The Urge

April 8, 2015 //

The yard work that I did last weekend was slightly grueling as jobs that involve lots of digging, pulling, and squatting tend to be, especially after having taken a long hiatus from this type of work. I was getting sore and I kept having the urge to quit. It would have been fine to have stopped mid job. The Earth would not have shattered. But I also knew in the back of my mind that I feel better when I accomplish something at times when my mind is swirling in ambiguity. “Look at me, World! I can do something from start to finish!”

So, at little intervals, I told myself things like, “If I got the west side of the path done, it would be a completion of something. I’ll just do that much.” Then I finished the west side of the path, which, incidentally was the harder part because it was full of small tree roots. “I’ll just do a little bit more,” I told myself. I also moved a bag of soil mix from the side of the house to where I was working. I knew that I would be too tired to do that part of the job if I left it to the end. The bag was full of wet soil and weighed a ton.

It was as if a switch had been turned. It was still hard. I was still sore. But I had something I didn’t have before. I had momentum to finish the job. The urges to stop went away and I stopped feeling overwhelmed by the task. I finished every part of it that I had wanted.

I was thrilled that day. The next day, my hamstring muscles were super tight and complaining. They were still complaining the next day. They are almost as tight today. When I was taking my walk today, I kept getting the urge to quit. My legs hurt. I had to walk slowly, which is not very energizing. I told myself to walk to the count of 10 to see if the urge would pass. That helped a little. Then I saw something down the street that I wanted to photograph. That helped a lot, for a short while. And then the sun came out, which made me feel light and energetic, for a short while. The urge was back. Then I noticed that my hamstrings had stretched out some and that I could pick up my walking pace a little. The urge switch was toggled to the off position. I met my goal.

Sometimes I have urges to stop. Other times, I have urges to act and to keep things going, even if it is not the best thing to do. I have urges to help, urges to be right, and urges to reduce my anxiety by controlling a situation or by requesting reassurance. The urges to do are stronger for me than the urges to stop. They come on quickly, so quickly, that sometimes I am acting on them before I recognize them.

These urges involve interpersonal situations. Right now in the class my family is taking, we are working on how to be more effective with other people. We talked about defining and prioritizing three goals: 1) My objectives (for example, being right, changing someone else’s behavior), 2) Maintaining the relationship with the other person, and 3) Maintaining self-respect.

These are all worthy goals, in the abstract. A person could make an inspirational poster for each of these goals. “Keep you eye on the prize!” “Would you rather be right or would you rather have friends?” “Love yourself! Respect yourself!”

A person’s priorities, however, are situation specific. And that’s why I don’t like those inspirational posters! They ignore context! But I digress. Balancing these goals is hard, especially when I act on an impulsive urge instead of thinking things through.

Right now, I am dealing with a difficult interpersonal situation, involving someone who does NOT read my blog. (it’s not you, Mom!) I’ve been fighting off an urge to act for several days. I could even wrap my actions in high minded and reasonable sounding justifications. But I suspect that I would be lying to myself about my real goals and intentions. I am going to try to let it be.

Watch me! Ready, set, STOP!

Tags impulse control, interpersonal effectiveness, maintaining relationships, mindfulness, self-respect

Categories Mindfulness

Lost and Found

April 5, 2015 //

My husband and I moved around a lot during the first several years of our marriage. We were married in 1990 and it was not until 2001 that we bought our first home in Seattle, which is the home in which we still live. This is one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. and we don’t live an ostentatious life style. Consequently, our house is not fancy or stylish. But we love our 1950’s house and have worked to inject it with our own personal style, which is colorful and eclectic.

When we moved into the house, there were flower beds in the back. I spent the first year in the house weeding and seeing what kind of plants there were. There was a grassy front yard, bordered by two huge juniper shrubs. Juniper shrubs were commonly part of the landscaping for homes built in the 1950’s and 1960’s. I imagine that they were cute back then. They get rather prickly and enormous over time. Also, they are really ugly, so ugly that the house had what my brother, a realtor, called, “No curb appeal.” After we’d been in the house for about three years, John removed the shrubs and built a rock wall. The shrubs were weighed at the city dump for the composting program; a half ton of shrub. 1000 pounds of juniper, people!

I planted a rock garden. A year or two later, John removed the front lawn. I covered it in layers of newspaper and cardboard followed by four inches of beautiful black compost that I had delivered to my house, which I carried around the yard by the wheelbarrow full. I didn’t plant anything in the yard for a year to make sure that all of the grass and weed seeds under the paper barrier would not get exposed to light. The following years, I started a long project of putting in flowers, summer vegetables, shrubs, garden art, soaker hoses hooked to an automatic watering timer, and slate walkways.

After the front yard was “done”, I started work on the planting strip, the piece of grass between the sidewalk and the street. This land is owned by the city but the home owner is responsible for upkeep. The city encourages people to make the strip into a garden. We had already planted two trees there, which were given to us by the city as part of their Street Trees program. I got out my garden edger and started the long process of removing sod from the strip. I did it in pieces, removing a small square and filling it with compost and new soil. I planted beans there the first summer. After a year, it was all removed and planted. Right now, it is full of blooming tulips, which I have planted in wet fall weather, my garden gloves filling with cold muddy water.

