And the real battle begins....

It has been a hard week. After my second chemo treatment last week, I felt good for a few days, he usual. On Sunday, the steroids wore off and the worst of it kicked in, as usual. This time, I was prepared and things went well for awhile. My Dad came down to visit because Steve was to be away. I helped make a delicious dinner on Sunday. Monday, we went to Lowes and grocery shopping and I read and rested.

Things started getting hard on Tuesday when, instead of feeling better, I felt slightly worse. What is hardest at this point is the nausea. Although the anti-emetics control a lot of it and I am not vomiting my immortal soul, as Twain would have it, I found myself with a slightly burning stomach and nausea all day. Since I was waiting for workers to come measure our kitchen, I didn't take the anti-nausea med that makes me sleepy. Instead, I tried what had worked in the past, which was to keep my stomach full. Nothing worked, despite eating anything I could think of all day. By nightfall, I was exhausted, grouchy, worn out by the long, slow grind of feeling bad.

All my life, I have been a creature of feeling. Very much in-touch with my physical and emotional state, I have used them as a barometer of how well life was going. Although I have chosen courses of action and followed them, I've never been good at ignoring the signals that told me something was "too hard", "too scary"' etc. This has meant that I've never been a particularly disciplined person.

On the other hand, I has given me strengths others don't always have. I've never been good at hurting other people in order to get my way, for example. Since other people's pain feels bad to me, I try to avoid it. I've never tended to excess in many areas, since my internal discomfort would weigh in to protect me and bring me back to center. I've tended to avoid really damaged people, since their obvious pain and anger triggers my emotions and I self-protectively avoid being vulnerable to them. In short, it has made me sensitive and sensible and kept me fairly healthy.

Now all that is stripped away and I have to find a new way to be. I feel lousy all the time. I feel nauseated, fatigued and vaguely unwell all the time. What I learned this week is that, if I do what I've always done when that is true, I will be miserable and depressed. It Is a hard adjustment to make.

In the past, I've been a baby about being sick. Because I am so used to feeling really good, my reaction when feeling a bit les than that has been to stop, curl up around myself, take medicine if I need it and wait it out. This has worked well. I am rarely sick more than a day or two, I heal and get back in the saddle.

Three days of nausea and fatigue and trying to cope by reading and resting has been really tough. The signs of incipient depression loomed; nothing seemed worth the effort, nothing seemed appealing. Tuesday night, I roused myself to take a walk. It was gorgeous out, cool and quiet on the streets of our little village. Yet the nausea wouldn't leave me and, halfway through I stopped, feeling unable to take another step. Then, from somewhere inside me, an orneriness rose up and joined the fray. Standing there under the street lamp with Steve, I said out loud "I will NOT mind. I will NOT mind this. I will NOT mind being nauseous!" and I kept walking. And I did not mind. I was nauseous, but I could ignore it, and I got through the walk, fiercely refusing to let the nausea get under my skin.

So I am embarked on a new journey of not minding, and it's a totally new adventure. In many ways, the drama of diagnosis, the excitement of massive change, the incredible challenge of facing such momentous news and incorporating it into my life suited me better. My natural dramatic flair kicked in an allowed me to transform the nightmare into adventure. Crisis has always brought out the best in me. But this long slow, boring siege of feeling like crap all the time, is actually the deeper challenge. Not surprising.

So, now I see the enemy. In fact, I have fallen before it, lain for a few days prostrate and miserable. Last night, I realized that this less exciting, far more threatening monster of despair and depression, the death of a thousand cuts, is the real battle. How to be constantly nauseous and remain cheerful, hopeful, powerful? This will clearly take a metal toughness and discipline nothing else in my life has required. Here is where I will find out what I am made of.

So the game plan is this...rigid discipline with affirmations, gratitude journal, blogging, meditation, and all the things that keep me whole. Discipline of mind to turn my attention away from negative thoughts. Scheduling time to interact with people ( avoiding group events that brought me a virus last week I did not need added to the mix), to sing, to exercise, to laugh every day.

Finally, I can get my curious mind interested in this process. What is it like to become a person not defined by how I feel? I need to be connected to a sense of purpose that goes beyond chow I feel right now. I need to keep my reasons for surviving this in front of me at all times. I need to tap into something greater than how I feel right now to keep me going. All the time, not some of the time. How strange it will be. I am looking forward to finding out.