Keep It Simple

A reader posted a comment on yesterday's post, about "Keep it Simple." Now there's a mantra for cancer treatment craziness.

When it comes down to what really needs to be accomplished today, and what can wait -   Keep it Simple - we need groceries to fill the fridge, more than we need to drop off extra supplies back at a hospital office kind enough to give them to us in the first place.  We have to eat today - they have sufficient supplies that our paltry return will be as nothing on those well-stocked shelves.

When it comes down to what each of us can bear, if Robert needs a time-out to straighten his head or just have the cool water of peace swish through his soul, then keep it simple - make the space for him to go off alone and putter, by giving myself the space to start a painting, cut out a garment I wish to sew, or do one of  a zillion things I can do, alone and happy.

When the logistics are getting complicated about who can drive me where, to get this or that done on this or that day at this or that time, and I can't yet feel comfortable driving myself to a distant hospital for a CT scan to stage the tumour - keep it simple -  call my sponsor/dear friend and ASK. She of course agreed, which means I get to have a meeting with my sponsor and some wonderful laughs and the pleasure of her company, making this an outing I can enjoy instead of just another obligation.

Keep it Simple. Cut my day down into bite-size chews, and that way I'm not faced with a mountain I think I need to devour within the next ten minutes; I can take it one step, one day at a time.

Thank you for that blessing,

So It Begins.

I had my first radiation treatment today. It was all over in a matter of minutes; I was finished before realising that they'd started.

It was painless,  but I'm told that with the attending "sunburning" of the skin which will occur, I may suffer further pain on top of what I'm now experiencing.

Last night I spent some time cleaning my glass collection, polishing the beautiful golds and reds and purples. I was overwhelmed with gratitude for my friends, my lover Robert, my sister: who cares for me, and is struggling with her own pain about it all, and my brother, who adores the painting I made for him, which he received yesterday, finally.

I miss my meetings so much, but am too ill to attend them. When someone comments here on my blog, it feels a little bit like a meeting, and I am truly grateful for your input, please know that, and keep talking to me!

I'm hoping that my fight over this cancer will succeed enough for me to go back to a more normal form of life, with meetings, and social encounters, and gardening. I'm feeling like I may be able to beat this one back enough to have some more life granted to me. I'm too young, and unwilling to accept dying yet. I want to live.

Update

I had three biopsies in total, on 3 new lumps, and will get the results in a week or so - more waiting. Robert is feeling devastated that it wasn't an abscess - I think, in retrospect, I knew it wasn't, but was trying to be hopeful about it.

Just knowing is easier than waiting to know, I find. I'm not feeling devastated about it all, more that I'm back at the beginning of the chemo round - hoping that whatever they give me will shrink the lumps, as the first batch of lumps were shrunken. It's all completely beyond my control, but I just have to hang on to the information that it doesn't appear to be in any of my major organs, and that makes it much more workable.

Not much else to say today. Unusual for me.

When Time Goes Agonisingly Slowly.

I have never been a person over-blessed with patience. Having cancer means that suddenly it seems that all one does is wait - to be given tests, and then for the results of those tests. To be given treatment, and then to find out the results of the treatment.

Today I go into hospital for another day surgery to either drain an abscess, or if it turns out instead to be a tumour, for a biopsy. I'm in a lot of pain right now, feeling tired, and with difficulty trying to turn it over, let it go. It's all completely out of my control, and will be whatever it will be.

I need to go take a shower, get dressed, and get ready to leave. One foot in front of the other, trusting in faith that my Higher Power will grant me the strength to get through whatever comes next. I am deeply grateful for Robert, because I know he will be with me whatever comes next.

Bless you.

Deja Vu All Over Again

I'm going in next Tuesday for another day surgery. Ugh. I have a lump which the radiologist considers to be an abscess, and the oncologist isn't sure what it is. Either way, abscess or otherwise, it either has to be biopsied, or if it is an abscess, drained. So I'm going back to the hospital again. I'm deeply grateful that it's going to be day surgery, and I can go home afterwards.

I'm struggling a bit with this. I've reached a limit of some sort, and feel like I've had enough, already. I don't want to go to the hospital again, I was just there two weeks ago getting a chemo port put into my chest.

But the sun is shining today, and I've got plenty of blessings for which to be grateful, so I'm trying to shut out the whining voice in my head, ask my Higher Power for help, keep calm, and carry on.

Be Where Your Hands Are.

I first heard that phrase when I was a newcomer, and it hit me with the force of a blow. What an astonishing feeling that was, to realise that the fellow member of Al-Anon had just given me a way to anchor myself in the present. Where are my hands? In the evening of January 9, 2015. I have the choice as to whether my mind is in the same time period,  rather than wandering the dusty hallways of the past, or racing wildly along the path to my future.

