Humans are interesting creatures. I watched a couple of documentaries the last two weeks that really made me think about the nature of physical suffering. Nobody wants pain or suffering, right? But yet, we actually kind of do. Sometimes we purposely seek it out. Why is that?
One of the movies I watched was about Bikram Choudry. He is the founder of Bikram yoga and popularized the whole hot yoga trend where people practice in rooms heated over 100 degrees. I've tried it three times, and each time I felt utterly depleted afterward and decided it just wasn't for me. But people get really addicted to it and swear by it. The interesting thing about Bikram is, not only is the room miserably hot, but his style and personality are quite abusive to his students and he has since fled the country due to litigation over allegations of sexual assault and abusive behavior. Still, thousands of people happily forked over thousands of dollars to train with him, and they still do today.
The other documentary was about the mountains and the draw that they have for us. Mountains are not welcoming places. They are starkly beautiful, but they are not places you go for quiet rest and relaxation. In ages past, mountains were forbidding places of deep mystery, and nobody would go there on purpose. Mountains are cold, hard, unforgiving environments. How many people have been injured or died while trying to cross passes or reach summits? Still, the mountains draw people in. People will pay dearly for the opportunity to experience some of the most intense suffering of their lives in attempts to climb the highest peaks in the most heinous conditions imaginable.
I'm no stranger to the joy of suffering. Each summer, I purposely, and with great delight, weigh myself down with many pounds of gear on my back so that I can go out into the forests or mountains and expose my fair skin to the punishing effects of the sun (or perhaps rain or wind), put up with all manner of biting bugs eager to make a meal of me, and generally make myself quite exhausted with the effort of it all as I find myself counting down the steps or paddle strokes until I can make camp and sleep on the cold hard ground. And I love it.
So why do we do it?
Maybe its the old adage, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. While modern life has its challenges, most of them are not physical challenges. Life is pretty cushy for most of us in the western world who are not manual laborers. I think we all long to test our mettle in some way. There is something deeply satisfying about doing something really, physically hard, and somehow getting through it. Smooth seas never made for a skilled sailor. Muscles don't grow from sitting in the easy chair. We get better, and stronger, when we are challenged.
This is exactly why I've started challenging myself with the Wim Hof method. Wim Hof is a slightly insane Dutch guy who is also known as the Ice Man. He's done some pretty astounding feats such as a climbing to the death zone of Mt. Everest and running a marathon above the Arctic Circle, both times wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. He holds records for swimming under the ice and immersing himself in ice water for a couple of hours without his body temperature dropping. Through experimentation, he has learned how to hack his body so that he can control his autonomic nervous system and charge up his immune system. He teaches some specific breathing exercises and controlled cold exposure in an effort to help people improve their health and well-being. Even people with chronic diseases like Parkinson's and cancer have found better health through his method. Hof believes that humans evolved to be able to handle cold temperatures, but in our modern lives, we have climate controlled ourselves into a state of weakness. By exposing ourselves gradually to the cold, we can turn on all kinds of mechanisms within our bodies that help us regulate body temperature, build stronger immune systems, metabolize fat more efficiently, and reduce chronic inflammation.
I already practiced a lot of breathing exercises, so that part wasn't hard to add to my daily routine, but the part I really had a hard time with was the cold exposure. Wim Hof suggests cold showers and ice baths as part of the methodology. Yes. Cold showers. In the middle of winter. Did I mention this guy is a little bit crazy? I have always hated the cold, so why was I even considering this? But somehow Wim Hof kept turning up in just about every podcast I listen to and I kept hearing how awesome it was to experience this cold therapy. It took me nearly two months of just doing the breathing exercises before I finally summoned up the courage to try the cold showers. So I'm as surprised as anybody to say that I am finding that I almost enjoy it.
OK. Enjoy might be a strong word, but there is something pretty empowering about it. Despite the fact that the outside temperature is now below freezing, and the water coming out of the pipes is tremendously cold this time of year about (50 degrees), I have been taking a cold shower nearly every day for the past two months. I start out with warm water, and then I shut off all the hot water so that only the cold is running. The first few seconds are the worst. But it is surprising how, if I stay calm and just keep my breathing steady, my body knows how to handle it. I turn the warm back on when I feel I can't do it anymore, usually after about one minute, and then I end with another 15 to 20 seconds of cold. It is very bracing, to say the least, and I am, most certainly very AWAKE by this point.
Will it make a difference for me in the long run with my health? I have my quarterly scans at the end of the month, and we will see. But even if nothing changes with my scans, the plain fact of the matter is that I do feel better. I'm finding I've become much more tolerant of the cold weather this winter, and I don't feel nearly as cold as I used to feel. My skin is in better health with less itchiness (itching is a side effect of one of the drugs I get), and I have really good energy and focus.
