What is The New Normal: Giving Her a Name She Can Not Run From

After receiving a diagnosed of colon cancer, I was told, by fellow cancer survivors, that this experience will change more than just your physical self. They told me that this will be the thing that you will remember on a regular basis. It will be your catalyst for change and your daily motivator. The idea of this thing will hide away in your mind like a stow-a-way on a large slave ship. This shoeless and earthly smelling intruder will seek control of your daily thoughts; however you must resist this urge at all cost. For this transgendered deity, has mastered the art of using his masculine traits saturated in a silent-feminine voice to accomplish his/her goal. She/he answers to no name, for if it is recognized by a name or any audible sound its commanding powers will dissipate.

As I ponder on this proclamation, I am burden with the thought that, my “normal” will never be the same because the bar of normalcy has been moved. The line in the sand that was once visible from the shore has been washed away.  It is like a terminal patient that has abandoned the hope of being “pain free” and now flirts with the wish of not experiencing pain every day. The “pain free” condition is not one that is within his reach anymore instead, the “low hanging fruit” of being “painless” instead of “pain free” is now his new norm. This bi-gendered being has a way of changing an individual’s norms by mentally, physically and emotionally changing who they are. It seeks to replace your healthy cells with damaged ones.

 As my calendar adds more days to this diagnosis, my old self continues to become more and more unrecognizable to me. I have witnessed yesterday’s desires being insignificant and offering little solace for me. I continue to search daily for that stow-a-way knowing that if his identify is revealed, I will become the victor and then I will declare and claim my body as my own property. I must cling to the idea that tests, blood work are not the sum of my body parts; they will not define me. I have tasted the sweet nectar of life and desire more. This has forced me to declare war against any foreign invader that seeks to control my temple. I have found this journey hiding under years of emotional leaves and I will not turn back. I will stand toe to toe and look this transgendered goddess in the eyes and shout her name “Cancer"!!

Bodhicitta (Compassion) in Meditation: The Enlightenment of a Friend

Today was a day that would be surrounded by uncertainties, obligations, misunderstandings, hope and adventure. It was on this day, that I decide to visit a Buddhist meditation ceremony. Actually, I did not know that I would be attending a ceremony, when I discovered this group; I thought it was going to be a class on meditation (with hint of Buddhism). More recently after visiting the Cancer Treatment Centers of America CTCA, I have become interested in the art of meditation. This infatuation is what motivated me to seek a local meditation group on the internet.  I am not a stranger to different religions and faiths and before I joined church 13 years ago, I made it a point to study as many religions as possible. I did not want to join something without knowing what else was available to me.  I have also had formal learning, such as a couple undergrad classes on Indian culture. This background, allowed me to enter this meeting today knowing that attending a Buddhist ceremony would not be scary nor would not be a threat to my own personal spirituality. I subscribe to the belief; that if you have “paper faith” that is at risk of dissipating if presented with new experiences, it would be a good idea to reassess your spirituality. I have a god that loves free choice and free thinkers.

This experience is worthy of a blog not because I attended this ceremony, it deserves mentioning because my friend, Tonia, agreed to meet me there. It was both our intentions to meet and learn more about meditation; we did not know that they would be conducting a Buddhist death ceremony today. This was a shock and I was lucky that we arrived in separate cars because if Tonia had driven she might have left me there looking for a ride home. Her frustration was evident when the instructor presented the list of prayers we were to recite. It was during this time that she turned toward me and mouthed the words “I am going to kill you”.

It was at this point that I felt guilty because I had not taken into account how much of a cultural shock this was going to be for her. This was a death ceremony for insects, pets, animals and love ones who had passed away. When this information was reveal, I was waiting for Tonia to grab her keys and head for the door. To my surprise, she stayed, took off her shoes and began to actively listen to what was being said. It was at this point that I realize that Tonia was open-minded. This is a characteristic that many patients have to adapt when faced with challenging diagnosis. For it is during these times, that many physicians are forced to present alternative plans of care for these patients. Today’s events reminded me of the interaction I had at CTCA, after meeting my naturopathic doctor Summer Baptist, ND,L.Ac. When she presented me with her plan, she was surprise that I was open minded enough to listen. She later told me that there are many patients who turn a deaf ear toward alternative treatment.

Meeting Dr. Baptist along and Tiffany, my Mind and Body therapist, was a life altering experience for me. It is because of these meetings, that I have begun to look at different life possibilities, including not living a life that is constrained by fears, regrets and lost opportunities. I am determined to seek a holistic approach to living. This has become my new goal and if I have friends and family who are not willing to travel his journey with me, then I will gladly wave at them as my mystical train leaves the station. I cannot tell you where this journey will lead me however I feel this is one I must take. I have lived many years bowing to societal norms however; we only have one existence so why not live for ourselves.