My adopted grandmother had several sayings she repeated endlessly, and one was:

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
I take that to mean that each day contains enough to keep me occupied, so I need not be trying to peer around the edges of today, trying to imagine all the possibilities of my future.

Living with cancer is a hard teacher of that philosophy. Find a new lump, and one's mind can jump to various horrors and losses - when I'd just found the latest lump, before seeing the doctor, I said to Robert, "I can't face another operation!" He put loving arms around me, held me close, and said softly, "Don't fear the worst. It may never come to that."

I've just returned from seeing the doctor at Cancer Care again, the ultrasound report is in, and it appears that I have an abscess, and cellulitis,  (the skin and the tissues beneath it are infected.) This may sound somewhat gruesome, but compared to cancer, it's manageable and tolerable. I remember the oncology nurses warning us months ago, that I'd be susceptible to infections that a normal immune system can shake off.  It's a small price to pay for continued life.

Staying in the present moment means that I do not allow myself to imagine what might happen "if" this or that were to occur.

I don't go excavating in the past for hidden meaning anymore, or to feel self-pity about my childhood. It was what it was, and there were bad times and good; I choose to focus upon the positive, rather than reliving the pain, terror, and loneliness. I wallowed in my past for many years before Al-Anon, polishing my resentments, feeling furious anger about the abuse I'd gone through, wishing with all of my heart that my childhood had been "normal" and that I had a family in which I was loved. I didn't, I wasn't, and now that I'm 57, so what?

I cannot change the past no matter how hard I try. It's done and gone, and I've made my peace with it. Today is all that I am given - I have only this day in which to live, and if I spend my inner life in the past or the future, I am not really living, I'm existing.

I'm learning that having cancer doesn't mean I can't feel joy and gratitude. I feel as much happiness as I allow myself.

Today, I found myself thinking that I wished I still had my old industrial straight stitch sewing machine, with which to sew the coat I'm making. It had great power, and would sew through a dozen layers of leather with no hesitation. In the past, that thought would have had a life of several hours. Nowadays, it's a passing thought. I don't have it anymore, so what can I do if this domestic machine balks? Get a heavier needle. Do some handsewing. It's all manageable, if I permit it to be so.

Roller Coaster Ride, con't.

Just a quick note to say that I saw a doctor at Cancer Care this morning, and had an urgent ultrasound this afternoon, and am now taking two kinds of antibiotic, as the doctor thought the lumps were the result of an infection, and or possible abscesses. She mentioned that on chemo, one is vulnerable to infections that someone with a fully functioning immune system can shake off easily.

We're praying that the news from the test will be that she's correct in her diagnosis, and that my new lumps are part of the infection.

She noticed, as I had not, that a lump I'd still had at my last appointment has now disappeared, and also, I'm gaining weight, both excellent signs.

I'm trying to let go of awfulising, projecting, and worrying, and just live in the moment and be grateful for all of my blessings. I'll keep you updated. Thanks to all of you who sent your best wishes to me, it's enormously comforting to receive them.

The Progression of Addiction; But First, A Silly Joke.

Robert and I were talking earlier today, about some of the alcoholics in our lives - whether in immediate family, or extended family, we agreed that often, they seem to be living in their own little universe, and that those of us who are not addicted, can have great difficulty understanding the thinking or the choices. He went on to joke that most alcoholics are the centre of their, and our, "soon-it's-worse."

That joke is silly, but it speaks of an unfortunate piece of reality. Alcoholism is a progressive, increasingly destructive disease, which if left untreated, will cause nerve, heart, liver, kidney, and brain damage - the list goes on endlessly. Over the ten years I was married to an active alcoholic, I watched him go from a man who could drink a 12-pack of beer and seem only moderately intoxicated, to a man who was drunk out of his mind on 6 beer, consumed over the same time period.

When I asked my doctor about this, he shook his head, and said that this was one of the signs that the alcoholic had moved into the latter stages of the disease. His body could no longer excrete the alcohol quickly, because his kidneys were no longer functioning at their previous level.

One afternoon, while I was rooting through the junk drawer in the kitchen looking for something, I found an invoice from a ambulance service. When I asked him what had happened, he refused to answer me. I phoned his best friend to ask if he knew - he told me that my first husband had started to vomit blood.

At the hospital, it was determined that he had thinning of the esophageal walls, a result of heavy alcohol consumption, and he was told if he didn't stop drinking immediately, he was courting death, that he could bleed out from one of the swollen veins in his throat before help could arrive.

He continued to drink, and I left the marriage about a year later. Almost three years ago, I was out walking my dogs, and encountered one of his daughters, now an adult with children of her own. She told me that her father was still alive, but in dreadful shape, because he was still drinking.

