The Balance of Mabon - March 2021
"Letting go helps us to live in a more peaceful state of mind and helps restore our balance. It allows others to be responsible for themselves and for us to take our hands off situations that do not belong to us. This frees us from unnecessary stress."
~Melody Beattie
Kia ora whānau. The 20th of March saw Mabon, the autumn equinox - when the day and night are of equal length and balance prevails. I would dearly love to say the quote above exactly reflects my new-found approach to life but I'd be lying. In many ways I'm as unbalanced as always, but I'm working towards owning my shit and allowing other folks to own theirs.
This month has been great - taking a break from the conventional medical treatments meant I could explore some unconventional ones. I also returned to work and to running, and felt almost normal again. I even went to a concert!
Crowded House weathering with us
Balancing that freedom was the ever-present hum of waiting for an oncology appointment and then waiting for test results, but it was wonderful to have the scales tip towards normal activities and away from hospitals and surgeries. At least for a while.
Craft
Another low-output month on the craft front, but the awesome news is we rented a cabin as an office / craft space. The caravan didn't work out as a sewing room so has been returned to a spare bedroom, and may be put on the market soon.
My wee haven
I knitted a hat for Regan then realised after I'd blocked it that I'd dropped a stitch and now it languishes unloved on the couch. I've begun doing some sewing - I hand-stitched a cover for the sewing machine (not pictured above, that's a tea-towel!) and while I have the cottage to myself for a few days I'm madly cutting out patterns and fabric for the next few projects.
Tomorrow is Good Friday and I've set aside the day for washing and ironing fabric, and tracing and cutting out patterns. I'll probably be sick of all of my projects by the end of it but I'll be glad of it come winter. I'm planning on doing quite a bit of hand-sewing so I can curl up on the couch by the fire once the weather chills down. I aim to have mastered the thimble by the time spring pops up her green head.
I think I have a crystal problem
Nothing has happened on the jewellery front except I managed to get all the crystals out into the moonlight for Monday's full moon. They even had a wee wash of rainwater. I was rather alarmed at how many crystals I had and I need to get cracking if I want to have enough stock for a Christmas market. I may in fact be a crystal hoarder and don't yet know it; perhaps I'll never sell any of them and will eventually die alone with only my crystals and cats for company. Let's hope not.
Season
Autumn is special. Especially in this area when it's often warm and settled weather - plus I can start wearing woollies again, hurrah! As I write there is a thunder storm and rain that will be welcomed by the dry soil. Lulu is outside and I'm fretting for her but I know she'll have found cover and will arrive back inside bone-dry when the storm passes. Update: she did.
Sadly I marked Mabon only in passing, and snatched just a few quick glimpses of the full moon on Monday. But the change of season is obvious here as the hue out the windows shifts from green to orange and the nights are drawing in.
Autumn leaves reflected in the birdbath
This weekend sees both Easter and the end of Daylight Savings - events that are related to the moon and to the sun... I love these pagan threads weaving through our sanitised and digitised lives. I've been unable to book any trips away as chemo may start at any time, so I'm planning an at-home yoga retreat. I'll sleep in the caravan, and the cabin will be my yoga shala. Meals at the outside table and meditation in the cottage, and I'll write out a proper timetable and pre-make all my meals. Lulu can be my guru, guiding me into stillness and rest. Yes, I'm a yoga dork!
I'll also weed the garden and mulch the beds with the multitude of fallen leaves. I've done basically no gardening this season and while it's sad to be so disconnected from the soil it has been a good lesson in letting go. I do, however, have some bulbs to plant, which I'll do on Saturday. I ADORE planting bulbs - a few moments to dig a hole and a lifetime of springtime joys. It's the marker that I don't ever plan to leave this place, as you don't plant bulbs in a rental.
Health
My unconventional treatment adventures began with a week of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) which I was amazed to find really helped my poor battered boob. By the fourth session the pain was gone, the ever-present slosh of the seroma had disappeared, and the wound was sealing and healing properly - prior to that it was deathly white and a bit gappy. I did some research and found that wound healing really is HBOT's jam, and I'm definitely a convert.
Me sitting in the small aeroplane that goes nowhere
Next up was past life regression to see if there were any echoes from previous lives complicating matters. I'm agnostic on the question of past lives - I don't know and I don't rule anything out, but I've not experienced anything super convincing prior to my session. Sadly it turns out I'm un-hypnotisable - even though I was keen to do the session and was interested to travel back, I was sub-consciously resistant and my 'doors of perception' were apparently triple locked - with the chain on for good measure! But it was an interesting experience and I'm glad I gave it a go.
