I have received a deluge of emails from those of you who are most curious about why I haven't posted an entry for 3 weeks. Let me begin by assuring you all that there's nothing (new) wrong. The breast cyst aspiration went really well and proved that it was totally benign. No one has any idea why such a large cyst formed, but it seems to be fine now. As far as I can tell, my cancerous breast tumors and bone metastases continue to shrink. My hands are slowly healing. My kidneys and liver are managing to do their job of detox and elimination without further deterioration. My blood pressure has stabilized and I'm sleeping well.
I have been needing a level of "radical rest" that is unprecedented in my life. I yearn to be carried by the delightful feeling of coasting - moving effortlessly with the momentum that is there, not having to exert energy to create the push to do the next thing. I am exhausted and learning to surrender to a cycle of rest that is deeper than I've ever known. I've needed a rest from writing and from the feeling that someone is expecting something from me.
When I think back through my life, I inevitably end up considering somewhere around age 6 as the last time I felt rested. How could that be?!
Prior to this past 8 months that I have been off work and dealing with cancer as my more-than-full-time job, I was in private practice for the previous 23 years, with barely more than a week off once or twice a year. Three times in that 23 years I took 2 weeks off, but I didn't spend the 2 weeks resting or doing something "vacation-like." I'd go away for 5 or 6 days and then spend the other week at home taking care of some project. I used to be so misguided that I'd count conferences as vacation.
In my "spare time" I wrote my book. I awoke at 4 am for over a year to get some quiet writing time before everyone got up. I used "vacation time" twice in that period to spend a week somewhere writing 14 hours a day.
I took 3 months off when I moved to California, but I hardly rested. I moved my home and my office 3000 miles and had to set up a whole new life during that time. I spent the first year flying back to New York once a month and working for a week. Gold Status on American Airlines is a poor replacement for rest.
I was a student for decades before that. I began college in 1973 and worked either part-time or full-time during the 8 years it took for me to get to Osteopathic Medical School, where I spent another 6 years completing that task. I was on-call my last night as an Intern at Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn. In the morning when I completed that wretched phase of my training, I went to the roof of the hospital and burned my white coat. Upon returning home at 7 am on July 1, 1987 I packed a truck and moved to Woodstock with Carol, where I immediately opened my first office and worked as a carpenter's helper for the guy who fixed up the house we bought with a $4000 cash advance from a credit card.
My first summer job was at age 12 in a cabinet factory. I counted the screws, nuts, bolts, and brackets that came with a self-assembled desk and bookcase, put them in plastic bags, and stapled the bag to the underside of the desk. During the school year I worked for my father helping with the bookkeeping for his kitchen remodeling business until I left for college.
As I work chronologically backwards through my reasons for feeling like I desperately need a rest I get to this period from ages 6 - 12, where I was just an elementary school student without a job. It was during this time that my mother's health began to go downhill. She intermittently spent days to weeks at a time in the hospital and I was called upon to take care of her and other things at home. She wasn't diagnosed with cancer until I was 16, but had an endless stream of gastrointestinal, gall bladder, and pancreas problems. I was overburdened with emotional and household responsibilities.
What a sad portrait of myself, rest-deprived for nearly 47 years. I can't help but think of all the people who grow up in extreme poverty or in a war zone and are severely traumatized and neglected in addition to their lack of rest. I am almost embarrassed to be complaining, but I remind myself that comparisons don't help anyone. We all have a right to feel whatever our circumstances dish out to us. I hope I can honor the path I've been given and surrender to the need for rest. It is such profoundly satisfying medicine. I know I will emerge from my "healing cave" with a whole new view of purpose and meaning in my life and find a way to share it with others while simultaneously living a new way of caring for myself.
Consider the benefits you might gain from finding your unique form of radical rest and self-care. Don't wait until your system forces you to do so, or decline and death might come first. Anyone able to read this has a choice.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Another "Feng Shui And A Few Broadway Shows" Moment
I'm still struggling with typing, but I have a great story to tell, so I'm typing it gradually, resting every few lines.
I also have another fabulous Op Ed column from today's (Sunday) New York Times that has an inspiring view of cancer, life, and what everyone can do about it. I have pasted it in at the end of this blog entry.
I had a horrible morning yesterday. I woke up at 4 am and started crying. I could not get moving. I was not in horrendous pain but so many parts of my body were uncomfortable, I just couldn't find a resting position that didn't make something feel worse. My knees were throbbing, a side effect from Arimidex, the estrogen blocking drug I take daily. My right hand was probably doing well for being 20 days post-op, but that didn't feel too good. I had aching in my palm, forearm, and 2 fingers. My left hand was flared up and buzzing from working too hard to compensate for the disability of my right. My neck and upper back were tight and spasmy. And to top it all off with one more thing, I have developed a big (size of a very large lemon) most-likely-benign cyst in my left breast. I am off to Stanford tomorrow to have it aspirated and drained.
