Pull Up a Chair

Lulu and Louise

When I was first diagnosed with cancer, my friend Beth recommended that I look at the work of Louise Hay.  Louise Hay is best known for her book "You Can Heal Your Life".  It was on the New York Times best seller list for 13 weeks and has sold 35 million copies around the world.  Louise believes that our body and mind are connected and that we co-create our "dis-eases", as she calls them.  We unconsciously do this by carrying resentments, old hurts, and thoughts that literally make us ill.  On some level we don't love and accept ourselves.

In her book, Louise lists numerous illnesses and conditions related to different parts of the body. She details the thought patterns that supposedly go hand in hand with these "dis-eases".  Louise feels that if we become more aware of our thought patterns, if we completely accept ourselves, and if we change the background thought soundtrack that we continually play though our heads, we can reverse illness and experience greater health.

This type of approach is not without controversy.  What about little kids with cancer?  Did they really cause their illness?  Isn't this approach just blaming the victim?  What about the randomness of  things or environmental toxins?  All are good questions.  Do I believe that I caused my cancer?  I didn't even know that such a thing as tongue cancer frickkin' existed, much less that it could turn up as a part of my life!

That being said, studies show that the cancer patients who get support and who fight - who don't passively give up and accept defeat in the face of whatever hand is dealt them - statistically live longer and have better outcomes.  So, I figure, why not try to do as much as I can?  Radiation - check.  Support group - check.  Journaling - check.  Looking at what I'm eating and minimizing sugar - check.  Looking at my thoughts and reading Louise Hay - why not?

I watched Hay's "You Can Heal Your Life" movie on streaming video on-line.  The negative self talk in the beginning of the movie struck a cord with me.  It rang true.  Many people I respect and whose work I have read over the years like Christiane Northrup, MD and Wayne Dyer were in the movie.  After the movie, I went to the library and checked out the book. 

Regardless of whether or not Louise Hay's philosophy is true for everyone, the descriptions of thought patterns for cancer and for issues surrounding the tongue felt true for me.  I felt the despair and grief that was part of the cancer description.  I felt the lack of joy in my life with regard to tongue conditions.   I had been feeling down and "what's the use?" for a while.  Hay's book doesn't assign blame. I can't worry about if I "gave" myself cancer.  That's even a little beside the point.  Obviously, not everyone who gets depressed for a while will get cancer.  We are all doing the best we can in life.  What I did do was start to turn my self talk around after reading the book.  Because, again, why not?

My new mantra from the book became:

I lovingly forgive and release everything in my past. 

I choose to fill my world with joy. 

I love and accept myself.

And because I was worried about treatments and moving again to a new area:

I don't know what the future will bring, but I am very excited about it.

If you have anything on your mind that you are concerned about, try saying that last line.  You will smile in spite of yourself. 

I said my mantra on my walks.  I wrote it down.  I said it to the mirror.  I internalized it.  What happened was, in spite of everything that I've gone through these past few months, I began to feel better.  Something shifted in my thought patterns that seemed helpful.  I now feel lighter and more able to find joy in my life.

That brings me to Lulu...

Lululemon (check out the website) is a new joy and love.  It all started when my brother brought me an outfit from the NYC location for my birthday last month -  a cool yoga top, pants, and cover up.  He and my sister-in-law thought that having a great looking casual outfit would make me feel better at home, even if I felt tired after treatment.  I was really excited. I had lost weight and many of my old clothes were too big to wear.  Because of the weight loss, those new yoga pants looked really good on my butt.  Bootylishous even! 

My pants were "talls" and a couple of inches too long.  My brother said if there wasn't a store near me, he could get them hemmed back at Lululemon in NYC for free.  I checked the website and found a store right near where I got radiation treatments.  I had never known it was there. I took the pants in the next day.  It was instant LOVE.

The store had such a positive vibe.  It was so full of health and color and style and fitness, that I felt like a person who had slowly gotten used to living in the desert and then suddenly finds themselves in the midst of an oasis - the Garden of Eden without The Fall.  I've been back many times since.  This (click link) is their manifesto.  It feels good to go to a store that has as part of it's message: "Dance, sing, floss and travel." And "Creativity is maximized when you're living in the moment."   And: "Life is full of setbacks.  Success is determined by how you handle setbacks."  Plus, the clothes are really well made.

