Being Where You Are

Treatment Progress Check: As I write this I’m on Day 12 of a 21-day cycle. Currently I have completed 2 out of 5 cycles. Things generally tend to improve once I’m at least a week out from the IV treatment, although they can still go up-and-down on a daily basis. Like for instance, Friday I felt good enough to go with Lori to The Show That Goes Wrong at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre (and we had a great time). Then yesterday I felt pretty wiped out again, and making a short trip to the grocery store was a challenge.

A big thanks to everyone who reached out in the last week to encourage me and us! It means a lot to have you folks in our lives 🙂

This past week I joined a Mindfulness practice course put out by CancerCare Manitoba. I have some experience with mindfulness meditation in the past, but I thought the refresher would be good. Also, doing it all through the lens of being a cancer patient (or support person) would perhaps be helpful and feel more relevant now. We meet Tuesdays via Zoom, and started out doing your usual things like a body scan, holding a raisin in your mouth, and some breakout rooms of conversation with other course participants.

We were asked to discuss amongst ourselves why we’d chosen to take the course, and I chose to share something that had come up in my counselling sessions as well; I’m not sure I’ve let go of being “pre-cancer Nathan” again. Intellectually I know things are different, that time marches on and we can’t go back, but some part of me is hoping against hope that everything will go back to ‘normal’ and I’ll carry on being the guy I was at the beginning of the year. I get pretty emotional when I think hard about how that…won’t really be possible, and so I know there’s more to unpack there but I haven’t really taken the time to do it.

I thought a Mindfulness practice — a course about practices that help ground you in the present moment and experience things as they are — would help me not to dwell on a version of me that no longer exists. We’ll see if that turns out to be the case.

Two other things I noted from the Mindfulness session; for those who’ve never done a practice like this, the instructor helpfully clarified that this is not meant to be a ‘spiritual’ practice that changes or replaces any beliefs we currently have. I think that’s still a fear people have; the word ‘meditation’ can have some connotations for folks that put them on edge. In my experience it’s more about slowing down, and finding a restful place to check in with yourself and what you’re currently feeling, both physically or emotionally.

The other thing I found interesting was that the instructor told us not to ‘fix’ or ‘help’ each other. We’re more than welcome to share things that have worked for us, but we’re not welcome to try and foist those on to other people, as we’re all coming from different treatments, experiences, diagnoses, and backgrounds. As somebody who still struggles to just ‘listen’ to another’s problems without trying to jump in with a solution, this was a valuable reminder.

On a more practical note, my hands and feet were really tinglin’ this week as the weather got colder. It turns out my gloves are not adequate, and I’m probably going to have to wear one of those face/neck warmers soon, even though we’re not below zero yet. At least I can drink things that aren’t hot these days — warm water is…not very refreshing.

Everybody hang in there this week!