Saturday, May 29, 2010

checking in - spaciousness and stillness

It's been awhile since I've given a progress report... So...here it is.

Energy - About 80% restored. I no longer nap during the day. I am working full time without any problem. In the past two days, I have walked the equivalent of 10 miles, and in the last five days, I have walked 21 miles. That's about equal to my pre-treatment activity. Most mornings, I am greeting the day with a two mile walk, (and often some chi gong exercises) and really enjoying it. I am much lighter and my muscular strength is probably half what it was...I'd like to start doing some light weight training soon. Sometimes at night, I feel myself crash when we sit down to watch a TV show...Sometimes, it is almost painful...but I wake up refreshed.

Taste. About 75 % restored. For the most part, I do not taste foods as strongly as I used to. Some foods, particularly sweets, are still a bit unpredictable, and at times, unpleasant. Milk often tastes a bit sour. I ate a few bananas this past week...bananas for some reason taste funny now. I used to love eggs...now, sometimes, I do not like the taste of eggs at all. If a food is spicy, it is difficult to describe how harshly it burns...it is virtually intolerable. I ate a bagel, cream cheese and lox for breakfast today (my traditional Saturday morning breakfast)...it wasn't bad, but it was a lot of work. Eating with minimal saliva is more of a chore and less enjoyable, but I have come a long way back. I just discovered ARBY's sells an apple turnover that tastes just delicious to me with a cup of coffee or tea. I pass an ARBY's on my way home from the office, and I fear I will become addicted to this treat. I am enjoying coffee a lot. I drink green tea, but tea now always leaves an unpleasant aftertaste. I drink gallons of water, but other than coffee or tea, most other drinks, such as fruit juices, taste weird.

Salivary function. About 25% restored. This is the worst of the lingering aftereffects. I do not know yet whether I will still improve here or just have to learn to live with this. I do have some saliva, but it is not "normal" and I frequently feel like I have to rinse my mouth. Unless I am eating something with sauce on it, or lots of moisture in it, like oranges or melons, I have to drink water to swallow. With meat, chicken, bread, crackers...if I don't have water, the food gets stuck in my throat. When I am outdoors or am doing a lot of talking, my mouth gets really dry really fast if I am not sipping water. Now that the weather is warmer, it's not as bad as it was in the cold.

Neuropathy. Another side effect of chemo that has not gone away. My fingers and toes often tingle. Sometimes my whole right arm is a bit painful. When I wake up in the morning, and am nice and warm, I barely notice it...it seems to get worse as the day goes on. But, it is very manageable, and does not impair walking or grasping or typing, etc. If it gets no worse, it's no real problem, just a bit annoying.

Some days I just feel lethargic and a bit nauseated and just not well. They seem to be isolated...I just go on with the day and invariably the next day I feel better. This is a new reality for me, having come from a place of almost unbelievable continuous health. I hardly knew what it meant to feel "under the weather." I never was an energy superstar, and my normal pace was first or second gear, but now, I am learning to adjust to having these days that just aren't so hot. Today, actually, I have felt as good as I have felt in almost a year. If I could forget about the saliva, I would say today I felt like my old self.

SPACIOUSNESS AND STILLNESS. I have a new longing...well, not new, but more pronounced. It is a longing for stillness and spaciousness. I have difficulty putting this into words...but when I am walking early morning, or practicing meditation, or just sitting quietly without any distractions, I feel myself move into a place of deeper peace and fulfillment, and it's like thirst-quenching is to a thirsty person. Today while I was walking I had this thought...life begins with tremendous spaciousness...then, as the years go by, we fill that space more and more until at some point, there is virtually no space between the barrage of stimulus at all...we just move from one hectic moment to the next hectic moment...then, as we approach old age, infirmity, and ultimately death...we begin to again have some spaciousness, depending on the speed of that process. Well, friends, let me tell you...I am reclaiming some of that back right now. I am certainly not yet old (isn't it something how "old" is a relative term, and moves a little further down the road than we presently are...) and God willing, have some healthy days ahead...and I never want to fill them up to overflowing with noise, activity or mind racing thinking again. NO SIR! Give me quiet walks, quiet times with God, quiet time to contemplate and meditate. SPACIOUSNESS AND STILLNESS....