Every Sunday morning they offer a free yoga class before the store opens.  I used to enjoy yoga so I thought it might be fun to get back into it by trying a class at the store.  My daughter went with me the first time.  The class was so hard I thought I was going to cry.  Then I regrouped my thoughts.  After all, yoga is not about competing and every posture can be modified.  Yoga is about the union of body, mind, and spirit.  I began to think instead, "I just went through weeks and weeks of radiation - and I'm HERE!  I'm so proud of myself to even be here." 

This is what a class in the store looks like.  They move all of the center clothing racks out of the way.  It has been packed with over 20 people each week.

I went again this morning.  Postures that were way tough two weeks ago have become less fear inducing.  I'm happy to be making more choices lately that make me feel joyful. It feels good to give my body credit for how well I'm doing and to think positive thoughts.  At the end of class, the instructor said, "Go out and enjoy your day!  Be mindful of being kind, strong and full of courage."  A perfect message for me to take out the door.

Whether you are devoted to Louise Hay or diss her, whatever you have going on in your life --  do something or go somewhere just for the joy of it.  Because, well, why not?

Light tomorrow with today!    Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Small things

Is small the new big?

A few small things I'm grateful for today:

Afternoon sunlight through the trees.

Being able to see deer in the woods across the street from my house.

The fact that 70% dark chocolate is recommended as a good choice of dessert in the food section of the new book "Anticancer, A New Way of Life" by David Servan-Schreiber MD, Phd.

Any book illustrated by Maira Kalman.

The toilet paper roses that the people who clean my house make.

Rose colored glasses and my silver lining shoes. 

Because there has to be a sliver lining to this summer.

The fact that my husband is highly organized.

My pocket journal from friends that looks just like the framed original English prints on the walls in homes in Elle Decor.  Elle Decor and magazines in general.

Wildflowers.

Wonder

This is a picture of my grandmother's house in Virginia.  It's the place I go to in my mind when I want to feel calm.  It's the place I mentioned in an earlier post, Pennies from Heaven.  My grandmother died a number of years ago, but when I find myself needing comforting she's a person I turn to in my mind who I feel still supports me.

I called her Moonie. Her name went unquestioned until I was in fifth or sixth grade when I asked my mom, "Why do we call Moonie 'Moonie'?"  My mom said that one time when I was very little I had been crying in my crib.  My grandmother came into my room to comfort me and pointed out the window. She said, "Don't cry. Look. The moon is watching you." 

Months later when she was visiting again and I was starting to talk I kept saying, "Moonie, moonie."  My mom asked, "Who's moonie?"  I ran over to my grandmother and that's what I called her ever since. She was a special person in my life, and even now seeing a full moon reminds me of her. 

Last night, after my day at the doctor's office and finding out that I have still more cancer treatments to go through, I was so sad.  Marc was out of town and I just went to bed crying, scared and worried and feeling overwhelmed.  Around 4 am I was awakened by a light outside my window and on my pillow.  There was a bright full moon shining on me.

I opened the window and took this picture.  Seeing a full moon was both wondrously surprising and very calming.  I felt like it was a sign that things would be okay.  If something happens to you that feels magical, maybe it is magic. Go ahead and wonder. Or as Rumi put it, "Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment." 

I felt better all day today. 

Here's a song my brother shared with me that I linked in an earlier post, but seems fitting again: What faith can do

Photo credit for Moonie's house - Don Janak

gRADuate school

I thought I had gRADuated from radiation. I rang the bell, got my picture taken, and got handed a certificate.  My follow-up appointment was today. My radiation oncologist looked at my tongue up close and now he wants me back in for treatments next week.  He is concerned about a small area under my tongue.  There was a spot left at the end of radiation, about the size of a small cold sore, but he thought it would go away.  Instead, it has gotten a little bigger.  There is another lump under the skin as well.  He thinks this could be scar tissue from radiation, but he isn't sure. 