He was looking bad by the time I left him; I shudder to think what havoc and destruction another 26 years of drinking has wrought upon him. I pray for him, as I pray for my sister - not that they stop drinking, because that's not my job. I pray for their safety, and for my HP to bless them.

I feel enormous gratitude that Robert is not an alcoholic. Also, he has about 6 years of 12-Step experience, from the time when he was trying to quit smoking cigarettes, which he did manage to accomplish. As a result of this, he understands program principles, philosophy, and language, which makes for another area in which we are intimately connected.

I don't live with an alcoholic, both my birth parents are dead: the alcoholism in my family is my two sisters. The middle one is sober now, and the oldest is not.  I have recently ended contact with my oldest sister, because I am no longer willing to subject myself to her verbal and emotional abuse. It was getting worse as her alcoholism progressed.

The last time I spoke with her, was when she called to rant and rave at me, because I'd asked her politely in a recent email to please not criticise our middle sister to me. That brought on a torrent of verbal abuse about how "people like you are so self-centered and selfish," - on and on she went, ad infinitum. I listened in astonishment for a minute or two, astounded that she would make a call and say things like that to me, when she knew I was going into hospital the very next day for the second major cancer operation, not knowing if I'd come through it, and yet she felt quite comfortable with calling to upbraid me, for setting a boundary with her.

That was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back - I prayed about it, thought about it, talked to my sponsor, Robert, and a couple of program friends, then decided that I don't need to subject myself to that level of abuse just because we're related. A friend asked would I accept that from a stranger? I said I certainly would not. She smiled and raised one eyebrow, and we laughed together.

I cut contact off by writing another courteous email to say that's what I was doing, and why, then blocked her from my email. I recently changed my phone number because my ex got my old one, and she hadn't been given that yet, so she has no way of contacting me, since she doesn't have my address, either.

I find I can lose sight of what is and isn't appropriate, possibly because I've had so much verbal abuse earlier in my life from various family members, that it can feel almost like a normal family interaction.  Al-Anon is teaching me that I have choices in these matters, and blood may be thicker than water, but it does not justify abuse.

Intermediate CT Scan Results

I had an appointment with an oncologist this afternoon. I had been nervous prior to the CT scan of yesterday, but that was more about the test itself, than fear of the results. I'm  very claustrophobic, so being run through the hole of a large metal donut is not my idea of a relaxing time.

My scan hadn't been "read" yet, but the oncologist went to have a look at it online, and came back saying that she could find no signs of metastasis, that my liver and my lungs are clean, so that's wonderful news. With luck, when it's been properly "read" by whatever experts do that, the rest of the news will be as positive.

I'm still waiting to hear if I will be allowed to take another 12 rounds of chemo after I finish this batch. That's usually only permitted if the patient is tolerating it well, and if the results are noticeable, which so far, mine are.

So I'm feeling fairly positive today, just had a nice walk home from the library, after Robert dropped me off there, and went off to run his errands.

I stopped in at the Cathedral on the way home, and spent a few minutes in silent prayer and meditation, thanking my HP for everything with which I've been blessed. I hope for you all a good weekend, in whatever fashion you define "good.'

What Qualifies as "Gossip or Criticism."

I was raised in an adoptive family in which the major form of humour was sarcasm. I picked it up along with some other bad habits, and used it right into the doors of Al-Anon.

Before progam, I used sarcasm as a weapon, as a rebuttal, as a defense, and to score points in an argument.

 I spoke to my first sponsor about it, and she reminded me that in our closing, we read, "Talk to each other, reason things out, but let there be no gossip or criticism of one another. Instead, let the understanding, love and peace of the program grow in you one day at a time."

I define "let there be no gossip or criticism of one another" very narrowly. Many times, a new sponsee will ask me who my other sponsees are. I don't tell them, because that runs up against my strong belief in keeping confidences. If one sponsee wishes to break that confidence by talking about who their sponsor is, that's up to them. Nobody is going to hear it from me.

I'm not comfortable in hearing about who irritates or bothers you at a meeting, because they are too this or that. I am not at a meeting to sit and fume because someone has a personality quirk I find irritating. I am at a meeting to share the experience strength and hope I have to offer, to bask in the atmosphere of love and acceptance, and to learn.

My experience in this program has taught me right from the start, that it would invariably be the person who was irritating me the most, who had the lesson I most needed to hear at that time.

In my second group, which was a home-group meeting, we went to a member's apartment, and we were no further that just inside the door, before I was silently judging her for her décor. (I was a supremely shallow person 30 years ago, I lived in anger, fear, and judgement.)

During the meeting, I was judging this same woman for the way she spoke, her choice of clothing, her speech patterns; everything about her, got my goat. The meeting ended, I went home, and found that one thing she'd said, was getting more and more powerful the more I thought about it. It applied to my own character defects, and it stuck in my head all week, like a cocklebur seed to a sock. It poked, prodded, and needled at me day upon day. I finally called my sponsor to complain about this obsession, and we had a very interesting and to me, madly infuriating discussion, in which she suggested, not for the first time, that what most annoyed me in another person, often turned out to be a character defect or personality quirk of my own that I disliked.

