The Inflammatory Pumpkin Issue

 To many people, a passionate discussion about canned pumpkin would seem insane.  Or boring.  Who cares what it really is?

But to my friend Kim and I it was an inflammatory issue.

"I swear," I said, "I read that it was actually butternut squash.  And that makes sense, really.  The texture-"

"Naw."said Kim,"Where, exactly, did you read that?"  Kim used to work at a respected local newspaper called The Rocky Mountain News.  She was an educator for thirty years, has a master's degree, is world traveled, and wants sources.

"It was a while ago," I admitted, "And I could be making it up.   But I think it was Reader's Digest."

"That was a long time ago!"

"Really long!"

We both cracked up for a while, thinking about how old we were.

"But why would they even do that?" Kim demanded.

  "Who knows?"I said, "But I've never grown a Halloween pumpkin that baked better than a butternut."

"I just-I don't think they can-that they would do that."

https://www.rd.com/article/is-canned-pumpkin-really-squash/

This remained a troublesome mystery for months until late October, when I hijacked a normal conversation with, "Oh my god!  I saw an article online about Libby's canned pumpkin!"

Kim grabbed onto it."What?"

"They have their own variety they grow especially for the canned product!"

"They what?!"

"There's pictures!  So," (I heard my voice go soto voce, black-and-white detective style)it's the shape of a butternut, but the skin is brown.  And they grow it just for the canned pumpkin product.  Turns out that botanically, there is no difference between a pumpkin and a squash."

Kim's voice matched mine with a fascinated hush, "Really!"

"So we were both right!  It is a pumpkin but it looks like a butternut!  it's both!  Holy shit!"

"Holy shit!"

"Are we total dweebs or what?"

Kim and I laughed at ourselves for a good three minutes, wave after wave of laughter.  It's how we laugh.  It dies off and then starts up again, gaining over time, until we wear ourselves out. Occasionally one of us would say, "Garden dweebs!  or, "Food dweebs!"And we'd keep laughing through it.

I wish more inflammatory issues were resolved that way.

My Grief is an Animal Mother

 This simile came to me as I was waking, in a twilight dream.

When a vixen or mother wolf or feral cat queen moves her young she takes them in her teeth by the scruff of the neck and, if they make too much of a fuss that could attract attention, gives them a good shake or several to quiet them down.

She can then get them to the new, or next, den safely.

When my grief comes for me it seizes me by the scruff of the neck and gives me a bone-shaking session, sending me to the restroom or, if I'm at home, to my bedroom for a good fingernails-embedded-in-palms, face-screwed-up ugly cry that will leave me trembling, red-eyed and relieved, and ready for a major nap.

Over time, these sessions have also culminated to push me over the line into true radical acceptance of my new situation; I couldn't have done it without them.  I needed to grieve my old life in order to truly accept my new one, suck though it does.    And once I truly began to radically accept it, it was much easier to live with every day.

Talk about hope all you want.  Hope is still resistance to the present reality, and as such, it's a state of pain.  Plus, it has a dark side.  The dark side of hope is fear.  And fear is the worst state of all.  The most blissful state of all, in my opinion, is a life free of fear.  Living in acceptance comes pretty close.

That's where the animal mother in my soul has taken such good care of me.

When You've Just Found Out You Have Cancer

 Maybe your heart is pounding.

Maybe your hands are shaking.

Mayby you're crying.

Maybe you're ashamed of all these things, thinking you're supposed to be tougher than that.  Well, if you are, you're tougher than I was.

But if you just found out that you have cancer then I, who have had terminal brain cancer for two years now, (going on three, actually), have two things I need you to know:

1.:  YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

2.  YOU WILL NOT ALWAYS FEEL LIKE THIS.

Oh, wait.  I need you to know more things:

Mainly, that YOU CAN'T IMAGINE HOW MUCH HELP IS WAITING FOR YOU.  Literally WAITING.  Because there are so many people who WANT to help you with your cancer, including oncologists, radiologists, therapists, palliative care workers, social workers, and others, lining the corrodors and leaning out past each other HOPING FOR A CHANCE TO HELP YOU.  It's what they love and need to do.  You are about to find yourself falling into the arms of angelic people, at least for the most part.  Compassion fatigue happens to the best of us, and experiences vary.  But just scratch the surface of your resources and you'll find them pretty plentiful.  Cancer sucks, we all know it, and the cavallry stands ready.  But you have to do your bit:  you have to reach out, and you have to  show up.  It also helps to be nice.  It sucks to have cancer, but nobody in scrubs gave it to you; so  treat them with kindness.  They deserve a lot more respect and gentleness than they get, in general.  Also you will get a much better experience if you are pleasant, patient and appreciative with medical people.  They don't get a whole lot of that.  You may need to stand up for yourself at times as well, and I'll write plenty of posts about that, too.  But generally people will treat you the way you treat them.

