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It’s such a weird thing, thinking about death. Not death itself, necessarily, but having a realistic understanding about what will likely kill you, is especially strange. It’s fodder for visualizing what this body’s end might look like. It’s something humans like to do, isn’t it? Prepare for the future? There’s nothing comforting about knowing, but there is something motivating in its eventuality. Quality of quantity. That’s my new mantra.
Mom snapped this blurry pic at my birthday dinner at ZeroZero in SF. LOL and SORRY to my beautiful sister for posting this. She's not always that cray looking, I swear.
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Don’t worry I’m still alive. It’s been over a year since my last post. Apologies for the radio silence. I’ve just been living that normal 26-year old life, you know, the one that’s full of fabulous career opportunities, glamorous cocktails and spontaneous adventures. Just kidding. I’ve actually just moved into my sweatpants. I have lots and lots of tumors again, and they are all up in my abdominal muscles, severely inhibiting any and all dreams I have for a rock hard six pack.
It’s not all bad though, I’ve been on disability from work for the past few months now, and it is becoming a truly transformative experience. For the first time ever, I have time to reassess my life and start living in a way that (1) will ultimately stop giving me stress tumors (2) is spiritually satisfying (3) is full. just full. Because, up until now, everything has felt half-lived. Probably because I had approached all opportunities with the fear that cancer is going to just slap it out of my hands.
At the risk of sounding very Los Angeles ‘new-agey’, I’m totally in the middle my spiritual awakening. I’ve run the gamut on alternative healings. Mostly out of my desire to control my cancer, but also because I’m an enthusiastic and experimental gal. I’ve done crystal healings, acupuncture, ayurveda, bio-resonance therapies, chakra cleanses, homeopathy, reiki healings, qigong, infared saunas, and have eaten any and all things that claim to be anti-cancer. On any given evening you could probably find me mediating near my salt lamp, or lounging on my bed with a castor oil pack on my abdomen, all whilst googling shamanic ritual healings on my phone. Some practices have stuck with me more than others. More on that later.
I know I sound a little bit like a stereotype, and I probably am, but I’ve never felt better. I just spent a weekend in San Francisco at my sisters, and in a delicate moment between sleeping and consciousness I felt something shift inside me, like I all of a sudden learned how to love myself. I don’t know. That just feels like first, and most important step, not just to health, but to living fully.
I Can't Sleep
I'm wondering if this should be a blog about insomnia rather than cancer, since it seems to be the only affliction that is causing me visible discomfort. I don't think there has been a day this month that my eyeballs havent felt like they needed to be peeled back up after every single blink.
I found a 3.5cm mass on my abdomen almost a month ago and began the same routine treatment, but this time the plan is to take steroids forever. I am in purgatory, again and possibly forever. I've resigned now to the idea that I will never be rid of cancer and I will be chronically afflicted with the fear that death, disfigurement and dependency are forever walking a few steps behind me.
This is my fate and there is no slowing it down, because that darkness that slowly creeps behind me, it moves tirelessly, and I... well I don't.
Here I am, ready to bring summer to it's final conclusion. I'm eager as all hell for the weather to cool and the leaves to change. It's always the onset of Fall that reinvigorates my anticipation for "beginnings"; much more so than new years. Perhaps it's a nostalgia for school, or maybe it's just that so much has changed this past year. I've moved out, moved in, met amazing people, gotten sick/better/sick/better, done a lot of great things and done a few fucked-up things.
I move very rarely, so settling into a new home brings up many questions about my future, which is something I am always reluctant to think about since Cancer. How can I know that I'm in the best place for me. Am I living my life in a way I know I wont regret? Who can and will be in my life throughout future bouts of illness and health? On a broader scale, what the fuck do I want to do with my life and who in their right mind would care to figure it out with me? Sometimes I settle on my past mistakes, on faults and terrible coping mechanisms but only briefly, as I remember all of the good that I am capable of doing.
Without trying to sound too melodramatic, everyday scares me a little more than the last.
So, what now?
re-reading this is probably one of the more masochistic things I've done this month.
"How astonishingly (here I must premise that illness, as far as I can judge in so short a time, has relieved my mind of a load of deceptive thoughts and images, and makes me perceive things in a truer light),--how astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world impress a sense of its natural beauties upon us! I think of green fields; I muse with the greatest affection on every flower I have known from my infancy--their shapes and colours are as new to me as if I had just created them with a superhuman fancy. It is because they are connected with the most thoughtless and the happiest moments of our lives. I have seen foreign flowers in hothouses, of the most beautiful nature, but I do not care a straw for them. The simple flowers of our Spring are what I want to see again."
Keats 1821
Everything Will Be Alright
It's been a while since my last post. Why?
I've been doing a lot! I went on vacation, tapered off steroids (hooray!) and immediately got new tumors (face palm). Whatever. I've been trying to enjoy good times while they're here, and moreover, i've been trying to avoid self-reflection, for fear that it will drudge up unnecessary anger.
For the past few months I have absorbed myself in distractions, focusing on anything and everything other than myself. I think that's the way i'd like to go about living life, but cancer will always force me to take an occasional step back and re-evaluate if I am where I want to be.
I guess it's that time for me.
I don't really think that I'm ready to "get right" with myself, though. I'm too angry at my body and all of it's fundamental failures to be content. There is something really disheartening about a 24-year-old body that can't sustain itself without medication. That's why I take to individualized sports with such gusto. Being able to literally climb my way to the top of a mountain, or master a head stand in the middle of a room provides me a much needed reminder that I'm capable of strength.
So, even though my WBC is dropping every day that I'm off prednisone, I can know that my body will constantly surprise me. I just have to take the bad with the good. That's what they say, right?
