THE BOSOM BLOG Part 1
January 24, 2012 | By Mari | Bosom Blog
Where has my voice gone? I hear it in my head, but of late, it hasn’t translated into my fingers or even to my lips. My health has been a bad news buffet — every moment devoted to teasing apart various aspects of medical information.
On January 26, — exactly six months and one day after I endured the replacement of my left hip with a combo of titanium and ceramic — I will be filleted again. This time surgery falls on a Thursday. Thursday was the day of the week my Mom died, and my Dad. (Stress resurrects my childhood superstitions.)
I had open heart surgery on a Thursday, on the cusp of the new Millennium — December 16, 1999. It was a time of drama and pathos. News commentators predicted that the world would shut down; hospitals would be forced to depend on their back-up generators.
No such drama presented, but in our medical theater, the plot was thickening. I was fighting to survive the eight hours it took to remove my God-given mitral valve and substitute a mechanical device that makes me sound like a ticking clock.
And then I was stubbornly reluctant to come off the respirator and breathe independently. I retain fragments of images: Robert standing over me imploring me to breathe. Finally, after an hour of coaxing, I did inhale and agree to return to life.
I HAVE BREAST CANCER. This discovery blind-sided me. Over the years, I have become accustomed to having mechanical engine repairs, like our vintage Bentley. R. says that I am morphing into a bionic woman.
But cancer is different. Cancer — the very word makes all other monsters pale. They run for cover. When your own cells have turned against you, and there is no blueprint for what might happen in the future — only speculation by calm, detached medical professionals — it leaves you feeling as though you have been pushed out of a plane and are falling through time and space with no landing pad in sight.
It is lonely; it is scary. This is a tricky thing indeed. I can rationalize it from a meditator’s point of view.
Falling reflects the true nature of all existence. Letting go is the lesson, impermanence the friend or foe, depending on whether you choose to extend your hand in friendly offering and once clasped, ease your grip, or you decide to seek the best parachute and state of the art padded suit, magic remedies, prayer and hocus-pocus-hoolah-moolah and then convince yourself that you jumped for the thrill alone and know a soft landing awaits you, when you choose to touch down on earth.
I am somewhere in between the two. The ground is approaching. Surgery is this Thursday. It is no longer a nebulous date to be fixed in the future when I have finished interviewing my team of experts: surgeon, oncologist, radiologist oncologist, lymphedema therapist, nurse navigator, counselor. Then there is the back-up crew: cardiologist, internist, homeopath, physical therapist, trainer, spiritual mentor and my husband and two dogs. Robert, Snowflake and Mumbles should be at the top of the list. They have my boot, my tail, my sides, and in this case, more pertinently — my bonnet.
So on Friday, my right breast shall have a new wrinkle or two as it loses mass — another proud scar to add to my collection. And I shall have to succumb to a tattoo, something I have continued to eschew each time one of my near and dear decided to get inked. “The dot will mark the spot,” they tell me.
I do like my doctors. It has taken weeks of hard work, research, reading, interviewing friends and then building a fence around me so that I don’t overload and implode. At some point, I had to stop absorbing information and make a decision, and then there was only the waiting.
Waiting is a large piece of this puzzle: waiting for results — as I sweat off pounds while consuming chocolate; waiting on hold for nurses and doctors’ assistants; waiting in waiting rooms while people in various states of deterioration schlepp by; waiting disrobed on examing tables; waiting on the move – pacing like a terrified tiger; waiting with wily detractions – reading my iPad but not being able to concentrate, talking on my cell phone while pacing, texting, counting my breath, repeating the Gayatri Mantra 1000 times, (especially when encased in the tomb of the MRI machine). Add to that, numerous Aums, prayer and intensified meditation practice.
Before open heart surgery, I kept the local Starbucks afloat with my constant infusion of cappuccinos. This time I am going through Royal Blend tea as though another revolution were imminent. Add to that a bundle of Russian Rushka tea leaves, but only after two PM.
Also, sleep is a thing of the past. I may enjoy four hours where the zzzzzs surround my pillow, but each night is filled with intervals of wakefulness and the demons of the knife, of ravaging cancer cells, of swelling limbs, of bleeding wounds, of pain, of helplessness, of powerlessness.
This brings us back to falling again, doesn’t it? So I let go — again. And I begin — again. And I rally, smile, show up, offer succor to someone who is worried, frightened, scared. It doesn’t matter if their reasons seem trivial in the face of cancer. Feelings are feelings, and they can turn us upside down. Suspending my judgment moment to moment, offering compassion and love, and finding humor in every situation (“life without humor is tyranny”) carries me along to those shores of right seeing, one day to the next.
Robert is still asleep. Snowflake snores at the foot of the bed. Mumbles is with me. I have been up since four AM. My vibrant cup of Royal Blend is ready for refilling. I am taking my cue from the Queen Victoria teacup; she is revealing ladybugs and butterflies on the inside or her fine porcelain lip. They, too, appear to be suspended, but they are not in the least disturbed. In fact, they seem to be in thrall as they circle below the golden rim of my teacup — indefinitely.
More tea. More talk later.
These phrases are part of my daily litany.
“May I live life as an art. May I sip of life as of a delicious nectar. May I not squander a single precious moment. ”
But I am a guzzler and, “May I guzzle life as of a giant loaf of crusty bread” doesn’t quite cut it, does it?*
* Especially since I love Kalamata olives on the side, and they tend to make one’s front teeth look like mud flaps — not very poetic, or is it? Doesn’t every morsel of life contain the seed from which poems are conceived?