Until my cancer diagnosis, I spent a great deal of time in my yard, weeding, pruning, and planting. Then I stopped working in my yard, for the most part. I had repeated surgeries that made it hard for my to use my arms and abdomen. I started exercising regularly, which meant less time for gardening and also another way to fulfill my need to spend time outdoors. I had trouble with fatigue. I had friends that came to help. Later, I decided to get rid of the little strip of grass on the left side of the house to open up more planting area. I got about half done with that project and lost steam. It is still unfinished, a year and a half later.

But after years of working out there several times a week during the summer and frequently during the rest of the year, I found out what happens when a yard doesn’t get such regular attention. It’s not pretty. It gets weedy and full of brown stuff. Some plants get out of control and propagate wildly. The rose bushes did not get pruned. One of them got as large as a Volkswagen. It was really overwhelming. I often found myself thinking, “My yard used to be so beautiful. It was so much easier to maintain. Now it is a mess.”

Last spring, I actually hired a landscape service to weed, prune, and mulch the front yard, which is where most of the flowers are. I couldn’t afford for them to work on my back yard, too. I figured that after they did the heavy work, I would be inspired to get back into the yard because it would not be so overwhelming. The landscapers did a great job and I didn’t end up doing anything out there.

This year, I found my yard overgrown once again and myself, once again, thinking, “My yard used to be so pretty. People used to take photos of the flowers in my yard. Sometimes cars would slow down to look at my yard.” I called the landscapers out again. It was not quite as big of a job this year and it made an enormous difference. And this year, unlike last year, I did gather some momentum. I weeded my raised vegetable containers, my husband turned over the soil, and I added compost, fertilizer, and new soil. I transplanted flowers to other containers because they were getting in the way of the vegetables. I replaced broken soaker hoses for the front yard as well as for the vegetable containers. I removed three years of old bean stalks and tomato plants from my two story metal growing cages.

Today, I went back to the yard. I planted lettuce and bok choi seeds in my vegetable containers. They are fast growing and should be finished by the time for planting summer vegetables, beans and tomatoes. I cleared the hair allium that had started out as about eight bulbs and spread into several hundred plants. Waaaaay too much allium. Clearing that out took a couple of hours, working around tree roots and plants I wanted to save. The number of little allium bulbs under the soil was unbelievable. (Hair allium is cool looking and it used to be a moderately expensive plant. My guess is that they are now being giving away at Home Depot check stands. They are worse than bluebells for “naturalizing”, a.k.a. taking over like a hostile alien race from another planet.) After I dug that out, I had to use a couple of bags of soil to replace what I’d removed. When I finished, my yard looked so nice, nicer than it has looked in years.

I came across a random photo of my front yard from my pre-cancer days. It shocked me. My yard looked terrible! Now the fact that I’d taken a photo tells me that it was probably a “before” photo taken for spring clean up. The yard always looks bad for part of the year. My surprise at the photo got me wondering how much I had exaggerated the state of my garden in comparison to the years prior to cancer. “My yard was so beautiful before cancer.”
In truth, it was better maintained in the past and that does make an aesthetic difference. But I think nostalgia and loss has nudged my memory to increase the contrast, closer to, “Before cancer everything was wonderful.”

Truly, there are a lot of losses than come with cancer, and they are losses to grieve and honor. But sometimes I think I may be too quick to interpret “before and after” in a negative way, when I am feeling discouraged, worried, or overwhelmed. I think this is natural for people to do, to think about significant aspects of life from the past with fewer shades of gray. I learned last year with my 30th high school reunion that perhaps my recollection of high school being terrible in certain respects, was not accurate. I suspect that friends who look back at high school with very strong positive feelings and memories, may be forgetting some of the bad aspects. And then of course, there is the whole lamentation of culture and young people, “Kids today…” “Society is going to Hell in a hand basket.” It can be easy to idealize the distant past. It is not clouded with immediacy of the present or the unknown of the future.

I don’t really know how much better or worse my yard is. After all, living things grow and die, regardless of whether we work the soil or not. Things change all around us.

What I do know for sure is that today I dug in the dirt and I had a marvelous time.

My roses in 2012. They will start blooming again soon.

Tags Breast Cancer, Gardening, grief, loss, mindfulness, post-cancer functioning, pre-cancer functioning

Categories Breast cancer, Feelings, Flora and Fauna, Mindfulness

Back Into the Woods

April 3, 2015 //

Several months ago, my husband and I were in Fauntleroy Park, which is the closest woods near our house. As we walked down the path, he joked, “Oh scary! Someone could jump out of the bushes at us!” The comment hit me in all of the wrong ways, though this had nothing to do with him. I said to him, only half jokingly,”You’ve ruined my sanctuary!”

I have done a lot of grieving and healing in those particular woods. I have felt my heart rate lower and my spirits lift as I walk into the entrance. I have listened to the creeks, the birds, and the sounds of the rain and wind. I found a hummingbird nest in those woods and waited for the egg to hatch into a chick, whom I discovered had not made it, when I visited the woods last Mother’s Day. As I am often the only one in the park, those woods were a safe place to sit by the trees and the running water, and have a good cry. I have felt the reassuring softness of feathery mosses, watched the emergence of new growth from the forest floor, and sampled berries from bushes that connected me to my childhood, learning about native edibles from my mother, while walking in the woods that surrounded the home in which my parents still live. I have had experiences in those woods, seeing new growth, old growth, and decay, and felt connected to the worlds of living, dying, and dead at a deep spiritual level.