While the longing for spaciousness and stillness seems to me a generally good and healthy pursuit...wouldn't you know, there is a bit of a dark side to this that harkens back to my past. My mother, who was a generally sunny, cheerful and wonderful woman, briefly entered a state of catatonic depression...she became a statue...and required shock treatment ...electroconvulsive therapy...back in 1964. After a few weeks of brain zapping with electricity, she snapped out of it, and was her cheery self again for about thirty years until a relapse of her depression sometime in the 1990's... This second bout with depression responded well to Lithium which I believe she stayed on for the rest of her life. She died when she was 84, and did not have another episode of depression during the last 8 or so years of her life. Around the same time that my mother had her initial episode of catatonia and depression in the 60's...(I was an adolescent) I began having some milder symptoms myself. No one noticed. NO ONE NOTICED! When I was a freshman in college, at the State University of New York at Albany, I lived in an old dorm that was a spillover dorm (if I remember correctly) from the old teachers college, and was located a few miles away from the campus. They put freshman in this dorm because all the modern campus dorms were full and they had to find another place to stick us. Since it was an old dorm, it was built like an old dorm...long dark hallways, etc. I went through a phase where I would stand as still as a statue in the window sill of a very large window at the end of a very long hall. I would particularly do this after the hall lights were turned out around midnight, and only the exit signs were lit, making for a very dark tunnel like effect. I do not remember how long I would stand this way, and I was often high on a variety of hallucinogens, being in college in New York in the late 60's. I was virtually invisible to people coming back to the dorm late, or getting up to use the bathroom down the hall...I was not noticed because, I think, no one expected to see a person standing absolutely still on the ledge of a large window at the end of the hall. When I was noticed, people would startle, and then say something to the effect of "what the hell are you doing standing on the window sill up there?" I would calmly reply something to the effect of "I am not doing anything" or else, " I am just standing here." Surprisingly, those explanations generally seemed to suffice, given it was the 60's and being weird was generally acceptable. Now... over the course of the last decade...there are times I find myself given to similar moments like this...I drive somewhere, turn off my car, but do not move...I stay completely still for a minute, maybe five.... for no particular reason...I "stop" for a bit of time, and then continue doing what I set out to do. This is quite interesting... to me. I am fully in control, and am... by no means... stuck. I don't do this often, but I have an appreciation of this stillness and this "stopping " that is, perhaps, a bit eccentric. I guess a little bit of eccentricity is OK, even (or especially) for a psychologist. What is odd to me is that I haven't encountered such a phenomena in others. Why always the press to "keep going." Try it...just completely stop...be really, really, really still...just for a minute or two...it wont hurt you, and you may even enjoy it...then resume your activity where you left off. Perhaps this eccentricity has nothing at all to do with my longing for a more meditative and spiritual stillness and quiet... ...perhaps...

While I was nearing the end of radiation treatment, I had such a moment of "stopping" on the radiation table, and I wrote a short, one paragraph post (Sept 28 '09) hinting at it in a bit more descriptive manner...I was, by then, taking narcotics, and not saying anything too concretely. Here is the link to copy and paste in your browser if you care to read it...or you can go to the 2009 posts in the blog archive to the right, and click on September and then the entry that's titled "hold a second absolutely still." I am not sure if this post or that one makes more sense...

http://sblumsblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/checking-in-hold-second-absolutely.html




A slightly different perspective on the same concept.

Friday, May 21, 2010

look out -- our new kitten coming soon


he worries...
will Simcha
look down from heaven
and hiss...
*
*
*
*
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Simcha, you are the alpha cat of my heart!

lessons learned - chew your food slowly

All right, I re-adopted the "lessons learned" title for this post. It is a lesson, and I am learning it. Now that I am nearly devoid of saliva, swallowing is always a bit of a challenge. If I do not pay attention to what I am doing when I eat, I invariably am startled into the realization that this bit of food that is currently lodged in my throat is not going down as it was meant to. Thus far, I have been able to quickly drink some water and resolve the situation without embarrassing myself, or worse.

Today, I had a ghoulish image of spending the last few moments of my life vainly attempting to perform the Heimlich maneuver on myself on the back of our dining room chair, while the little TV in the kitchen was spouting out the news of the day (the five thousandth story I've heard on the impact of the oil spill) and keeping me company while my wife was gone. Would I hear the voice of my dear deceased mother saying "I told you a hundred times to chew your food slowly!"...or would I have the thought..."this serves me right for watching TV while I was eating...I'm such an idiot!" or would I be thinking..."maybe I should use the upholstered chair, this wood chair is killing me..." or maybe my last thoughts would be..."I shoulda picked up some won-ton soup to go with the sesame chicken..."

Anyway...the lesson here...is to pay attention to what I am doing. Doing that when I eat may become life or death for me. But when I am talking to my friend, my wife, my client, PAY ATTENTION.... when I am watching the Robin feed the baby Robin in the nest just outside our window... PAY ATTENTION... when I am reading a difficult poem, or a passage of Scripture, or when I am in prayer, or washing the dishes... PAY ATTENTION.

