I desire to stay!
I choose to live!
I will survive and continue to be here for Satya.
Just tell me what to do and I will do it.
What does this situation demand of me?
What is the lesson here?
What is the message, and how can I respond?
What must I do?
I’ll do anything.
These are some of the statements I’ve made and questions I’ve asked (myself, Spirit, the Universe, God, call it what you will) since this journey began.
I’m dropping into an ever-deeper space on this journey, and I’d like to invite you in with me. In this dispatch, I hope to begin sharing some of the more holistic and inner aspects of this healing journey I’m on, including my effort to love the cancer, partner with chemo, and fight without resisting.
Before jumping in, a quick update on Round 2. So far it has been substantially more grueling and torturous than the first round was. I may have been guilty of some hubris in my last update, feeling as though I had sort of sailed through the first round. This last week, I’ve felt more intense nausea, deeper exhaustion, and more utter emotional rawness than ever before. I still celebrate that this treatment seems to be working, but the way I feel in my body is anything but a "treat."
I also want to keep up the drumbeat of gratitude to match the drumbeat of supportive messages y’all have sent me and helpful contributions you’ve made to my healing fundraiser. Feeling into the near future, I can tap pretty easily into anxiety about finance and recovery post-chemo. Your support has gone a long way to remind me that I am safe and provided for.
360° of treatment
While my first couple of emails have dealt mostly with the big headline of starting chemotherapy, the truth is these drugs are really just a few players on a big and increasingly robust team. They are important players, for sure — but they are joined by equally important teammates.
I’ve written of the work I’ve been doing around diet and nutrition. More recently, I’ve also been blessed to receive some healing touch. I’ve been awarded some grants for complementary integrative health services like massage and guided imagery, and I’ve begun to schedule appointments for acupuncture and other forms of energy healing in the coming weeks. I’ve sought counseling and had several meetings with an amazing hospital chaplain. And I’ve cried — a lot.
I’m learning to meditate in a whole new way, to listen more deeply to the still, small voice within (or, more commonly, to witness the ever-teeming peanut gallery of thoughts and just keep breathing). I'm deeply aware that I have much more work to do here. Some nights, getting to sleep has been a real challenge. Sometimes, I can let it all go and just feel the beauty of a moment in the sun. And in some instances, my default emotions of hope and positivity are temporarily dethroned by abject terror. Simply put: I'm in it.
“I know intuitively that a big part of the message of this cancer is that I must do my true work of sharing my story and singing the unique song of my soul.”
I’m pounding some amazing books like Radical Remission and Choices in Healing. If you know anyone else going through a cancer journey like this, I heartily recommend these titles. They have reinforced the truth of my agency in the healing process. While the chemotherapy I’m currently undergoing is the most highly research-backed international standard of care, which I am trusting to support my body in removing the cancer, I take ultimate responsibility for my role in completing this journey — and as I’ve mentioned, getting the message of this cancer is of paramount importance.
Cancer is one of the greatest teachers I’ve ever had, and I’m doing my best to allow it to transform me for the better. I ask myself about the meaning of this experience. I believe it is here to guide me to a more whole-hearted expression of life and of myself. I’ve hinted that I have books and other acts of creative expression within me, clamoring to be to let out — and I know intuitively that a big part of the message of this cancer is that I must do my true work of sharing my story and singing the unique song of my soul.
If this inner rebellion of cancer (especially cancer originating in such an intimate space, my testis, my center of creation) has a primary message, it has to do with my need to birth some specific creations into this world with my finite time on our planet. I believe these inner rebels can be healthily integrated into my body politic only as their important message is heard and respected.
It is a scary proposition — stepping into this world as a creator, dealing with my past trauma, writing and speaking my truth, expressing long-suppressed emotions like grief and shame and fear, and trusting that it is safe to take this risk of sharing what I have within me. To put it in testicular parlance, it will take balls.
But I must create what I was put here to create. Plain and simple.
Loving cancer and partnering with chemo
As I work through this diagnosis and cure, I'm finding myself doing a lot of reframing. We’re so used to hearing and echoing violent, antagonistic refrains like “battling cancer,” “fighting cancer”, and winning the “war on cancer” — and there may be something to the impulse to call on our inner warrior to embrace and face what certainly feels like a fight. But I’m also thinking about how I can prevail in this struggle, in the lineage of Gandhi and Dr. King, with the power of love.
So in addition to fighting cancer, I’m also dancing with it. I’m listening to it and learning from it.
And in addition to empathizing with that voice that wants to scream, “FUCK CANCER,” I am digging deep within to find the courage to also say, bravely, “love cancer.”
I’m attempting a similar inversion on the common attitude toward chemotherapy. Many patients I’ve come across over the years have expressed a fraught or even toxic relationship with their chemo, referring to it as “poison.” For me, it is medicine that I welcome in order to support a desired outcome. Nausea, hair loss, inflammation in my veins, loss of red and white blood cells and a dip in liver function are just temporary side-effects — but these bags of bleomycin, etoposide and cisplatin are my friends, allies and partners in healing.
As the above piece of therapeutic artwork (which I did with oil pastel on a large poster board) shows, these infusions transmit an important message to these cancer cells: in service of the longevity and health of my whole organism, it is time for these rogue cells to quit reproducing and die. If there is a message for me in the cancer cells’ act of rebellion, I will do my absolute best to hear and heed it, but the democratic government of my greater organism will not allow this faction to take over.