I climbed a fucking mountain. What did you do last week?
I'm a drag
I wanted to come to some sort of conclusion for this post, but I can't. I've been trying to articulate to myself, and I guess to you, why things are amazing some days and really fucking shitty other days.
And I mean amazing in an emotional "I'm in love with life" kinda way, and really fucking shitty in a "I can't hold a normal conversation with anyone because I'm too distracted by my whole body tremors"… kinda way.
I think I'm too sleep-deprived for this tonight. I guess I'll crawl back into bed and bitterly watch my dog and everyone else in this house sleep soundly through the night.
Don't worry, I'm going to take my overly-stimulated hormonal complaints somewhere other than this blog. Like a therapist's couch?
I have exchanged sleep for raspberry smoothies, staring blankly out my front door, and journaling. If I wasn't exhausted all the time, these quiet moments in the morning would feel incredibly healthy.
Two years ago today I was horseback riding in Griffith Park with J, celebrating my entry into adulthood/graduation. It was one of the best gifts I had ever received. I loved that with her, I could finally do all the things in Los Angeles that I had wanted to. Two years ago, I was eager to see what I had to offer the world, terrified, but ready to become a 'real person', because up until graduation, I had thought my life pretty unreal.
It's two years later, and I'm hoping that I can get that eagerness back and instead of trying to become a 'real person' I'm just trying to become the person that I was before I had cancer.
Responsibility
Here I am. Finally at a fucking point in my life where I actually feel capable of pursuing a future. After a lifetime of doubt, insecurity and missed opportunities, I have arrived. And maybe illness got in my way a little bit, but maybe it helped me get to this other, better place. I think I've decided to stop hating my cancer, and start to recognizing it as a source of strength.
Prioritizing and compartmentalizing my life A.C. is a really strange thing. I had half-expected to be one with the ether of the universe or have other worldly knowledge, and I don't. Not even a little bit. But what I do have is a constant reminder to re-evaluate my purpose. And lately, that's been giving me a stronger foundation for every decision I make.
I recently read an interview between Gwenyth Paltrow and Ellsworth Kelly and Gwenyth (we're on a first name basis) said she didn't believe in accidents. I hated her instantly. If everything is on purpose, then my illness was calculated, and she was a bitch for telling me that I deserved cancer. This is, of course, a result of me being incredibly self-involved, but my point was that any doubt that the world was anything but complete chaos put me into a frenzy, because I didn't want to be responsible for my illness.
That's the one that I'm still working on.
Sure. Can I replace it with puppies?
Young Adult Oncology
Found this little gem here. Picked out the chunk on the psychosocial effects of cancer.
"Perhaps the greatest difference between patients in the adolescent/early adulthood age range and other ages is in supportive care, particularly psychosocial care. Adolescents and young adults have special needs that are unique, broader in scope, and often more intense than those at any other time in life. Cancer therapy causes practical problems in social arenas. The dependence of adolescent and young adult patients on peer-group approval poses greater challenges when confronted with a diagnosis of cancer. Self-image, a critical determinant during this phase of life, is compromised by many of the adverse effects of therapy, such as alopecia, weight gain or loss, mucositis and dermatitis (acne, mouth sores), bleeding, infection and contagiousness, susceptibility to infection and need for isolation, impaired sexuality (intimacy, impotency, tetratogenicity risk), and mutilating surgery. Other challenges include the loss of time from school, work, and community and the financial hardships that occur at an age when economic independence from family is an objective. A wide range of financial challenges occurs in the age group. In addition to the health insurance challenge described above, there are the usual limitations in affording life, much more once confounded by the costs of cancer treatment. There may be guilt if not attending to these responsibilities or stress and fatigue if trying to keep up a semblance of normal activity. Partner relationships are tested by the strain of the cancer diagnosis and its therapy. Whether a partner stays in the relationship is challenged by fear of relapse or infertility and may be influenced unduly in either direction by guilt or sympathy. Those contemplating having children may fear passing on a genetic predisposition to cancer. Medical professionals are often poorly equipped to deal with the psychosocial challenges within the age group and are often stymied by the need in these patients to increase compliance, reduce stress, and improve the quality of life during cancer therapy."
Lovely. Welcome to adulthood, Corinna.
Livin' Life
I haven't posted in a while, but it's because I've been out livin' it up, all wild-like. Really, I have.
Exhibit A: I rode a mechanical bull in silky pants. (NOT at Saddle Ranch. Don't assume those kinds of things)
Exhibit B: Enjoyed a home-cooked dinner with friends in my yard.
Exhibit C: Made a really gross healing soup that resembled this.
Exhibit D: Undid any good the healing soup may have done, and ate this.
Exhibit E: Got community acupuncture and instantly relieved all of my digestive woes. No joke. There is a much more elaborate story here, but I'm not ready to go public with it because it involves farts and naps.
Mostly, I've been trying to keep myself as busy as possible. I'm filling each day to the brim, hoping that those inevitable moments of overwhelming fear and isolation occur less frequently. And they do (occur less frequently) when I'm constantly surrounded by amazing people. They also occur less frequently when my tumors shrink. Which they are TOTALLY starting to do! They aren't completely gone, and my blood work isn't stellar, so I can't start tapering off steroids at this point, but next week, it's goin' down. Literally.
Employee photo day at work, and day 1 of my increased steroids. Aint no thang but a chicken wang. Look at all that swag.
Acceptance is not giving up — far from it. But like a prisoner in handcuffs, you only waste precious energy by trying to wriggle your way free. With cancer, the best way out may just be patience.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/life-interrupted-fighting-cancer-and-myself/
