The last few days I've been back at the gym. Doing yoga and trying to be active at least 3 times a day. We go to the gym in the morning after I take all my supplements. On weekends we come home and do house stuff until around 4 and then we try to go for a light bike ride. We come home and eat dinner and then we go for a walk around the neighbourhood. All of this in attempt to regulate blood sugar levels, to keep things moving and to maintain a type of homeostasis. Jason continues to be my best friend and constant companion, walking slower than I'm sure he'd like and biking much slower than I know he'd prefer but he's there with me every step of the way.
In between all of this I'm taking tinctures, oils and supplements and juice. Weekdays, driving to my treatments.
Physically, these past days I have some strange pains. I have a pain in my leg, my various joints ache, I have a concerning pain in my rib. I try to overlook them and just focus on the day. I'm addressing them all with my care team. It's not improbable that these pains are evidence of metastatic disease (aka Stage IV - terminal cancer) but I can't focus on that. And to anyone who reads this don't give those thoughts any power. It could be any number of things and I'm doing whatever I can so I try not to worry too much about the pains I feel. There's nothing I can do about it today anyway. It could just be plain old muscle aches. It could be nothing. Think positively.
Tonight we went for a walk after a nice grass fed steak dinner. I ate about 5oz of beef. Almost my allotment of beef for the month, but a lovely meal with some sauteed dandelions and cucumber and tomato salad from the garden and a nice glass of red wine.
Anyway, it was a beautiful night, the clouds an orange sherbet with purple and pink. It was so lovely. We walked the mountain brow. I got to a certain point and looked down at how beautiful everything was. The setting sun on the trees, the houses and the lake. I remembered back to this moment.
In the chemo fog. I didn't know what was down there. What I was looking at, I was barely making it a step at a time. Just looking out into to the nothingness of cancer, wondering what would become of me....if I was doomed...scared and afraid. I was lost.
Today I stood in the same spot.
I can see so much more clearly. There's so much there although it's me, standing in the same spot, looking in the same direction I see so much more from all around me.
The trees, the distance, the light. It was always there. I just couldn't see it before.
I haven't "beaten" cancer. I will likely never hear those words. I may hear "No Evidence of Disease" or "Remission" but not cure. That's OK. It's just the way it is. I don't need the words to determine how I feel. I feel how I feel each day and today I felt good.
I think back of me looking into that fog. So scared and alone and confused and unsure. Afraid of death, dying, suffering and not knowing.
I'm still not a huge fan of all of the above, but I accept that death, dying and not knowing are all a part of life, just as much as beautiful sunsets, happy days, babies and spring. Suffering is something we often put upon ourselves, we often do it before we are anywhere near death. We fail to see the light and the distance and we trade our good days worrying about what may come.
If I had spent all the days until today worrying what was behind that fog on that February day, I would've wasted them all and it wouldn't have changed what ended up being there tonight at all. Worrying doesn't control a thing. It just destroys the present moment.
So when I stood there tonight. I thought, "OK...I don't know much more than I did that day in the fog. My future is still uncertain and I've got no more guarantees BUT I enjoy this moment much more than I did that one". I thought about how lucky I was to be alive. How easy it is on beautiful summer nights to feel filled with grace, but I also thought about winter and how we make it through. And how we deserve these beautiful nights.
That's life. One minute you're looking out into an abyss and can't see a foot in front of you and not too long after you can see sunshine and for miles and miles.
In each of those pictures.
The time is now.
The place is there.
The person is me.
All we ever have is now. The present moment and our thoughts about it.
You can't hold a negative and a positive thought in your mind at the same time.
Best we make our thoughts about these moments bright whenever we can.
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