But mostly, it makes me feel powerful. And that feeling, I think, is what it's all about. Having cancer or any kind of illness can make you feel like you are somehow weak and frail. So often, though, our mental challenges are far bigger than the physical challenges. If we can just get out of our heads sometimes, we find that our bodies have the wisdom to know just what to do. These bodies of ours are pretty amazing. Just the fact that you can think about scratching your nose, and then make it happen, is a feat of neurological wonder.
When I take that cold shower, I see how quickly my body warms me back up the minute I step out. It's quite remarkable. We focus so often on the things that are wrong with us, that we forget about the millions of things that go right every single moment. It helps me to recognize that we are so much stronger than we think we are and that every challenge just makes us a little bit stronger for the future.
Tuesday, December 10, 2019
Thursday, March 7, 2019
Health is Not the Absence of Disease
Today was treatment day for me. Every three weeks I go into the cancer center and get an IV infusion of Herceptin and Perjeta. These are targeted therapies that are meant to keep the specific type of breast cancer cells that I have from growing. The drugs target receptors on those cells that keep the cell from dividing. They have kept me stable for over three years now with minimal side effects. I am beyond grateful for them.
Every three to four months, I get a CT scan and an echo-cardiogram to see how I'm doing. The drugs can be hard on the heart, especially for those taking them long-term, so the the echo checks to make sure my heart is still pumping efficiently. The CT scan checks the state of the lesions that have shown up on previous scans, and they measure them to see if there are any changes or to see if anything new has popped up. I had a scan at the end of November, and it was not entirely good news. The scan showed a slight enlargement of one of my axial lymph nodes. These are the nodes right in your armpit. We don't like changes in the scans unless they show that there is a reduction of size. That kind of change is A-OK, but bigger is not better. If there is progression, that could mean that my cancer has stopped responding to the current treatment. This sort of thing happens a lot with cancer which is what makes cancer such a tricky thing to manage.
My oncologist was pretty concerned. This might mean that we would have to change things up with my treatment, which I wasn't excited about at all. Most of the other treatments are not as free of side-effects as the one I'm on. But she didn't want to make any rushes to judgement. There could be lots of reasons why a lymph node might be enlarged. I had just had a flu shot the week before. Could that have been the reason for it? Maybe I was fighting a cold. So, we decided we'd take a "wait and see" approach and scan again in three months.
The three month re-scan happened last week. I knew that this one, depending on the report, could make a big difference in what my treatment might look like. I knew I might have to put in a little more effort into the outcome I wanted to see.
I've done a lot of reading this past year about how absolutely powerful our thoughts are. We've all heard someone say "just thinking about it makes me sick." It's true, though, isn't it? We've probably all had the experience of worrying so much about something that we got a stomach ache, or feeling so stressed out that we get a headache. We can, most definitely, make ourselves sick. So, it stands to reason, that if we can make ourselves sick by our thoughts and emotions, couldn't we make ourselves better too?
So, I focused my meditations on feeling the emotions of a positive scan report. I visualized the smile on my doctor's face as she told me that things looked good. I imagined healing love energy flowing into my body and filling up every corner of every cell with a beautiful golden light. I visualized myself doing a happy dance and sending that love energy to everyone around me. I imagined telling people the good news. I filled my heart with positive emotions and a sense of well-being. Our brains and bodies produce chemicals based on our emotions, and I wanted my body to know that everything was totally good.
The morning of the scan, I had a thought that popped into my head. "I want to see a monarch butterfly today." If I saw an image of one, I would feel like that was my sign that everything was going to be just fine. And then I went to work and forgot all about that thought. Before I knew it, afternoon was upon me and I had to head over to the clinic to get my scans. As I was waiting for the CT nurse to call me in, I pulled out my phone to while away the minutes. Facebook is always a reliable way to kill time, and I was scrolling through to see what my world of friends and family have been up to. All of a sudden, I scrolled upon a video that a good friend of mine had posted. And what do you suppose was in the video? Not just one butterfly. The video showed hundreds of monarchs flying against the backdrop of a bright blue sky. It was simply beautiful, and I found myself overcome with love and appreciation and a sense of great awe and wonder. It was almost as if the universe was saying, oh you wanted a butterfly, did you? I'll show you so many butterflies that there will be no mistaking this sign.
As I gazed at this slow-motion video of butterflies dancing across the sky, I had this sense that each one was picking up whatever troubles I did not need and carrying them away. And I knew that, no matter what, everything was going to be okay.
