Month: October 2024

Walking Through Cancer/Part 10

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

One Tough Old Bird

Nearly three years ago, I tripped on a towel in our bathroom and fell, whacking my head against the porcelain tub. I broke six ribs, had a pneumothorax, and a teardrop fracture in my neck.

It was my fault, moving too fast in an unlit room, I made a promise to myself: I can never fall again. Period. Well, “Promises are like piecrusts…” Is that how it goes?

Five days before my first chemo infusion, I made the same mistake. I had a fall that resulted in a significant fracture of my humorous (upper arm). OMG, I can’t believe my timing! I’ve started out in a sling and the orthopedist saw me yesterday. Because of the cancer treatments, we’ve elected to avoid surgery for now and let it heal in the sling for six to eight weeks.

“Marilea, the human body is a remarkable machine. It will heal itself if we are patient and let it. If you use the sling for the next two months, slow down, and use the time to rest, it will eventually heal itself. You will need to do regular exercises and maybe work with a therapist regularly, but I think we can avoid surgery, which is problematic at your age, not to mention your cancer treatments.”

“Thanks, Doc. I’ll learn to be patient and let my arm heal on its own. See you next week for a checkup.”

Ladies, have you ever tried to get dressed, pull your pants down to go to the bathroom, floss your teeth, cut vegetables or an apple, just live your life the way two-handed people do? It’s damned inconvenient. And slows me down, probably a good thing.

So here’s another lemon in my life: the broken arm.

Lemonade? It could  have been SO much worse. I could have had a concussion, broken a hip, compromised my legs and ability to walk. Walking, oh wow, that’s number one on the gratitude list. If that were compromised I might have just had to put everything on the cancer side of the drama on hold until I could walk again! So lots of silver linings to pay attention to and deeply felt joy and gratitude that it’s just a broken arm. Oh, another glass of lemonade? My ability to see all the silver linings and allow them to elevate my spirit.

The spiritual part of this journey is absolutely essential to holistically healing my body. My alcoholism recovery is the basis, of course, for all this healing and has saved my life. Minimal whining, endless joy and gratitude, A deeply held faith that life is unfolding for me as it was meant to. I’m in God’s hands. And however much time I have left on this earth, I will live it to the best of my ability, and accept, gracefully accept, God’s will for me.

Amen, and stay tuned for the continued cancer part of my saga!

Walking Through Cancer/Part 9

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

A Retrospective Musing

Cancer has taken away the life I lived before. Like a thief in the night, one day I was an energetic 70-something, fully engaged in the life around me, and then I wasn’t. But even before this disease struck, I worked at being spiritually healthy. And now, more than ever, it’s necessary for me to stay grounded in those principles. I am becoming an expert at turning lemons into lemonade. So, applying that metaphor to my cancer journey, I’d like to share a real-life example of how beneficial it is to maintain a positive perspective.

Here is a recipe for lemonade. But first you’ll need lemons. You can’t make this delicious fruit drink without the sour bitterness from the lemon tree. How you get from one to the other is not so complicated. Not if you want to live well.

Gene and I took a camping trip to Orcas Island recently. Probably just to prove to ourselves that we still could. Over the past thirty years, we have camped in some of the most horrible conditions imaginable: from near hurricane-force winds in the middle of the night that blew our tent off over our heads; to swarming black flies that sucked the living daylights out of me. But we were much younger then…

The first lemon on this trip was that I booked the 5:55 am ferry out of Anacortes. I must have been asleep when I did that. Wild horses couldn’t have gotten us to a ferry at that hour. So we showed up at 12:35 when I thought we’d be leaving.

“Sorry, but can’t you see the 5:55 am time on this receipt? Go wait in the standby line.”

“Thanks, pal.”

Lemonade? We made it onto the ferry.

The next lemon on our Orcas trip was our campsite. I knew better than to wait to the last minute to make a reservation. So in December of 2023 I secured a spot in Moran State Park. The last one available! I felt so lucky. But sometimes I think with cotton in my brain. Why was it the last one available? Because no one else wanted it, dummy Site #83 was sandwiched in between many other sites and the restroom, so there was naturally a steady stream of people on their way to the bathroom right through our site.

Lemonade from this lemon? We didn’t have to walk far to pee; and there was trash and a water spout right next to us.

