So many of you have offered kindly to help me with whatever I need. I am blessed to have such a loving and giving support team of friends, family, colleagues, and patients, that I haven't needed to ask many of you for help. Here's your chance!
This May 7th, my team, Team Hot Weals ("weal" as in Commonweal), will participate in the Marin Human Race to support the Commonweal Cancer Help program.
When I attended this program in April, 2010, I found that it was one of the most helpful and healing things I did for myself in that early stage of learning to live with cancer. I have learned much from them about what it truly means to embrace the moment and live well, regardless of a diagnosis. I stay involved with Commonweal as a volunteer because I get to connect with great people who value the preciousness of living, and I admire and respect the work this organization does to make the world a better place. I am seeking sponsors for our walk to help Commonweal reach out to more people who are living with cancer. All the money raised will go directly to this program.
Would you be willing to sponsor me for $20-30 or more? Click here to go directly to my Donation page, or go to our Commonweal Team Page and click on my name to make a donation. You can also find out more about the race day events at Marin Human Race if you're interested in attending to cheer us on in person.
Thanks for your love and support,
Bonnie
About Commonweal
The Commonweal Cancer Help Program (CCHP) is a week-long retreat for people with cancer. The intention of the program is to help participants live better and, where possible, longer lives. The Cancer Help Program addresses the unmet needs of people with cancer. These include finding balanced information on choices in healing, mainstream and complementary therapies; exploring emotional and spiritual dimensions of cancer; discovering that illness can sometimes lead to a richer and fuller life; and experiencing genuine community with others facing a cancer diagnosis.
Commonweal is a nonprofit health and environmental research institute in Bolinas, California. Founded in 1976, Commonweal conducts programs that investigate the environmental links to cancer and the possible solutions; support sustainable living; enhance juvenile justice; reconnect health professionals with the meaning of their work; and many other things. Please visit the Commonweal website for more information about the Cancer Help Program, along with the many other fabulous programs they offer.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Friday, April 8, 2011
No Philosophy, Just News
This is not a literary or philosophical blog entry; it's just a news bulletin. Many of you know I spent the day at Stanford yesterday, and I want to let you all know that I'm doing well. All I had done were some blood tests, which all look better than ever, and the conclusion is that there's no reason to repeat a bone scan or CT scan until summer or fall. I still need to be seen by them and have blood work done monthly, but no big testing unless something changes.
Most of what I suffer from is treatment side effect. I don't want to complain, because the cancer seems to be moving in the right direction, BUT my joint pain persists, temporarily stirred up by the antics of moving. My hands are somewhat worse. I had an emergency where I panicked and almost had to cut off my wedding rings. They are now at the jeweler being re-sized because my fingers have permanently swelled to a size and a half larger than the size of my rings. My hands turn into pin cushions when I grip anything too long. I have pain in my feet, knees, 1 shoulder, the opposite elbow, my whole neck and back. I can live with this, if I get to live. I just have to continue to test my limits and stay within them. I struggle with understanding how much I can do and every week or so end up totally laid out in bed for a day or two. This should be my worst problem!
As our house recovers from looking like a flea market that got hit by a tornado, I hope to start writing more again. I wander from room to room looking at the piles of things from the office. It's quite surreal. For those of you who knew our office and loved its Zen simplicity, the secret to that spacious order was hidden in our huge kitchen closet and a few other stashing spots. Steve and I spend a few hours each day sorting, shredding, loading bags of books for our local used book shop to get trade credit, and boxing things up that we just can't part with that are destined for the attic. We'll probably unload the attic someday and throw it all away. Some charitable organization is going to get some great bags and boxes of stuff. In June we'll have a monster garage sale, and hopefully by the summer we will have integrated the stuff we want to keep into our life and freed ourselves of the rest.
I have at least 4 half-written blog entries, 3 half-written books, and way too many emails in my draft folder. I need a stretch of days, weeks, months to rest, move, meditate, and air out the space inside my internal atmosphere in order to write that way I'd like to. I can feel it coming. . .
Most of what I suffer from is treatment side effect. I don't want to complain, because the cancer seems to be moving in the right direction, BUT my joint pain persists, temporarily stirred up by the antics of moving. My hands are somewhat worse. I had an emergency where I panicked and almost had to cut off my wedding rings. They are now at the jeweler being re-sized because my fingers have permanently swelled to a size and a half larger than the size of my rings. My hands turn into pin cushions when I grip anything too long. I have pain in my feet, knees, 1 shoulder, the opposite elbow, my whole neck and back. I can live with this, if I get to live. I just have to continue to test my limits and stay within them. I struggle with understanding how much I can do and every week or so end up totally laid out in bed for a day or two. This should be my worst problem!