I've been having counselling for a wee while now, and it's been extremely valuable, especially at the moment. It's taken time to find someone I really like, and I'm so lucky to know her. After my most recent session I wandered into a "hippy shop" and had an unplanned reiki session which was a great complement to the counselling. I've booked in for another session after my next counselling appointment.
Reiki is a form of energy healing and I used to be very eye-rolly about it but am now a big fan. Again, finding the right person is important, and this all had a very guided vibe to it all, which I appreciate. Weirdly, she said that I was the first person she'd worked on where she detected ZERO THOUGHT ACTIVITY. None. Dooooooooooooooo... I was definitely thinking about stuff so I'm wondering if it's similar to the hypnosis thing - the doors are firmly locked until I trust the person perhaps? You only get the key when I know you won't poop on the rug!
No pooping beyond this door
But we mustn't forget the conventional treatments - I had a consult with a plastic surgeon and I finally got to meet my oncologist. He's smart and interesting, and also poetic and a philosopher. I wasn't sure if that was the exact combo I wanted from the doctor in charge of the Very Strong Drugs, but after two meetings where he took time to answer all my questions and seemed genuinely delighted that I'd done some research - I'm glad to have him on Team Linda.
I'm in a bit of a grey area as to whether chemo will be helpful or harmful so we've opted for genetic testing of the tumour tissue to more accurately pinpoint whether my special flavour of tumour warrants chemo, and what the likelihood of recurrence is. The testing is done in the States and with delivery times all crazy these days and Easter in the middle of it, it might take ages. I'm hoping I won't need chemo, of course, but that then brings the next surgery forward, which isn't a happy thought.
I'd been focussing on how I could avoid a mastectomy altogether but finally resigned myself to it when Dr. Chemo (not his real name!) described DCIS as chaos, and cancer as thriving in chaos. See what I mean about poetic? But it makes sense to me - chemical signals going gonzo and confusing the body's natural defences. If you know otherwise please keep it to yourself as this explanation is the only straw I can clutch to be ok about the mastectomy.
So now we wait. Again. Still. We wait and then things will all happen very fast and very differently to what I expected. There's something in the patients / patience thing, and I'm having to let go of my need to pre-plan and colour-coded-spreadsheetify the whole experience. This isn't able to be exactly mapped out. It's frustrating but that's the nature of it, and everyone is doing their best to keep me alive, so the least I can do is enjoy the ride. Well, endure might be more apt but you get the gist.
I'm sad to say goodbye to March as it's been a wonderful month of feeling like a normal person again. I think I assumed that if I ever got proper sick I'd want to do juice fasts and tantric meditation all day but it turns out I just want to drive myself to a beach and be able to do a full day's work. Weird. Thanks for reading along and I will see you back here next month, when hopefully I'll have made myself some new clothes and we'll have more knowledge to make informed choices about chemo and surgery. Have a happy April!
References
Mabon
The autumn equinox, when day and night are of equal length and the days begin to shorten afterwards. A harvest festival, and a time of thanks-giving.
Couch to 5k
I've trained a few times using the C25K app by ZenLabs, as it's a great way to ease into running. You don't need an app though, you can follow the training program in whatever way works best for you.
Thimbles - Abby Cox
If you do any hand-sewing learning to use a thimble is a great idea. I'm still getting used to it but I can already see it'll speed up my stitching. Abby Cox is a dress historian and hilarious YouTuber who will teach you everything there is to know about thimbles!
Easter
The Christian holiday is marked on the first Sunday following the full moon after the spring / autumn equinox. The timing of Easter in the Northern Hemisphere around the moon and spring festivals suggests fertility symbols like eggs and rabbits are related to ancient pagan rites as well as the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy - HBOT
Being in an HBOT chamber is like being in a tiny aeroplane that goes nowhere. You lie or sit, the door is closed, and the air pressure changes. Your ears pop like when flying. You have pure oxygen piped up your nose and can read or sleep. Not to be confused with a flotation / sensory deprivation tank - there is no water, and you can see out and hear muffled noises.
Oncotype DX testing
Incredibly advanced testing which gives a prediction of the risk of recurrence of breast cancer as well as an accurate guide to the effectiveness of chemo offset against the risks. Not currently carried out in NZ, the sample needs to be sent to the United States. Apparently the testing is in the process of becoming publicly funded here, which will be excellent as not only will it save the country millions of health dollars but also save people from unnecessary drug treatment.
BCAC support pack
This excellent pack consists of a diary for recording all appointments and treatments, a journal, and an information book. I've found it really helpful for keeping all the info in one place. Those appointments quickly add up, plus cancer patients move from specialist to specialist and it can be hard to remember exactly what happens when. I also recommend getting a folder and dividers to keep all the paperwork in one place.
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