Monday, October 4, 2010

Acceptance

I have been thinking all weekend about a conversation I had on Friday with one of the nurses at St. Elizabeth Cancer Care. Now this is a great place to get treatment, if you ever need it, because all the staff are kind and good at what they do. I used to do what they do, long ago. I usually go with friends, because I have awesome friends, but on Friday both of them were sick. I figure that when I go alone, God has some plan for me there. I wasn't wrong. Jenny was my nurse and she was just who I needed to talk to. Sometimes I think I have this whole scenario figured out, and sometimes I feel just as lost as I did the first day I was told I had cancer. I feel like a bird in a net, flapping and snapping, but unable to get free of the cords wrapped around me. Jenny presented my situation in a way that I had seen before, but not with the eyes I have now. I think if I give up fighting the net, I will never be free. But I cannot fight the net. I must find the way to be free within the net. The net actually protects me from greater danger. The chemo, awful as it is, is better right now than the cancer that waits to destroy me. To see this means not fighting it, when not fighting it feels like quitting. But it is not quitting, it is living.

2 comments:

  1. my aerobic instructor, who was a little new age hippy for sure, was telling me all about natural child birth when I was pregnant. Now, I didn't follow her advice at all because I am not opposed to pain killing drugs, but it sounded interesting. She said what she did for the second time giving birth was to not tighten up your body with each contraction and hold your breath or yell (fighting), but to relax every muscle in your body, breathe, and kind of do this meditative type thing. She said it worked.

    Well, I didn't use it for child birth, but I do get migraines. And I can't take any medicine for them because I'll get sick. So I use some of her new age stuff, and it really does help. It doesn't make it go away, but it dulls the pain and helps me fall asleep so at least I can sleep through it. There is something to be said for letting the body do what it needs to do.
    Melissa

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  2. Love you-love your living

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