Mojo Monday
If you aren’t familiar with the idea behind Mojo Monday, it’s a writing prompt to get your creativity flowing. Feel free to write about it on your blogs or simply leave a comment below.
Write as much or as little as you wish on the prompt below. Looking forward to reading your contributions!
Great prompt, Marie 🙂 I have something brewing…….
LikeLike
oooh 🙂
LikeLike
I don’t have a blog, but I would still like to comment on this here. Before I got cancer, I thought I had a good marriage. Illness showed up the cracks and strained my relationship to breaking point
LikeLike
Helen, I wish you had a blog. This is, sadly, heart-breakingly something I hear more and more. Thank you for sharing this truth which isn’t pretty or pink or anything but honest. And just writing these two sentences might make hundreds feel less alone. xoxo
LikeLike
Thank you so much Britt for responding to my comment. I feel less alone just reading your words
LikeLike
Before cancer, I relied on other people and material things for happiness. After cancer, through stillness and meditation, I found that true happiness lies within. Today, I follow the path that, I believe, leads me toward enjoying life to the fullest with a healthy body, mind and spirit.
LikeLike
I didn’t know that when cancer cells invaded the brain the most likely treatment is radiation. I thought I was done with radiation after my lumpectomy. What did I know?
LikeLike
What a great writing prompt, Marie!
LikeLike
Before I got sick, I didn’t know that cancer is a more motivated, creative, energetic, adaptable and intelligent force than any other disease I know. It wants to live and thrive. It colonizes any area it can, which is why it feels like a dictator, all slogans and admonishments, all about pushing on, no matter what. It has no regard for the survival of the context in which it flourishes.
I didn’t know how much time, sweetness and caring my husband, sisters, neighbors and friends would devote to me when I got sick the third time. They were so concerned the first time, but that was only a stage one episode, no big deal. I thought everyone was over reacting. The second time, a stage two situation but hey, I knew what to do, and still felt that I would get it behind me and move on. I felt silly about the deeper concern my community was expressing. I forged back into my work and life, a tad sobered, but expecting another ten years without incident.
In April, eleven months after the second episode, I lost part of the vision in my left eye.
I didn’t know that my eye doctor could speak so sensitively. He was usually a talkative, brusque sorta fellow, one you kind of wanted to say, stop talking so much. He took a long time looking at the back of my retina. He shook his head, started saying, Ya know, I’m just not sure about this. I wanna send you to the opthalmologist, and I want you to get down there today, cause I just don’t know. It looks like a metastasis, but I wanna be sure, and I know you do, too. I’m real sorry about this… Sweet, soft spoken, looking me in the eye in a kind way. He scribbled three phone numbers on the back of a card, said to call him anytime, really, he wanted to be sure I was OK.
That was the beginning of acknowledging that I didn’t know how deep that long term community relationships would grow over the course of 37 years, that passing acquaintances and a work friend’s spouse, a check out boy or a nurse at the oncology office would show such concern, would be so connected to the fact that our family was scared, suffering and feeling so alone.
Before I got sick, I did not know that people who develop metastatic cancers live in a parallel universe, parallel even to the one that earlier stage, more “curable” cancer patients inhabit. All of a sudden, there I was. When I came to the oncology office to get the workup for other areas of disease, I felt like an imposter. When they told us, ” Widespread, low volume mets to the bones, lungs, lymph nodes and eye…. “, I changed. Something vacated my being and left a strange space inside. My denial of death vaporized, leaving in its place the disturbing awareness that I WILL die, and that it will be sooner than I ever thought, and that it will be about this dictatorship forcing troops on the territories of bone, lung and eyesight within me.
I did not know, before I got sick, how much I would crave a chance to tell it like it is, to be straight forward, to not mince words.
In appreciation for the question you posed, Mame
I
LikeLike
Thanks everyone for your comments. Please keep them coming
LikeLike