I swallowed and muttered and grumped while she explained this idea in greater detail. When she was finished, I didn't have much to say, I was too offended, so I said a stiff goodbye, thanked her, and hung up.

Talking to her hadn't helped me in the way I'd hoped or wanted. I didn't get what I thought I needed from that discussion; instead I was, as so often in the early days with my sponsor, mightily offended. I took offense very quickly when I was new to Al-Anon. My self-image was so negative and so shaky, that even the slightest suggestion that I was wrong could send me into a tailspin for days. After a few months of dealing with this aspect of my personality, my  sponsor suggested that perhaps by being offended, I didn't have to hear what she was saying?

That hit home with a thump, because it was simply, and undeniably true. A large part of my judgement, when it wasn't about allowing me to feel superior, because I didn't do that at meetings, was about being to cut that person out, as someone I didn't need to listen to very carefully.

This woman taught me to listen carefully when anyone speaks during a meeting, because I've learned that the most (to me) unlikely person, may be the one person at the meeting who is carrying the message from my HP, that I most need to hear.

Taking Care of Myself

Thursday evening, around suppertime, my land line rang. I checked the display screen, and it showed the name of the area, but no specific phone number. I often get calls like this from the Cancer Centre, so I picked up the phone, without waiting to hear if the caller was going to leave a message.

A voice said, "Hi! It's (ex-husband)"

I was taken aback, my phone number is unlisted, and I am very careful about to whom I give it out; everyone knows not to give it to my ex. Last time he had my cell phone number, after I had left him, and been gone for several months, he started to call me every day.

Time and again, I had said to him, "Don't call me anymore. Call your program friends, call your sponsor, call someone else, don't call me, I don't want to talk to you. I left you because I didn't want to be with you anymore, that includes talking to you. Leave me alone!"

It was, as it always was with him, like talking to a brick wall. The next night, the phone would ring, and it would be him again. I realised the only way to stop him was to get an unlisted number, so that's what I did. I got an unlisted land line.

Somehow, 2 1/2 years after I left him, he managed to get my unlisted phone number, and called me.

I should have just hung up immediately, but I was startled, so I asked, "What do you want?" (I don't care what he wants, I want to be free of him.)

He replied, "I just called to talk."

I said firmly, "I don't want to talk to you." and hung up. Within about a half hour, I phoned my service provider, explained the situation, and asked for a new unlisted phone number. It went into effect today, and the old number is now "unassigned."

It felt thoroughly unpleasant,  to know he had my unlisted phone number, and could call me any time he chose. If this happens again, and he gets my new unlisted number, I'm going to go to the police and charge him with stalking. The laws here have changed considerably with regard to stalking, and continual unwanted phone calls fall within the stalking legislation.

I was disgusted that he felt he could try to force himself back into my life in this way, but when I considered it calmly, I thought, why should anything have changed in his thinking, just because I've been gone for 2 1/2 years?

By the time I left, after 17 years, I just wanted some peace. I realised, after a couple of days in this city to which I moved, that the strange feeling I had, was the result of no-one being angry with me. At first, I had a bit of a hard time getting used to how lighthearted I felt. But as time went on, and I began to understand just what a difficult situation I'd been surviving, and how much better my life was without him in it, my joy of living started to resurface. I started to wake up happy again, ready to face another day, secure in the support of my HP.

Then, after almost a year down here, I met Robert, and thought we could be good friends, which we were, for quite some time before the relationship deepened into what it is now. Having a loving relationship with a man who treats me with respect and care,  has shown me how much I was missing, living with an alcoholic who was not in recovery, and saw no need for any change on his part. My ex lied to everyone, not least of whom was himself, all while presenting himself as the soul of honesty - ironic.

I made new friends in program, and have found myself to be in a safe place.
Even with the cancer diagnosis, I am the happiest and most grateful, I've ever been in my life.

A Problem Is What We Make It.

This past summer, Robert and I were walking downtown in a fairly busy area, and found ourselves face-to-face with an attractive young woman. We did that little dance to one side and then the other, trying to move out of the way, yet moving in unison, so that we were still unable to pass. Almost every other time this happens, I find myself laughing with the other person, and then one of us will stop trying to get out of the way, and wave the other by, with good feeling on both sides.

This young woman became angry, we couldn't believe it. We've talked about it since, laughing that if that is a big annoying incident for her, she must be doing very well in her life. I wonder how she'd manage if she were to lose a loved one, or get diagnosed with cancer?