I knew I'd feel better if I got up and did anything: go for a walk, ride a stationary bike, lie on my slant board and just change my relationship to gravity, take a bath, do a Continuum dive, even watch a movie. But I couldn't break the spell of inertia and whinyness (is that a word?) . . . until my friend Carole called from the theater in LA about to see A Chorus Line.
For those of you who don't know, I am a sucker for a schmaltzy Broadway musical. As a starving student in New York City in the late 70's I sneaked into the second half of almost every show on Broadway. Security was lax in those days, and I would lurk around the doors during intermission and slip in to catch the second half of any show, which always has the most cathartic and cheesy songs.
I happen to know every word to every song in A Chorus Line, one of the few shows I saw in its entirety, with the original cast, shortly after it opened in New York in 1975. I even know the words to the songs I don't like. So I pulled out the CD of the soundtrack and played it beginning at 2:00 when Carole and her friends (including Gael, for all you Continuum folks) were simultaneously watching the matinee.
It felt as if a cloud lifted, a cloud I've been lost in since last July. I sang along, rolled on a ball, and danced around the living room for almost 2 hours. I lifted and moved both arms for the first time in months. And when I was done I wept, more from relief than grief.
I was exhausted and propped myself up in bed, finally able to find a position of comfort, when Steve called from San Francisco where he is for the day with an old college buddy about to see In The Heights, another Broadway musical. It won 4 Tony Awards in 2008 and is now on tour. I went directly to the iTunes store, downloaded the soundtrack, and waited until curtain time at 8:00 so I could watch another musical simultaneously with a loved one. How often does a person get a chance to do this twice in one day?!
It turns out In The Heights is schmaltzier than A Chorus Line. I read the liner notes and all the lyrics and laid in bed listening and singing along to the soundtrack until Steve called to say how great it was after the show. I slept for 10 hours without any "sleep aids" and woke up feeling amazingly different. Something has shifted that I just can't quite name.
Now I'm off to Beth's monthly Continuum class. Could the flow of events be more perfect? Yes, Donald, it's like another Feng Shui And The Tango moment!
Here is the NY Times Op Ed piece you must read. Then find something in your own life to reflect upon, or else just put on some music that makes you sing and dance.
My doctor’s call came early last month just as I was completing a column noting that 41 percent of Americans come down with cancer. That statistic felt as remote as a puff of cloud in the stratosphere — until my physician, Gary Raizes, gently began to break the news to me that I had a tumor in my right kidney. My built-in optimism was shaken when I read that five-year survival rates for kidney cancer are less than 50 percent.
Ten days ago, I had a three-hour operation. I lost 10 percent of my right kidney, along with a tumor a bit more than an inch long. Afterward, I felt as if I’d been hit by a truck, and I gained a six-inch scar that won grudging admiration from my hard-to-impress teenage kids.
And, boy, did I feel lucky!
The main reason that kidney cancers are so deadly is that they are typically discovered late. My tumor was discovered early only by accident, through a CT scan ordered for another reason entirely. I confess that I had been committing thought crimes against the physician who ordered the scan, Mark Fialk, wondering if it was an example of out-of-control testing — and now I felt that Dr. Fialk might have saved my life.
But I also felt lucky in another way.
This is trite but also so, so true: A brush with mortality turns out to be the best way to appreciate how blue the sky is, how sensuous grass feels underfoot, how melodious kids’ voices are. Even teenagers’ voices. A friend and colleague, David E. Sanger, who conquered cancer a decade ago, says, “No matter how bad a day you’re having, you say to yourself: ‘I’ve had worse.’ ”
Floyd Norris, a friend in The Times’s business section, is now undergoing radiation treatment for cancer after surgery on his face and neck. He wrote on his blog: “It is not fun, but it has been inspiring. In a way, I am happier about my life than at any time I can remember.”
I don’t mean to wax lyrical about the joys of tumors. But maybe the most elusive possession is contentment with what we have. There’s no better way to attain that than a glimpse of our mortality.
My surgeon, Douglas Scherr, said that his patients frequently derive additional satisfaction from life after a cancer diagnosis, and at least for a time are more focused on what feels more important — like families.
In contrast, none of us want this for an epitaph: “He sweated many weekends at the office, ignoring his family but earning a huge bonus.”
As regular readers know, I’ve written frequently about suspected links between chemicals and health. In my own case, I can’t help wondering if there might not be a connection as well.
I grew up on a sheep and cherry farm in Oregon, and as a kid I helped mix the pesticides in the sprayer. Dogs on the farm have often died from cancer, and some have had unusual kidney cysts and deformities. Could the orchard pesticides perhaps have some impact on kidneys? Nobody knows.
