#24 "OK" is An Inside Job.

Today I had to drive to Toronto to see my Shaman and my Naturopath. I try to make my Toronto appointments on the same day so that I can save myself a trip. I can't believe I used to drive back and forth from Hamilton to Toronto multiple times a week for the past two years.

Well, actually I drove for the better half of the last year, before that I didn't drive. I took the Go Train, and cycled end to end. Up the mountain every time. Bike on the Go Train from Danforth to Aldershot, sometimes I'd bike from Burlington to Hamilton to save myself the bus ride from the Aldershot station because the Go Train doesn't go directly into Hamilton at most times during the day, it makes two trips in the morning rush and in the evening all the other times it stops just outside Hamilton and you have to take a bus into downtown Hamilton, and then still, make it up the mountain somehow. I biked through the winter, rain, cold, wind. You name it. It was a grind.

Anyway, the reason I mention any of this is because lately I've been trying to figure out how exactly I did get cancer. I haven't received confirmation that I am BRCA positive or that this cancer is genetic in origin; however, even if it is - it's just a gene. Some trigger has to switch it on for it to express and cause disease anyway. Not everyone who has the BRCA gene gets cancer, statistically, it's just much more likely.

I go for genetic counseling this Friday before chemo. I'll know eventually if this has a genetic association, but for now, I'm guessing.

I'm trying to figure it out. So far, I really don't think it was dietary. I don't think it was caused by the overuse of xenoestrogens in my personal care products. I didn't eat tonnes of soy or phytoestrogens, or processed food or nitrates or non organics, even my wine was organic. I exercised EVERY SINGLE DAY for over 20 years, exception being just right after I had my babies.

Long story not so short....I've determined that it's likely that my cancer was caused by stress.

I realized this today when I was driving and thinking about what I've been through over the past 3 years.

From May 2017 to May 2019 I was navigating a separation, I would stay with the kids on week days in the family home and was a single mom, doing all the after school activities, groceries, homework and play dates. I was also in school. Studying and doing assignments after I read stories and put the kids to bed, cleaned the dishes, packed the lunches and did the laundry. I also had a co-op position with CanPrev, and that additional work load. I did not drive. I took the kids everywhere by transit for a year and a half and cycled to and from school and everywhere in between. At night when I could I'd take the kids to the gym with on the bus. I had to quit my fancy gym because it was too expensive for a single mom in school with no job yet. I would leave the house every weekend for two years so the kids didn't have to.

Before I graduated, I got a job working in Hamilton as a Healthy Living Advisor (lol) on Wednesday evening and weekends. I would go back and forth between Hamilton and Toronto. All the while I was still negotiating custody and access and trying to figure out where I would live with my kids, where they would go to school and how our new life would be and how Jason would fit into it.

I had no life besides what I described. Every single day I was loaded with stress. I would see Jason on weekends and a lot of them I spent at the kitchen table studying to make up for work I didn't get done on weekdays. We would go to the gym where I'd work out for hours sometimes. Monday I would repeat it all over again. I never quit. Even when I was exhausted.

I graduated Valedictorian. I was relentless. I pushed myself to the very edge of what I could do. Staying up some nights until 2 or 3 am studying just to maintain my impossibly high standards. I went to the gym when I was tired because I didn't want to skip a day. I didn't cry or ask for help with my separation. I got myself legal aid and we went through a mediator but with the exception of some sage advice from one of my mom's friends, I mostly navigated the legal bits of the separation alone. We wanted to avoid court and the stress for the kids, so there were many arguments. I had very few close friends and my weekdays were quite lonely aside from time with my kids.

Every aspect of my life was a challenge. When I look back on those years, it's no wonder I have cancer. There was never a chance for my poor body to relax. I literally lived every day in a stressed state overworking and trying so hard to make a better life.

I'm not saying I was joyless, I had Jason and of course my kids were and are such a huge source of happiness for me. But I was burning the candle at both ends for a long time.

When I was driving today I was reflecting on all of this, and it was then I decided that stress caused my cancer. My drive for perfection and my relentlessness and need to control everything-or at least try created an oxygen-less state, a state of disorder and eventually ...dis-ease.

Now there's very little in the big picture I can control. I'm doing what I can. As I write this. Madeleine has started barfing. She's clearly brought home a bug. I sit here now, in this chair, unable to help her, or care for her because I risk catching it. I have to keep myself away from her because it could mean delayed treatment or hospitalization. Jason has to do it all, clean the barf, disinfect and care for her and now because he's been so close to her he has to stay away from me and can't help me. It's not ideal.

My only job right now is to not stress about it. When I think back on how damaging stress is, I have to decide to let it go. Acceptance is key. I accept for now I have cancer and I'm doing everything I can to fight it. One big part of that is managing my stress, this is the biggest change I can make.

I need to lower my personal standards and expectations of what I and others can do in a day. I need to accept that sometimes it doesn't all get done. The dishes stay dirty and the kids don't eat organic everyday. This is a big part of me being well in the future. Learning to moderate my expectations and manage how I react to real life when shit blows up, as it does, will be a big part of defeating cancer. Cancer is a disease that thrives on chaos and lack of oxygen and systemic stress.

I can't believe I didn't make a stronger case for stress in all of this. I was looking for the one thing I ate or did that caused it. I really do think it was just that I was overdoing everything and despite me eating well and exercising, I never gave my body a chance to fight cancer.

We all fight cancer everyday. Most people win, their bodies destroy it and their immune systems defeat it before it can replicate. I didn't give myself that chance because I was too busy trying to control the outside, I left the inside unprotected.

From now on, I'm going to make more of an effort to control the inside first. If inside is calm, I'll proceed to what is going on outside. If things are left undone, that's fine, if I'm not perfect, that's fine too.

I'm not trying to be perfect anymore. I'm just trying to be OK.

And that will be good enough.