Chapter 33: Enough surprises already
Friday, March 27th 2020: Reflections on a rough week, for us all.
I’ve been quiet on the blog world for a few days. Sorry, friends. I promise I have a very good excuse, however.
I am one week out from my second craniotomy. Recovery has been going well physically this time around, actually quite a bit better than the first time. I was able to take my dog for a two-mile walk outside today at a semi-normal dog walking speed (AKA nearly running for my life because my dog is part husky and thinks she is taking me for a walk at all times). Snail days are over once again!
Although physically recovery has been a breeze, emotionally it has been much tougher the second time around. Craniotomies are tough surgeries and are known to cause some emotional “irritation” which I find fascinating. I mean, it makes sense… you have surgery on your knee and you have to teach your leg to stand up again. You have surgery on your brain and you have to teach your brain how to control your emotions again, or something like that.
Well, I was finally getting a handle on the waves of sadness and hopelessness that were my fun surgical side-effect when I got an unexpected call from my surgeon to “review my pathology results. yesterday” I knew this was likely not a good sign.
To review, I was diagnosed around two months ago with a diffuse astrocytoma, a type of glioma (an incurable but treatable brain cancer). Well, turns out my original biopsy did not actually tell us the full picture.
I was starting to think life was getting a little boring here, what with only a pandemic and two recent brain surgeries , so thank god some excitement showed up this time around.
My second surgery took a larger sample of the tumor and found that it was actually worse than initially thought. I actually have a type of brain cancer called anaplastic astrocytoma. Well, that sucks.
As if that wasn’t exciting enough, life decided to kick a girl while she’s down. With this new diagnosis, brain surgery isn’t enough. I get to start chemotherapy and radiation, too. No better time than mid-pandemic, am I right?!
Even though initially being diagnosed with brain cancer was overwhelming, I had actually wrapped my mind around that much. Surgery, Ok I’ll do it. Chemo and radiation, though?! That I was not prepared to hear. Just goes to show, we never really know what the future holds. Even when we’ve had just about enough surprises, turns out there are more to come.
Well, getting this news was a like telling the knee-surgery patient she has to do a StairMaster marathon before her knee is fully healed. My emotionally-recovering brain had a hard time processing this news. I’ve been on an emotional recovery marathon over the past 24 hours, but I think it will make me stronger in the end.
Life is tough for everyone right now mid-COVID-19. Social distancing feels like a cruel joke life if currently playing on me. I’m ready for the punch-line, so we can finally move on from this awful comedy routine, life.
I like to take the Buddhist perspective of impermanence to my situation, the idea that our challenges, our suffering, our difficulties are only temporary, and we simply need to experience them momentarily to learn something before we emerge from the other side, happier, calmer, and hopefully wiser.
I’m not going to pretend I am mindful enough to fully see my current situation as all positive. I previously quoted Thich Naht Hanh on “no mud, no lotus.” I still find this phrase to ring true, but right now, I feel knee-deep in mud. The mud is so high I think I stepped on the little lotus blossoms without even seeing them.
I don’ know if you all can relate to this feeling, but I imagine with COVID-19 turning most of our lives upside down, we all feel like there is just too much damn mud.
How do we clear the mud so we can see the happy little lotus trying to emerge from below? Hell if I know, people! But, I am a fan of someone who might know, so I’ll quote our Dalai Lama from “The Book of Joy: (highly recommend)”
“Changing the way we see the world in turn changes the way we feel and the way we act…With our mind we create our own world.”
How true is this? When I let my mind be consumed in sadness, socially isolating myself in a dark room crying about chemotherapy in the midst of COVID-19, the world I create is scary, lonely, horrifying, and unfair.
When I decided to stop crying for a few minutes and take a beautiful walk outside, letting my mind be filled with thoughts of warmer days ahead, patio dinners to come, and happy faces passing by me (>6 feet away) on the street, my world was totally changed- it was lighter, brighter, and full of joy.
I initially saw chemotherapy, radiation, and this pandemic as. a horrifying fire-breathing dragon looking at me, a small paper doll about to be totally destroyed.
Yet, “With our mind we create our own world.”
Today, I change my mind. I decide that I am actually the fire-breathing dragon, Cancer, the terrifying treatments that come with it, and this pandemic can be the stupid little paper dolls, cowering for their lives.
Fondly,
Courtney
©CB2020