Today, my little Dove Dark Chocolate (I have one each day) candy wrapper message said “Look at you glow.” I looked in the mirror, and while not exactly glowing, I looked back at myself with some amusement and knowing. I will be glowing soon, but not in a way I expected or hoped for.
A couple of years ago, I had a cancerous growth removed, along with all my female organs and three lymph nodes. Luckily for me, my oncologist used the robotic Da Vinci surgical machine, and I was up and about after two or three days, with very little pain or side effects.
I proceeded with living my life, going once every three months to my oncologist for a checkup. The last visit, the Physician’s Assistant saw an anomaly and sent some cells out for biopsy. The test came back positive, so I was sent to a facility to have a PET scan, which came back negative.
This meant that there was some cancer (on what is referred to as the “vaginal cuff”), but not enough to light up in a PET scan. However, cancer being the unpredictable little bitch that it is, radiation was ordered, and I just had my setup appointment. This involves having markers (an actual tattoo, my first) placed on different parts of the affected anatomy and running the patient through a CAT scan to pinpoint the area to be irradiated. That information is sent to the radiation facility so they can accurately zero in on the area, and I will start going there for six weeks, Monday through Friday, to be zapped.
Even though my cancer is mild by a lot of standards, I have had a tough week in terms of concentration and mood. I sit down to write, and nothing comes. I simply stare at the screen and feel confused and mildly angry. My creativity has apparently packed its bags and gone to live somewhere else (probably somewhere on the Mediterranean, just to spite me) until this new intrusion can be dealt with.
A lot of my inner dialogue has been spent being annoyed and surprised at this turn of events; there is no cancer in my family, and I have been fastidious in my quest for good health. However, these thoughts don’t change the fact that I do, in fact, have cancer, and denial and self pity won’t change that fact. So I turn to the positive: I have an amazing support system of husband, family and friends, I have great doctors, my health is otherwise terrific, and my future looks more than hopeful.
But having a health incident like this pokes at the ego, and the ego hates that. Its very existence is being threatened, so it goes into overdrive wondering about its future and inevitable death. The ego doesn’t want to think about death, it tells itself it will live forever! I have plenty of time, I am invincible, I am so important that nothing will ever happen to me, etc.
Sigh. Ego, have some humility for God’s sake.
Isn’t this actually an opportunity to feel more love, more gratitude, more possibility? This initial phase of fear and resentment can turn a corner and bring a reawakening that could result in a richer life, if I let it. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien so poignantly wrote, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
My decision a year ago was to put down my violin and start writing. And in my glowing state, that’s what I’ll be doing from now on.
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