Peaks and Valleys

My dear friends and family,

Well, Life's journey took me into another valley last week when I heard that I have had relapse and that my white blood count had risen for the third week in a row, despite treatment.  All of this...ALL (which happens to be the initials of the Leukemia I have!) forces, prods, nudges me insistently to take account of my all-ness, the totality of my being.  Are there any nooks and crannies I'm afraid to look at?  To love?  To accept?  With each relapse do I go into despair (yes, sometimes) or learn to trust more (yes to this too)? 

Little by little I'm learning that I am much, much more than this cancer!  It may come back, but I have witnessed, gratefully, how it also recedes.  When it comes, as it did last week, I'm learning not to fear it as much and how to open into a greater spaciousness around it.  In short, how to trust in the midst of impossible decisions and untenable conditions.  This past Monday, for example, I had another treatment -- an infusion of a steroid and chemo/anti-body that sent me into convulsions for 7 hours.  An ambulance took me to the hospital.  I was vomiting blood, dry heaving, couldn't open my eyes or speak.  Unexpectedly I was having sudden and very SEVERE side effects, and really didn't know whether I'd make it or not.  I was so taken over by the experience I couldn't even pray!  But I do remember a very kind doctor putting his hand on my arm and saying encouraging words,  "There you go...breathe more slowly and deeply now.  It will help you.  The medicine will take effect very soon now, I promise."  I would try my best to breathe more slowly, but the retching would take over....  Still I could feel his warm, caring presence and touch, though I couldn't get conscious enough to respond or see his face.  "This is God's love," I thought in a brief moment of awareness of my surroundings before plunging into another episode of dry heaving.  I touched his arm in return as a way of saying Thank You!

The experience of pain that day was traumatic, to say the least.  But Nature has its ways of getting our attention, sometimes rudely.  It brought to mind the question of just how much more "chemicals" my body can take.....

Peter and I attended a wonderfully inspiring retreat day on Saturday with Fr. Martin Laird who wrote "Into the Silent Land" and "A Sunlit Absence."  There is so much I could write about it, but suffice it to say it was like drinking ambrosia all day.  The truth was so pure, so resonant with my inner being, so opening to Life, Love, God....  It spoke to my innermost needs at this time and I have taken from it some real, practical gems that have been escaping me til now.  He talked about how we are so often in reactivity to life and gave the analogy of being in a phone booth with a bee buzzing around our heads.  This bee is our mental commentary on/reactivity to the events of life, the difficulties, assumptions, judgments, pain, etc. etc.  Through the practice of silence "which has no opposite" we learn to gradually open the door of the phone booth and step into the meadow just outside.  There are bees there too, doing what bees do, but they are not swarming around in our heads with "stinging" thoughts.  We need these bees in life.  They are necessary for our growth.  There is no such thing, he reminded us, of a "bee-less" life.  But they don't define who we are, unless we allow them to.

So with this latest relapse, I'm ever so gradually learning to open the door of the phone booth just a crack.  I'm learning not to be in fear of "potential outcomes", to trust more in the greater Mystery and in the healing power that is all around and within.  As the saying goes, "It's simple, but not easy."  Each day I get plenty of opportunities to practice!  When I feel pain in my head due to the cancer, I'm not merging with it as I used to, but seeing it objectively as just a part of my experience of life, not the entirety of my life.  Did I say "gradually" enough?  I need to emphasize how it's truly three steps forward and two backwards many times.  Patience.  Practice.  Didn't Yogananda say "Perseverance is the whole magic of spiritual success"?

Peter found a world renowned expert in ALL at the City of Hope in LA who offered to speak with us about my options.  Meanwhile,  I am focusing on the cold energy and I believe that is what brought my white blood count down from 31 two weeks ago to 10 this past week!  Yes, it HAS come down again!  It's still not in the normal range which is 0-5, but I'm almost there.   When my white blood count gets under 5, which I'm expecting it will in another week or so, we'll do another cytology test to look for cancer cells.  I'm fully expecting the test to reveal NO SUCH CELLS! 

Also, about the Rituxan anti-body treatments, this last Flow Cytometry test they did not find any more CD-20 positive B cells, which indicates it was effective in eradicating those.  I still don't know how all of this works together.  I'm charting new territory for sure; even the doctors working with me are. 

St. John of Karpathos wrote that the most serious thing that can happen to us in life is to lose hope.  Sometimes I have felt myself clinging to a thread or a ray of that precious thing we call hope.  Sometimes hope has flooded my being with all the splendor of its Goodness and Joy.  What an education I'm receiving these last two plus years in the REAL lessons we come to earth to learn and that we take with us on the final journey we call death.  As none of us do, I don't know when that journey will come, but I pray each day to have the time and diligence it requires to integrate these lessons into the heart and soul of my being.  May they continue to give me stamina, courage and resilency!

Love and Warmth to you all....

Heidi