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.

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