (I should be handling this better, I should be being more positive, I should be more grateful, etc., etc., etc.), followed by another round of mourning, needing comfort and burning some fears up.

I'm tired now, this week especially again but it's okay. It's okay to not always do everything well.

It's okay because I have been through this a few times already. I will lean into what is getting me through, continue on in this circle, and come around again to the top.

Giving thanks - even on the hard days when I don't feel like it. One of the things I'm leaning into.

Finding light

Today is the shortest day of the year and also the first day of winter. I crept out of bed before any of my kids and even though it was past eight it was still pitch black. Tonight it will be solidly dark well before we have dinner. I'm looking out the window at part of our forest while I write this, the trees all bare but their branches beginning to be lightly illuminated by the sky behind them as the sun rises. There isn't even enough snow to cover all the fall leaves where they lay thick in the wild parts of our yard. Trees don't have trouble with the stark stripping down and apparent death of this season, they thrive on letting things go to nourish what is coming next. It's not always so easy for us humans.

It has been two months to the day since I had an emergency appendectomy where they found not an infected appendix but instead a tumour that had ruptured my appendix and also some deposits on my right ovary.

It has been about six weeks since I found out exactly what that tumour was, a low grade appendicital neoplasm and also that the deposits on my ovary were mucousy which is how this tumour  spreads.

It has been five weeks since I found out from my amazing surgeon (who did everything right during surgery even though this is very rare) an approximation of what oncology would do.

It has been a week since I have met with one of my oncologists for the first time.

Here is what I've found:

It takes about two weeks, maybe a bit less for your mind to wrap your head around the idea that yes, this is happening to you. You are really allowed to feel sad or mad or anything else you want about your diagnosis during that time even though there are worse tragedies going on in the world, because, well you just are.

It takes about a week (for me anyway) after it all sinks in to get incredibly fed up of thinking about life without you, so I wrote about it because that helps me process it and shake it off, but also my husband gave me this.

It takes about one week of wearing this elastic band with one hard snap each and every time I thought about life without me in it until I didn't really need it anymore. (Idea from Kris Carr's book, Crazy, Sexy, Cancer Survivor).

If I am having a bad day, I put it back on but mostly now it is this:

One day at a time

Putting your big girl panties on

Being held up by the prayers and encouragement of those who love you and a God who calls you beloved.

Because it takes about zero days to realize how much you love your life, and by that you mean your family, your friends, your faith, your very own self, even this often very broken world. I think this is what we call blessed; when you have all of this, so dear to your heart that you have such gratitude, despite what ever else is going on. So you suck it up, you breathe them in. You absolutely get drunk on everyday moments like brushing your girls freshly dried hair and saying I love you and eating dinner together around the candles.

You revel in moments that you no longer take for granted like waking up alive and hearing your prognosis is good. Because it takes about zero days to realize that to survive you have to look for the light, each and every speck of it, especially during the darkest days of the year.