Chemo: Day Seven of Reflections

It was a another night of insomnia - something that I've been dealing with for quite a while now and when I awoke for the day, I felt poorly - a little sick to my stomach, a little headachey - but nothing new, so not chemo-related. I also needed to be out early for work to be done for the water damage - last day before the clean-up! I prepared for the day - to be out of the house until mid-afternoon - and it was going to be fun and enriching, being with a close friend for a walk and picnic at the beautiful lake. She passed the "healthy test", as this is the period when I cannot be around anyone who has a cold or any illness. I'm still doing my "air hugs", washing with anti-microbial soaps - such a different process for this type of cancer and treatment. Solid tumors are treated differently than blood/bone cancers and even more so, following a staph infection. While I am not alarmed at what I need to do and have been a "good patient", I am still in awe that my numbers on paper (the labs) do not match up with how I feel and get around in the world. I "look good" - this used to be a real sore spot for me - while I wrote about this in the past, I'll highlight it once again. In my many years working as a nutritional therapist in eating disorders and disordered eating, I've recognized how clients will talk about their increasing depression, compulsion and anxiety, when they are told that they "look good". The reasoning for this is that inside they may feel really unhappy, very much misunderstood and unable to express their feelings. If they "look good" on the outside, this further enhances the disconnect. While I did not suffer any longer with the body image aspects of "looking good", I sure felt that my failing health was not being taken seriously because I was still highly functioning. I finally was able to step out of my own perception and realized that people do not often know how to face illness and that being positive with someone helps to not only alleviate their own feelings of discomfort and reminder of mortality, but they truly hope to make the patient feel better. I do feel really blessed that I do maintain positivity and stamina 90% + of the time and have looked at the pros and cons of this personality type, recognizing that I occasionally need to "allow myself" time to grieve, time to be angry, time to feel really tired and unable to achieve. With regard to my day, I felt better while walking, talking and eating my yummy meal, but when I arrived home, I recognized how tired I was and listened to my body. I ate dinner earlier, listened to the two webinars that I had signed up for - one for the Detox Summit class and the other on EFT Tapping Technique. At this crossroads following the webinars, I had many items on my list of To Do's, but chose, instead to go to sleep. I was very aware of my setting new ways of being - listening to MY needs, pacing myself, following through with a guilt-free attitude! Try it, practice it and you, also will be on the path to true healing. In health, Julie