Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Nothing is in control.

I have a 7 seconds of meditation app on my phone.  Its purpose is to increase mindfulness in your life.  Once a day, it gives me a message.  Yesterday it was "nothing is in control.  Smile about it and let go."

Last week, I went out to breakfast before chemo with an old friend/mentor.  Somebody I associate exciting and fruitful times with.  Although I had a great time catching up with him, I left feeling very moody and sad that I am, life-style speaking, a different person.  Not able to take charge of my difficulties and fix them my own way.  I have no control over how this plays out.  I have control over my CHOICES, of course.  But I am not in control of cancer.  I have no idea where it came from.  I have no idea what caused it.  I have no idea how to prevent it from coming back, aside from following the recommended treatments of my medical team.  I guess this is the fear that they speak about.  Women living in fear that it will come back.  Its really just a lack of control that's the culprit.  But I need to follow my phone's message and let it go.  Nothing is in control.

In our breakfast conversation, I found myself shrugging my shoulders a lot to comments and questions.  Because, that's the only response I really have.  Shrug your shoulders and wait for how its going to turn out.  And much to my annoyance, I had trouble concentrating on the conversation towards the end.  I was becoming mentally exhausted.  Chemo-fog.  And that made me irritated.  Having breakfast with him has been on of my favorite things to do, on that occasional day off from work.  Sigh.  Now these days off work are due to cancer treatment, and I can't enjoy them with full clarity like I normally would.

However, something really great that happened is that he put me in contact with another music educator who was a student at KU, shortly before my time there.  Five years ago, when she was 32 years old, like me, she was diagnosed with Breast Cancer.  She blogged through the whole experience and now she is doing great.  She is a survivor.  Her job appears to be going better than ever, in the KC Metro area at an urban school, very similar to the schools I work in.  She is a dog lover and a yoga enthusiast, as well as being committed to being super fit.   She is a new mom, post-cancer, which for many women is not a possibility.  And she is very involved in spreading information about healthy eating, food products, and home cleaning products free of toxins and general bad stuff.  Her motivation is to create a better healthy life for her son.  She is a very wise, humorous go-getter with a positive attitude.  She is passionate about education, and writes thoroughly and at length.  I'm so glad she exists and I'm really enjoying reading her blog.




No comments:

Post a Comment