Dear Friends,
One year ago today, I headed up to Fletcher Allen Hospital at 6 am for a CT scan. The technician and I chatted while she was scanning me, determined we were the same age and had some mutual acquaintances. Techs are not allowed to tell you the results, they leave that to the doctors, but when she led me out to the main hospital doors still in my hospital gown when it was over, I knew something was up. Sure enough, I had barely made it home before the family practice doc called. Now, if I have learned anything over this past year, it is that a prompt response from the doctor is NOT good news. That afternoon, I went back to radiology and had a CT assisted biopsy to take samples of the "extremely large" mass that they had discovered in my chest. The top of it was the lump I had found at the base of my throat, and it extended down to below my heart, displacing my lungs some and putting pressure on my trachea when I was lying on my back. Luckily, I got a nice sedative that made me feel mostly like I was at a spa during the biopsy (I think it was the very pleasant nurse anesthetist who laid warm blankets over me) and made it possible for me to calmly call some of you that evening as I was walking home from the hospital to tell you it looked like I had cancer. I didn't find out that it was lymphoblastic lymphoma until the following week, and I started chemo a few days later, on June 7.
You know all of this already, and I am only rehashing it because I have been thinking about it so much in the past week. I am once again getting ready to head to Smith to begin graduate school, and as I make travel plans, get class books, rent a mini fridge for my dorm room, in the back of my mind constantly is how similar this is to last year, and how completely different I am. I didn't cry about having cancer until I sent the e-mail telling Smith I was going to have to defer. It was only then that it hit me that I was no longer in control. All of a sudden, the world was not my oyster -- it was a narrow hallway with thick cement walls, no doors or windows, and I HAD to walk down it. A year later, after briefly walking down this hallway, I feel an opening rather than a narrowing of my world. I do know that my firm control on life is illusory, but that hasn't stopped me from making plans and lists and goals. Only now, when people ask me about them, I tend to respond with "That's the plan!"
With the dissipation of that sense of firm control came a dissipation of a certain sense of otherness. While I have never had trouble with empathy for people dealing with hard things, I held an assumption that they were different than me -- that they had made different choices to get where they were. Now I know that there is not necessarily a correlation between choices and outcome, and therefore we are all equally vulnerable and equally strong.
When I finished yoga teacher training at the beginning of May, we had a ceremony to mark our graduation. It was just the kind of ritual that I love and that completely stresses me out -- before we were each called to the front, we had to look into a mirror and say what we were graduating from and then turn around and face the group and our teachers and say what we were graduating into. Talk about pressure! I couldn't focus on the ceremony as my mind raced, trying to figure out what I could say that would be appropriately profound and meaningful. Finally, I realized I was being ridiculous, and I should summon my best yogic mind control and not think about it until it was my turn. To make a long story short -- I ended up declaring that I was graduating from fear and into an exciting adventure. Not particularly profound, but I really meant it, and I have thought about it a lot since then. Before I was diagnosed with cancer, I couldn't imagine dealing with bad news and I spent a lot of time fearing it. Thinking back on a year ago, I am surprised and impressed with how I handled the news of my disease and also how it seemed that all of you took it in stride, offering only a tremendous outpouring of love and support. (I had Valium on my side, you all must just naturally be calm, cool, and collected in the face of bad news.) Now that I have dealt with the idea of having a life-threatening illness, it seems like I can give less energy to that fear. It is not that I am no longer afraid of dying (apparently yoga teacher training only guarantees certification, not enlightenment...sigh) but I do have more confidence in the idea that we are only given as much as we can handle, and so I will deal with things as they arise. In the meantime -- there are so many exciting things to look forward to.
I hope all your summer seasons will give you lots of time for swimming and climbing mountains and eating strawberries with whipped cream. I will be in Northampton, Massachusetts from June 1 until the middle of August for the first summer of the social work program at Smith. At least, that's the plan!
Love,
Zpora
