February 26, 2017

On the medical side of things there is some improvement and some stasis.  My dysgeusia seems to be diminishing.  That is the condition of having an unpleasant taste in your mouth for sustained periods of time, sometimes all day.  The taste just arises from nowhere in particular.  In my case it is as though I have the after taste of having just eaten a spoon of salt.  My other taste problem, the inability to taste any food or drink, remains although there may be some slight glimmers of improvement  At this point it is a little early to see significant change.  The whole subject of how we experience taste is more complicated than I ever would have thought.  A matter for me to put on my already too long reading list.

My energy is slowly returning.  This coming week I'll  start testing that with some exercising.  The loss of energy as radiotherapy progresses is very surreptitious and its' return seems to be the same
Cetuximab with which I was treated has had the side effect of causing my eyebrows to lengthen and become bushier with some curling and twisting.  My "normal" eyebrows were already noticeably bushy.  I now appear to have a small unkempt animal living above each eye.

I believe I said in an earlier posting that having cancer has not changed the course of my life but has rather confirmed for me the course I was already on.   The passage of time is affirming that.  We know, or should know, that many of the things of life that  we get caught up in are not that important.  However, we keep on getting caught up in them anyhow.   My mindfulness/Buddhist practice has helped to sort these things out.  Arriving in one's seventies and receiving a potentially life threatening diagnosis helps one to strip away even more of the extraneous and even more quickly.  Susan Cheever commenting on the effect a meeting with e.e. cummings had on her said, "I saw that being right was a petty goal - being free is the thing to aim for."  

February 19, 2017

The second of my post-therapy weeks is over.  For the most part it was, as promised, fairly rough.  However by today things are feeling much better.  All food and drink remains tasteless or provokes strange unpleasant tastes.  It's too early to expect any improvement in that and it may take up to a year to say how much taste returns.  I manage to mostly focus on what is coming back and not on what is still lost.

One day this last week was maybe the roughest day I've had and I even felt a little depressed.  Toward late afternoon of that day a realization dawned.  A piece of music I heard, a laugh I shared, the sight of late daylight falling on the trees over by the lake had all been moments of happiness regardless of the kind of day I was having.  In the commonplace book I started last year are the following entries.

"Our notions about happiness entrap us. We forget that they are just ideas. Our idea of happiness can prevent us from actually being happy. We fail to see the opportunity for joy that is right in front of us when we are caught in a belief that happiness should take a particular form."  Thich Nhat Hanh

"Some people feel the rain.  Others just get wet."  Roger Miller (Frequently mistakenly attributed to Bob Marley)

I will probably continue my weekly updates for another couple of weeks.  After that I may discontinue posting.  If and when I quit I will say so in my last posting. 

February 12, 2017

How easy it is to delude oneself.  I was told the debilitating effects of therapy would accumulate and the two weeks after therapy ends would be just as bad as the last week of therapy.   In spite of this I found myself feeling I would be bouncing back this first week after therapy.  My intent to attend the Friday gathering of Snowflower Sangha did not come to pass nor did other anticipated outings. In retrospect I was setting myself up for unnecessary suffering.  Implicitly I was thinking in terms of how I wanted things to be rather than being with whatever was the case.

In spite of the self delusion described above there are definite little recovery signs scattered about.  When we lived out in the woods I saw spring evolving from winter in sporadic ways.  Spring never arrived at once with some heraldic event.  A tiny wildflower showed itself in a sunny spot a few yards from the remnants of a snow drift.  The early arriving red winged blackbirds sometime found themselves singing as late snow blew off the marsh.  I'll have to keep this in mind as I await my "Spring"  and not expect some heraldic event.

With respect to both  recovering from treatment and also how this period relates to the rest of my life I can't help but think in terms of the Tibetan Buddhist concept of the bardo.   Bardo is an in between or transitional state.  It came to Tibetan Buddhism from the earlier Tibetan Bon religion.  In that context bardo is where consciousness reside between lives.  I think of it in metaphorical terms.  Is this illness experience telling me I am tied to an obsolete idea of myself that I need to shake to move on to a new version?

February 7, 2017

As of Friday, February 3 all the planned treatment is over.  Eight infusions of cetuximab and thirty three radiotherapy treatments are completed.  The cumulative effects of seven weeks of treatment, especially the radiotherapy,  have taken their toll.  There's no discomfort by way of pain.  The chief but not only effect is lack of energy.

I've made a number of attempts over the last few days to write a post to this blog.  Not much luck. Things as simple as writing a coherent narrative take energy you don't quite have.  It's predicted I'll be in this state for another two weeks if I follow the typical pattern.  This coming weekend I'll make another attempt at posting.  In the meanwhile - I just take a step at a time and hold myself and others in my metta meditation..