The next day, I thought I'd play around with the universe again. So I asked for an image of an angel as another sign. I didn't see one all day and again forgot about it until evening. We had plans to see a movie that night, Apollo 11, at the Imax theater in Roseville and as we walked into the theater from the parking lot, I realized I had not seen any angel images. Just as I thought that, my son said, "Hey, Alita, Battle Angel. My friend saw that and he said it was really good." I had not heard about this movie at all, but as we walked into the theater, the first thing I saw was the poster for Alita, Battle Angel, with an image of her front and center. I laughed to myself and thought, OK, so it wasn't exactly the image of an angel that I had in my mind. But sometimes the universe gives you what you want in ways you did not expect. You just have to be open to things as they come your way.
I met with my oncologist today. It took her a good long while to get around to telling me about my scan results. We talked about how Stage 4 in one person, isn't the same as Stage 4 in another person. If we just checked off the boxes that say "this is what you do when you see a change" I would probably already be on a different treatment. But she understands that she's not treating cancer. She's treating me. She is treating someone she knows. Yes, I have metastatic breast cancer, but that is not who I am. I am not a diagnosis. We are not defined by the labels assigned to us by a system that wants to check off boxes. I may be labeled as stage 4, but I also snowshoe, and I backpack, and there is nothing keeping me from living the life that I want to live. Just as my angel didn't look like I expected, "health" does not always look like you expect. Health is not the absence of disease. It's about how we are able to live our lives. Are we able to do the things we want to do most of the time? Are we able to give something to our communities. Are we part of something bigger than ourselves?
We talked about how cancer changes us and makes us see life in ways we would not have imagined. She sees it all the time - people who say, I'm actually a lot happier and healthier post cancer than I was pre-cancer. Of course, none of us who have cancer or have been touched by it would ever wish it upon another person, but there is something about the experience of it that changes you. It makes you understand that life is so incredibly beautiful in all its many guises. It makes you take better care of yourself. It makes you appreciate and see each day in a whole new way. It makes you wonder how you can make the world a better place.
That lymph node? It's still enlarged, which I wasn't wanting to hear. But it hasn't changed since last time. Everything else is perfectly stable as well. No changes at all. So my Dr. doesn't think we should make any changes to my treatment because I'm doing so great and everything still looks good. So I didn't get exactly what I expected, but it was still the exact outcome I wanted. My doctor did have the happy smile I had imagined. I did feel my body full of light and love. I did do that happy dance I had visualized and excitedly shared my scan report with the nurses and my family. It all transpired just as I had imagined it would
So it's all good. We will scan again in three months to keep an eye on things, and as we wait for the next scan to come round, we will all just live each day the best we can, and imagine and feel deep in our cells what we want our future to be. And if we open our eyes, I bet we will see unexpected angels everywhere. Or a hundred butterflies. You never know. Spring isn't that far away.
https://www.facebook.com/pato.moreno.71/videos/1879461472182424/?t=2
Every three to four months, I get a CT scan and an echo-cardiogram to see how I'm doing. The drugs can be hard on the heart, especially for those taking them long-term, so the the echo checks to make sure my heart is still pumping efficiently. The CT scan checks the state of the lesions that have shown up on previous scans, and they measure them to see if there are any changes or to see if anything new has popped up. I had a scan at the end of November, and it was not entirely good news. The scan showed a slight enlargement of one of my axial lymph nodes. These are the nodes right in your armpit. We don't like changes in the scans unless they show that there is a reduction of size. That kind of change is A-OK, but bigger is not better. If there is progression, that could mean that my cancer has stopped responding to the current treatment. This sort of thing happens a lot with cancer which is what makes cancer such a tricky thing to manage.
My oncologist was pretty concerned. This might mean that we would have to change things up with my treatment, which I wasn't excited about at all. Most of the other treatments are not as free of side-effects as the one I'm on. But she didn't want to make any rushes to judgement. There could be lots of reasons why a lymph node might be enlarged. I had just had a flu shot the week before. Could that have been the reason for it? Maybe I was fighting a cold. So, we decided we'd take a "wait and see" approach and scan again in three months.
The three month re-scan happened last week. I knew that this one, depending on the report, could make a big difference in what my treatment might look like. I knew I might have to put in a little more effort into the outcome I wanted to see.
I've done a lot of reading this past year about how absolutely powerful our thoughts are. We've all heard someone say "just thinking about it makes me sick." It's true, though, isn't it? We've probably all had the experience of worrying so much about something that we got a stomach ache, or feeling so stressed out that we get a headache. We can, most definitely, make ourselves sick. So, it stands to reason, that if we can make ourselves sick by our thoughts and emotions, couldn't we make ourselves better too?