I had avoided going to those woods since the loss of the hummingbird chick and my husband’s ill timed remark. I would never have predicted that I would react that way but it did. Today, as I was ambling through my neighborhood on my daily walk, I decided to get back into the woods. I was greeted with the sound of running water, birds that sounded like they were auditioning for a part in The Jungle Book, the smell of skunk cabbage, and the deep pink of salmon berry blossoms. I saw two hummingbirds. I visited the spot where the hummingbird nest had been last year. It was gone, either blown off by the wind or removed by a hiker.

This week’s stressful mammogram generated another thread of fear, sadness, and gratitude to weave into my life. I am glad to be back in the woods.

Categories Breast cancer, Feelings, Flora and Fauna, Mindfulness, Religion

Putting terror in a box

April 1, 2015 //

“Wise mind” is a mindfulness concept in the class that my family has been taking. Wise mind is used when “emotion mind” or “reasonable mind” get out of balance. Wise mind is, well, wise and validates both emotion and reason.

If you look back at my last post, you can see moments where either emotion mind or reasonable mind got out of balance. There is a mindfulness skill called, “ask Wise Mind a question.” No, I kid you not. The judge-y part of my brain has thoughts like, “That sounds silly and dumb.” Fortunately, I am really trying to learn as much as I can from this class so I’ve been able to keep Judge-Y at bay, for the most part.

On Monday, while I was lying on the ultrasound table, feeling fear, scary thoughts, and starting to try to reason myself out of them with arguments that now seem kind of ridiculous, I thought, “Wise mind, what should I do?”

Within a fraction of a second, I noticed that my heart was beating fast and started using paced breathing to slow it down. My heart rate is particularly responsive to breathing techniques so that helped settle me down considerably. It also gave me something to focus on, something in the present, which was much preferable to my worrying about the future.

“Wise mind, what should I do?” was a question that got me unstuck. It helped me shift my attention and thoughts, to cope more effectively, and to make my anxiety much more manageable.

I am finding, more and more, through my practice of mindfulness and the other techniques taught in this class that I am able to limit my suffering around scans to shorter periods of time. Another skill I used is called, “Coping Ahead”. It is not a mindfulness skill. Mindfulness is powerful but it is not always useful. Coping Ahead means identifying a stressful event that you know is happening in the future, identifying skills for handling it, and visualizing yourself successfully applying these skills (mental rehearsal).

When we covered this skill, I knew that my scan was coming up so I made a plan. To be honest, the plan was not perfectly laid out but I put many elements into place. I decided that the most difficult part of my anxiety around my scans was that I am irritable and on edge and end up getting upset with my family for no good reason. I have not only coped in a way that increases my own suffering but that of the people around me. I imagined what I would be like if I was not that way and identified the skills that would help me get there.

As it turned out, the actual scan and the hour or two around it, were much more stressful than I expected it to be. But I didn’t snap at my family. In fact, we had a wonderful weekend together.

When I wrote my last post, I was trying to convey the experience that many of us have as cancer patients. Although I have not had known cancer for nearly three years, I still consider myself to be a cancer patient. I don’t know if that will ever change. I wanted people to understand that. I also wanted people to understand that meaningful and joyful life is still possible, nonetheless.

There are aspects of my life that are scary. I feel my feelings. I think my thoughts. Some of you described my last post as “harrowing”. That’s a pretty intense adjective. I was a bit shocked by the reaction and then felt sorry for having distressed people. But if I really think about it, I was describing the experience of trauma cues and fears of being sick again. That’s pretty hardcore.

My writing and my mindfulness exercises help me put my terror in a transparent box, so that I can examine it, like a specimen. It is still painful. It is still scary. But it is a way for me to move forward without hiding from myself.

“Wise mind, what should I do?”

Live my life.

Every day.

Tags distress tolerance skills, emotion mind, fear of cancer recurrence, mindfulness, reasonable mind, Scanxiety, wise mind

Categories Family, Feelings, Mindfulness

The Good Plates

March 30, 2015 //

My husband and I host Thanksgiving every year and although not at Martha Stewart’s standard, I like to make the dinner tables pretty. Sometimes, John sets the table with our day to day plates and I say, “No, use the good plates.” The “good” plates consists of the full set of Franciscan dinnerware that my mother-in-law generously gave to me years ago. They match. There’s a gravy boat. There are enough for our extended family crew of 16-24 people, depending on the year. Matching, rarely used plates for fancy occasions.

Today I had a mammogram. I scheduled it many months ago. I remember telling my oncologist’s scheduler that I needed a diagnostic mammogram. She called over to the breast imaging center and told me that I didn’t need a diagnostic mammogram. I was due for a screening mammogram. I said, politely with a tinge of anxiety, “But I’ve had breast cancer.” She talked to the imaging center again and verified that a screening mammogram was what my oncologist had ordered.