So I have four more treatments next week.  I know it's only four, but still.  They can't do many more because I'm about at my lifetime limit of exposure.  Partially, I'm really worried - and on the other hand I'm mad.  I'm ready to graduate already!

I'm visualizing graduating again, this time with a clear result.  Think positive thoughts and picture me with a healthy tongue again, able to eat things that are crunchy.

 

I took these pictures from a tiny bouquet a neighbor brought over.  I posted them to remind myself that some small things look beautiful when they are scrutinized up close and through a magnifying lens.

Close friends

A group of my close friends in Chicago send me a fabulous gRADuation bouquet. So beautiful I took dozens of pictures trying to capture it in different angles.  

 

The bouquet reminded me of the work of Laura Coombs Hills, an artist I have long admired, for her art and for her love of life and beauty.  Hills (1859-1952) supported herself through her designs and paintings at a time when few women did so.  She became known for her miniature watercolor portraits.

When her eyesight began to change in her sixties, Hills increasingly focused on larger pastels of flowers.  Instead of getting upset that she could no longer do the work that had made her reputation as a painter, she jubilantly shifted gears.  "I'm kicking up my heels on a pastel," she wrote in 1926, "It sure is bright."  If anything, her work got better as she moved into larger formats.

The page below is from an American Art Review article I had put in an inspiration file in 1996.  (Vol. VIII No. 3)  1996!  I must have really liked the floral in the bottom left and the others in the article, because, in general, I'm not much of a saver.

My favorite florals are the ones that look like she could have cared less about the containers the arrangements were in - she just focused above the vase line. 

This image is from a note-card set of her paintings now on sale at Barnes and Noble:

At a show in Boston in 1947, the critic A.J. Philpot said that while Hills had previously been known as the "Queen of Miniature Painters," she should now be known as the "Queen of Flower Painters."  He said, "Laura C. HIlls has always been in a class by herself.  Here she is eighty-eight years of age painting with all the enthusiasm of a woman of fifty."   I hope to be so lucky.

 

Here's to thinking bigger and bolder and brighter as you get older.  Here's to shifting gears with enthusiasm if you need to.  And here's to close friends to share the journey!

Thanks, girlfriends!  Can't wait to see you next month!

Full circle

Radiation ended last week.  My tongue is still sore and gets worse as the day goes on.  I still feel tired in the afternoon.  I'll make something to eat and then find it's more than I can chew at this point.  I worry from time to time if the tumor is all gone.  Is the spot that I can see cancer or scar tissue that is forming?

In a few more days I should start to feel a lot better.  They say you begin to turn the corner after radiation has been over for a couple of weeks.  Until then, the radiation keeps cookin' a bit.  On the plus side, I feel better than I felt a few weeks ago, my head is clearer since I'm no longer on meds, and I've been doing more working out.

Since radiation I've also done some soul searching.  I can't help think about what may have caused my cancer as I take steps to move forward.  I'm not looking so much in a "blame the victim" sense, but in the sense that there are so many parallels between when I had cancer before and now.  25 years ago I had a malignant melanoma removed from my leg.  It hadn't spread or anything, but it was hard to deal with at the time.  I still have a four-inch scar. 

Cancer takes years to develop and is often precipitated by a period of intense stress.  Back then I had moved from the Washington, DC area to South Carolina to be with my fiance (prior to Marc), and had called off the engagement a month before the wedding - right when the invites were about to be mailed.  It was hugely stressful.  Two years later, I had a new job, and an apartment in SC. I was engaged to be married to Marc when I got the cancer diagnosis three months before our wedding.

This time I had moved to Pennsylvania a few years ago, leaving good friends and job contacts in Chicago. I found a new job I loved managing a furniture store, only to have the store close two years later in a big "Going out of Business" sale with a liquidator.  It was really hard for me to see the store close. Slide show here: Store open and closed. My subsequent job in big box retail was stressful and required 60-plus hour weeks. I was facing two graduations and being an empty nester when I got the latest cancer diagnosis. 

