April 13, 2023
Movement, no matter what kind, has been essential to my well-being since day one of my diagnosis. It has looked different throughout these last nine months and post surgery, it has been minimal. I will expand more on my fitness in another post, but one of my favorite apps has a feature called “The Daily Move”. I have relied on these brief videos when I am feeling my lowest energy or in the case of surgery, when I need to be very delicate in my movements so as to not aggravate anything in my body.
Today, The Daily Move was entitled, “You Are Resilient,” as if the universe could not be more clear in its reminder about who and how I am. A series of gentle movements with deliberate breath work are narrated by the host, Mel Mah. Her words during today’s movements jolted my insides and brought me to tears.
“Think about how much you have been through in your life and how resilient you truly are. Express gratitude for your resilience, how much it has carried you through and all it will help you with in the future…. Being resilient does not mean acting like everything is fine. It’s recognizing that you are capable of healing even when life stretches you to your limits.”
Yeah, knocked over sideways, right? Any cancer diagnosis stretches you to your limits. As if life isn’t complicated enough, now I have to navigate this. I did 28 days of low-dose radiation while taking 6, capecitabine tablets on radiation days. 168 oral chemotherapy pills that began to thin my hair and leave little pin prick pulses in my feet. As the radiation wore on, I began to develop diarrhea, as my rectum was left raw. It hurt and left me no choice to eat a diet of chicken breast, rice, and Imodium. I watched weight melt off my body and my energy deplete. But October 3rd came and I was done. And in the three weeks I got to rest, my body rebuilt, my soul re-energized and I prepared for the second phase.
Eight chemotherapy sessions of oxaliplatin delivered over 2 hours and fluorouracil delivered via a pump for 46 hours caused my hair to thin so much I chopped it off. I was tired and short of breath sometimes. My hands would involuntarily cramp, the muscles around my mouth would spasm, I was sensitive to cold: touching, drinking, breathing in the biting Chicago January air. It hurt to cry, Yes, the neuropathy from the chemo made the sensation of tears welling in my eyes almost unbearable. Everything in my digestive tract from my tongue all the way to the pit of my stomach felt raw. But February 2nd came, and I was done with that too.
Then come scans and a scare from a shadow on my hip. A bone biopsy (thank goodness it was nothing) and then this surgery. But between February 2nd and April 3rd I ate… and I exercised…. And I did things I enjoyed. And I put myself back together. The picture featured with this post was taken March 13, 2023 before I headed off to work for the day. I was resilient. We all are. We put one foot in front of the other until we overcome one challenge, then the next, and the next one after that. And I didn’t act like everything was fine. I shared my truth. I cried about it, I felt angry about it. I felt scared about it. But we do it for all the good years we have to come (thank you Aimee for always reminding me of that.) You Are Resilient. I Am Resilient. We Are Resilient.
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