It is not lost on me that these cells labeled “cancer” — even if they are misbehaving and causing pain and fear and confusion — are still my cells. And while they have attempted to reproduce uncontrollably, and ultimately need to get with the program and perform the cell’s final act of "apoptosis" (death), it is ultimately with LOVE that I greet and treat these cells.
I hold this cancer with love. And it is only out of a more overwhelming love for the whole of this life that I ask and require these specific cells to die in peace and dissolve into water.
Honestly, even if the cancer cells were alien invaders, little slimy rat-like creatures I had to extract from my own flesh and kill one by one, I would do it with love. I would pluck their little bodies from beneath my skin, hold them, listen to their intention, and as I snapped their little necks I’d tell them, “I hear you. I love you. Go in peace.”
These cells are just confused and out of bounds, and I will not allow them to take over, because there is a whole inner civilization here who deserves to thrive. It is love — my love for myself, for my family, and for life itself — that informs any fighting against or killing of the cancer cells that have developed in my body.
It is love. It is love. It is love.
Fighting without resisting
Of all the struggles and challenges of my cancer diagnosis — the physical pain and nausea, the early-morning drives and hours-long chemo infusions, the fevers and sore throat and hair loss — the most significant suffering I've experienced has been in my mind. (Where else does suffering really happen?)
Primarily, it is classic mortality fear. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave Satya. I want to, desire to, choose to stay. And in this overwhelming desire to live, I find myself holding two apparently contradictory (but ultimately harmonious) notes:
On the one hand is non-resistance, acceptance of what is.
Control is inherently illusory and life inherently uncertain. That’s true for us all. Any one of us could die tomorrow in a car accident (or, an unfortunate hallmark of modern America, a mass shooting). As Trungpa Rinpoche suggests in the “Four Reminders” of Buddhism, “death comes without warning; this body will be a corpse.” There is a need to accept what is, surrender to what is, not to resist or deny what is.
On the other hand is intention, will, and choice — knowing that our thoughts, words and actions can and do influence the outcome.
We can acknowledge something as the truth and still say “no” to it. We can take powerful steps to affect the future. But we must start with accepting the present situation if we wish to respond appropriately.
The best metaphor I’ve come up with to illustrate this is a grizzly bear attack. (Ever seen The Revenant ?) imagine you are walking alone in the wilderness, you have a knife at your side, and you are suddenly attacked by a bear. No chance to sneak around it or deter it. You’re being mauled. Its jaw is closed tightly on your left arm. What do you do?
Grab your knife. Go for the throat.
In any survival situation — whether making it through the bear attack, a wildfire, or a plane crash hundreds of miles from civilization alone (a la “Naked and Afraid”) — it is presence, situational awareness, that can make the difference between an unwanted outcome and a successful one. We can make it. We can survive. But we've got to be here now.
I’ve had moments lately where I’ve wondered if I am grasping in my attempts to overcome this bear I'm currently facing. Is my fighting coming at the expense of accepting what is? Would I be better served with a healing visualization, a walk, or perhaps a movie? Yes to green juice and a clean diet... and can I still get some cheese on my burrito? When it comes to cancer, is there such a thing as too much fighting?
This thought may be an incomplete one. I am in a fight to live — and to whatever extent there is a battle, my wish is to engage in it from an empowered place, without struggling or grasping more than I need to — but also without neglecting the sacred power of my intentions and my choices.
The language of healing
In a previous chapter of my life, I served as an anatomy and physiology instructor at one of my alma maters, the World School of Massage and Holistic Healing Arts, where I learned a great deal about how healing works (with no idea what I was ultimately being prepared for).
One of the most valuable aspects of healing I explored as I attended this this mystery school in my early twenties, just after losing my father, was the importance in the healing process of the words we use.
My teacher, Patricia Cramer, referred to this judicious use of our power of speech as "the language of healing."
The idea, in short, is to mind our words, for they have the power to create. As the title of a treasured old book puts it, Your Body Believes Every Word You Say.
When I used to be a healing coach and massage therapist, I met so many people who would declare emphatically, almost proudly, things like, "I have a bad back/knee/hip," or "I have arthritis," (or diabetes, or high blood pressure... or cancer). Over time with an affliction, the mind, the ego, can come to identify with it, to claim it, and so to crystallize and solidify and keep it. And that is notsomething I desire to do here.
The language of healing invites us to reference trauma and unwanted states of being in the past tense and avoid claiming states that we don't wish to persist. Don’t “have” your dis-ease: heal it and let it go!
Instead of a "bad back," perhaps it is a "healing back," or "a back that is recovering from some trauma" — or perhaps there is simply some "room for release" in that back.
Similarly, instead of "having" arthritis, diabetes, or cancer, perhaps "I was diagnosed with" that disease. Perhaps "I'm working through, beating, facing, dancing with, listening to" that disease. Perhaps "I'm overcoming" that disease entirely!
So my humble request: if you speak of me, please don’t say “my friend has cancer,” but rather, “my friend is completely healing and triumphing over cancer!”
Thanks, as ever, for being here on the path with me.
Sending much love to you!
Yours in community,
Nils
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