Round 2!!!

Good news, I got my period today!!! 28 days to the day!!! YEAH!! Two points for E. Bachner's body!! I new I was ovulating... but I was so scared I was making it up and did not want to be dissapointed so soon. But I rejoice!! I don't think I have ever been so happy to bleed!! My OB/GYN said, "This is a very good sign that your body is not stressed!" Yes! This is also a good sign that I still have the choice... in this moment....

Sufi picks my pregnant sister up at the airport while I cross the ever lengthening t's and dot the never ending i's. I don't care how many pills I still need to pick up, endless errands that need to be run or calls that should be answered... I'm still gonna have my manicured nails when I walk into the infusion center!

Dr. G and I come up with the pre-med protocol in relationship with each other. No Benadryl, No on the Ativan, Yes on Aprepitant (the stuff for nausea/acid stomach), No on the Aloxi and yes on the Decadron. I'm also gonna use Frankinsence this time to help ease the many side effects of the pre-meds and chemo. (that is me sniffing and holding onto the bottle during the treatment. When I start to get overwhelmed by all the foreign substances going into my body I focus on the smell and I can feel my body shift and I become more grounded and less naseated/agitated). It seems to be working.

Like a pregnant mom who is both scared and excited for labor, I'm kinda jumpy with anticipation, "How will this round of chemo combined with this cocktail of pre-meds effect my body this time? Will I have more nausea? less? will I be more present? will I be begging for more drugs? "

I sit in a state of wonderment. I am in awe of both science and my body. I have ABSOLUTELY no idea!! None, what-so-ever!!! And instead of fighting this place of 'no control', I surrender to it knowing that whatever the challenge I can face it because I have such great support around me.

Sufi and I have both been noticing the energy of the hawks lately. The weekend I was diagnosed there was a hawk circling around and around where I was watching the sunset. (if you zoom in on the photo, I promise, the hawk is there) And it was not a fly by situation. Rima, the kids and I watch it for about half an hour just hang out, gliding, right over our heads, then SWOOP down it went to get its prey. We jokingly said, "Wow, maybe that is my animal mascot?"

I was joking until Sufi mentioned she kept seeing them too. And she actually figured out why the hawk was communicating to us. So, the hawk is not known as a sweet, loving, chirpy bird. It is a predator that preys on field mice and other creatures miles below it on land. The message was to imagine the chemo as the preditor, the hawk. The chemo would enter into my body with calculated accuracy and then swiftly dive to where it needed to grab its prey, the cancer. The prey in this situation might also be really, really small and almost unseeing to the naked eye, but with hawk vision the chemo would know where to go in my body and find the cancer and fill its belly with delight!

Yes, I am more 'woo-woo' than most (I have been living in California for over 11 years, cut me some slack). And if you dig around on cancer sites you will see that lots of people reccomend visualizations; but, none of them had any resonance to me because I know that I am not fighting a fight with cancer - that is the chemo's job! Yeah, the chemo is a 'toxin'. Yeah, the hawk is a 'predator'. But just as the predator has it's place in nature, so does chemo in the life of someone with cancer.

With each bag of chemo I tell the millions and trillions of hawks inside to "fly, be free, do your job and do it well! Find the big and tiny, ity, bity cancer cells and feast away!! Be direct in your flying! Be exact! Be precise! Be intelligent! Be clean in your attack!! And for god's sake, be gentle with my uterus and ovaries. PLEASE be kind if there is no prey there for you to eat!"

This message from the hawk on a new way of appreciating the chemo/cancer has supported the lessoning of my struggle with this so I can find even more space to be made for the health of my body. And for me, those are the kind of tools that are the most important.