Both times, I had not only gone through a period of stress in the not too distant past, but was also navigating a change towards a different future, first into married life and then as an empty nester. I'm glad I didn't stay single (or marry the other guy!) and I want my kids to cultivate lives of their own. It just seems like more than coincidence that I was/am in the middle of such a big shift each time. 

And now it comes full circle - in January we are moving back to the Washington, DC area with Marc's job.  I'm going back to the area I left before I got cancer the first time.  I've lost 20 lbs on the Oral C diet so I'm back to what I weighed when I got married.  I have no answers, but I'll keep working on insights and gaining wisdom.  In many ways, it will be fun to be back in the DC area again.  After living in five different states during the past 25 years, I'll be back.  I picture living in a condo where Marc can easily take the Metro to work, I can easily get to the Hirshhorn, and we can both easily walk out at night to talk, window shop and have dinner.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot

Bouquet - 3 ways.  Flowers from Joyce - thanks, Joyce!

gRADuation day

At the oncology center the big deal is ringing the bell at the end of your treatment.  Trust me, it feels like a big deal when you are the one who gets to do it!  Everyone claps and you get a graduation certificate.

Yay!  Treatment done!  I should be gradually feeling better and better.  I have a follow up appointment in a week and a half to see how things are going.

For a smile and a flashback to the 70s, try this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPYese-Hl8M

Treatment Eve

It's come down to the night they call "Treatment Eve" at the oncology center, the night before my last treatment tomorrow!

Beauty

I'm almost through radiation treatments.  Hopefully they will be done this week.  It will take a while to get my taste buds back and have my tongue not be sore, but still - ALMOST DONE sounds really good.

I'd been working on a post about my "lessons learned" or my "net takeaways" from all of this, when the doorbell rang.  A delivery guy with a beautiful bouquet from my son's girlfriend in China awaited me on the porch.  I got so inspired I spent the next hour and a half taking pictures of the flowers.

Studies of cancer patients have shown that those who feel loved and supported, and have been able to keep their spirits up, survive longer and have fewer recurrences than those who do not.  The immune systems of those who feel supported have more active NK or "natural killer" cells, a type of white blood cell that attacks and disarms cancer cells, than those who feel "alone, helpless or emotionally distraught".  (Anti-cancer - A New Way of Life, by David Servan- Schreiber, MD, PhD) 

I feel continually grateful for all of the support and love that have surrounded me the past few months.  It's been like discovering a parallel "The Matrix" movie world that was always there, but that I never fully felt or took the time to receive or take in.  I have been supported in more ways than I thought possible.  If you ever feel down or alone, consider the possibility that there is a whole network of support around you that you may not see at first - that you may not believe to be there at first.  Support is there for you.  I felt alone in the beginning. With all the support I've had I'm sure my NK cells now KICK ASS!  

"Beauty is the promise of happiness."      Schendhal

Thanks, Marc!

A big supporter of mine these past few months has been my husband.  I've been able to regroup, take time off work, and focus on healing because of his total support - and medical insurance through his job. The fact that Marc works for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission also helped with some of my fears about radiation.    

Before I began treatment, he did a thorough check of the radiation oncology department at the hospital.  Radiation accidents, where patients are given the wrong dosages or have the wrong body parts irradiated fried, happen.  The New York Times did an in-depth article in January on the subject, ominously featuring a tongue cancer patient who died from his treatments gone wrong.  In March, the NRC levied a large fine at the VA Hospital in nearby Philly because of errors related to treating 97 prostate cancer patients between 2002 and 2008.  It seemed to him that where I was going to be going had a clean record, the latest equipment, and good doctors as well.

But more than his job or background checking, Marc supports me personally.  Every day if I'm feeling tired or like I should be getting well faster or coping better, he tells me, "I know you're doing the best you can to get over this. I'm proud of you and I love you."  Most importantly, because I'm a visual person, he tells me, "You look really good!"  Thanks, Sweetie.  Happy Birthday!

This picture was taken my neighbor Rachel at their Memorial Day party shortly before I began treatment.