I walked into the imaging center. It is in a building that adjoins my cancer institute, where I typically have my appointments. The cancer institute also does mammography. This time, I was sent to the building that is part of the same medical center but not part of the cancer center. Even though I’ve been there before, I was disoriented, even in the parking garage. I don’t have the best sense of direction on a good day but when I am nervous AND underground, it is much worse. The parking garage was packed and although I thought I was following the signs, I knew that I was anxious and distracted when I saw the sign, “Alligator” to show me that it was floor A, for the third time. I was driving in circles. I snapped out of it and worked my way down to “Camel” where I got a parking spot, wrote directions to finding my car after my appointment was finished, and went on my way.

As I walked into the waiting room, I had a sense of unreality bordering on derealization, a dissociative state experienced by individuals with PTSD. The waiting room felt unfamiliar but I knew I’d been there. Then I say myself there, in my mind’s eye. This is where I had the diagnostic mammogram, the ultrasound, and the core biopsy that would establish my breast cancer diagnosis and refer me to the cancer center, nearly three years ago. “Hello, trauma cue!” Once I recognized the cue for what it was, I could at least stop wondering and start coping.

The funny thing about this is that one reason I felt uncomfortable and scared was because I had been “demoted” to a screening mammogram and to add insult to injury, had to leave the safe and familiar nest of the cancer center, to do so. Mammography involves compression of the breast tissue between plates. I’ve had all kinds of mammography, screening, diagnostic, and PEM the latter being the fanciest and as it was in Phase II trials back in 2012, was not covered by insurance costing $2000 out of pocket. PEM took three hours following a 24 hour no-sugar diet and radioactive dye injection. Oh, and did I mention that each picture takes 7 minutes, all 7 of which the plates are compressed? Oh yeah, I just remembered that the PEM tech is seated right across from your eyeballs. But I digress.

I found myself in the waiting room thinking, “I want the good plates. I want the diagnostic mammogram.” Yes, I know, the difference between mammogram machines is not the plates. But do you blame me for thinking about the plates? (Ladies who do mammograms understand.) When I checked in, the receptionist asked, “Who do you want us to send the report to?” I provided her with the names of my physicians. Then I anxiously asked, “But I am getting a verbal report from the diagnostic radiologist during my visit today, right?” She verified that I was. Deep breaths, Elizabeth.

I changed into a gown and waited for the mammography technician. She soon greeted me and led me to the exam room. She was a very small woman, under 5 feet. As she was positioning the plates, I noted that she was about the exact right height for the job. She would not have to bend over at all to get a view of breast level for most women. I thought to myself, “Why do I notice things like this?”

She was skilled and efficient. I was lead back to the waiting room near the changing room. I waited. I was distracted for awhile talking to other women, waiting for their results. I answered some email. A woman called my name, a different woman than the mammography technician. I didn’t like this. She led me into an ultrasound room and asked me to partially disrobe, lie down, and wait for the diagnostic radiologist, Dr. Bang. She said, “He will give you the results and discharge you.”

“Uh-oh, there’s something suspicious on the mammogram.” Dr. Bang soon came into the room and introduced himself. He was a young Asian American physician with a nice smile and a professional demeanor. One of the first things he said was, “I see a 2mm mass in your left breast. It is probably a non-malignant cyst.”

My thought, “Yay, he’s being straight with me. He told me what was going on as soon as he could without being cold and abrupt. Hmm, but he also told me that he thought it was likely just a cyst. I hope he’s not one of those physicians who is afraid to tell the bad news. I hope this does not affect his judgment.”

He was very thorough, I must say. I looked at the images from the mammography. Besides thoughts to myself like, “recurrence”, I busied myself by noting how much less dense my breast tissue looked in the images than they had in 2012. As many of you know, having particularly dense breasts makes most of the imaging techniques difficult to interpret because water (the source of density) shows up as white, which is also the color that tumors look on the images. Density is reduced with age, as breasts take on more fatty tissue. I could see this change in myself, likely accelerated by my cancer treatment induced menopause through Lupron and over two years of taking Tamoxifen, which I will likely continue to take for nearly a decade.

I am a geek and a healthcare provider. I am very happy for this when I am getting a stressful medical examination. I can distract myself with wonder and fascination. I also joke with healthcare providers. This lot were pleasant but business like. Joking would not be a comfortable option. So I continued to practice paced breathing to keep myself calmer and to geek out on medical technology and to reflect on the the marvel that is the human body, post-mastectomy and all.

Dr. Bang was having trouble finding the 2mm mass on the ultrasound. I asked him if it was located in the part of my breast tissue that is still very dense. He said that it wasn’t and was in fact very close to the surface. Then I thought, “Oh, if the cancer is near the surface of my breast, maybe I can get a small lumpectomy. That won’t be so bad.”

I was also thinking about what the next step would be. Biopsy? Then I remembered that I had gotten a screening mammogram and that the next step is usually a diagnostic mammogram. However, in this case, I was given an ultrasound. Hmm. A memory flooded back to me. Cancer treatment is like giving birth. They tell you what is going to happen like they are invariable steps. But it’s not. There are rules of thumb that I can understand but the course of assessment and treatment can change. I’m not complaining. If I were cookie dough, the medical team could use cookie cutters to do their job.

