First of all, if you just want the low down on how I’m feeling on chemo, right now, two emojis pretty much bring us up to snuff, so if brevity is your thing, here they are and off you go.👍😊Secondly, I’d planned to answer questions asked in emails and texts earlier in the week with one fell swoop but happily, family and friends have been stopping by minimizing my time to write, so let's not be surprised if those answers (to questions aired throughout the week) shape up into a soliloquy, which this post is likely to become.😊Thirdly, your loving concern is more deeply appreciated than words can clearly convey.And now, on to update #6—with this cautionary note—As Angie says: ‘Annie, I sit down to relax with a glass of wine before reading one your tomes,’ (And since I’ve no clue as to how much will pop out of my head once today’s stream of consciousness takes off on its own—if you decide to ride sidekick with me then at least you’ve been clearly cautioned, so please buckle up—here we go!😊Generally speaking, we offer up ‘not-so-good news’ first in hopes of closing a conversation with better news, which lifts our spirits, so with that insight in mind, here’s the first round of not so good news—Following Monday’s 9:30AM appt. (Dec. 2nd) with my oncologist (whose office is on the same campus as the hospital), we learned that a bed on the oncology floor would be unavailable until afternoon, so Will and I, taking a moment to raise the flag of patience to fly at full mast, decided to go home and putter around until a call from admitting suggested a bed had been vacated and readied for our arrival.And now—here comes the first round of better news:
The call came at 1:30 pm—We arrived at 2pm—I was admitted at 3pm
Have I mentioned that being admitted to this particular hospital feels like checking into a five star resort?For example—Seen daily in the hospital’s cheerful lobby is a pianist performing on a baby grand so as to soothe jangling nerves. Today, I was told that a violinist was engaged for the very same reason.Whenever I order a meal from the extensive menu, the person taking my order answers the phone: Room service, how may I help you? Then a delicious (I kid you not) breakfast, lunch or dinner arrives punctually in keeping with my personal timing requests. So while hospitals, run by Big Brother (uh—make that big business) are run into the ground by the insatiable greed of CEO’s and shareholders, whose unquenchable thirst for wealth matches that of ‘His Majesty’—no not King Midas—I’m referencing the first dictator to run for presidential office in the USA and WIN (what???)—dt, who, being such a blackguard, receives no signs of respect from me, and as such, I’ll not pay tribute to his domineering presence by capitalizing any letter that announces his name.
Since the mainstay of my positive attitude depends upon recharging my spirit’s smile from the inside out, I’ve been rebalancing frustration by occupying my mind with memories so corny as to engage quite frequently with my funny bone, which declares—What am I doing on an oncology floor, where talk of cancer with a deeply caring staff is much too sobering for me to partake in, day after day. So, let’s whisk me away to the children’s hospital, where I can play with kids my own age! And each time a train of thought is made up of insights as corny as these, which choose to tunnel straight through the dark side of my mind toward the light side of life, ASAP, we can take a moment to clean out my closet in case I'm still hiding any subconscious skeletons, witches and goblins from my conscious self, which, awaiting to spring out from my past and scare me silly, sees all of my hair fall out!As one close friend suggests, ‘if ever there’s a time for dark humor, that time is now, and quoting another close friend, who (along with Will, Sam and me) has been one of ‘the guys’ for nearly 6 decades—‘this too shall pass’.
So, having entertained my appetite for ‘corn’, inherited from my high spirited dad, I feel it’s time to air my second round of not-so-good-news.
With patience and courage worn on my sleeve while the decline of my health remained misdiagnosed (though I’d sought professional help from several doctors, over many months), I’ve longed to meet up with Confucius in hopes of heeding a few words of wisdom flowing naturally from the mind of a sage into mine, because two of my inner strengths (patience and courage) experienced sound reason to slide downward in the hospital on Monday night, freeing repressed fear to surface and slide down my cheeks on a quiet river of tears.Though initially that emotional reaction did not feel good, I felt better once awareness of inner need to release repressed tension offered my mindful connection to wholeness to identify a sense of subconscious relief, which upon peeking out from behind my wall of denial, encouraged me to identify the main cause of Monday night’s short-lived shift in my positive attitude, and here is what insight, dawning, offered me—my valiant team encountered a problem implanting and sealing the chemo needle into my port (ensuring no leakage of meds, which would have invaded healthy tissue unable to withstand toxic effects that would place the present state of my health at greater risk)—and in addition to repressed anxiety seeping through my defensive wall of denial, a build up of repressed frustration was aroused, as well, based in the fact that my nurses on day shift, who had proactively ordered my variety pack of chemo, several times from the hospital pharmacy (STAT) did not receive the goods until 10 PM, meaning that changes concerning flushing my chemo lines, which must take place every 24 hours, are now scheduled to start at 11pm, night after night, when my absence of energy wants to visualize nothing other than fairies on my pillow. Over these past several days, I’ve come to understand why my oncologist had clearly stated his preference for orchestrating flushing several chemo tubes (as well as various tubes connected to auxiliary bags, flowing with meds necessary to coat my vital organs protectively). With six bags hanging, port detail at 11PM, nightly was a serious deal. In fact, one nurse would recite the computer readings for each bag, aloud, followed by her partner's voice repeating whatever she'd heard before writing whatever was necessary into my chart. And so rather than all of this taking place during daylight hours when I’d be more apt to feel awake—unfortunately, the pharmacy had proved to be as sluggish as my bowel.