It took me years in Al-Anon to realise that my problems had precisely the room in my head and in my life that I gave them. I was shocked by that suggestion the first few dozen times I heard it, and then irritated and then angry - were these people trying to say that my problems were minor?

I thought them enormous, insurmountable, terrible and depressing. That was my take on them, that was my description of them, that was the amount of room I gave them in my life.

When I began in my fumbling way to try to practise gratitude, I slowly but surely discovered that I had many things in my life for which I could feel grateful. And doing that regularly, searching out the people, times and facts of my life for which I could feel nothing but gratitude, changed my attitude completely.

"How Important Is It?" became my favourite slogan, and I used it on everything over which I became upset or even slightly annoyed. My first sponsor would ask me, "Will you remember this in a week? A month? A year? Will you be lying on your deathbed thinking about it, and wishing you had handled it differently?"

I found her questions blasted my mind open to a way of living I'd never imagined. Why, I could let go of this stuff as soon as I decided to! It's my choice to decide that something may require thought or effort, but it only becomes a "problem," and only takes up room inside my head, if I choose to allow that to take place.

Let me say that another way - I may get stray thoughts flitting through my head, but I can sit quietly and watch them float by; I don't have to reach up, get a stranglehold upon them, and then spend the next two days obsessing over them.

I can watch them come and go, then turn my mind to thinking of that which gives me serenity, peace and joy. As with so much of this wonderful program, it's my choice. I do not have to give the committee of assholes any room at all inside my head. I've got the key to the lock on that door.

Dealing with Relapse.

A reader posted a comment about her long-time partner relapsing, several program friends have been going through this with their adult children. My own niece, who is at present, in rehab for the first time, has plans to rejoin her drug-dealing boyfriend when she gets out - my sister is at her wits end, and has finally begun to attend Al-Anon meetings, which she is finding helpful.

A relapse can be agonising for those of us who love the alcoholic. I know when my first husband had been sober for nine months and then relapsed, I was devastated. This was before I joined Al-Anon, and I felt somehow responsible, that if I'd tried harder, done something more, said something more, it wouldn't have happened.

This is just not the case.

 We have no control. We don't cause it through our behavior or actions, we can't control it with any amount of talking or decisions, and we can't cure it by sacrificing our own happiness.

Letting go of wanting to fix the alcoholic is a process learned slowly by most of us, myself included.

I was raised with the family myth that if things aren't going the way you want them to, you just need to try harder. Increase your effort, put in longer hours, talk your way into what you want. So when I encountered alcoholism, I put all of myself into the effort of stopping the drinking, and I failed spectacularly. 20 years after the end of our marriage, and my first husband is still drinking.

All of my years of trying to make him quit had no effect. I ran into one of his children during the last year I was in my second marriage, and she told me he was still drinking, and had never quit. I was saddened to hear that. I'd let go of all of the misery of that marriage many years back, and have no hard feelings towards him.

I felt sad that he was still in the grip of the addiction. He has an uncanny skill when it comes to anything mechanical. He can take apart something he's never seen before, discover how it is supposed to work, and then fix it.  He was in high demand as a mechanic when his drinking was still somewhat under his control, when he was what I've heard AA members call a "high-functioning alcoholic."

By the time I left that marriage, his business was failing because he'd begun to drink during the day, something he hadn't done for years. He was beginning to move into the final stages of alcoholism.

I couldn't stay with active drinking. Some people can live with active drinking and manage to have a good life of their own. I was too new to Al-Anon, and the trust between my first husband and I had been shattered by an affair he engaged in shortly before I left the marriage.

When he relapsed after nine months of sobriety, I didn't realise that during those nine months, his sobriety was what an AA friend would call the "white-knuckle" variety - he was hanging onto it through sheer force of will, with no help or support from AA.

What retrospect has granted to me, is the ability to see that although during the marriage I may have believed that I had a part in his drinking or not drinking, in reality, I had as much effect upon it as the kitchen table might have.

None.

I was incidental, really. That was a blow to my ego when it fist became evident to me. Now, I feel a little sadness for the young woman I was, who felt responsible, and was struggling to survive, in a situation which would bring most of us to our knees.

Accepting doesn't mean condoning. When I accept that the alcoholic is going to do what they are going to do, and I am powerless, I set myself free from the hopeless battle. When I turn towards that which I can change - myself, I set in motion a powerful force for serenity in my life. There's always room to work towards making me a better person.

When We Love An Alcoholic.

When we love an alcoholic, we may start off believing that with sufficient rational and careful thought, we will find the "right way" to explain to them, the damage their drinking is causing us and the family. We might think that because of our care in choosing our words and our tone, the alcoholic will be able to hear us.

Not so. We as humans all have the ability to deny, some of us to a level of what may appear insanity - that's addiction.

When we love an alcoholic, we may want to believe that what they are telling us is the truth this time - they won't ever behave like that while drunk again, we don't have to cringe in the face of screaming rage, because that was the very last time, it will never happen again.