Another part of my brain was planning who and how to inform people that I would need follow up assessment. Before, I was pretty sure that I didn’t have cancer. After all, only 20% of biopsies are malignant. Mammography has a notoriously high false positive rate. That is one reason that it is so widely criticized. Actually, the prime reason is that we keep getting the message in our culture that it is far more accurate than it really is.

After what seemed to be 500 years, Dr. Bang told me that the cyst had been present on my last mammogram but it seemed to have grown since then. “I don’t think it’s cancer.” He told me that he wanted to “watch it” and that meant having another mammogram in six months. In the past, I would have been hesitant to ask my “worry questions” but I asked away. “Will this be a diagnostic mammogram?” (“Yes”.). “Will it be a 3D mammogram?” (“Yes”.)

There is no cure for breast cancer. I have had a status of “No Evidence of Disease” since my mastectomy on 8/8/12, which was proceeded by two failed lumpectomies performed by a marvelous and kind surgeon. Three of my four invasive tumors could only be revealed after surgery. None of the imaging technologies, MRI, ultrasound, and three types of mammography that were used, found them.

I was diagnosed nearly three years ago. I have thought about cancer every single day since I was informed of the diagnosis. That is over 1000 days. I don’t want “the good plates”. I wanted the black and white plates. I want the plates of definite “I don’t have cancer” answers.

Cancer has provided me with a daily lesson that bad things, really bad things can happen. And I have learned to live a happy and satisfying life in the last three years despite all that my family has been through, a significant amount that has nothing to do with my cancer. Something that a pathologist looks for in examining an excised tumor and the surrounding tissue is for “clear margins”. A clear margin is the amount of healthy tissue that surrounds the tumor. Larger margins are better than small ones and if they are too small, as was the case with my first two surgeries, more surgery is recommended.

The “clear margin” is not magical or 100% accurate but it is meaningful. It is more than a good sign. There is always the possibility of disaster or hurt at the center of our hearts. I try very hard to live in the present and at present my margins are clear.

Tags Breast Cancer, fear of cancer recurrence, mammography, mindfulness, Scanxiety, trauma cues

Categories Breast cancer, coping with humor, Family, Feelings, Marriage, Mindfulness

Not what I’d hoped for

March 28, 2015 //

When I practice mindfulness, I encounter a paradox of experiencing a greater connectedness with thoughts, feelings, and sensations but also having some kind of buffer. I don’t really know how to describe it exactly. It’s not exactly a distance but it kind of is. No doubt there are individuals far more practiced in mindfulness who have written about this much more precisely and eloquently. I know that the word, “equanimity” is often used to describe this state, a mental composure that wards against imbalance of the mind.

Yesterday morning I was walking and noticing. I do most of my mindfulness practices while I walk. I also do a great deal of contemplation about my life. I was thinking about how much more fun I am having with my family these days and the level of harmony we’ve been experiencing. The sun was out and I could feel it on my skin. The flowers and trees in the neighborhood were beautiful. I felt a great deal of joy. In these times of mindfulness I find that I encounter unexpected thoughts and feelings. The balance that I feel makes this possible, I think.

Yesterday, I felt hopeful, a feeling that is familiar to me. But yesterday it was followed other thoughts and feelings. Hope involves taking mental chances. Hope leaves the door open for good outcomes after a long time of fearing the worst and experiencing very hard times.

Hope can be frightening.

Tags Breast Cancer, fear, hope, mindfulness, stress

Categories Breast cancer, Family, Mindfulness, Parenting

Staying aloft

March 25, 2015 //

During one of my recent mind adventures, my memory took me back to the old 1960’s television show, The Flying Nun. It starred Sally Field as Sister Bertrille and took place at a convent on Puerto Rico. Due to her small size, the frequent winds, and her cornette (a particular style of nun hat), she could fly, hence the title of the show. After my mind took me to this show, my fingers took me to Wikipedia.

Sister Bertrille could be relied upon to solve any problem that came her way by her ability to catch a passing breeze and fly.

That sentence gave me a good chuckle and I thought, “How could the show’s writers sustain this premise?”

Plot 1: The convent eagerly awaits a visit from the Bishop. After an albatross makes off with the his miter, Sister Bertrille hitches a ride on a gust and saves the day by retrieving it.

Plot 2: Fire breaks out in the convent campanile. After accidentally breaking the tallest ladder in town, Sister Bertrille uses her flying power to reach the fire and put out the blaze.

Plot 3: A little girl’s kitten is stuck in a tree! The fire ladder is still broken. Sister Bertrille flies to the top and saves the day!

Plot 4: Run away kite!

See, not sustainable. Nonetheless, the series lasted two seasons. How did they do it? Also, how did her cornette stay on?

A fictional life needs substance to sustain itself. It can’t be utterly ridiculous.

A real life needs so much more.

Once upon a time, my blog was often humorous. Once upon a time, my blog was mostly about cancer. My blog has changed and my needs have evolved. My husband asked me yesterday, “Do you still think about cancer every day?” I told him, “yes” and I have thought about it every day since May 25th 2012. I mean this literally. Every day.