As our house recovers from looking like a flea market that got hit by a tornado, I hope to start writing more again. I wander from room to room looking at the piles of things from the office. It's quite surreal. For those of you who knew our office and loved its Zen simplicity, the secret to that spacious order was hidden in our huge kitchen closet and a few other stashing spots. Steve and I spend a few hours each day sorting, shredding, loading bags of books for our local used book shop to get trade credit, and boxing things up that we just can't part with that are destined for the attic. We'll probably unload the attic someday and throw it all away. Some charitable organization is going to get some great bags and boxes of stuff. In June we'll have a monster garage sale, and hopefully by the summer we will have integrated the stuff we want to keep into our life and freed ourselves of the rest.
I have at least 4 half-written blog entries, 3 half-written books, and way too many emails in my draft folder. I need a stretch of days, weeks, months to rest, move, meditate, and air out the space inside my internal atmosphere in order to write that way I'd like to. I can feel it coming. . .
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
The Field We Created In This Space Extends Out Infinitely. . .
 |
| The Field We Created In This Space Extends Out Infinitely Forever . . . |
Monday, March 21, 2011
The Life That's Waiting. . .
As you can only imagine, these last few days of Steve and I being in our office together are an intense emotional roller coaster ride. I have been trying to write for over a month, and just can't get the words flowing. So instead, I offer you this quote to ponder, from An Open Life: Joseph Campbell in Conversation with Michael Toms,
"You have to strive every minute to get rid of the life that you have planned in order to have the life that's waiting to be yours. Move. Move. Move into the transcendent. That's the whole sense of adventure..."
Thursday, February 24, 2011
An End And A Beginning
This is the letter we sent out to about 1,000 patients this week. If you are not one of our patients, or haven't seen us in a few years you won't get one in the mail, so here it is, explaining the next shift in our lives. For you Doctor Who fans, in a recent episode he said, "Everything has to end sometime, or nothing would ever get started." Join us in bringing excitement about the new possibilities into the foreground, while allowing mourning the losses to fade into the background. I will be in the office the entire week of March 21 - 25 while Steve is seeing patients. Call the office for a list of hours if you want to stop by.
Stephen F. Paulus, DO, MS
Bonnie Gintis, DO
3233 Valencia Avenue, Suite B-6
Aptos, CA 95003
831-688-4201
February 18, 2011
To all of our patients,
It is with mixed emotions that we are writing to inform you that as of March 25, 2011 we will be closing our office.
As many of you know, Bonnie was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in late 2009. She has not worked for over a year and remains on medical disability. Her cancer treatment is going well, but she continues to have disabling side effects from both the treatment and the cancer that prevent her from returning to work as an Osteopathic Physician. As she enters this next phase of life, she is hopeful and continues to be expansive by seeking certification as a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction teacher. She looks forward to the possibility of continuing her commitment to helping people explore health and well-being through some combined method of teaching meditation, Continuum Movement, medical education, and writing. Check her website for information about her upcoming teaching schedule.
Steve will be closing his private practice and transferring his clinical skills to the Family Medicine Department at the Dominican Medical Foundation. He has made a decision to return to primary care medicine as a full-time Family Doctor. He will bring to the Dominican Medical Foundation 23 years of clinical experience as a Family Doctor and Osteopath. We encourage all of you who need a Family Doctor to chose Steve as your personal physician and allow him to continue to care for you by using all of the tools of modern medicine as well as the art of healing expressed through Osteopathy. Because Steve will be directing most of his clinical energies toward primary care medicine, he will be devoting a much smaller percentage of his practice to Osteopathic Manipulation.
We look at this change not as an ending but as a natural progression into an exciting future with great potential. Steve will begin seeing patients at the Dominican Medical Foundation Westside office at 2018 Mission Street on Monday April 25th; you can make an appointment to see him by calling 831-706-2220. By the late summer or early fall of 2011 he will be moving back to Aptos to work at the new Dominican Medical Foundation office at 9515 Soquel Drive in Rio Del Mar.
Thank you for your dedication to our work as Osteopathic Physicians and most of all, thank you for being a part of our community of friends and neighbors. Steve looks forward to connecting with you at his new office in Santa Cruz, and later in Aptos.