But if they continue to drink, and rage is part and parcel of the intoxication process for that person, then we will face it again.

When we love an alcoholic, we may be stunned to discover that when we finally make up our mind to make the break, after perhaps years of suffering with the effects of their alcoholism, that is the time that they decide to stop drinking - once we are out of the picture.

I've seen that happen more than a few times, and the partner who has made the break may feel an overwhelming anger - "Why now? Why couldn't they do that when we were still together? I gave years to that man/woman, and begged them a million times to quit drinking, and they wait until I leave the marriage, and then they quit??"

When we love an alcoholic, we may hope that if we bail them out of a bad situation, provide them with money/ a place to stay/ groceries/ a vehicle to drive, they will be grateful, and will try much harder to get or stay sober. In Al-Anon, this kind of behavior is termed "enabling," because it makes possible the alcoholic's ability to maintain their balancing act for a longer period, before it all collapses around their heads, and they face the consequences of their own choices.

Enabling may feel loving and caring, but can often be more about us, than about the alcoholic. We may need to feel that we have "done all we can" or are "a good parent/wife/sibling" in the hope that our example will show them how their behavior is by contrast, destructive.

Perhaps we are caught up in a cycle of enabling, in which we believe that if we do not act to save them, they will be lost in their addiction forever, or even die.

The sad truth is that not every alcoholic is able to get or stay sober. Many of them are lost to addiction, and many die each year from the effects of drinking.

In Al-Anon we learn that we didn't cause it, we can't control it, and we can't cure it. This can be either a blow to our ego and self-image as a helper, or it can be a step towards freedom, when we understand that it is truly possible for us to have a satisfying, productive and serene life, whether the alcoholic is still drinking or not.

Detachment is not cruel or heartless; detachment saves us from continuing to labor at that about which, we can have zero effect.  When we love an alcoholic, one of the kindest things we can do for them is to allow them control of their own lives. We may feel agonised by their choices and self-destruction, but when we honestly admit our own powerlessness, we have begun our own journey of healing.

I pray to continue to detach from the alcoholics in my life, and to be able to see without judgement, and love without blame.

Where Is My Focus?

When I came into Al-Anon, my focus was squarely upon the alcoholic. He seemed to take up all the space in our house, and in my mind. I didn't have to be with him to be obsessing about him and his drinking. He'd disappear for days on a bender, and I'd go to work, come home, feed the dogs and myself, worry for the entire remainder of the evening, then go to bed and toss and turn wondering where he was, what he was doing, and if I was going to hear a knock on my front door, and find police officers standing there, telling me that he was seriously injured, or dead.

It was a terrible way to live, and I did it for about 8 1/2 years, until I finally listened to my GP, and went to my first Al-Anon meeting.

I went to that meeting expecting all of the people there to be squarely focussed upon the alcoholics in their lives. When I was told that Al-Anon was for me, and that I needed to find a way to live in serenity whether the alcoholic was drinking or not, I was so surprised that I just pushed that concept to the side. It seemed clearly impossible.

Over the years that I have been in Al-Anon, I have become much better at aiming and focusing upon that which gives me pleasure, satisfaction, and hope. I have become more skilled at letting go of that which does me no good, only torments me, and over which I have zero control.

It's the same with cancer. I have a choice, I either obsess about it continually, ruining whatever time I have on this earth, or I let go of it, and live my live the way I would had I never had the diagnosis. I choose to do the latter, because I've learned how, and it allows me to take from each day enough to feed my soul and mind, and not open myself to worry, anger, stressful imaginings, and resentment.

Life is what I make it, to a great extent. This is true regardless of my income or social status. I am the one who gets up in the morning and decides whether or not I'm going to enjoy the day. Al-Anon has taken the furiously angry person that I once was, and transformed her into a woman who loves to laugh, and to make others laugh. That's an amazing feat, any way you look at it.

Do What You Can And Let The Rest Go.

I told my GP when I was in to see him yesterday, that I felt as though I have had enough blood taken from me in the last two weeks, to fill a small dog. A Pomeranian, perhaps? We laughed together, and then had an excellent discussion on the way that serious illness can suddenly make clear to a person just what is and is not important.

Some of us are fortunate, and have had enough time in twelve-step programs, that we can already grasp to some extent, what matters and what truly does not. I find myself full of gratitude that I've had all these years in Al-Anon; I can just picture the roiling mass of anger, resentment and self-pity that I would be in this position, had I not had years learning to seek humility and serenity.

If I want peace, I need to do what I can, and let the rest go. I might be able to go out and walk in the park after treatment, but I also might only be able to come home and sleep for hours. It will be what it will be, and I have no control over it. What I do have are friends, my wonderful Robert, and a good solid program to help me get through whatever I am facing. I am content.