But thinking about cancer and being actively treated for cancer are different. I think back to what I needed to do during my active treatment and I can’t believe it. The extra work I had to cram into my schedule in order to take time off for surgeries, the number of surgeries, the telling people or not telling people about my health. The changing landscape of my body. The changing energy levels. The changing brain. The major unknowns about even the near future. One of the ways I dealt with the stress and fear with laughing at the ridiculousness of it. That is a coping strategy that is useful to me, it sustains me.

I think about sustainability and capacity a great deal. I want to be a healthy person. It is too easy for an active person such as myself to work too hard and to get my life out of balance.

But sometimes we just have to work really hard. Cancer treatment is one of those times. One of the hardest thing about this time as well as during other unpredictable and serious stressors in my life is that I don’t know how long I will have to work super hard in crisis mode. In the past, I used to tell myself that I would slow down once the stressor passed, for example, once I finished my Ph.D., once I got my career settled, once my daughter was older, once we bought a house, etc.

Those stressors never stop. Life is hard and complicated. Fortunately, I appear to be in good physical health and my mental health is strong. I have a safe place to live, a loving family, lots of friends, and a wonderful job. But it is easy to get caught up in moving too fast, worrying too much, and creating needless suffering for myself even in a life that in most respects is an embarrassment of riches.

As I’ve mentioned recently, right now I am focusing on having more fun with my husband. We do something, just the two of us, at least a couple of times a week. We went on a trip. We went to grown up prom. I have also started having more fun with my daughter. I think that the fact that I am more relaxed has had some positive impact on her among other things. Just last weekend she told me, ‘Mom, have you noticed that I am out of my “I hate my mom” teen phase?’ I have learned to accept these lavish gifts with understatement. “Hmm, I guess yes, I’ve noticed. Why do you think that is?” She replied, “I don’t know. I guess I just got older.”

I take these beautiful moments for what they are, moments. And they seem to be threading together into increased maturity. But her growth is not linear; it has peaks and valleys and plateaus. All of our lives are like this, even the most stable of us because there are so many aspects of life that are out of our control.

My family life is still full of unknowns. My husband and I still deal with major stressors and challenges both within our immediate family and in our extended family. We are part of what is called “the sandwich generation“. Sometimes I feel like we are the PB&J left on the bottom of a backpack for a week that ended up getting run over by the school bus.

Nonetheless, we are making time for fun. We have trips or fun visits planned for every month from May and September. My passport is being renewed as we speak. We will see two coasts, mountains, and two states. We’ll travel by planes, trains, and automobiles. We’ll be surrounded by friends, by cities, and by nature. And yes, friends, there will be photos, lots of them.

I am discovering that I need to make time for peace and enjoyment. One of the least sustainable premises in real life is waiting for life to get easier.

Tags Breast Cancer, Family, fun, life balance, Marriage, mindfulness, stress, The Flying Nun, travel

Categories Breast cancer, coping with humor, Family, Feelings, Flora and Fauna, Marriage, Mindfulness

The Hand Off

March 20, 2015 //

My daughter used to run on a track team every spring. She is naturally fast and coordinated. However, she is also quite independent and back then, difficult to coach. She had her own ideas about technique as well as what distance was best for her. Oh yes, she was also highly distractible. Whenever she ran, you didn’t know what would happen because the range of her performance was wide. One of of the meets had an 8th grade co-ed relay, with each student running 400 meters. Her team was small. They didn’t have two 8th grade boys and two 8th grade girls. So the coach put younger kids on the relay team, three younger girls and one 8th grade boy.

My daughter was one of the younger girls. They had not practiced prior to the meet. As I recall, she was second or third in the relay. The hand off to her was seamless; the hand off to the runner after her was seamless. She was ready to start when it was time to go and she absolutely flew down the track, passing all of the other teams by a rather large margin. The rest of the team ran well and held on to the lead she’d created. They tied the record time for the Archdiocese. The whole thing was really quite marvelous to watch.

In a relay race, speed obviously counts. But the most critical parts of the race are the hand offs. One has to hold on to the baton for exactly the right amount of time, not too long or too short. And the other part of it is taking the baton at just the right moment.

Much is written about painful feelings, especially those associated with grief. How long do we keep them. When do we let them go? When do we take them on. The relay race keeps coming into my mind. We can’t stay out of the race, altogether. We can’t deny or suppress painful feelings. To do so is a recipe for unhappiness and often leaves us alone. It is too hard to connect with others when one is coping by disconnecting with oneself.

Then there is the other problem, hanging on to the painful feelings too long. This is also a recipe for unhappiness and suffering, often alone. It is hard to connect with others if holding on to pain leaves no room in our hands to hold onto positives in our lives.

This all strikes me as rather complex. Sometimes I need to hang on longer than others want me to. Sometimes, I need to move on, at least temporarily to be functional in my life, to be good at my job, to be a good mother, to be a good friend, and to be a good wife. Sometimes I move on just to give myself a break.

It can all seem like one big game of trial and error. I know that practice helps and life provides frequent opportunities for holding on or letting go of painful emotions. I’m not keen on trial and error, though. I am a pattern maker, an observer.

I have taken on more work lately. My concentration and stamina are improved. I am happy to be able to participate more fully in my professional life, especially since my business operating costs have increased due to my new office’s significantly higher monthly rent. But this change has also made it harder for me to go walking everyday. I am still walking regularly, about five times per week.

