Cancer: a love story

KNOWING THE DIVINE

I found this quote on a website that I was researching. If you reflect on my past blogs you may recognize strains of it when I talk about my love of sitting in stillness by the river. With simplicity and elegance Buddha expresses a truth that I have experienced in the past, but without fully understanding. I share it with you now as my Christmas gift to you:


IF YOU WISH TO KNOW THE DIVINE, FEEL THE WIND ON YOUR FACE
AND THE WARM SUN ON YOUR HAND.

Buddha


I am writing today feeling more my normal self thanks to my weekly steroid boost. I have been too depressed to write before. I was truly dark. And afraid. In the three years that I have been aware of living with this cancer my attitude has been predominantly positive and relatively accepting. And here I am still alive and loving being alive and living with kidneys that refuse to quit on me despite the chemo onslaught necessary to restrain the proliferation of the cancer.

The past three weeks or so, however, have been very different. I couldn't sleep until 4 or 5 in the morning, I was emotionally volatile, but worst of all I felt hopeless, angry and negative. I would be constantly having thoughts that could be summarized as: "What am I doing, eating and waiting to die? Why bother?" Quite apart from feeling unhappy and often miserable, I knew I couldn't survive with this despairing attitude. After some time, about four o'clock in one anxiety-ridden morning, I realized that I had unwittingly done this to myself!

I have taken 1mg of klonipin at night for the past three years to help me to relax for sleep. Then on the suggestion of my oncologist I let my klonipin run out and tookattavan instead. This despite forty years of work as a therapist and knowing the dangers of rapid withdrawal from such medications! Last night a friend loaned me some klonipin and, voila! - I slept for nine wonderful hours. I plan on returning to the klonipin regimen and, hopefully, to that attitude and sense of self that has gotten me this far.

That attitude wherein that which I most cherish is sitting in stillness by the river feeling the breeze on my face and bathed in the warmth of the sun...

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May you awake to being enveloped by the Divine during this season and throughout the coming year. This is my heartfelt wish and blessing for you, my beloved friend and reader, in the deepest gratitude for your prayers, good wishes, and enriching presence in my life.