Hey everyone, another long time between messages but I assure you it certainly wasn’t because I’ve been feeling anything other than great. While I do have my share of stomach troubles, generally I’m feeling very well every day. The Challenge for me right now is that I don’t have much energy, and I really mean I don’t have very much at all. This is no surprise and not something I’m expecting to see change dramatically for a while, but in the mean time it does have some serious implications on my lifestyle.
For example, if you don’t have much energy, you can’t do very much. In many situations this isn’t a big problem, like when I’m sick. When I really don’t feel well I find that I don’t care much where I am as long as I’m as comfortable as I can get. However, I feel well and more to the point my mind is working at near full speed. Later in this process I will most definitely be on Prednisone, which is a steroid that you’ll learn all about. Prednisone plays many games with my head, and puts me in a place that is quite a Challenge to live in. Right now I’m not in such a place, so my mind is working almost as if I’m physically able to work, but of course the body will have no part of that and so the struggle between body and mind resumes.
Acceptance: I believe that one of the key steps to facing any Challenge is accepting that it exists. I often think about how you would effectively tackle a Challenge if you weren’t comfortable accepting that it is in your life, more to the point I’m not sure you can effectively do so. I have been very fortunate as my acceptance of my Cancer Challenges has been next to automatic. For my first diagnosis I remember the first time I said the word Leukemia – it was to my roommate after I had just left the hospital on what I thought could have been my last day pass ever. I had just had a conversation with my Doc where my Mom, Dad and I learned that the Docs were thinking I most definitely had Leukemia. After that chat I was given 6 hours of freedom, I went to my apartment saw my roommate for a short minute and while I was there I explained what was happening, as best I knew. It took me several trys to get the word Leukemia out of me, but once I said it for the first time I felt this calm inside and from there I moved forward.
The second time it was more instant than the first, and I was prepared for it. I had a strategy that was developed the night before, and once I learned I had relapsed I quickly set out to implement that strategy. The fact that you are receiving this email is a result of that strategy as I decided that I if I were to learn I relapsed then I would share my new Cancer Challenge. So that’s what I did, and am doing with you all.
Back to acceptance. For me accepting something is to gain some level of comfort with it, this comfort can come on many levels and I feel it’s important to come on a few levels. For me I feel we accept things on an intellectual level as well as on emotional and spiritual levels. I see the intellectual as understanding the physical situation – Cancer cells destroying healthy cells for example. Different people will understand a given situation on a different level than others. For example I have never been particularly interested to have much medical knowledge of Leukemia, but I have great interest in how having Leukemia makes me feel and what it means to me inside. The emotional level is very important and probably the one that many have the most trouble with as often our emotions aren’t as automatic as our brains. But gaining emotional comfort with a Challenge is very important because if you aren’t stable in your heart then the many subsequent decisions you’ll have to make may be very trying. And finally I think the most important level to gain comfort and acceptance on is the spiritual level. This is something I’ll talk about again soon, as I like to share my thoughts and feelings on this topic. Spiritual comfort is a tough one for me to describe, I’m pretty sure you all have a definition of what I’m talking about. For me it means that I gain comfort in my “gut”, which I think of as the combination of my head and my heart.
Depending on the person you can accept a situation on a whole range of levels for each of those three elements, but I really do believe that we all go through acceptance on these three levels. How we do it is customized. Of course please keep in mind that this is an Eaton Theory, and while I do look forward to going back to school to study and prove this theory, for now it is just a collection of thoughts that make great sense to me. I’ll explain more later.
I’ve been away from you all for quite sometime, and I’ve struggled with this message all day so if it doesn’t read well please excuse. I’ve been a little distracted lately and hopefully this message has gotten me back in a writing frame of mind.
Always…
Live Life. Love Life.
Geoff
