Taking it all in

It has been since months since I was diagnosed with cancer. I have since been tested and prodded and surgically treated. I have had one follow up visit (still awaiting results)... but it is only now that I feel like I can talk, or even think about what happened. I don't have cancer anymore, I'm not sure I even did in the first place. It happened so fast and was so unexpected that it never registered that I had a life threatening illness.

I feel strange with my brush with cancer, it doesn't seem like it happened at all. It raises all sorts of questions of the 'why' variety. If there is a God, why scare the bejubus out of me, then make it seem like it never happened? I remember a lot of fear and denial and guilt. Isn't that interesting. Guilt over not have as bad of cancer as everybody else. "Please don't call me a survivor... I just had a wart removed, that's all." That's how it felt to me.

It started me thinking about hospice patients that are given a diagnosis of 6 months or less when they didn't know they were sick in the first place. When I worked with them, they seemed calm or sometimes in daze, not exactly sure of what to make of the situation. Shock I guess you would call it. Now I have experienced it first hand... if my diagnosis had been worse, and it took me 6 months to realize what was happening to me in the first place... where would I be?

Diagnosis

It has been over a year since I've left hospice, but the affect on my life has not diminished.
*****

This summer I was diagnosed with cancer. I sat in silence and looked to my mother as the doctor said words that I knew I understood but did not make any sense. I could feel the oxygen burn in my nostrils as I inhaled. I felt the mental clicks of defense mechanisms. Stoic demeanor will surpass emotion. I stopped listening and nodded my head to make my exit that much sooner. There would be appointments. There would be MRI's, consultations, and discussions of risks and outcomes in the future, but at that moment I wanted to dissolve into oblivion.

*****

The experience of working with bodies both strong and frail have opened my eyes to miracle of life. As a species we are a grand experiment that seems on the verge of failing, yet pulls through at the very end. Our very fear of death has lead to a richness of life that can not compare to any other species, yet our lives are not complete without death. Is our fear the death itself, or the lack of knowing whether we'll be able to gloat to our friend that we did it! We got to the finish line with all goals accomplished.

I fear the darkness. I fear the silence. I fear the cold of the earth and loss of inner burning of my soul.

Another Cycle

I found out recently that two of my hospice clients that were released from hospice, had returned and subsequently passed away. I talked about these two quite often, and if not in my blog, in my mind and heart.

I saw E. for almost two years, before they decided to release her from hospice. She is the one that scared me the most. It seems funny to be scared of a 90 year old woman confined to her bed, and her own head. She didn't talk, she couldn't move herself, and she barely acknowledged your existence, but when she did, it got right to my core, right to my fears.

The fear that I would be alone dying, with no family to take care of me. I don't know if that was E.'s case, but situation always seemed to allude to that. In scary movies, you don't have to actually see the scary part to be scared. You infer things, you guess, and you imagine. A lot of the time, your imagination is a lot worse than what actually happened, and I think this could be true of many of our fears. To be well taken care of in a good nursing home, such as the one that E. lived in, is nothing to fear... but we do none the less.

The second person, D. was returned back home when her family was again able to take care of her after a family set back, and she died at home with her son there. She was also slipping into her own mind, slowly and would have soon needed much of the care that E. needed... but D. gave me hope. She was in a nursing home for several months, but she always seemed to have a smile on her face no matter where she was. I did not fear going to help her, and I was glad to hear she died at home.

I also hear that they have finally found a replacement for me 6 months after I left. I hope she is ready for what she is about to experience, I know I wasn't. I am happy for the clients to finally have the benefit of massage therapy once again at their disposal. I know that it made a huge impact on many of the clients I worked with.

I somehow feel that it is finally coming to an end, my experience with this particular hospice. I felt a little guilty leaving, when I knew that they would have trouble finding a replacement in this small community. I don't regret leaving, my business is doing very well and my stress level is much less. However, it's hard to give up touching peoples lives in such a profound way.

Good luck to the next in this cycle.

On the other side

It's been an interesting journey as of late. This switching of lanes from caregiver to bereaved.

I've understood for a long time the process of grieving and the steps it takes. The actions, emotions, and habits of the mourning process. It's been all very intellectual up until this point.

I cried for my grandma for the first time on 12/30/07, a month and a half after her death. As I let go, I realized that I was actually crying for all the people in my family that have passed in the last 2.5 years (I think we were up to 5).

Suddenly my understanding of the behavior of caregivers of hospice patients seemed so much clearer. I had not realized how much I was holding back, or how much I was relying on the problems of my clients to distract me from my own mourning.

I have heard people saying about others "She's just not been the same since so and so died" and never really knew what to think about it. I have a better understanding of it today. I realized that I have not been 'the same' since that first death in our family.

I feel that I am profoundly lucky to have had the experience of massage therapy and hospice work to guide me through this personally difficult time.

-sigh-