With gratitude and best wishes for the future,
Steve Paulus, DO & Bonnie Gintis, DO
www.StevePaulus.com www.BonnieGintis.com
Sunday, January 30, 2011
If You're Bored, You're Not Paying Attention
Now that I've been out of work for 15 months many people ask if I'm bored. I feel a lot of things, but bored is not one of them. One of my osteopathic teachers used to say, “if you're bored, you're not paying attention.”
Boredom is a habit that I don't find particularly helpful. It is quite unpleasant and it's not at all reflective of “what is.” In any given moment there is so much going on, that boredom is an odd choice of what to be feeling.
As our culture goes faster and faster, and our options for entertainment and distraction are more and more plentiful and readily available, we can find ourselves feeling discontented when the tempo changes and suddenly there's some time, or space, or silence in which to dwell. I know that my life literally depends on my ability to slow down, be attentive and mindfully choose where and how I spend my precious life energy, so I resist the temptation to override the tempo of my present condition.
I decided to take my commitment to slowing down and being mindful to the next level by doing the training to become a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher. My own meditation and body awareness practices have led me to want to explore teaching from this viewpoint. I hope to be able to teach again someday, and I realized that this approach would support whatever I might teach in the future, as well as my own personal process.
I am in the 4th of 10 weeks of training at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View with Santa Cruz' own Bob Stahl. I was thrilled to discover that it only meets once a week, and that it seems doable in my present state. It's too bad we both have to drive "over the hill" as we say in these parts when we drive north over the Santa Cruz mountains, but this is where the program has been based since Bob founded it in 1993. Since he's the only person offering teacher training outside of the "mothership" based at The Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts medical school in Worcester, Massachusetts, I'm not going to complain about the commute. I discovered that not only was training with Bob nearby, but Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli are coming to Mount Madonna next week. If you don't know who they are and are interested in learning more about them, click here. The 7-day retreat they will offer here is part of the training process. It seems more than perfect that I can do all this training without getting on a plane!
At the conclusion of my training I will be assisting Bob in teaching an MBSR course at Dominican Hospital. There is a free introductory session on Tuesday, March 8 at 7 pm for those of you who are curious but not ready to sign up. The course begins the following Tuesday and runs for 8 weeks from 7 - 9:30 pm. For details here's the link to Bob Stahl's website: http://mindfulnessprograms.com/index.html
I will only be at the evening class.
Whoa. . . I thought I was supposed to be on a sabbatical - not making any plans. I have to reign in my enthusiasm or I will exhaust myself, but this excitement is a sign of healing. I can't wait to have a project, a plan, a new idea and find a way to share it with people. The only problem is -- I still have metastatic cancer, I can barely eat a small plate of food without my hand falling asleep from holding a fork, I get seriously fatigued whenever I don't totally respect my need to rest, and I get easily distracted by the chronic joint and muscle pain I wrestle with. I need to pace myself and see how this all gradually unfolds.
In the meantime, I cannot fathom being bored. Even on a challenging day when I can barely get out of bed, I am endlessly amused by the variation in my heartbeat, by the way my spine moves in wave motion as I breathe, by the sound of my breath, by the ever-changing sky, the undulation of the branches of the trees in the breeze, and the sound of the surf in the distance.
Today's New York Times had an article on meditation and its influence on the brain. Although my current favorite "pop" meditation book is Mindsight: The New Science of Transformation by Dan Siegel, this is a nice little intro for those of you not so familiar with the subject.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/how-meditation-may-change-the-brain/
If you want a very entertaining summary of Mindsight, here's Dan Siegel and Blue Man Group, who play the part of those pesky voices in our heads:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ0IEttCjj0&feature=related
Here's the link to The Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts medical school if you're interested in more information on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction:
http://www.umassmed.edu/cfm/home/index.aspx
Boredom is a habit that I don't find particularly helpful. It is quite unpleasant and it's not at all reflective of “what is.” In any given moment there is so much going on, that boredom is an odd choice of what to be feeling.
As our culture goes faster and faster, and our options for entertainment and distraction are more and more plentiful and readily available, we can find ourselves feeling discontented when the tempo changes and suddenly there's some time, or space, or silence in which to dwell. I know that my life literally depends on my ability to slow down, be attentive and mindfully choose where and how I spend my precious life energy, so I resist the temptation to override the tempo of my present condition.