Our tent that Gene hastily stuffed into its sack had broken poles, so we couldn’t put it together.  Gene jerry-rigged our back-up tent by raising it with a couple of walking sticks.

Lemonade? Gene gallantly offered,

“I think I’d rather sleep out in the open air anyway, under the stars. Haven’t done this since Ely in 1999.”

God Bless Him!

And so I come to the end of my recipe for lemonade. To reach a happy conclusion when life throws lemons at us requires some semblance of positive rationale-building. For every one of those lemons I could have thrown myself into fits of hand-wringing and anxiety. But to what end? An attitude and camping experience far more bitter than most lemons taste. So…my choice these days is to put a positive spin on whatever is happening. A worthy challenge.

Turning lemons into delicious, sweet lemonade beats walking around with my lips pursed from sucking on sour lemons. And we did prove to ourselves that we could still go camping, as ill and infirm as we are now. Gene is still nursing a broken foot. And I’m bone-tired from lymphoma. But we did it and survived, proud that we still could.

Cancer is one great big lemon. Not fun. But I’ve been tested before in my life and I’ve survived.

We only get one spin around the race track. Might as well try to make it a happy one. Beats bitchin’!

HALT

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

HALT Am I hungry, angry, lonely, or tired? A good time to pick up a healthy snack, count to ten, pick up the phone and/or take a nap.

Often when I’m angry or tired, for whatever reason, it’s best for me to lay low and not spread any negativity to those around me. These feelings are important for me to recognize, and I don’t want to deny them. But I need to guard with special care how I’m interacting with those close to me to avoid any collateral damage. Does that make any sense?

Walking Through Cancer/Part 8

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

                                           Preparing for the Big Day

I have spent a year with night sweats, my first symptom, not counting the white blood count that called for a hematology referral. The mouth sores began with a vengeance in April and have stopped. Just to try and keep them at bay, I gargle with salt and baking soda every night after I brush. Good dental hygiene is important with cancer patients. Don’t I have enough to deal with without also losing the few teeth I have left? J

And the mouth infections! In all my 76 years and with all my addictions, I’ve rarely had anything to prevent me from eating. I lost five pounds the first week and I can’t afford to. So I’m trying to avoid them.

They called from Fred Hutch yesterday and have to push my clinical trial back one week, to October  14.

“Do I need a driver every time, Kiana?”

“Yup”

“Well, getting a driver is not always easy. Gene will be in San Francisco on this new date. If I didn’t have a son in Seattle, it might be more difficult to find someone at the last minute. This is why I need you to give me a schedule for my treatments so I can give my friends options. They have lives, too.”

“I know, Marilea, and I’m sorry. But Dr. Poh needs to see how the trial pill works before she figures out how to schedule the infusions moving forward. And we’ll try to work around your week at Disneyland over Thanksgiving.”

“Thanks, Kiana. I know you’re doing your best. And I appreciate your efforts to accommodate me.”

After months of blood tests and bone marrow biopsies, I feel like a pin cushion. And now I’ll be a “holy” lab rat! “Clinical trial” is just an idea to me now; I have no idea what to expect. But I do know that the results will help future patients with my rare form of cancer. And helping others makes it all worthwhile.

I’ve lived with this uncertainty for about a year. How have I handled all the stress? First of all, I’ve been strengthened by my recovery, full of gratitude for the wonderful life I’ve been given, and this attitude keeps me grounded.

Life sometimes throws us curves, and how we respond to them begins in our head. It doesn’t matter what it is. I won’t even go into what a bad two years this has been for me, not counting the cancer. Just awful. And if I didn’t have the tools of recovery to work with, I’d likely be sitting on the pity pot whining about what a trial my life is. But to what end? How does that attitude solve anything?

I will use all these tests to make me stronger. Every day I pray to accept God’s will for me. My faith elevates me from all the stress and discomforts. I believe I’m going to be fine.

Stay tuned!

Progress Not Perfection

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

Perfectionism just keeps us stuck in being dissatisfied with ourselves. It isn’t possible for us to be perfect all the time. Trying to be perfect is a terrible weight around our necks. If nothing else, it’s a huge distraction from doing the recovery work we are called to do. Let it go. We are enough just the way we are. When we can make peace with that—and I admit that it takes a long time— we’re well on our way to an unexpected freedom!