Health Consciousness Part 1
Do I Still Have It In Me To Trust?
The main question that led to this conversation, was: Have I arrived, or returned to, real health consciousness? Or do I still feel, at some level, that I am a patient? Do I still feel “ill”? Or have I regained the confidence that I am a healthy human? Not an easy one to revisit, from where I am sitting now, over a year later.
I spoke to Mirella on January 21st 2024, while out for a walk in the forest behind my house in Valea Zalanului. The summer before, working on the house and the garden while stocking up on fire wood I had felt elated. Bathing in the river and basking in the sun, it was the strongest and healthiest I had ever felt in my life.
But an undercurrent remained. The remnants of surgeries, of a terminal diagnosis, a spontaneous remission. It had left me unsettled and not a 100% capable of embracing my health fully. A friend once said: Your body has the same rights and obligations as anyone else’s. What he had meant was, once free from cancer, my body was restored to it previous status of “healthy until proven otherwise”. For me, it never worked that way. The same way I now refer to the “a piano could drop on you head” framework to convince myself that A) nobody knows how much they have left, and B) there are a million ways to die. I love putting things into perspective, but on this one I will happily admit defeat. I cannot rhyme my “cancer consciousness” with your “health awareness” if you are someone lucky enough to have never experienced illness (and I don’t mean a runny nose or an ingrowing toe nail). Once lost, I never got it back.
THE CONVERSATION
It seems ironic, painful, that prior to this conversation I had just removed all cancer related books from my bookshelf. I needed to stop confronting myself with cancer on a daily basis and finally move on. Ouch.
Back in 2014 when my scan results showed my lymph nodes had shrunk to within normal margins, pivoting from accepting that I was dying to processing that I would live, and figuring out how I would live, proved tricky.
M: ‘We talked about health consciousness back then too, because it is such a huge deal to survivors of a terminal diagnosis. Faith in the body, faith in health has been obliterated by a life threatening illness.’
L: ‘When I had cysts in my breasts, I think in 2017, blind panic. Because I don’t assume it will be ok. Because based on experience, previous symptoms and complaints had led to something being very wrong.’
M: ‘Perfectly logical. Imagine how people live through the greatest tragedies, anyone who has experienced trauma the way you have -and already had before cancer manifested, survivors can retrieve some sense of faith, or confidence, but I question whether it ever really, completely recovers.’
L: ‘I think about it a lot. I no longer watch hospital series. After having spent so much time in hospital, enduring so much pain, hospital themed series are not a source of entertainment for me. They are triggering. House, Grey’s Anatomy, I can’t watch them. Then I started to notice how cancer was creeping into more storylines, kind of casually strolling in “where it doesn’t belong”.
I also respond significantly differently to a loved one being diagnosed with cancer, then before I had cancer myself. I cannot erase my cancer experience from my consciousness and it affects how I percieve the world, and myself. I always seek balance, from the vantage point of my miraculous survival (still inexplicable considering the average survival rate of metastasised PEComa has dropped to 16 months since 2011, when it was 18-23). It absurd I am still here. The impact cannot be erased. It would be inhumane if it had not impacted me, I think.
I do always strive to get something out of it, in a posiitve sense and not just for myself but for others too. What does this give me, what can I use to bend towards something good. Nobody benefits from me being a victim, aimlessly regurgitating my trauma. But there are some small specks of light in my epxerience that may benefit someone.
We are entitled to all our emotions, you are allowed to cry until the snot comes running out of your nose. It is your process your body- if there ever was a moment to do something your way, it is this. Cancer is your call to take charge. Nobody gets to tell you how you are supposed to handle it.’
M: ‘Negative, or positive, I think something else exists in between. Is a more neutral position achievable?’
L: ‘What do you think the difference is between a short lived instant trauma, compared to extended trauma? I lived with a belief I would die for over three years. Maybe that is why I still talk about it.’
M: ‘Experiences change your brain. Yours have been fried differently, leaving a lasting imprint, which you would not have had without those years of “dying”. How you experience it and what you do with it, is a psychological and emotional process. It varies from person to person where experiences live, in the conscious part of subconscious part, often depending on how much it hurts.
But the mark a life event like this leaves behind is not erasable, and you can ask yourself: would you even want to?’
L: ‘I do think I still gain from it. My awareness of my mortality has given me a sense of valuing my time. Valuing myself. When I say “I don’t have time for this” I mean that literally. That has been liberating. I love wasting my own time, but it is not a … I grant others. I am also more present than I was before. In the middle of cutting wood or digging up the garden, I can suddenly see something or hear soemthing and I am completely enthralled. I allow time to be so. Presence, choice, autonomy.’
M: ‘It is about holding the reigns. In the period when you were so ill that there was not much left for you to feel in charge of. Not letting anyone claim your time, is not just about autonomy. Whenever a human being is put in a situation where they have no control over their own health, their own pain, or anything else, because it is all decided for you.
Doctors decide how much pain medication you receive, whether you will have surgery or not. They decide what they tell you and how they present their “facts”. It feels as if they are the ones deciding over your life and death, because they are the source where you receive that information from.
It is not even that you are politely asked to surrender, you are appropriated in a way, by the totality of that system, in a way. That is a shocking experience. Which makes it completely understandable that if you make it through that, and you are finally back in charge of your life, there are certain things you no longer accept.
Not even solely from the notion that you are now more aware of limited time left.’
L: ‘It has become my meusring stick though. I sometimes blurt out “i did not survive cancer for this.”
After everything I have been through soe things don’t deserve my time or attention.
The way I see it now, like gratitude for my body. Hiking in the hills, cutting wood, those are Wow moments for me. How is this even possible? Building fences, making compost boxes, building a dog house. I can do this. I take nothing for granted. I am in awe from all of it.
I wish I could give that to everyone. The ability to be grateful, to not take anything for granted, without them having to suffer though what I have been through. Bottle it and hand it out.’
M: ‘I understand your desire, but remember the fundamental respect we owe everyone, for walking their path.
(I remember Mirella asking me this, shortly after my cousin died. “Can you accept that this was his path?” We can’t prevent life from happening to those we love. I don’t know if souls are predestined to walk a certain way, but however it works - I agree with Mirella on the fundamental respect. The way Deepak Chopra reminds me to honour how everyone is living from their level of awareness)
This has been your path. Objectively speaking, compared to most people, it has been an unusual amount of “misery” that has been generously showered on your life, since early childhood.
It has been immense. But that is simply how you walk through this life. Can you look at it from another level? That this is your path, these are your experiences, which opens up your consciousness in your way. No right or wrong, no positive or negative. It is what it is. Experience = consciousness.
Can you allow for the possibility that this is a life, these are experiences, YOU chose?’
TBC