          What I found extremely interesting and moving, was the fact that most of the participants there, had lost family and friends because of the spiritual decisions they had made. This was a decision to follow their hearts, to become Buddhists, and many members of their family and friends could not accept their newfound happiness. Some of the participants even spoke of having to hide the fact they were Buddhist as well as concealing their spiritual commitments. During the ceremony, I witnessed one of the ladies getting emotional as she remembered the death of her mother, who had passed on earlier this year. She stated that when her mother died in June, she died without knowing that her daughter was a Buddhist. She felt that sharing this would have added an unneeded burden on her mother. I was moved by her love and compassion but could not help thinking of the lack of closure she was now burden with.

          Tonight as I reminisce over today’s events and what lesson(s) I might have learned, I arrive at the conclusion that freedom is not free for everyone and there are still people out there who cannot express their inner passions. I am thankful tonight that I live in an environment where I can express myself openly. I take pride in the fact that I am at a place in my existence, where I do not solicit the approval of others. Tonight I am thankful that I have friends like Tonia, who are willing to step out of their comfort zones to support a friend. I know that some of my other friends might declare “I will support you, but I will not visit a Buddhist ceremony”. Today’s lesson was “Sometimes being there means, you actually have to BE THERE..”

Allie Gets Baptized and Converts... Congratulations

I have often heard older folk say “the Lord works in mysterious ways,” and as I continue to live, I am finding more and more truth in this statement. I have also learned that his plan is often times more perfect than any plan we could ever scheme on our own. This epiphany came to me a few months ago after I was diagnosed as having stage IV colon cancer.  It was also during this time I continue to invite a friend of mine to church. This was a friend I knew who had no intentions of ever coming to a Seven Day Adventist church, however I thought it was worth giving it a try. I guess part of me invited her as a way of testing God’s strength. She has been a really good friend to me during my sickness. She was among the many friends that would come and visit and pray for me while I was in the hospital, so I felt it only natural to invite her to church.

 Check here to Watch video of Allison being baptized

                My friend was very spiritual on the outside and in many of our conversations she would mention going to church on Sunday. She, like most of us in the world, had her share of vices and was actively seeking rescue from these transgressions. But she was in a place and I don’t think she was happy, and I felt that if she could be exposed to an active church, it will help facilitate her spiritual growth. So each week, I continued to invite her to church and each week she would give me an excuse why she couldn’t go. I expected these excuses, heck; I had given some of the same ones to my mother and other family members when they invited me to church years ago.
                             

                I have always saw little things in my spiritual walk, however at they time did not mean much to me, but as the days progressed, these little meetings became amplified in my life. For example, I remember about six months ago I decided to visit a friend at work. She had a light patient load that day so we had plenty time to just sit down and just talk about our dreams and our aspirations. Things at that time were going pretty good for me, I had a new job and I was starting to see my future as something other than just a mirage. It was in this meeting that I famously said “everyone I know has a cause they are very passionate about, something that gets them out of bed in the mornings. They have that one thing that they’re known for, something that has changed their life and now they have made a commitment to change others. I wish I had such a cause”. To my surprise, God had heard my wish.

                The next week I was scheduled for doctor’s appointment. It was a follow-up appointment that my primary physician had made for me after I had demanded that she do so. To make a long story short, I was got a diagnosis of colon cancer. What I could not see at that point, was that He was answering my wish, it was in the midst of all my trials and tribulations that I finally realized that God had given me cause. He had given me something that I can fight for, something that I can be strong about and something that I can help other people with; he had given me the gift of stage IV colon cancer. So after finding out what my cause was I was prepared to go out and conquer the world, unfortunately God had other plans for me and one of those plans included being admitted to hospital for two major surgeries.

                After I had been discharged from the hospital, my friend Allison gave me a call to tell me how she had been praying for me and that she was glad that I was doing better. Then she gave me some startling news and said “I am getting baptized at the end of November.” This revelation took me by a total surprise. I asked her, “Allison, you are really getting baptized? Where”, I said in a sarcastic manner. This is when she went on to tell me that while I had been sick in the hospital, she had been attending First Seven Day Adventist Church and now she had decided to make a conversion. It was at this point that I realized that “there is a bigger picture that sometimes does not come into focus until the dust of life has settled down”.

Flying Solo

            During my undergraduate pursuits, there were always courses that were required and almost all of them demanded a prerequisite. This is a situation that became a life lesson for me; it has been one that I have continued to remember many years later. I would like to think, that these prerequisites were designed to prep students for their next assignment. This was the common thought around the campus, however the reality was that it only created an steady stream of revenue for the institution. I am not naïve enough to think that in some cases it did not actually helped some of the students. I am sure there is some 43 year old restaurant janitor who is happy that prerequisites kept him out of medical school. Really? I think that prerequisites are used by many colleges to identify the serious student from the "I-want-my-refund" learners (pretty much all students).