I decided to take my commitment to slowing down and being mindful to the next level by doing the training to become a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher. My own meditation and body awareness practices have led me to want to explore teaching from this viewpoint. I hope to be able to teach again someday, and I realized that this approach would support whatever I might teach in the future, as well as my own personal process.
I am in the 4th of 10 weeks of training at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View with Santa Cruz' own Bob Stahl. I was thrilled to discover that it only meets once a week, and that it seems doable in my present state. It's too bad we both have to drive "over the hill" as we say in these parts when we drive north over the Santa Cruz mountains, but this is where the program has been based since Bob founded it in 1993. Since he's the only person offering teacher training outside of the "mothership" based at The Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts medical school in Worcester, Massachusetts, I'm not going to complain about the commute. I discovered that not only was training with Bob nearby, but Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli are coming to Mount Madonna next week. If you don't know who they are and are interested in learning more about them, click here. The 7-day retreat they will offer here is part of the training process. It seems more than perfect that I can do all this training without getting on a plane!
At the conclusion of my training I will be assisting Bob in teaching an MBSR course at Dominican Hospital. There is a free introductory session on Tuesday, March 8 at 7 pm for those of you who are curious but not ready to sign up. The course begins the following Tuesday and runs for 8 weeks from 7 - 9:30 pm. For details here's the link to Bob Stahl's website: http://mindfulnessprograms.com/index.html
I will only be at the evening class.
Whoa. . . I thought I was supposed to be on a sabbatical - not making any plans. I have to reign in my enthusiasm or I will exhaust myself, but this excitement is a sign of healing. I can't wait to have a project, a plan, a new idea and find a way to share it with people. The only problem is -- I still have metastatic cancer, I can barely eat a small plate of food without my hand falling asleep from holding a fork, I get seriously fatigued whenever I don't totally respect my need to rest, and I get easily distracted by the chronic joint and muscle pain I wrestle with. I need to pace myself and see how this all gradually unfolds.
In the meantime, I cannot fathom being bored. Even on a challenging day when I can barely get out of bed, I am endlessly amused by the variation in my heartbeat, by the way my spine moves in wave motion as I breathe, by the sound of my breath, by the ever-changing sky, the undulation of the branches of the trees in the breeze, and the sound of the surf in the distance.
Today's New York Times had an article on meditation and its influence on the brain. Although my current favorite "pop" meditation book is Mindsight: The New Science of Transformation by Dan Siegel, this is a nice little intro for those of you not so familiar with the subject.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/how-meditation-may-change-the-brain/
If you want a very entertaining summary of Mindsight, here's Dan Siegel and Blue Man Group, who play the part of those pesky voices in our heads:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ0IEttCjj0&feature=related
Here's the link to The Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts medical school if you're interested in more information on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction:
http://www.umassmed.edu/cfm/home/index.aspx
Friday, December 17, 2010
How 'Bout Those Mets?!
"How 'bout those Mets" is what you might say in New York when you're looking to make small talk with a baseball fan, but here in my life it's what I say to every doctor I see. Every one of them has a different opinion about the 2 mysterious findings in the CT scan of my pelvis. Whether or not the fracture and the lytic lesion (which looks like a marble-sized hole with a crust around it) in my pelvis are old or new, benign or metastatic, my treatment remains the same. Since none of these findings pose an emergency we will just use the scans that we have as a baseline and move forward. There's no reason to do a biopsy. "Let go of trying to understand what happened in the past and get on with living," is what more than one doctor has advised. Being a doctor doesn't make it any easier, in fact, I think it makes it more challenging to not get caught up in the rat's nest of thinking about the unknown.
I don't have any symptoms or pain in my pelvis, in fact most of my pain is not where I have bone mets, it's in my joints (almost all of them) and has nothing (directly) to do with cancer. Joint and muscle pain are the main side effects of my treatment. So, after one year of toughing it out on Arimidex (anastrozole) I have switched to Aromasin (exemestane). This estrogen blocking drug should be equal in anticancer action, and will hopefully have fewer side effects. It should take about six weeks to know how well it's working.
I was looking for some words of wisdom about living with the unknown and unknowable and I flipped to P.145 of my book,
I don't have any symptoms or pain in my pelvis, in fact most of my pain is not where I have bone mets, it's in my joints (almost all of them) and has nothing (directly) to do with cancer. Joint and muscle pain are the main side effects of my treatment. So, after one year of toughing it out on Arimidex (anastrozole) I have switched to Aromasin (exemestane). This estrogen blocking drug should be equal in anticancer action, and will hopefully have fewer side effects. It should take about six weeks to know how well it's working.