Over the past few weeks, I have noticed a pattern. Overall, I am much more patient and less irritable with my family. But sometimes I get my feelings hurt, feel anxious, and get a little heated. My reaction is not huge but it is out of scale with the situation. This almost always happens on a day I have not gone for a walk.

Hold on.

Let go.

Put on the walking shoes.

Tags emotions, exercise and emotion regulation, grief

Categories Family, Feelings, Marriage, Mindfulness

Second Chance

March 15, 2015 //

His name was Kurt. We went to high school together. He was a year ahead of me. I think it was my junior year. We took creative writing together one semester. I remember his appearance. He had very fair skin and very light blonde curly hair. I am pretty sure that he wore glasses. I also think he sat kitty corner across the classroom from me (we sat at tables in a “U” formation instead of in rows of desks). I remember his being nice but not really knowing or noticing much about his personality. As I recall, he was fairly quiet. He was one of the boys at school who was into muscle cars and he had some kind of old but “cool” car like a Ford Mustang, or something.

One day, as I was walking in the hallway from one class to another, he stopped me. I don’t recall ever having had a one to one conversation with him previously, but then again, I could have forgotten many. I am and was pretty friendly and talked to many people. Kurt looked assumed a very relaxed stance and with apparent nonchalance, asked me to his senior prom.

You may already know that I never attended a formal dance at school: No prom, no homecoming, and no winter ball. I did not attend any university formal dances; those were mostly for sorority girls. I was not in a sorority and honestly, at that time, would have avoided attending any event like that.

So, if I was asked to prom and didn’t go, I must have told Kurt, “no”, right?

Strictly speaking, that’s the truth. But the part that still embarrasses me and makes me feel guilty is that I told him, “yes” when he asked me and then changed my mind and cancelled on him the next day. I was afraid. I didn’t really know him. He wasn’t one of the boys who I was wanting to ask me out, either. And he drove a hot rod! I was afraid that he would be one of those boys who would pressure me for sex on prom night or try to get me drunk! I backed out in as nice of a way as possible. I later got to know him a little better and he probably would have been a good date. I could have been able to attend a major high school “coming of age” social event and NOT hurt a boy’s feelings. Oh yeah, I may have even had a good time.

About four weeks ago I was reading my neighborhood’s community blog. I saw that a “Second Chance Prom” was to be held as a charity benefit, at the golf course down the street from me. The tickets were very reasonably priced and it looked like a small, low key affair. So I bought two tickets and made an additional donation to the charity. Then I told John that he was taking me and as I had hoped, he readily and enthusiastically accepted.

I spent more time choosing clothing and accessories for my Second Chance Prom than I did for my wedding. I got my hair and make up done professionally. For my own wedding, I cut my own hair, styled it, and did my own make up using drug store cosmetics. But this is grown up prom! I wanted to get the best out of it and enjoy the process leading up to the event as much as I could. I trusted that I would not go crazy. After all, I will always be a discount shopper.

I tried on a lot of dresses. The one I ultimately chose was not my favorite based on photos. But it fit almost perfectly, required no uncomfortable foundation garments, was comfortable, and fit the James Bond theme of the prom. Also, it had an open back, which I knew John would like, and I looked about as good as I could.

Yesterday started as “glam day”. After my walk, I spent about 45 minutes online looking at photos to inspire hair and make-up ideas. If I were going to look like a Bond Girl, I wanted to go retro. I started getting a few ideas from photos of actresses from James Bond films from the late 60’s and early 70’s. Then I just started thinking about actresses from that time period and I thought, “What about Ann-Margaret?” Ding, ding, ding! I found an old photo of her with glam hair and make-up well suited to the time period as well as my hair.

My husband did not want to see my dress so I wore a coat over it, though he could see the bottom of it since it was a full length gown. He had still not picked out his outfit. Most of his button-down shirts are Hawaiian shirts. Knowing how overheated he gets, I even told him that I didn’t mind if he wanted to wear one. My only request was, “Please, no sneakers.”

He drove me to the salon with the plan that he would pick me up later and take me to dinner. This would be his way of picking me up for prom. I thought that was really sweet. I have gone to this salon for many years, so people know me there. They loved the idea of my going to prom and were excited to see John pick me up. I was seeing a different stylist for my make up and hair, Candace, who was recommended by my regular hair stylist, Megan.

I showed Candace the photo. She immediately understood what I wanted. Megan also came over during one of her breaks and said, “Good choice!” Candace was funny and sweet. I had arrived with a clean face and clean, frizzy hair. She styled my hair first and then did my make up. At one point, she said, “You are looking really glamorous, Dude. You clean up well.” When she was finished, I could tell that she was proud of her work. She said, “Let me parade you around the salon.” I followed her to the other side of the salon, where Megan was working. She also approved.

I was very pleased. Candace took a couple of photos of me for her portfolio and sweetly gave me a hug before she left to work with her next client. My husband arrived and responded in a positive but slightly stunned way. Then we got our photo taken together. John then kept asking me to pose for photos. And by “pose” I mean he instructed me on how to pose, a good thing because I have one pose and that is it. I think he said, “Wow” about five times. We had a great dinner.