So, I focused my meditations on feeling the emotions of a positive scan report. I visualized the smile on my doctor's face as she told me that things looked good. I imagined healing love energy flowing into my body and filling up every corner of every cell with a beautiful golden light. I visualized myself doing a happy dance and sending that love energy to everyone around me. I imagined telling people the good news. I filled my heart with positive emotions and a sense of well-being. Our brains and bodies produce chemicals based on our emotions, and I wanted my body to know that everything was totally good.
The morning of the scan, I had a thought that popped into my head. "I want to see a monarch butterfly today." If I saw an image of one, I would feel like that was my sign that everything was going to be just fine. And then I went to work and forgot all about that thought. Before I knew it, afternoon was upon me and I had to head over to the clinic to get my scans. As I was waiting for the CT nurse to call me in, I pulled out my phone to while away the minutes. Facebook is always a reliable way to kill time, and I was scrolling through to see what my world of friends and family have been up to. All of a sudden, I scrolled upon a video that a good friend of mine had posted. And what do you suppose was in the video? Not just one butterfly. The video showed hundreds of monarchs flying against the backdrop of a bright blue sky. It was simply beautiful, and I found myself overcome with love and appreciation and a sense of great awe and wonder. It was almost as if the universe was saying, oh you wanted a butterfly, did you? I'll show you so many butterflies that there will be no mistaking this sign.
As I gazed at this slow-motion video of butterflies dancing across the sky, I had this sense that each one was picking up whatever troubles I did not need and carrying them away. And I knew that, no matter what, everything was going to be okay.
The next day, I thought I'd play around with the universe again. So I asked for an image of an angel as another sign. I didn't see one all day and again forgot about it until evening. We had plans to see a movie that night, Apollo 11, at the Imax theater in Roseville and as we walked into the theater from the parking lot, I realized I had not seen any angel images. Just as I thought that, my son said, "Hey, Alita, Battle Angel. My friend saw that and he said it was really good." I had not heard about this movie at all, but as we walked into the theater, the first thing I saw was the poster for Alita, Battle Angel, with an image of her front and center. I laughed to myself and thought, OK, so it wasn't exactly the image of an angel that I had in my mind. But sometimes the universe gives you what you want in ways you did not expect. You just have to be open to things as they come your way.
I met with my oncologist today. It took her a good long while to get around to telling me about my scan results. We talked about how Stage 4 in one person, isn't the same as Stage 4 in another person. If we just checked off the boxes that say "this is what you do when you see a change" I would probably already be on a different treatment. But she understands that she's not treating cancer. She's treating me. She is treating someone she knows. Yes, I have metastatic breast cancer, but that is not who I am. I am not a diagnosis. We are not defined by the labels assigned to us by a system that wants to check off boxes. I may be labeled as stage 4, but I also snowshoe, and I backpack, and there is nothing keeping me from living the life that I want to live. Just as my angel didn't look like I expected, "health" does not always look like you expect. Health is not the absence of disease. It's about how we are able to live our lives. Are we able to do the things we want to do most of the time? Are we able to give something to our communities. Are we part of something bigger than ourselves?
We talked about how cancer changes us and makes us see life in ways we would not have imagined. She sees it all the time - people who say, I'm actually a lot happier and healthier post cancer than I was pre-cancer. Of course, none of us who have cancer or have been touched by it would ever wish it upon another person, but there is something about the experience of it that changes you. It makes you understand that life is so incredibly beautiful in all its many guises. It makes you take better care of yourself. It makes you appreciate and see each day in a whole new way. It makes you wonder how you can make the world a better place.
That lymph node? It's still enlarged, which I wasn't wanting to hear. But it hasn't changed since last time. Everything else is perfectly stable as well. No changes at all. So my Dr. doesn't think we should make any changes to my treatment because I'm doing so great and everything still looks good. So I didn't get exactly what I expected, but it was still the exact outcome I wanted. My doctor did have the happy smile I had imagined. I did feel my body full of light and love. I did do that happy dance I had visualized and excitedly shared my scan report with the nurses and my family. It all transpired just as I had imagined it would
So it's all good. We will scan again in three months to keep an eye on things, and as we wait for the next scan to come round, we will all just live each day the best we can, and imagine and feel deep in our cells what we want our future to be. And if we open our eyes, I bet we will see unexpected angels everywhere. Or a hundred butterflies. You never know. Spring isn't that far away.
https://www.facebook.com/pato.moreno.71/videos/1879461472182424/?t=2
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