#fightison

2/20/15

I lay here in bed unable to sleep.  I had maybe two hours of sleep the day beforedue to thinking too much, everyone in the house keeping me awake for one reason or the other and not falling asleep again afterwards.  So why am I not sleeping now?  Is this a side effect of CMF, a combination chemotherapy with cyclophosphamide, methotrexate and fluorouracil?

I tried visualization meditation (read at hospital).  Imagined that the CMF was not just these three poisons put into my body but an elite team of soldiers.  Wait, what?  Where did that come from?  I do not like war, fighting, I am more a Disney type of chick.  So where did this thought come from?  I try to re-set my mind with different scenarios but I keep coming back to the same thought. Soldiers.

To me, cancer is like terrorism.  It comes in uninvited and tries to harm the good, the innocent and tries to multiply with evil agendas that are selfish and unrelenting.  WHY?  Same question I keep asking myself as I watch the news.  You see I do not like to talk politics, religion and try to let people have their views hoping they will respect mine.  I just want to coexist.  But the similarities are too much to ignore.

I keep having the same scene play out in my head.  Todd Beamer from United Flight 93... you might remember him from September 11, 2001 as the person who said "Let's Roll" before he and a bunch of amazingly brave people took down the terrorists and did not allow the plane to hit the intended target. 

So you are probably wondering why I keep thinking of him?  You see I liken my cancer surgery to that.  We got the bad news, terrorists where on my flight (my body).  I had no weapons for a fair fight on my own but with a team of folks willing to work together (radiologists, surgeons, oncologists, so on) we could all take it down.  We could make a stand.  My "Let's Roll" moment was my lumpectomies.  We had to have some causalities (non cancerous cyst, good cells in margins, sentinel node) and of course we had to deal with the ramifications (scarring, chemotherapy, radiation, side effects and hormone therapy).  But we could win if we put our mind to it.

Again I close my eyes and see weird shapes and cloudy swirls.  I imagine it going from place to place and seeing areas get cleared.  I imagine CMF coming in as an army of sorts and checking cell and after cell.  I tell CMF they are not to touch the good.  (Yes I talk to them, I am the commander of this army, don't judge my visualization meditation.)  I tell them that they can salute them as they go by but not touch.  Like all terrorists they hide among the innocent just doing their jobs and living normal lives.  They try to blend in and act like a healthy cell but they are recruiting non -stop and multiplying.  This CMF has a big job on its hands.  For the majority of cells (like people in this world) are good.