ThevHealing Power Of Humor

From Hope for Today, April 6:

“…Today my sense of humor is a natural reflection of who I am. I experience the world through smiles and laughter rather than through bitter smirks. I share joy with others rather than seek company for my misery. I help others heal rather than attack them. I allow my sense of humor to unfold naturally, just the way it was meant, and I watch the wonderful results as my Higher Power works through me toward a higher good.”

Finding my sense of humor has been a reflection of how I’ve changed in recovery. I’ve worked through my grief around my daughter and continue to do so every day. But the darkness has receded. Somehow it’s not as heavy to carry as it used to be. It seems lighter. I’ve gained perspective from years of reading and writing, and listening to other peoples’ stories. Being able to laugh, and cease to take myself too seriously, has eased my journey through this frightening tunnel. I can see the light at the end of it.

At times I wondered if I would ever laugh again, but my Higher Power wanted me not only to survive but to do so joyfully. There are many other people in my world, and my recovery spills over onto them in countless ways.

Cultivating a healthy sense of humor keeps me right-sized; I stay small and HP stays big. Then I don’t get in my own way so much!

Walking Through Cancer/Part 11

                                    My Blood Tells the Whole Story

I’m so glad that I had a chemo port surgically implanted in my right shoulder. It’s much simpler for everything: blood draws, transfusions, and chemo infusions. Most of the time I forget it’s even there: painless, just a little bump under my skin. Very convenient.

This week, my blood work showed great improvement in my numbers: white blood count is normal for the first time in a year; but still low red count and anemia. Yet I feel so much better after only one chemo infusion last week. No more fatigue in my legs and just a generally improved sense of wellness. Except for the pain in my left arm…

I asked my doctor on Monday to level with me: did they start with a low dose of chemo and will gradually increase it with five more infusions? She said no, they plan on giving me the same dosage every time. So I guess we’ll see. It’s out of my hands anyway. Just lean into it and be grateful that there are no side effects so far. Same story with the clinical trial, a randomized blind study. Maybe I’m getting a placebo. Time will tell.

Fred Hutch Cancer Alliance has offered me up to $2100 for participating in this clinical trial. I’m pleased about that. And if the trips down to the Hutch are more than twice a week, they offer cheap housing on their campus to the cancer patients. I’m getting a lot of support. Not to mention all the rides my friends are offering to get me to the Hutch for treatments. I am surrounded by love and support. No more room in the refrigerator for all the food people are bringing. It’s hard to cook with my arm in a sling!

I feel blessed as I walk through this journey. I’ve attempted to be proactive with all the needs that go along with chemotherapy: anti-nausea pills, which I haven’t needed at all. And since my doctor assured me that I would lose my hair, I have a box full of scarves and bandanas which I can’t put on with one hand! I think God is playing a joke on me by making this so difficult. But so far, no need for head covering: I still have my hair. Still, it’s early in treatment…

During my first infusion, I realized I forgot to put on my chemo cap (a desperate attempt to keep my hair). By then, though, it wasn’t even cold, so I said to myself, the hell with it. I don’t even care anymore. Women are vain creatures, yes we are, and I certainly am. But every day that passes, my vanity seems to be flying out the window. It’s all so superficial anyway. My spiritual health is what matters.

So this is where I am now, growing inwardly, and happy to see on MSNBC that bald ladies seem to be in fashion. A new trend!

Walking Through Cancer/Part 10

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

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

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

                                           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

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!

Change Is Good

From the blue Nar-Anon pamphlet:

Changing Ourselves

“Addiction is like a chain reaction. It is a disease which affects the addict as well as the family members, friends and co-workers. We try to control, cover up, and take on the responsibilities of the addict. The sickness spreads to those of us who care the most. Eventually, we begin to feel used and unhappy. We worry, lose trust and become angry. The addict blames us and we feel guilty. If only something or someone would change!

When we discover Nar-Anon, we find others with the same feelings and problems. We learn we cannot control the addict or change him. We have become so addicted to the addict that it is difficult to shift the focus back to ourselves. We find that we must let go and turn to faith in a Higher Power. By working the steps, following the traditions and using the tools of the program, we begin, with the love and help of our Higher Power and others, to change ourselves.

As we reach out for help, we become ready to reach out a helping hand and heart to those in need of Nar-Anon. We understand. We do recover. Slowly, new persons emerge. Change is taking place.”

Though I have changed and grown through my work in the program, I. of course, still love my daughter and am available to help her if she reaches out to me for help. The difference is that I’m a healthier person now and am able to make the tough choices I couldn’t make years ago. I pray she finds the strength to come back to her family. We can’t get back the lost years, but I still have hope, like the warm sun shining on my face, and keeping my love strong.

