Today I had a needle aspiration of an enlarged and highly suspicious lymph node which might be the sentinal node, the catcher's mitt/drain of cancer cells that get infected first. Not pleasant, but using meditation, I went through it with a compliment by the radiologist who asked what I was doing, since I was so quiet and calm during very very deep penetration of the needle.
As I entered Sloan-Kettering accompanied by British granddaughters, I noticed a table dedicated to integrative medicine at MSKCC. I was overjoyed, since I had been told that S-K was way behind in alternative/integrative methodology. Not so, and I was very pleased as she described their offerings. Every session I take is prepped by the entire team to my specific medical records and treatment, even the relaxation massages. The one thing they are cautious about is the use of herbs, since it is not yet known how they interact with the traditional therapies, and we often don't know what their true content might include. I asked if the director, Wendy Miner, had heard of Ken, and indeed she had.
Upon arriving at home after a fancy East Side NY luncheon with my two gorgeous charges and a day at the Met, I noted that there is a class called Grace and Grit!! I immediately left a message with the LCSW who teaches the program, since the book is at my side constantly now.
Treya's journey began with a lump; I began with an abnormal mammogram which I endure faithfully every September. As with my care providers, her doctor decreased her fear that the lump could be serious, but sent her to a surgeon nonetheless, as did mine. He examined her much as mine did, with similar findings:
p. 31, Treya's diary: "If malignant there is often a slight puckering of the skin over the lump. Since my skin does not do that and the lump is unattached to anything, this doctor also feels that it is probably just a cyst." But when he tries to aspirate with a needle, he hits something hard, and recommends its removal within 3 weeks. Being advised not to treat it lightly, she sees a cancer specialist who recommends a lumpectomy the next day.
How do you feel about the operation, her doctor queries; do you want somethihng to calm you down?
p. 34 "That won't be necessary. I feel fine." (Studies have shown that women who are most afraid before having a lumpectomy for suspected malignancy are less likely to have cancer; those who are calm are more likely to have cancer.)"
Why is this?
I am presuming that it is because the cells "know" in some way whether there is a disease process at work. I will be writing and reporting on this aspect of the UL/UR as the days, weeks, and months go on.
When Ken and Treya receive the aweful news about the lump, Ken writes:
p. 35: "Strange things happen to the mind when catastrophe strikes. It felt like the universe turned into a thin paper tissue, and then someone simply tore the tissue in half right in front of my eyes....A tremendous strength descended on me, the strength of being totally jolted and totally stupefied...As Samuel Johnson drily commented, the prospect of death marvelously concentrates the mind."
My own reaction was guided by old patterns born from a lifetime of dealing with unpredictable psychotic breaks by relatives: I became stone cold hard. As the nurse fussed around me asking how I was doing hearing the very bad news, I shot back at her dismissively by holding out my steady hands: "Does it look like I'm not handling the news?" But of course I really was not handling the news well at all.
I was stone cold hard angry. At everyone. At the cancer. At the professional environment that over 2 1/2 years of harassment caused my immune system to cease protecting me and that led the doctor to inform me that such an environment was "a recipe for breast cancer." At some of my colleagues who were too nervous to come to my defense.
I was vaccillating wildly between flight and flight. From childhood I had learned ther clever adaptive trick of dissociation. I could feel the tug on my self to flee, to blank out, to become numb. I could register no emotions at that time, but knew that somewhere there was a child tugging at mommy's skirt pleading to get away from this scary place.
I stalked out of my local cancer center, so beautifully, tastefully and softly appointed to soothe the most frazzled patient. "You don't fool me", I warned it mentally as I glared back at it over my shoulder. I'm in for a horrible time and nothing is going to substitute for the pain and fear that will engulf my life from here on out.
The other thoughts spearing me as I got into my car to return home did not include, "why me?" Of course it was me. The shitty things in my life just keep on coming, don't they? And here I thought magically that once healed of a virulent form of PTSD, I had done my time in hell. Wrong, solider, you have to re-up, this time in the Cancer Zone. Bad karma? Prior life I did something really really aweful? Maybe my mother was right, and there IS a curse on our family?
p. 39-40 From Treya's diary: "This is real. This is happening to me. I lie in bed rigid with shock and disbelief as the world lies quiet around me....I have cancer. I have breast cancer. I believe this is true and, at the same time, I do not believe it; I cannot let it in....
"CANCER. CANCER. CANCER. This cannot be undone, this cannot be erased. CANCER. A cloud of voices, images, ideas, fears, stories, photographs, advertisements, articles, movies, television shows arises around me, vague, shapeless, but dense, ominous. These are the stories my culture has collected around this thing, 'the big C'"
p. 42: "Illness" versus "sickness"....This distinction stayed with me since my first reading. Ken defines "illness" as the actual disease process facing the person, be it a broken bone or a malignant tumor. It has medical and scientific dimensions, and is more or less value-free. A typical LR entity.
"Sickness', on the other hand, is how the person's culture faces him with that illness, with all the judgments, fears, hopes, myths, stories, and values---typical LL entities. "If the culture treats a particular illness with compassion and enlightened understanding," writes Ken, then sickness can be seen as a challenge, a healing crisis and opportunity. With the recent publication of books on ther "breast cancer enterprise", we would do well to look closely at the LL aspects.
As of tonight, I have been able to rest pretty staqbly in Kosmic consciousness, supported and surrounded by being aware as a manifest being experiencing this pain, and an infinite being who hasd never entered time or space. Neither can be held alone; both must be understood, or else there exists spiritual bypass OR endless suffering.
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