Being Satisfied With Our Daily Accomplishments.

I've heard many times in meetings, and from sponsees, and once upon a time, believed myself, that what I (we) managed to get done in a day was never enough. I gave myself no wiggle room for illness, fatigue, or simple mood - every day was the same - I hounded myself mercilessly to do more, always do more. I couldn't look at what I'd accomplished and feel satisfaction.

Today I was out picking moss from the stone verge of the rooftop terrace. The crows like to come down, pick up a clump of moss, and fling it out onto the terrace, looking for worms and other insect life. We end up with a terrace covered in small clumps of moss with mud attached, distributed evenly on the walking surface.

 I figured out that if I just remove the moss, they have nothing to fling and I feel immediate gratification at the resulting clean space. Much of gardening seems to consist of various tidying and neatening jobs of this sort, and I enjoy them all. Years ago, however, I wouldn't have been able to do what I did today, which was to do half the task, then stop for the day. Or had I been able to stop before completing the job, I'd have been completely unable to take any pleasure in the work I had completed, because I would have been nattering at myself about not staying at it, until I finished.

I was raised to believe that half-done was the same as not started. I had to be in Al-Anon for quite a few years, before I could give myself credit for whatever I managed to get done in one day. And it took a few more years after that, before I could even consider giving myself permission to take a day of rest. It felt like the "thin edge of the wedge" to get up in a day and decide that if I did not much of anything that day, I was still a good person, and my world wouldn't fall apart.

Challenging this kind of message instilled in early childhood can feel world-shaking to begin with, but after we've moved through the process to a state of clarity unsullied by emotions of guilt or shame, we may be astonished to realise their power over us.

Today I accept that whatever I get done is enough for today. Some days I will accomplish everyday tasks, as well as clear up a backlog of waiting chores. Other days, I'm doing well to be up, washed, and dressed. It's all okay. What matters is that I have love and respect in my life. Picking moss can be spread over two or even three (gasp!) days.

CYA, and Awfulising.

An aspect of modern medicine that I've found increasingly distressing, having been at the receiving end several times over the years, is the practise of many doctors to give one the worst possible scenario or outcome of whatever it may be that they are diagnosing us with. In this way do they "indicate the desire to document one's lack of culpability for foreseeable negative outcomes" or, to put it another way, "make sure that they cannot be blamed or criticized later for something."

I understand that this may be a result of increased litigation when things go wrong, and that it's most likely only fair to be honest about possibilities, but what I find disturbing, is this being done at the early stages of diagnosis, before tests such as CT scans, MRI, ultrasound, etc.

3 times in the last 3 months people I know have received an initial diagnosis which has scared them witless with the severity, only to be told after the testing is completed, that it's not nearly as bad as first thought.

So I wonder, what is gained by terrifying anyone with the possibilities of the worst possible outcome?
What good does it do to tell a person who has just suffered a spinal injury in an accident, that they may never walk again? Couldn't this wait until testing has proven the spinal damage to be that extensive and permanent?  Is it really necessary to give that information to someone whose spinal canal is still so swollen from the accident that no real long-term information can be gleaned until the swelling subsides?

What good is accomplished by telling a newly diagnosed cancer patient that they may have to have disfiguring surgery, before testing to stage the cancer tumour has begun?

My first sponsor called this "awfulising" and warned against it in all areas of life. She would interrupt me when I was engaged in a bout of awfulising, and state firmly that what might happen was beyond my control, I could do nothing whatsoever to change the outcome, why was I torturing myself with various ghastly possibilities? What did I get from doing this?

I used to quote the hoary old phrase "Expect the worst, and one might be pleasantly surprised" not knowing that by expecting the worst, I was robbing today of its pleasure, to try to arm myself against what a tomorrow might never bring.

Had I not had 29 years of membership in Al-Anon, the two months since my diagnosis with cancer would have been a very different experience. I'd have worried, fretted, agonised, stressed, and kept myself in a fever of fear and terror, continually presenting myself with hideous scenarios of what was going to happen to me in cancer treatment. Because I've had the years in 12-Step, I knew and know, enough to let that behavior go as a waste of precious time. I can push the reality out of my mind, and enjoy the moment. I can laugh helplessly with my beloved partner or another friend, I can work as a sponsor for those who seek my assistance, I can feel heartfelt and powerful gratitude for the wonders of my life today.

One sponsee used to try to have "what if" conversations with me, in which she would invent terrible outcomes for the alcoholic, and feel almost as much agony in the contemplation of those imaginations as she would have had they taken place. I finally declared that "what if" conversations were now off-limits, and I wasn't going to have one more of them with her. Her response, after a moment of silence, was an endearing giggle. This woman is newish to program, but her sense of humour is a gift and a treat. I admire her for it; by the time I came into Al-Anon, my sense of humour was long gone. I was completely unable to laugh at my own insanity. I took myself far too seriously, and wanted everyone else to do the same.