I was looking for some words of wisdom about living with the unknown and unknowable and I flipped to P.145 of my book,
"The nature of time and “reality” is unknowable, but it is helpful to question the conclusions we have drawn about how we perceive and respond to how we think things are. Suspending a definitive opinion about the way you think things are might give access to a different possible outcome.
When a physician examines a patient with the intent to make a diagnosis, he or she might conclude that something happened in the past that altered the physical properties or functioning of the body. When any of us examine our own lives with the intent to analyze, understand, or have insight about a problem, we might draw the same type of conclusions about the influence of the past. When this type of judgment is made, it tends to get named, labeled, and interpreted. At worst, generalized conclusions are drawn based on it. Diagnoses get dragged around and applied to the present and the future. Identifying with your problem, with something that happened to you, with your diagnosis or pain and using it as the reference point keeps you bound to it—thus keeping the residue of the past in your view of the present and future.
The mechanics of the past may be interesting and useful in order to understand what happened, but we don’t need a map to get back to the territory of the past. We’ve already been there. We want to enter the new territory of the future. Holding on to the residue of the past and projecting it into the future does not leave space for the full expression of the potential held in the future. We can become misinformed and misled about the prognosis for the future by the remnants of the past. Health and the therapeutic process can only be expressed fully if the path to the future is held clear and open for what has yet to happen, to unfold and reveal itself. Health transcends time; potential is always accessible.
The map of the past is not the territory of the present. The actuality of the future cannot exist until it emerges, and once it does so, it is not in the future anymore. It is an event that has already occurred. Once the action that was dictated into the present from the unfolding future produces a result, the effects of the process exist as an event already in the past. In this view it becomes clear how healing—as a creative act of the organism creating its future—can only happen to its fullest extent and potential if we hold the space for it to emerge and not clutter the field with attempts to fix and resolve the past. The philosophical view of life unfolding in this manner can be seen as more fully expressing itself if the future moves into the present, rather than attempting to fix or resolve the past and move it toward the future."I know this last paragraph is somewhat wordy, but read it slowly, one line at a time, and try to feel what happens in your body when you take a breath and allow yourself to experience the present as the space between your past and future without any judgments or preconceived expectations. Instead of plowing ahead into the future, allow yourself to sit in the stillness, and let the events of time unfold, as if the future is approaching to meet you where you are.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Finally, You Can Subscribe To My Blog
I finally got someone to help me activate the "Subscription Feature" on my blog. You can automatically receive an email each time I post an entry, if you don't want to have to check it periodically. Just enter your email in the box to the right.
I have an update brewing, as I sort through all my test results of the past week. Stay tuned this weekend. . .
I have an update brewing, as I sort through all my test results of the past week. Stay tuned this weekend. . .
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Join Me In Being Alive & Breathing Together Right Now
I have good news and some not too bad news. The bad news is that I do have a spot of metastasis in my pelvis (in my "sit bone," to be exact). The good news is that there is a possibility that it's not really new. It's most likely been there a while and just wasn't discovered earlier. My first CAT scan last year didn't extend far down enough to show it. At the time they were more interested in looking for cancer inside my pelvic cavity, than outside in the bones around the edges. So when the scan stopped an inch short of my sit bone, no one seemed to think it mattered. This means I have no way to know how long it's been there, and even though I can't feel it, I have a feeling it's been there a while.
This information doesn't really change anything, except my mood. It doesn't change my treatment. It doesn't change my prognosis. A few more specks in the bone don't mean much in the big picture. Regardless of what I think or feel about how long I've had this, my life in this moment is exactly the same.
My challenge in all of this is to remember I'm the same person I was before the CAT scan. This result doesn't change my actual life; it just changes what I think about my life. I had an old Indian teacher who used to say, "Your mind is a bad neighborhood. Don't go there. You'll get mugged."
This is the reality of this disease. It is chronic. It will most likely come, and hopefully go, for the rest of my life, regardless of how long that ends up being. I can't help but want to be special, be a miracle, be an overachiever, be an outlier, and I don't want to feel like a failure or that I am to blame if things don't go as I prefer.