As with every life experience, which has been mine to review, I’ve found it imperative that the bright side of my brain gains conscious control over the dark side (as in—whoops! Here it comes!) if I hope to embrace a self inspired, strong spirited, well balanced, peaceful, forgiving attitude that clears my current path to sit the negatively focused side of human nature in time out, away from revisiting harsh assessments of others, most especially assessments dealt out during times of crises when insults, bound to leap out of our mouths, arouse a pair of defense systems to nurse grievances made up of defensive misperceptions that caused hard feelings to layer up toward perpetuity if details concerning both sides of the same story are never blended to fit smoothly together as would a 500 piece puzzle languishing inside a box with no picture on the top, which is why feuding Hatfield’s and McCoy’s handed down smoking guns to their young, while we, who consider ourselves highly civilized folk choose to holster silencers, targeted at each other’s broken hearts whenever bullets made of passive aggressive facial expressions and body language speak as angrily as if angry birds had blasted insults loudly off of barbed tongues.On that first night, by the time my cheerful oncology nurse received several bags of liquid meds sent from the pharmacy (each of which drips precisely throughout every one of my body systems by way of my port), trouble erupted in River City, again, because one by one, three oncology nurses (who had called each other to my bedside), found it necessary to manipulate the port, freshly implanted into my chest, which being two days post-op, proved a painful procedure to endure for an hour before nurse #3 achieved success after heightening levels of pain exposed deeply repressed fears that revealed themselves, little by little, to me as if my nervous system, acting like a coffee percolator, had plugged into a slow drip, where subconscious tension, secreted from my conscious awareness over these last several months, had finally released my whole mind to consciously acknowledge the intensity of my stress level, which had been hidden from the conscious portion of my mind until my defense system’s wall of denial, experiencing this mini melt down, freed my entire think tank to switch tracks toward the dark side, momentarily, until my power of intuition arose to guide my natural emotional reaction to adversity toward transforming ‘bad news’ into ‘better news’ as this insight emerged from my bright side, again: Once my bravado was exposed to me, my smarts absorbed a balanced perspective of fear-based emotion arising, meaning that as soon as my fluid state of mind came to understand that it had cautiously entranced in incoming lane on the freeway, where emotional traffic felt a natural flow to blend in with the logical side, my outlook rebalanced, freeing my wall of denial from feeling need to unconsciously mask every fear-based emotion that my defense system had chosen to block from the portion of my brain where conscious awareness resides. In short, I could feel both vulnerable and courageous without being perfectly brave.Thank goodness I’ve chosen to participate proactively in sessions of EMDR therapy, each of which inspires me to work naturally toward connecting story dots that had remained invisible until heightened levels of patience and courage hooked into the emergence of humility (necessary to remove dark lenses when re-examining the traits of others until 'forgotten details' concerning shared experiences are aroused to emerge, fleshing in and rounding out memories, which, having been remembered incompletely, have been in need of reviewing, so that each time an invisible dot reappeared during therapy, an insight laden, bigger picture appeared, exposing details that my defense system had misplaced within subconscious storage so that a moment from the past was remembered in such a slanted manner as to fulfill whatever fantasy my ego felt need to believe about another person’s strengths and vulnerabilities in comparison to my own whenever conflict arose between us. Over time, I absorbed the fact that, like all defense systems, mine is programmed to unconsciously feel inner need to whitewash my traits while darkening those of a loved one when his/her perceptions rubbed me the wrong way, unless I was darkening my own, while whitewashing theirs. Oh, what a spectrum of conundrums exists within every subconscious, which are then passed down from one generation to the next What I’m attempting to say is this: When a deeply treasured love relationship falls into the pits and clear communications breakdown that due to the fact that invisible dots in need of subconscious emergence have need to be reconnected in a well-balanced way before both sides of a story relate to reality with a greater degree of consistency, leading toward memories of a ‘story-line’, sharing in AHA! moments where hard feeling tend to soften, naturally, on both sides. On the other hand, both sides have need to work toward reconnecting invisible dots or else discussions are futile, because in the absence of objectivity, misunderstanding continue to traverse a slanted path, and in the absence of heightened objectivity a deeply treasured relationship in need of restructuring continues to weaken for the worse. Why? Because, relationships are as alive as we are, and thus, true to life, nothing stays the same—some are consciously enriched while others unconsciously, shirking accountability, refuse to accept their fair share of angry words spat back and forth, and eventually, it makes sense for one or both to shrink back and away from enduring more of the same. And then there are those who feel need to shriek, bullying their opponents to give in or here's your hat, what's your hurry, and they have the most to gain from seeking insight as to why an uncoached defense system becomes your worst enemy as did mine. In short, every relationship would improve, naturally, if both parties, whose emotional wounds are still subconsciously raw thus unhealed, could brainstorm together toward identifying those