It has been raining the last several days, and the forecast shows the same for the remainder of the week. I was hoping to get some more UV from the sun to burn off some of the bilirubin, but that doesn’t look likely.
I’ve had so many different experiences in the last two days, from the new insights in working through the repetitive and extreme routine, to new perspectives into my emotional healing and discoveries, that it would require more energy than I have at the moment to write them all down. So, I will probably incorporate them into later blogs, like I have done for explaining the treatments.
I explained before how hard it was for me to watch the loss of most of my muscle. The nutritionist did a presentation yesterday and one slide explained that it came from a lack of sleep, not necessarily from the cancer. Kinda of a blow since I had been focusing on caloric intake for the last several months trying to combat it. The result of the nightly insomnia cocktail of pain and itching that I had unwillingly taken, had caused the radical physical transformation to my body. I have to now rebuild it from scratch, along with reestablishing new priorities, new goals, new attitudes… a new beginning with an unknown future. My only plan is to focus on my healing over the next 3 months and reevaluation my options.
I recalled living in the moment. A philosophy that I learned from an accident a long time ago that also had transformed my life. If you are feeling anxious or fearful, you are living in the future. If you are feeling depresses or sad, you are living in the past. Only in the present is your future and past created. It is OK to look, to make plans, or identify mistakes, but I can only live in the present. I recognized I had been searching for the why and how I got here, but also spending a lot of time in the future trying to forecast my outcome. How am I going to continue another 3 months after leaving the program? How am I going to manage the food and treatments? How was I going to finance all of this? How do I continue to motivate myself without Jose, my nurse’s help with such fervor?
I had let it overwhelm me and began to pray… returning me to the present and focus what I could do in this moment. To search out gratitude in the dozens of subtle little personal wins in my improvement; an increase in my appetite, getting some fish reintroduced back into my nutrition, getting 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep last night and waking up refreshed and not nauseous.
I got to meet Dr. Tony, the founder today. I had a one-on-one session with him how I was feeling and stated how impressed he was with my progress. He had reminded me how much this is a physical, emotional, spiritual, and MENTAL journey in healing. His holistic approach to healing the person with cancer, not the cancer within the person. It is subtle, but I had to make the change in my attitude. To see myself as the person with cancer and heal myself holistically with my team here a H4C.
He reassured me that they were here for me for the rest of the year. Only a phone call away for support and to reevaluate my status in 3 months (I think I return here for 2 days). He surprised me with even prioritizing and recommending only several treatments that I should make an investment in, as though he understood the difficulty of maintaining this routine when I went back home.
It was a good day… having been reminded of staying focused on healing in the moment. He concluded with giving me an name of an oncologist he has worked with in Denver (someone I can finally talk to, that understands my personal journey) and Dr Tony said he had a new treatment that he would like me to participate in when I return home.
Trust in God. Trust in the Process. Trust in Yourself. Live in the Moment. Thank you for all your prayers and love!