This is as close as I get to positive thinking. I acknowledge my desire to live a long life and to have a chance to re-invent my life if I ever go back to doing something other than caring for myself full-time. I want to have more adventures. I want to be with my loved ones and be a part of their lives unfolding. I want to be of service to people again someday. The intensity of these desires and my longing for life feels like my life force expressing itself. How do I maintain this passion for life and yet let go of what I can't control?
I don't believe in positive thinking because I don't believe that thinking is the way to guide our lives. Positive or negative thinking is still thinking, and thinking is not the most powerful force in us. The harm that's done is obvious when people get caught in repetitive negative thinking, but positive thinking can also make a person blind to that which they really need to be responding. There's a fine line between positive thinking and denial. And regardless of what we think, our unconscious still exerts more influence than our conscious thoughts. I believe that people who say one thing and unconsciously harbor the opposite are ultimately at much more risk of serious consequences, because they are in internal conflict and discord and not in touch with the necessity of the moment.
So I let myself feel the disappointment, the sadness, the grief, but I don't dwell on it. It's like bad weather; it will pass. I try not to let fearful scenarios take up space in my thinking because they are clearly only one possible future. I also try not to dwell on my desire to have my life be mended, because my desires are not reliable either. If I get too attached it makes it harder to cope with not getting what I want when that eventually happens. Inhale. . . exhale. . . It's good to be alive and breathing as I sit here typing on this Saturday morning knowing that you all will be reading this and joining me in being alive together right now.
This information doesn't really change anything, except my mood. It doesn't change my treatment. It doesn't change my prognosis. A few more specks in the bone don't mean much in the big picture. Regardless of what I think or feel about how long I've had this, my life in this moment is exactly the same.
My challenge in all of this is to remember I'm the same person I was before the CAT scan. This result doesn't change my actual life; it just changes what I think about my life. I had an old Indian teacher who used to say, "Your mind is a bad neighborhood. Don't go there. You'll get mugged."
This is the reality of this disease. It is chronic. It will most likely come, and hopefully go, for the rest of my life, regardless of how long that ends up being. I can't help but want to be special, be a miracle, be an overachiever, be an outlier, and I don't want to feel like a failure or that I am to blame if things don't go as I prefer.
This is as close as I get to positive thinking. I acknowledge my desire to live a long life and to have a chance to re-invent my life if I ever go back to doing something other than caring for myself full-time. I want to have more adventures. I want to be with my loved ones and be a part of their lives unfolding. I want to be of service to people again someday. The intensity of these desires and my longing for life feels like my life force expressing itself. How do I maintain this passion for life and yet let go of what I can't control?
I don't believe in positive thinking because I don't believe that thinking is the way to guide our lives. Positive or negative thinking is still thinking, and thinking is not the most powerful force in us. The harm that's done is obvious when people get caught in repetitive negative thinking, but positive thinking can also make a person blind to that which they really need to be responding. There's a fine line between positive thinking and denial. And regardless of what we think, our unconscious still exerts more influence than our conscious thoughts. I believe that people who say one thing and unconsciously harbor the opposite are ultimately at much more risk of serious consequences, because they are in internal conflict and discord and not in touch with the necessity of the moment.
So I let myself feel the disappointment, the sadness, the grief, but I don't dwell on it. It's like bad weather; it will pass. I try not to let fearful scenarios take up space in my thinking because they are clearly only one possible future. I also try not to dwell on my desire to have my life be mended, because my desires are not reliable either. If I get too attached it makes it harder to cope with not getting what I want when that eventually happens. Inhale. . . exhale. . . It's good to be alive and breathing as I sit here typing on this Saturday morning knowing that you all will be reading this and joining me in being alive together right now.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Quote Of The Week
Here's my favorite quote of the week, from my gastroenterologist,
Tomorrow's my big CAT scan, so it's seaweed and miso with every meal and snack for the next few days. My bone scan got postponed until next Tuesday.
Thanks for all the recent cards, emails, and letters. I'll keep you all posted about the test results and won't make you wait a month for my next entry.
"Your colon is beautiful and perfect."The dermatologist gave me a clean bill of health today, as far as my skin is concerned. Growing up in Miami in the days of baby oil sunbathing, I was sunburned until I was 15, so I'm serious about having my skin checked. So far the only diagnosis is terminal freckles!
Tomorrow's my big CAT scan, so it's seaweed and miso with every meal and snack for the next few days. My bone scan got postponed until next Tuesday.
Thanks for all the recent cards, emails, and letters. I'll keep you all posted about the test results and won't make you wait a month for my next entry.
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