+2 Months (Believe It!)
Mark and I manage a date night in the eye of the hurricane.
Are you ready? This one is a scorcher.
We skidded into March, and towards my new prostate cancer treatment Pluvicto, with my partner Mark suddenly required to deal with his parents both ending up, at the same time, in the emergency room. He eventually spent the better part of a month there, his father finally transitioning, and with his mother moving in and out of states of delirium, confusion and pain.
Simultaneously, I began to have the first severe cancer related pains in my body that I had ever experienced. My cancer markers were skyrocketing, and our first Pluvicto treatment wasn’t until the middle of the month. I was in agony up in my mountain home of Idyllwild, and out of nowhere experienced an incredibly alarming incidence of “gross hematuria” (I’ll let you look that up), leading me to pack in the middle of the night and head to LA to be near an emergency room.
Over the next several weeks, I went on a heavy duty painkilling regimen, while Mark was stretched thin with both his parents, and worrying constantly about me, who he couldn’t be with. I couldn’t walk too well. With my rib pain I had a hard time breathing for a bit. I managed to produce both my live events with help (I needed the money). Another bout of urinary bleeding (there, I said it) landed me at 2 AM in the emergency room for a particularly painful process.
Friends were there to help. They brought me to the hospital. They sent Mark groceries, flowers and resources. But I began to slip into a type of depression where I stopped getting pleasure from ordinary things. I was lonely. I was very afraid. I was, like Mark, overwhelmed.
I knew that I needed to reach out. The first thing I did was to join a program for flour and sugar abstinence. My dirty little secret: as a certified Radical Remissions cancer coach, I myself could never, through any force of will or implementation of system, completely give up these things. And, I had no idea why.
The program worked, but it cut off the very last (aside from binge watching The Pitt) escape strategy and source of sensory pleasure I could feel.
I was at the jumping off point.
I knew that, with this new program and these new circumstances, I had to do what I always knew I needed, which was to continually connect with others. To share about how my parents gave me sweets, even while abandoning me, and to not have food pleasure now felt like terrifying loneliness. To share about being scared, being lonely, and maybe even some of the things that you, dear reader, don’t even know about, things you take for granted I have lost forever through these last six years of aggressive treatments.
Then, after the first Pluvicto treatment, almost immediately, the pain went away. I speculate it was because of the six months of enzyme treatments I, with the help of my community, invested in to strip away the sugars and proteins that hide the cancer in the body, allowing this new and innovative radiation treatment to work so quickly. The bleeding continued (it’s probably permanent radiation damage to the bladder), but the doctors gave me solutions. But to be able to walk, to not take meds, and above all, to meditate, was pure Grace.
Mark and I had dinner last night, just a few hours before he had to return to his mother, and held each other, cried, laughed, and told each other that we will be together…soon…
Now I ask you this. Do you see, as I do, the Divine orchestration behind all of this? How this motivated me to give up crucial obstacles to my healing (food dependence and isolation), and to strengthen Mark and I both for even greater challenges? To move us towards relying on that which is Higher and Greater than our small selves, to surrender to that which we are in Essence, that Connection that brings us the greatest Freedom, Joy and Awakening?
Folks, you see what’s happening around you. We may all be required to become soldiers soon, in our own way. What kind of soldier will you be? One of resistance to what is?
Or, one of Unconditional Love and Service?