After four days in the hospital, I spent a week recovering at home from the surgery. As I was finishing up this column, the pathologist’s report on my tumor finally came back. Dr. Scherr told me that my tumor turned out to be an oncocytoma, which is benign. Astonishingly, against all odds and expectations, I hadn’t had cancer after all. My wife tells me she no longer feels sorry for me, and I’m beaming.
So today I have an impressive scar, a bit less kidney, a big bellyache, and far more appreciation for the glory of life.
My hope is that when you put this column down, you’ll think about what you can do to reduce the risk of getting an ominous doctor’s call like mine last month:
Stop smoking and avoid secondhand smoke. Slather on sunscreen and avoid tanning salons. Avoid charred meats. Check yourself over for lumps, changes or irregularities, whether in breasts or testicles or skin, and consult a doctor if you have doubts. Try to microwave food in glass or ceramic containers rather than plastic. Toss out plastic food containers that are marked 3, 6 or 7 at the bottom (unless they say “BPA-free”). Buy a radon detector to check radon levels around your house.
And, believe me, it’s never too early — cancer or no cancer — to start appreciating our wondrous world, instead of disparaging its imperfections.
I also have another fabulous Op Ed column from today's (Sunday) New York Times that has an inspiring view of cancer, life, and what everyone can do about it. I have pasted it in at the end of this blog entry.
I had a horrible morning yesterday. I woke up at 4 am and started crying. I could not get moving. I was not in horrendous pain but so many parts of my body were uncomfortable, I just couldn't find a resting position that didn't make something feel worse. My knees were throbbing, a side effect from Arimidex, the estrogen blocking drug I take daily. My right hand was probably doing well for being 20 days post-op, but that didn't feel too good. I had aching in my palm, forearm, and 2 fingers. My left hand was flared up and buzzing from working too hard to compensate for the disability of my right. My neck and upper back were tight and spasmy. And to top it all off with one more thing, I have developed a big (size of a very large lemon) most-likely-benign cyst in my left breast. I am off to Stanford tomorrow to have it aspirated and drained.
I knew I'd feel better if I got up and did anything: go for a walk, ride a stationary bike, lie on my slant board and just change my relationship to gravity, take a bath, do a Continuum dive, even watch a movie. But I couldn't break the spell of inertia and whinyness (is that a word?) . . . until my friend Carole called from the theater in LA about to see A Chorus Line.
For those of you who don't know, I am a sucker for a schmaltzy Broadway musical. As a starving student in New York City in the late 70's I sneaked into the second half of almost every show on Broadway. Security was lax in those days, and I would lurk around the doors during intermission and slip in to catch the second half of any show, which always has the most cathartic and cheesy songs.
I happen to know every word to every song in A Chorus Line, one of the few shows I saw in its entirety, with the original cast, shortly after it opened in New York in 1975. I even know the words to the songs I don't like. So I pulled out the CD of the soundtrack and played it beginning at 2:00 when Carole and her friends (including Gael, for all you Continuum folks) were simultaneously watching the matinee.
It felt as if a cloud lifted, a cloud I've been lost in since last July. I sang along, rolled on a ball, and danced around the living room for almost 2 hours. I lifted and moved both arms for the first time in months. And when I was done I wept, more from relief than grief.
I was exhausted and propped myself up in bed, finally able to find a position of comfort, when Steve called from San Francisco where he is for the day with an old college buddy about to see In The Heights, another Broadway musical. It won 4 Tony Awards in 2008 and is now on tour. I went directly to the iTunes store, downloaded the soundtrack, and waited until curtain time at 8:00 so I could watch another musical simultaneously with a loved one. How often does a person get a chance to do this twice in one day?!
It turns out In The Heights is schmaltzier than A Chorus Line. I read the liner notes and all the lyrics and laid in bed listening and singing along to the soundtrack until Steve called to say how great it was after the show. I slept for 10 hours without any "sleep aids" and woke up feeling amazingly different. Something has shifted that I just can't quite name.
Now I'm off to Beth's monthly Continuum class. Could the flow of events be more perfect? Yes, Donald, it's like another Feng Shui And The Tango moment!
Here is the NY Times Op Ed piece you must read. Then find something in your own life to reflect upon, or else just put on some music that makes you sing and dance.
A Scare, a Scar, a Silver Lining
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: June 4, 2010
The result was a grim monthlong whirlwind of doctors’ visits, medical tests and furrowed brows. The doctors agreed that the odds were 10 percent that my tumor was benign, 90 percent that it was malignant. I had no option: surgery was essential.
