Blessing the Dust (Surprises Part IV)

There is this poem for Ash Wednesday called Blessing the Dust by Jan Richardson from her book called Circle of Grace. She talks about dust and what humans are made from. About how old stars from who knows what galaxy live in our bones. It mesmerizes me and I will post it at the end as her sorrow mixed with hope brings me to tears every time. It was just the thing to soothe my soul this past Ash Wednesday

Also, my own words are not very eloquent right now. There is good advice among writers to write from where you are healed not from where it is still raw and gaping. This thing about which I'm to share is still very raw and gaping which may puzzle you once you read it but there it is.

I saw my oncologist on Wednesday and got some shocking news that they are not recommending the next surgery/hot chemo treatment at this time (what! and yes I argued with her about it and my results for a half hour.) By some miracle my two new lesions they thought were starting baby tumors were benign. More than that all the mucin they sampled (from multiple places but there was a large sample size on my right ovary that was removed) was acellular. After my ovary surgery no one told me it was even a possibility that this could be the result (no one even explained to me the difference between acellular and epithelial mucin) and when they called to book my next oncologist appointment (apparently before all my results were in) I was told to ‘discuss your situation and surgery’.  The only surgery this oncologist does is cyto/hipec. I was told multiple times along the way by several different doctors that new lesions and mucin would mean cyto + hipec. No one told me that there was a chance all that mucin could be acellular instead of epithelial containing. And my CT scan and bloodwork I had done a few weeks after my last surgery came back clear. Anyway I am in MASSIVE shock and grateful to have been a surprise to my oncologist, but also to be fully honest still quite stressed and anxious. My brain feels very holey.

For the first 24 hours after I got the news all I could think about is that my doctor was wrong and that I should get another opinion, trying to get in with another appendix cancer specialist in Calgary. I’m feeling a bit of shame about not feeling all the joy and relief those who love me are feeling. But as someone who loves me said: after five months of some serious ups and downs, two surgeries and many more other minor procedures and tests and appointments it is not surprising my brain and body are having trouble shifting out of fight or flight mode and to give myself grace in that.

Now that it has settled in a few more hours and I’ve had some time to search on pubmed and at look current pathology guidelines (hello type J who deals with anxiety with an attempt at control) I do feel like I am moving more in the direction of accepting this news.

I already have my next scans booked for late September and will continue to have scans for a good many years as there is a 10-30% chance of reoccurance (if so at which point they would give me the cyto/hipec surgery I was expecting to have this spring) but for now they are considering me no evidence of disease (NED).

Now I need to rest and have some time to let my soul settle and breathe and think about what all this means after an insane five months. Also to continue with the healing process; body, mind and spirit.

But first I have to say thank you. I know not all of you believe in God but I do, so I am massively grateful to God's gifts to me in this which have not just been physical healing. Through all of this insane ride I have felt God's presence by my side, even when I feared for the worst I was comforted and loved.  And also thank you to all of you: I have been so blessed through this by other's thoughts, prayers (to all the complete strangers and people who don't know me well praying for me, thank you), healing energy, making me laugh, sending me encouraging messages, information, cards, food, flowers, balloons, and so much more. It is humbling to think about and brings me to tears of gratitude daily at how good all you people are. Truly. To all of you thank you. To the few of you who were witness to my not so graceful parts of this - thank you too for listening to me through snotty tears and rambling incoherent thoughts and anger on my really hard days and standing by my side anyway.

To all of you: Thank you for showing me all the stars blazing in your bones.

Blessing the Dust: A Blessing for Ash Wednesday

All those days you felt like dust, like dirt, as if all you had to do was turn your face toward the wind and be scattered to the four corners

or swept away by the smallest breath as insubstantial—

did you not know what the Holy One can do with dust?

This is the day we freely say we are scorched.

This is the hour we are marked by what has made it through the burning.

This is the moment we ask for the blessing that lives within the ancient ashes, that makes its home inside the soil of this sacred earth.

So let us be marked not for sorrow. And let us be marked not for shame. Let us be marked not for false humility or for thinking we are less than we are

but for claiming what God can do within the dust, within the dirt, within the stuff of which the world is made and the stars that blaze in our bones and the galaxies that spiral inside the smudge we bear.

—Jan Richardson from Circle of Grace

How are you?

The question I get asked most these days is 'how are you?' I understand, it is what I wonder about people too. I wonder what are you thinking about, what makes your soul sing, have you read anything good? Do you feel like you are living an authentic life, what is really hard right now, how is the weather affecting you and what makes you feel alive? You know, how are you? I'm not sure that is exactly what people mean when they ask me; they may mean something more like how are you physically feeling, or are you going to survive?

So here is my answer: even when you have cancer not much changes. Life goes on in all the regular, beautiful, everyday ways. My kids still wake up needing to eat and learn and be parented. Sometimes I can cherish every second and sometimes I'm just hanging in there until I get an hour with no one talking to me. Aaron and I are still married, we still need to connect with each other and pay our bills and do our jobs, we still love each other very much.

Normal things happen: we went to the symphony and my girls got the flu and we fold laundry and do math and watch soccer games and clean out the chicken coop. My sister had a baby on Valentine's Day, I can't wait to hold her, a miraculous reminder of things carrying on just as they should.

I still like to write and post things on instagram and be in nature and talk to my best friends and laugh and find beauty everyday. I'm tired because I'm often not sleeping and also, oh yeah, maybe the cancer, but otherwise, it is life pretty much as normal and I'm doing okay.

And here is also my answer: when you have cancer everything changes. It starts out with your heart being broken. It most likely will be re-broken many times along the way and you have to decide, after you mourn, to pick up from there and move on. It challenges every thought you have ever had about how things are, about how if you do enough, you will succeed, certainly at something as simple and straightforward as keeping yourself healthy.

It makes you look at your very own life and examine every part. Is this really what I want to be doing? Is this how I want to spend my days? Is this how I want to treat people? Is this really important? Important enough to trade my time for?

It makes you wonder, what is this here to teach me? What goodness will come from this?

Cancer makes you say everyday 'I am healing' and at first you only believe it metaphorically. But then with the gift of a magical unicorn lightbeam of a healer and the power of the holy spirit, you realized as you said it two days ago, for the first time, yes, you believe it. You believe it fully, deep in your soul. You are not just going to survive, this is actually healing you.

Cancer makes you wrestle with deciding which of those broken pieces of yourself are worth picking up and salvaging and which needed to be shed off and let go of a long time ago. 

And this too is okay.