Steven...PAY ATTENTION...your life is in this moment...and please, for Heaven's sake, chew with your mouth shut!

Sunday, May 16, 2010

deeper things - life, after dying, revives

I feel like getting away from the title "lessons learned" ...it just started to sound very pompous to me. I also feel like adding a few poems. This poem may be about death or dying, but to me it is more about living, and the realization that even when we go through death, literal or figurative, there is life on the other side. There has been life before cancer, during cancer, there will be life after cancer... there is life after loss and grief; even in the midst of loss and grief, if I was willing to listen and remember, I was carrying all the large and small joys of my life in my heart...listen, if you are in the valley, just listen...there is another voice to hear, faint and distant though it may appear. Someone once anonymously posted a comment (after a post entitled "dayenu") and used the phrase "whispering dayenu." I am not sure what that person meant...but I know what the comment meant to me. Sometimes, in the midst of pain, I could not jump up and down with joy, and the best I was able to do (and only at best) was whisper with the faintest wisp of gratitude...whoever wrote that comment...I was so moved by it and those two words that I carry them with me.

Give a listen to this poem...tell me what it sounds like to you...I think it is recited quite nicely, (especially the pause right before the words "then journey on..." Hearing a poem gives such a different perspective than reading it...I will put the poem in print below the video, if you insist on reading it, but at least try to listen along while you read. It's an oldie but goodie, written by Emily Bronte in the mid 1800's. Be quiet, and in quiet listen to the poem. Please tell me how it speaks to you




There should be no despair for you
While nightly stars are burning;
While evening pours its silent dew,
And sunshine gilds the morning.
There should be no despair--though tears
May flow down like a river:
Are not the best beloved of years
Around your heart for ever?

They weep, you weep, it must be so;
Winds sigh as you are sighing,
And winter sheds its grief in snow
Where Autumn's leaves are lying:
Yet, these revive, and from their fate
Your fate cannot be parted:
Then, journey on, if not elate,
Still, NEVER broken-hearted!

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

lessons learned - silence

The sweetest song is silence...
--- Heart

Be still and know that I am God
--- Psalm 46:10


Trauma has a way of silencing a lot of extraneous noise. But it also has a way of drowning out everything else with it's own harsh voice. In the midst of my treatment, I sat in silence, but at times the discomfort was deafening. Also, there were the times I sought noise to distract me from the discomfort of the immediate moment. During my daily radiation treatments at the hospital, there was an oldies station constantly playing in the background while I was strapped to the table and immobilized. I learned to judge how many minutes I had left by the number of songs I heard...each treatment was roughly four songs (with all the radio commercials in between) worth of time. And during chemotherapy, there was awful daytime TV playing in the room where I and dozens of others were sitting on recliners with IV's hooked up infusing our bodies with poison.

There is a kind of silence, though, that I have learned to appreciate. It is the silence and stillness that I think is implied in the verse from Psalm 46 above. (By also quoting from a Heart song, I do not mean to elevate those lyrics to the level of the Psalms, but rather, they seemed to fit right there; I just happened to hear the song "These Dreams" from which those lyrics were taken, about an hour ago in my car...that, along with Heart's "Dog and Butterfly" always caught my attention.)

The type of silence that I have sought is the silence that allows the awful and wonderful presence of God room to dwell. Awful in the sense of the humbling that I have experienced in silent moments like that, and wonderful in the sense of an appreciation of His majesty and awesome presence. It is a silence that allows me to still my anxieties and regain perspective. It is a silence that fills what has been drained away by the world, it's noise and its demands.

I have been on a few silent retreats at a nearby monastery, and I know that simply observing the absence of sound is not enough. There usually is all sorts of internal dialogue and noise accompanying the "quiet." However, I have found that sometime during the second day of a silent retreat my inner dialogue begins to quiet down along with the outer silence. Then, the "stillness" of Psalm 46 gets some traction...then...I start allowing some room for God. It's not that He wasn't present all along, it's that I was so distracted by the "noise" of my inner and outer world that I didn't notice Him...

So...this cancer expereience in some way has taught me to approach that silence more frequently and more hungrily. Ironically, I think the hit my energy level has taken in some ways has also made room for more stillness...I don't know...maybe I'm wrong about that.

I was having a conversation with a friend today about the verse "pray without ceasing." I do not know for certain what that means...but without regular times of stillness and silence...I know it's impossible.

Be still and know that I am God.

Could anything be more profound?

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Lessons learned - Rewriting the previous post

Here is a shorter version (in a poem and a quote)

If you can awaken
inside the familiar
and discover it new
you need never
leave home.


-----Ted Kooser



Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

----Thoreau