We knew no one at the dance. But we were both ready to have a good prom. We danced when we wanted to even if we were the only couple on the dance floor. John sat down when he needed to. (It was hot and his back is still bothering him.) I danced even if he wasn’t dancing.

I danced even when I was the only one on the dance floor. I just enjoyed myself. I enjoyed the experience of dancing, which is something I love to do. I’m sure that I raised a few eyebrows. When I “get into the zone” with dancing, there is a certain level of abandon that people typically associate with um, intoxication. If this had been high school, there would have been mean gossip. As I keep saying, age has its benefits. After about 1 1/2 hours of dancing, I took off my shoes and went barefoot because I could tell that my feet were going to hurt, if I didn’t. After another 1 1/2 hours, we called it quits. My hip was hurting and John was drenched with sweat.

I missed my first chance at prom because I was afraid. I could have missed my second chance by being self-conscious about my body, my age, or being the only person on the dance floor. But I didn’t miss it and I had the time of my life with the man I love.

Hubby opted not to wear a Hawaiian shirt and his one blue dress shirt perfectly coordinated with my dress. And for those of you who have had breast construction, the little dent under my right underarm would probably be described as a “deficit” from a reconstructive surgery standpoint. Does it bother you? It didn’t bother me, either! And if the appearance of symmetry is important to you, the neckline of this dress is helpful in that regard.

The best kind of smile comes from laughing in delight at your husband’s insistence on taking a million photos of you.

Dinner at “the most romantic table” at Salty’s, which has a splendid view of Elliot Bay and the downtown skyline.

Corsage and prom bling on display.

Tags breast reconstruction, fear, high school prom, Marriage, mindfulness, second chances

Categories Breast cancer, Marriage, Mindfulness

The Whole Truth

March 11, 2015 //

Last week I had dream that I was in a car accident and ran over four people with my car. I was horror struck. The dream did not last long. It was interrupted, as my nightmares increasingly are, by a lucid though. “You are dreaming. No one is hurt.” I immediately opened my eyes. My heart was pounding very fast. As I looked around the room, I quickly became calm. It was just a bad dream.

It may have just been a dream but my horror was real. And my horror matched my thoughts. But my thoughts did not match actual concrete actions and events. Yes, I had real feelings. Yes, I had real thoughts. But no, the action I was carrying out was sleeping. My location was my bedroom. I had not been driving or hurt anyone.

Feelings and thoughts do not always align with our actions or external realities. We think about thoughts and feelings as being unreal if they do not align in this way. Feelings and thoughts are real. They have some reality. They have meaning.

A tricky part of life is knowing when to take thoughts and feelings at face value and when I need to interpret them as a communication to do something else like eat if I am irritable because I’ve skipped breakfast or to take better care of myself if I am getting my feelings hurt easily because I am working too many hours.

One of the skills we have been learning when emotions and thoughts seem to be out of synch with other realities is called, “Checking the Facts”. Our instructor prefers the name, “Checking Your Thoughts”. I prefer the latter as well.

I have to say, this is one skill in which I excel. I am typically able to come up with alternative explanations for situations when I sense that I have jumped to conclusions or when a situation is upsetting but the pieces just don’t seem to add up.

Sometimes, in my quest to be restrain myself with thoughtfulness and understanding, I have a different problem. I over explain and over understand. I work too hard to find the whole truth.

We never know the whole truth or the full story. I have been working for many years on this, especially when it is a need to master reality to reduce my own anxiety and I just end up creating more anxiety to myself and others by being a know-it-all. My dear husband of 25 years gets the brunt of this, I’m afraid. We will have some kind of minor misunderstanding based on a different recollection of an agreement. Usually, this is an agreement during which I remember him agreeing to do some kind of chore at home. I’ll ask him about it and he says, “That’s not what I agreed to do. I agreed to do _____.” Then I start feeling guilty because I had been annoyed with him. Then I feel anxious because I stress out about forgetting things and dropping the ball. So I start doing an inventory.

“But John, don’t you remember. You said that you’d stop at the store to pick up ice for the party. You were just finishing a phone call with your mom when we talked about it. You said you’d do it as soon as you got your shoes on. I asked you if you were sure that you could do it. You said yes, I asked you to pick up two bags of cubes, not solid ice. Also, I was wearing a blue dress, that one I picked up on our last vacation to the San Juan’s. You know, it was the time we took the ferry that had a public puzzle set up that was so fun.”

Okay, I am exaggerating and that situation is fictional but representative. Is it really necessary for me to go on in this level of detail?

Is it really helpful?

Is it really that big of a problem that I need it to be acknowledged and fixed immediately?

This brings me to the next skill I am practicing. It is called, “the wave”. Basically, it’s allowing oneself to feel uncomfortable feelings in their entirety without trying to fix them. It is a type of exposure in cognitive behavioral terms. All feelings go down if you let them.

Yikes, this is one of those passive skills. I. Am. A. Problem. Solver. This is one of the hardest things for me to do. To sit with my own distress without trying to fix it. To sit with the distress of my loved ones without trying to fix things for them.

But I am getting better. I am accepting, bit by bit.

Tags cognitive behavior therapy, emotion regulation, mindfulness

Categories Marriage, Mindfulness