Positive Persuasion

From Each Day A New Beginning, September21

“Praise and an attitude of gratitude are unbeatable stimulators…we increase whatever we extol.” ~Sylvia Stitt Edwards

Our attitude in regard to any situation attracting our attention influences the outcome. Sometimes to our favor, often to our disfavor if our attitude is negative.

Thankfulness toward life guarantees the rewards we desire, the rewards we seek too often from an ungrateful stance. The feeling of gratitude is foreign to many of us. We came to this program feeling worthless, sometimes rejected, frequently depressed. It seemed life had heaped problems in our laps, and so it had. The more we lamented what life “gave us,” the more reasons we were given to lament. We got just what we expected. We still get just what we expect. The difference is that the program has offered us the key to higher expectations. Gratitude for the good in our lives increases the good…”

It’s hard for me to improve upon these words. Except to say that my daughter is still lost to me after 22 years in the world of drugs and all that it accompanies. As she has gone deeper into the weeds of that life, my grief over losing her has transformed itself into a better  place, a place that works for me. (read a great Al-Anon book, Opening Our Hearts, Transforming Our Losses, for sale on Amazon).

When my nightmare began all those years ago, I was incredulous that this was happening to my daughter, as though she were any different from all the vulnerable young people out there. She wasn’t and still isn’t. The more I fought to save her, the more my own health and well-being deteriorated.  After several years of doing everything I could think of (much of it misguided help), I finally got the message that I was powerless over her disease. And that’s when I started to turn toward the light.

The miracle of all the 12-step programs is assuring us that we have the power to change. I’m only as miserable as I make up my mind to be. In the beginning, I blamed all that misery on my daughter’s poor choices, of course, feeling more victimized than ever. But when I gave up that martyred attitude, and took back my own power, my life started to work better for me. I never stopped loving her and praying for her. But I have two other children, grandchildren, a loving partner… and the list goes on.

Every morning when I wake up, where should I put my focus? Should I fall back into bed and immerse myself in a mother’s endless grief? God knows I’ve wanted to often enough. Or should I focus on those kids and grandkids who need me now?

Walking Through Cancer/Part 7

                                  

                                                     Big Girl Pants

Early in my diary entries, after my first bone marrow biopsy, I thanked the doctors who approved administering conscious sedation to me during the procedure. I referred to the men and women who didn’t receive it,, most ungenerously, as “screaming meemies,” because presumably they couldn’t tolerate the procedure awake. Now that the clinical trial has reopened, things are moving quickly, and there wasn’t time to schedule conscious sedation this time. But Ativan was approved. So after my blood draw, I went into the procedure suite and waited for the oral sedation to take effect. It didn’t, not at all. Too nervous, I guess.

So, without blinking an eye, I turned over onto my side and let the nurse/practitioner begin her work. It helped me to have a nurse I knew come in and hold my hands, which were getting sweatier by the minute.

“I’m going to give you a few shots of lidocaine, Marilea, so you’ll feel a little pin prick.”

No big deal.

“Now I’m going to go deeper into the tissue with more lidocaine.”

Ouch, that really hurt, a deep ache.

She was coaching me like I was giving birth,

“Deep breaths, Marilea. A deep one into your nose and then exhale out of your mouth.”

“Okay, I’m going to get some liquid aspirate now. Deep breaths.”

“Another deep breath, Marilea. Okay, halfway there. One more puncture.”

I felt a very deep ache in my hip. Moaned a little, kept up the breathing. This part took a while. She was carving a small piece of bone out of my hip and placing it in a wider, hollow needle.

Then it was over. Maybe twenty minutes.

I finished dressing and Gene steadied me as we were leaving. NOW the Ativan kicked in! I slept when I got home, disturbing my sleep cycle. Definitely not worth the trouble. Even if it had put me to sleep in time, the pain would have woken me up. I’ll never elect oral sedation again, and I may forgo conscious sedation as well the next time. It’s a nuisance with scheduling and getting me ready (starvation beforehand, for one). Since I have blood cancer, I know I’ll be getting regular bone marrow biopsies, so I may as well make friends with them.

This journey has taught me many things. And one of them, as I get deeper into the weeds of treatment and all the discomforts, is that I’m tougher than I thought I was. Remember, up until now there has been no need for me to undergo these tests and procedures. But I’m at a new normal now, and more grit will be required of me. For those of you who have been following me on this journey, you know that I’ve been challenged emotionally most of my life. It usually took the form of substance use disorder, but thankfully I’m in recovery from years of that behavior. And right now, when I most need it, my recovery is serving me exceedingly well.