We know that we are getting somewhere in working this program when we can begin to truly laugh at the nuttiness of our old thinking. When we can stop wanting others to sit silently while we catalogue our woes, and then tell us how well we are doing in shouldering our burdens, when we can honestly take an interest in another person, rather than pretending to do so in order to have them listen to us, we are beginning to grow.

Awfulising is self-defeating, tedious, tiresome, and boring for the listener. Who wants to hear a litany of complaint or negativity? How are we sharing experience, strength and hope? That's the question of the day.

Mood Swings.

Today started out well, then I was sitting here doing some unpicking of a waistband on a pair of pants I'm altering, because they've gotten too big for me, and began thinking about my partner and I collecting seeds for the rooftop terrace garden, and wondered if I'll even be around next year to garden. Within a short time, my mood has darkened considerably, and I've gone from feeling fairly cheerful and positive to a much more negative frame of mind. I'm wondering if there is any point in doing some of the future planning I've been doing - will I be alive to do these things I'm discussing with friends and family?

I was diagnosed on August 12th, it's now September 21st, and the waiting to get all the tests done in order to stage the tumour, and being told nothing whatsoever until they are all completed, is beginning to wear upon me. I'm trying with all of my might to accept the waiting period as just something which must be endured, and I'll find out when I find out, and not before, but some part of me is straining at the bit and wanting to scream, "Just tell me how far gone the bloody cancer is, will you?"

Patience has never been my strong suit, and waiting to find out something like this is trying beyond anything I've ever gone through. Most of the time, I can manage to push the wanting to know out of my consciousness, and go on with the next thing, but some days, days like today, it fills my worldview and leaves me feeling unable to cope. I want to collapse weeping in someone's arms, but as a friend who had cancer a few years ago said to me on Wednesday, "They're all so down about it that you feel like you have to stay cheerful for their sake, it leaves you feeling terribly alone."

That it does. My partner lost a family member to cancer a couple of years ago, so I have been feeling uncomfortable talking to him about it. My friends keep telling me how strong I am, how brave, etc, which leaves me feeling like I'm getting an unspoken message that this is how they want me to be, so that I feel stifled about revealing myself to them; where can I go to howl and cry and rage against this quirk of my fate? I feel alone in a way I wouldn't have expected. My sponsor has said several times that she's "proud of me for the way I'm handling it." That sets me up to feel that if I were to collapse into weeping the way I sometimes want to, I would be disappointing her. So I don't feel as though I can go to her when it threatens to overwhelm me.

I haven't felt this alone in a long, long time. I realise that partly, it is because no-one who hasn't had cancer can ever truly understand the way it feels, and partly, it is my own inability to reveal myself to other people past a certain point.

Today, I'm struggling.

Later:
I decided to speak to my partner, Robert about how I was feeling, because being the sensitive man that he is, he knew I wasn't doing well, and asked outright what was going on. It was an enormous relief to be able to get it all out over a period of several hours. At one point, we stood in the kitchen locked in an embrace while I wept into his shirt. There is nothing so comforting as loving arms holding us tightly.
He told me that he doesn't want me trying to protect his feelings by not telling him what's going on with me. He suggested that I call my sponsor, so I did, and was honest with her about my difficulties revealing my feelings to her, and was told lovingly that she is proud of me whether I'm doing well, or as I am today, being swept around in eddies and whirlpools of emotion.

So it all comes down to my own expectations of myself, which I've projected onto the people who love me - an old behavior pattern to which I've regressed somewhat, during this difficult time. I'm feeling much better this evening, am going to have something to eat, get some sleep, and go to church in the morning, and to see my sponsor in the afternoon.

Thank you to those of you who have written in support of me, I'm deeply grateful.

Get A Grip

This morning I returned a call received the other day, from a nurse working for a screening program - I've been told I need a test, the same test that started it all off for my friend, who died a year ago this past May.  Thus far, I've been calm and relaxed about it, but this morning, when I called the number and listened while the automated voicemail gave directions about what I should do, I felt the first rise of unease - not a lot, not a great sweeping rush of it, just a momentary shiver running through me.

In Al-Anon, I learned what a waste of time it is to worry, and on the whole, I don't indulge in that mental torture of self. But this test was the beginning of the end for my friend, so I'm not surprised that I have the occasional thought trying to force its way into the forefront of my consciousness.

But I've also had ample life experience of hours, days, weeks, spent in fearful anticipation of "evils which never arrived," and I know what a pointless exercise it is to project the object of my fear onto the wall, and then tell myself frightening stories about it, when I could be enjoying my life. All I have is this moment, and it's my choice how I spend it. So,  I choose enjoyment.