And the adjustment will happen.  Right now you feel like you'll never be yourself again, and in a way that's a little bit true.  You will never be the person who never had cancer again, who didn't know what it felt like to have THAT shadow over your shoulder.  That innocence is gone, and it's definitely a loss, and a loss worth grieving.  If you are feeling that sadness, it's no wonder.  And it's perfectly proper to grieve it, in my book. It's well worth a crying session, or several. But you will readjust to the new reality and get your feet back under you.  I can't tell you when.  We're all different.  It took me over six months and vigorous work with a kick-ass therapist doing integration work once a week every week, plus plenty of journaling, mindfulness work on my own, and meeting with an independent mental wellness group I joined with some friends, also once a week.  But I finally reached the point where I no longer had PTSD, not ony from the shock of the diagnosis, but from the trauma of the brain surgery.  I could finally call myself very deeply healed, though I am still healing.  But I am myself now as much as was before diagnosis.  As I did say, it took work.  

I need to recognize my good fortune here.  I've had the time to do this work, to rest and recoup.  Not all cancers allow that.  Mine happened to back off for a time.  But some cancers attack viciously right away and give no quarter, taking the patient down with horriffic cruelty and speed.  If this happens to you, I am deeply sorry and all I can say is, you didn't lose a battle.  Nobody loses a battle against a tsunami or a volcano.  Cancer is Nature.  It's built into the mathmatical model of the universe, the way I see it.  You did nothing to incur it or to "lose" against it.  Cancer is horrible.  You were brave.  You were loved.  Even if the people in your life deserted and betrayed you, you were loved in ways you never knew about and you are still loved.  May you come to know how loved and wonderful you are.

If you have the blessing and grace of time to contemplate life and death, may you have thiese gifts, too.

Shielding

 Other people's shielding can hurt.  And they have no self-awareness of it.  To make them aware, to turn their own shields to face them, could injure them, so we hesitate to do it, but I'm nearly past that civility.

I swallow my truth a lot, and always have.  Self-abandonment is a survival method for those of us brought up by narcissists in violent, alcoholic households where truth-telling was a very dangerous proposition.  We learned to eat our feelings (for me this was literal.  I developed an overeating habit that resulted in an on-again, off-again flirtation with obesity and a dance with self-hatred lasting most of my life because of that).

But I am so tired of this habit of swallowing truth that I am nearly ready to let people have my truth even when I know they are unaware of the hurt they are inflicting and that the knowledge will hurt them.  Truth hurts.  But those of us with cancer are hurting enough already.

This came into focus for me when a cancer free friend, B,  was driving another friend and I home (Roz and I, who live down the street from one another, coincidentally both have glio blastomas). Roz remarked that one of the most stressful things about cancer, particularly ours, is the fact that the tumor could not only change direction on a dime but that it could grow very quickly into any area of the brain, taking speech, eyesight, memories, the ability to walk, and many other executive functions, so the bulk of the stress comes from not knowing what your life could look like even next week (will you be running your ass off to keep up with a clinical trial schedule?  Will you be having a port installed to gwt Avastin infusions?  *shudder*). B was contemplating the fact that she herself had had" many situations in her own life when she did not know what to expect next, and, well, she had adjusted!" (this last was said in a cheery, sunny tone)

The implication here is, "Just be like me!"

To which I always want to reply, "Oh, really?  Well, get cancer first, and then we'll see!"  

The whole speech would be more like, "Did you wake up in a new reality where you suddenly have twenty years chopped off your life expectancy and you have a very highly increased chance of waking up tomorrow with no peripheral vision or are completely blind, or no longer able to walk, have no memory of the people who love you, aren't able to speak or understand language or read?  Because unless you live in that reality suddenly overnight, it is not the same.  And you don't get to tell anybody else "they will adjust" to that unless you have done it,  or that "they will adjust" to the knowledge that they have a foreign invader growing in their brain that is definitely 100% going to kill them.  If you don't live with that, you do not get to tell people "they will adjust to it".  To be in cancer club and tell people how to deal with it you have to HAVE CANCER.  Otherwise, sorry, it's just condescension and it's meaningless and it's rude.  I know you are a loving person so I want you to know how it sounds to us."

B was not trying to be rude or condescending, I know.  She was just unconsciously shielding.  When people have simple solutions or begin sentences with the word "Just" as in, "Well, you just have hope, that's all!" or, "I just believe God never gives you more than you are ready for!"  (OMG, THIS one, the very definition of trauma.  Another entry on this one later...)  When people want you to cheer up and "just " carry on, look out.  That's their shiny plastic shielding.  It's jagged, and it hurts.  Keep your distance.