times when one defense system or the other had unconsciously white washed one person’s traits while darkening the other’s, making an angel of one while turning an opponent’s point of view into the devil re-incarnate.And with that last thought in mind of the negatively focused attitudes of opponents growing toward becoming teammates, who do more than value (in that they consciously prioritize positively focused conflict resolution, you can see why I worked along with my sons to develop a well practiced line of self disciplined emotional control during moments fraught with conflict, so that in retrospect, our thoughts were trained to feel likely to track logic than may be true of those who have little conscious memory as to when their emotion-driven filters uncap.Upon seeking a silver lining while consciously steering our family’s minds toward strengthening our fledgling connection to logic during moments that would have otherwise have flooded our brains with emotional tension too static to think straight, eventually, we found ourselves eating our own barbed words less often than would be true if The Line of Emotional Control had not popped out of the creative center of my mind while guiding three rambunctious boys to brainstorm through family conflicts while everyone of us, small and tall, directed our thinking caps toward drawing forth positively focused trains of thought based in growth spurts of generosity of spirit, which would manifest like magic while were engaged in brainstorming sessions, led by a leader, who passed the talking stick around the table—and the leader was me only one fifth of the time, and over time, we all learned to offer our opponents the benefit of the doubt until depth in understanding was achieved, again by tall and small, culminating in a solution, acceptable to all, which would surprisingly pop out of one of our minds, and since the ‘voice of authority’ was not the sole property of the parent, thus were the values of self respect and mutual respect absorbed as priorities ever deeply into our minds, no matter our age. BTW, do you know that values and priorities are not the same, which is why each time values and priorities clash, a treasured relationship tends to crash head on ...During recent years, upon glancing back over our extended family time line, I've gained insight after insight into why passive aggressive reactions concerning unresolved transgressions poke at hot buttons with such subtly as to be missed by everyone involved except for the two who are still doing the emotional tango, which has become so complex as to tangle up two minds within subconscious conundrums as would a pair of unpracticed Argentinian dancers, whose footwork can’t unhook, so rather than dancing forward ever more gracefully while accepting each other’s human vulnerabilities, minds, which continue to lock horns with unfathomable emotional complexity tend to make good people feel jumpy, unnecessarily.And so we come to see how today’s lengthy train of intuitive thought encourages me to clean up my act most especially when the same shit hits the fan so as not to free uncapped fear to shatter my natural sense of wholeness as spontaneously as if my inner strengths proved to be as fragile as a glass, slipping out of hand, smashing to the floor.
So what, you may ask, sparked my power of intuition to feel compelled to turn the spotlight of insight toward this particular train of thought, today? The fact that life’s too short to invite passive aggressive attitudes into my presence without expecting my voice to speak up in defense of preserving my retrained peace of mind—most especially when times of crises, opening my mind to personal need to grow ever more receptive to love and logic pouring forth generosity of spirit so freely in a healing manner, back and forth, as to see each of us achieving leaps of faith by becoming ever more consciously aware of personal need to receive love unblemished by transgressions left unhealed from the past.Having absorbed today’s post, you’d think my days have been spent rereading TUESDAYS WITH MORRY, repeatedly, when one reading had affected my absorption of the depths of ‘The Golden Rule’ (more about that later) so thoroughly as to inspire me to love ever more deeply, expansively, conscientiously, compassionately and kindly by choosing to create a peaceful place of solitude in which to ponder (think Walden Pond) where my ability to reflect ever more objectively concerning each other’s darkest moments when (depth perception blinded by intense emotion, clashed furiously or fearfully against common sense, which, once knocked out cold, releases one processor or the other to feel driven to lean so far over cautionary, yellow lines as to force deeply valued friendships to run head on, off the road, where deeply wounded victims on both sides have no conscious clue of having indulged in self inflicted, highly defensive, passive aggressive misinterpretations of each other’s motivations, and if this negativity of thought does not have a short shelf than how can the eyes of love, which are the windows of my soul, open to extend my generosity of spirit so hopefully as to welcome you home with a song in my heart.😊❤️🌈🌻AnniePSAs today’s stream of consciousness took six days to straighten itself out (Whew!) I checked out of the hospital on Saturday, with no chemo side effects, as of yet, other than fatigue and lose of appetite. Wouldn't you know it—now I can eat anything and everything, and my system says—who needs it! Though my logic agrees with everyone whose either enticing me or forcing me to eat grub to serve as fuel to empower my whole self to grow so strong as to cause this foreign invader into full retreat.
Hey! Perhaps, my need to release a spectrum of intuitive musings has fortified my subconscious awareness of holding chemo effects at bay—Seriously—the human brain is a mysterious, magnificent, complex machine—to the moon and back—more than once!
No pun intended when I add: News about Houston will appear in the next post or this one will never be sent😊Hoping you’re well,🙋🏻🌈🌻
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