A Story Told Through My Body

A Story Told Through My Body

"The DVT is in room three," I overheard the doctor tell another outside of my small curtained cubicle at my local hospital.

                                    

What on earth is a DVT? I wondered while perched on the awkward hospital bed holding my right arm. I figured I had sprained a muscle or torn a ligament which would account for the ping-pong sized throbbing red lump on the inside of arm midway from my wrist to my elbow. My husband and I both overheard the voice, and arched our eyebrows simultaneously in a quizzical gesture.

"I've had three cancer surgeries already, it can't be related to them.  Besides, I came in with a nasty sinus infection," I reminded my husband in a muffled voice. I was speaking through the surgical mask they had given me when I checked in. I was in my second month of chemotherapy to attack the breast cancer, had no hair, and no functioning immune system. To protect me from the random germs that might find me at the ER, I had been given the mask and placed in the last cubicle as far away from other patients as they could find for me.

When the concerned doctor finally made his appearance in my room, he confirmed one suspicion and laid another one on me. Indeed, I did have a sinus infection. In my immune-compromised condition, that meant  I'd have to be hospitalized with IV antibiotics administered through the port that had been surgically implanted on the right side of my chest.

But he was more concerned about the silly lump on my arm. I was told to wait for a specialist to examine and test me.

"So what is this DVT I heard you talking about?" I finally asked.

"It's a deep vein thrombosis, or more commonly, a blood clot. You are more susceptible to them when you are on chemo, and if my suspicions are correct, you'll be placed on blood thinners for a year."

Another two hours elapsed, and the doctor's suspicions were confirmed: a DVT, plus three days hospitalized for the sinus infection, and a year on coumadin.  Great. First chemo, now rat poison. What a year.

"After all of this is over," my husband noted wryly, "You ought to write a book."

Not a bad idea, I thought as I lay back on the bed.

But how? About what? Who was I now, and what kind of map would guide me in exploring where I had been?

After I left the hospital I researched the sorts of books people write about their illnesses. The majority depicted a healthy person living a typical life when suddenly an illness invaded. The illness was described, the steps toward resolving the illness were outlined, and then the author would state how his/her life choices were made differently after the illness resolved. 

People obviously have to think differently once they become ill. After leaving my doctor's office the afternoon of my diagnosis, I realized that all of the next week's plans had to be abandoned. But how? What would be on my calendar now and for the next month or year?

I was lucky; I already had a map: the Integral framework.

 

But how I might construct the personalized healing map would depend on me telling my story, first to myself, and then to others. Every time I spoke of my illness to friends and medical personnel, it was like a dress rehearsal. It became my performance art, my experiential theater. Every time I recited what had begun in October 2010, I emphasized some parts or deleted others. I was really constructing a map for myself, explaining to myself and others what I was feeling inside, how I was behaving on the outside, what systems I chose to direct my healing, and what values I might discard in favor of new ones.

I had other choices to make. Would I write in first person, second person, or third person perspective?

                                                                 

FIRST PERSON = I

SECOND PERSON = YOU AND ME, WE

THIRD PERSON = IT, ITS

My "topic" was all about my cancer illness and related health issues. I could have chosen THIRD PERSON, and told it like the doctor had done outside my cubicle that day: "The tumor was in the left breast and measured....."  That would have reduced me to a storyteller who was, in effect, separated from my stricken body.

                               

But that was not the entire truth, was it? My mind is diffused throughout my body. 

I wasn't interested in merely telling a story ABOUT cancer. I was interested in telling my story THROUGH my wounded body. The story that was ushered in October 2010 set aside all the other stories about me.  My body was now the cause, topic, and instrument through which all new stories about me would arise.

I needed to tell this story for myself, above all. FIRST PERSON= PERSONAL.  This body, now besieged by several illnesses in different areas, was mute. I needed to interpret its pains, symptoms, emotions, to myself so that I could relate to my  own experience.

But I also needed to make this a social experience, and thus I needed to share it: SECOND PERSON = SOCIAL. My audience would help me reframe my own understanding of this experience. Just as a play has performances outside of Broadway prior to its official opening, I needed to try out my story on others first.  Orally and over time, I began to weave an effective narrative for myself. Only then might I deem it worthy to share with unknown others, and hope that my story might be of  value to others.

Today's society demands a new means of sharing a story about illness. Some talk of post-modern writing; others see a voice beyond the post-modern and call it Integral. In future blogs I will deal with the old way, the modern way, the post-modern way, and the Integral way by which stories about illness help those suffering and those who share in the narrative.