Leonard Cohen
At the hospital today I bumped into my very first breast cancer nurse and we caught up on the latest events. In the midst of this I found myself telling her that despite everything I was in a much better place mentally, emotionally and psychologically than I think that I was before cancer. I'm not convinced that she believed me. I wanted to write about it to see if I believed myself.
We all go through life listening but not necessarily hearing about life changing experiences. We read of people who have had near death situations and people who have conquered life threatening illnesses and come out the other end. I had listened many times to such accounts but I had never truly heard them. I didn't understand on any level what it meant to have a fresh perspective or to see life differently, I think I do now.
The last two years have undoubtedly been hard. The strain and stress of this illness has taken its toll in various ways. However, it is too easy to look only at the negatives and to feel angry and resentful at the hand one has been dealt. What is more difficult is to take the good, the positive. If I had been asked 2 years ago to find positives in my current situation I would have failed the test, I could not have imagined this journey being anything more than a really unfair one. In many ways I still see this. The way my situation stands at the moment I will never be cured, I pretty much know what I am going to die of. I will more than likely spend what time I have either going through chemo or waiting on scan results, or both. That is not easy. It's not the life that I had thought that I would live. These are harsh realities. I have had to give up my job for the majority of these past 2 years, I have altered my life style (only recently, and I wish I had done it sooner) and I essentially live a different kind of life. But here's the thing; it's different, it's not necessarily worse, it's just different and dare I say it, maybe better. No, actually, better IS the right word. I have a new perspective.
I remember an adult saying to me when I was ten years old " be careful not to wish your life away". I didn't heed theses words but I clearly understood the sentiment as I remember it so vividly. I obviously didn't like this aspect of me but I didn't know how to change it. Today I'm learning. I have spent years not only looking forward to future events and thus utterly ignoring any good in the current moment, but also worrying about the future. Not tomorrow but years away. Literally stressing over the ever increasing retirement age and imagining turning up to school in my 60's or 70's. Now we all project a little about such things but I did it a LOT. It's a bitter sweet pill to now be freed of this with the semi safe knowledge that I won't see my 60's or 70's but it's freeing. Perhaps I am able to swallow the pill with relative ease because as I have said before we humans are brilliant at finding hope in apparently hopeless situations. I wake up every day with the belief that they may well come up with a better solution to my problem. I have faith that with time and research my seemingly incurable cancer will be cured. Its not impossible. In the meantime I live in the day (or try to as best I can).
I suspect that a great many people facing cancer find a lot of things in their journey that they would not have believed possible. I personally have met some amazing people through it and have made new friends whom I would not have met otherwise. Just the other day a good friend of mine who has been coming to my chemo appointments with me lately, commented on how much laughter there is in the chemo clinic. It's true. He said that this had surprised him and wasn't something that he would ever have thought to be the case. Everyone is rooting for one another and while we all have a wee moan about our latest cancer disaster; they couldn't find a vein for bloods, the scan took forever to come back, the side effects are getting worse, we feel a bit shit etc etc, we do also (mostly) laugh. I am on weekly chemo and so I attend on a Tuesday along with other women in pretty much the same boat as me. Its the metastatic clinic and we're all a bit screwed really but we have coffee, and lunch and then more coffee (its a long day) together and so we know each other pretty well. We invest more in one another than we would in virtually any other circumstance. We leave there with a restored faith in humanity (and poison in our bodies but that's a technicality).
This is fresh perspective. Its embracing change and accepting that you don't have control over your life but you do have control over how you live it. All of the clichés come back to me with a vengeance, " you only get one life" "you never know what's around the corner". I listened to these clichés in the past but I didn't hear them. I'm really not sure if it is possible to hear them without the experience I have had or if this is just a part of my character failings, I would like to think that for many, living for the day is a reality not only realised through adverse circumstances. For me it took something like cancer to get it. That's ok it really is. It's why I say that, in a way I am thankful for my journey. In an ideal world I would have come to this conclusion all on my own and I would be perfectly healthy today. It's not the case, that's not how it happened and it's ok. Being forced not to take life for granted for me is a gift. I did take it for granted and I completely lost sight of the here and now within it. I now want to try new things. I want to be proactive and not reactive. I would like to think that I could learn to complain less and do more. I am on that road. I don't know about anyone else, but I believe me.
Living in the day is not something that I have ever been good at. Since I can remember I was looking at what was going to happen next week, month, year. I wasn't able to enjoy what was happening right now. By the same token I would worry about what was going to happen next year or in ten years. The ever increasing age of retirement was a regular concern for me. Really! I could say that I no longer have this luxury. OR I could say that I no longer have this limitation. I am free of it. I believe that the latter is true. Thinking constantly about the future whether near or far, only limits your ability to live in the day. I remember an adult saying to me as a 10 year old "be careful or you will wish your life away". I didn't necessarily heed these words but I do clearly remember them and so I obviously understood the sentiment but didn't know how to act upon it. I'm now learning though. I'm learning to live for today.
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