Ten days ago, I had a three-hour operation. I lost 10 percent of my right kidney, along with a tumor a bit more than an inch long. Afterward, I felt as if I’d been hit by a truck, and I gained a six-inch scar that won grudging admiration from my hard-to-impress teenage kids.
And, boy, did I feel lucky!
The main reason that kidney cancers are so deadly is that they are typically discovered late. My tumor was discovered early only by accident, through a CT scan ordered for another reason entirely. I confess that I had been committing thought crimes against the physician who ordered the scan, Mark Fialk, wondering if it was an example of out-of-control testing — and now I felt that Dr. Fialk might have saved my life.
But I also felt lucky in another way.
This is trite but also so, so true: A brush with mortality turns out to be the best way to appreciate how blue the sky is, how sensuous grass feels underfoot, how melodious kids’ voices are. Even teenagers’ voices. A friend and colleague, David E. Sanger, who conquered cancer a decade ago, says, “No matter how bad a day you’re having, you say to yourself: ‘I’ve had worse.’ ”
Floyd Norris, a friend in The Times’s business section, is now undergoing radiation treatment for cancer after surgery on his face and neck. He wrote on his blog: “It is not fun, but it has been inspiring. In a way, I am happier about my life than at any time I can remember.”
I don’t mean to wax lyrical about the joys of tumors. But maybe the most elusive possession is contentment with what we have. There’s no better way to attain that than a glimpse of our mortality.
My surgeon, Douglas Scherr, said that his patients frequently derive additional satisfaction from life after a cancer diagnosis, and at least for a time are more focused on what feels more important — like families.
In contrast, none of us want this for an epitaph: “He sweated many weekends at the office, ignoring his family but earning a huge bonus.”
As regular readers know, I’ve written frequently about suspected links between chemicals and health. In my own case, I can’t help wondering if there might not be a connection as well.
I grew up on a sheep and cherry farm in Oregon, and as a kid I helped mix the pesticides in the sprayer. Dogs on the farm have often died from cancer, and some have had unusual kidney cysts and deformities. Could the orchard pesticides perhaps have some impact on kidneys? Nobody knows.
After four days in the hospital, I spent a week recovering at home from the surgery. As I was finishing up this column, the pathologist’s report on my tumor finally came back. Dr. Scherr told me that my tumor turned out to be an oncocytoma, which is benign. Astonishingly, against all odds and expectations, I hadn’t had cancer after all. My wife tells me she no longer feels sorry for me, and I’m beaming.
So today I have an impressive scar, a bit less kidney, a big bellyache, and far more appreciation for the glory of life.
My hope is that when you put this column down, you’ll think about what you can do to reduce the risk of getting an ominous doctor’s call like mine last month:
Stop smoking and avoid secondhand smoke. Slather on sunscreen and avoid tanning salons. Avoid charred meats. Check yourself over for lumps, changes or irregularities, whether in breasts or testicles or skin, and consult a doctor if you have doubts. Try to microwave food in glass or ceramic containers rather than plastic. Toss out plastic food containers that are marked 3, 6 or 7 at the bottom (unless they say “BPA-free”). Buy a radon detector to check radon levels around your house.
And, believe me, it’s never too early — cancer or no cancer — to start appreciating our wondrous world, instead of disparaging its imperfections.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Feel The Buzz
My recovery from hand surgery is going well, but typing makes my fingers buzz. So please be patient and I will return with many inspired entries as soon as I can.
If laughter is good medicine then I should be cured after the visit with my brother and sister-in-law. We had a riotously hysterical time (and made a scene at Nepenthe's in Big Sur that involved half the people on the back deck laughing with us - you had to be there!)
Okay, so many of you have asked, I will tell. The inane things I watched last week that made me laugh were the old Kevin Kline and Meg Ryan movie "French Kiss" and the episode of the British sit-com "Extras" with Ricky Gervais & Kate Winslet. It's available from Netfix - but only watch the episode with Kate Winslet, the others are nowhere near as funny.
I'm off to Aptos High School Graduation. My step-son Ben graduates today!
Stay in touch; I'll begin writing again soon.
If laughter is good medicine then I should be cured after the visit with my brother and sister-in-law. We had a riotously hysterical time (and made a scene at Nepenthe's in Big Sur that involved half the people on the back deck laughing with us - you had to be there!)
Okay, so many of you have asked, I will tell. The inane things I watched last week that made me laugh were the old Kevin Kline and Meg Ryan movie "French Kiss" and the episode of the British sit-com "Extras" with Ricky Gervais & Kate Winslet. It's available from Netfix - but only watch the episode with Kate Winslet, the others are nowhere near as funny.
I'm off to Aptos High School Graduation. My step-son Ben graduates today!
Stay in touch; I'll begin writing again soon.
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