          Looking back on my life, I have to declare that I have always been a maverick. I have always been a person who has not been afraid to cross social lines. My life has been consumed and fueled by a collection of unfiltered moments. So on many occasions, when I was faced with the dilemma of needing a course, that I had not taken the prerequisite for, I registered for it anyway. After doing this on many occasions, I was shocked by the fact that I was actually permitted to register. This experience solidified for me the idea that "winging it" is one of the best ways to overcome most of life's obstacles. The expression "winging it" means to present a contradictory image while concealing a true identity. In this case I was, by registering for a course without the approved preparation, implying I had the qualifications while ignoring my academic record.
          Years later, I would remember this experience as I sit in my oncologists office. "Do you have a healthy support system, is there someone we can call in case of an emergency," the nurse asked while I was mentally trying to control a reaction my diagnosis was transmitting to me. I knew these were loaded questions and that if I my answer was unacceptable, it would only encourage more probing. It was at this point that I remember feeling like a school child standing in a lunch line without enough money to pay for the meal he had just requested. I felt emotionally trapped, so I did the only thing I could do. I raised my chin, puffed out my chest and lied. It was at this moment that I stood up on the shoulders of hope and love and said, "I do!!", it was also in that moment that I decided how far I would let cancer take me. I knew that this diagnosis would change me and even though I would be forced to physically yield to its demands, I would not allow it to make me helpless. I was a solo flyer and proud of the wings I had earned...
        

Building Support Systems 101

This morning I decided to go for walk and while on my journey I met a man. This man was dressed in casual clothing with a cancer ribbon on his jacket collar, accompanied by a perplexing smile. I believe in a different setting his smile might have been considered friendly but in this one it was hiding a intense secret. As we began our journey we broke the silence with a brief conversation about the weather but I knew that there was something deeper and more intimate that he wanted to share. So I began to question him about his cancer diagnosis and how it had affected his life. He smiled and said “this diagnosis hasn’t really changed me; it has changed my perspective of those whom I had previously thought were close to me”.

                This was a powerful and deep statement. I did not need to have an explanation for the position he now held because I had experienced it myself. In fact this statement took me mentally back five months ago when I was first diagnosed with cancer. It was a Friday morning and I was sitting at the doctor’s office listening to him tell me about a tumor he had found in my intestine. This was a shocking revelation for me and now I was expected to drive home as if  everything was normal. This was the longest in the hardest drive home I had ever taken. It took everything in my power to muster up enough strength to turn the steering wheel and shift the gears on my 6 speed Volkswagen Passat. When I finally made it home the first thing I wanted to do was reach out to my family.  I called them and nervously reported the news to them with the secret hope that they would say “you’ll be okay, we’ll be there for you”. This phrase was never uttered.

                After this brief historical flashback, I slowly began to focus back on my walking companion. He was in the mist of recalling his own personal cancer story. He told me that when he delivered the news to his love ones “they begin to tell him” everyone’s going through something, we all have problems of our own”. He turned to me with tears running down his unshaven face and declared that looking back, this response hurt him more than any treatment program he would have to go through. He stated that it was at this point that he knew he was completely alone and that this lack of support would retard many of the medical decisions he would have to make. He said “some mornings I wake up and feel like just staying in the bed, with the covers over my head and it is the lack of support that fuels these feelings”. He went on to say that our support groups are not preassembled and that just because someone shares the same DNA with you doesn’t mean that that they have compassion for you.       

He told me that he learned this lesson the evening after his dreadful doctor’s appointment. He said it was during this time when one of his friends spoke to him over the phone. He recalled being reluctant to share his misfortune however his desire for comfort over took his need for privacy. This friend not only listen she asked for his next appointment date and who was going to take him. To his surprise she showed up on the day of his appointment, ready to transport him. She said “I knew your pride wouldn’t allow you to ask and I felt like you needed a friend to be there, I’ll take you to this appointment, Pam will take you to the next one, Amy and Sally will you get to these” she declared as she pointed to a makeshift appointment book she had organized the day before “this should get you through the next couple of weeks, until your family is able to make it here”.

                It was at this moment that the man stopped walking, looked at me and acknowledged “I knew that my cancer was not a priority for my family and that any promises they had made me were only superficial pleasantries they used to get me off of the phone”.  We came to a crossroad, he went one way and I the other. Lucky for me this interaction did not leave me without knowledge and to repay him for his information, I gave him a strong handshake followed by a manly “take care”.

             As I sit in my room, I realize what his conversation was all about. He was telling me that people in general, are preoccupied with their own issues and this selfishness does not allow them to extend any real compassion or sacrifice for others. It is the kindness of strangers that will allow you to survive this and reaching out to familiar faces will only disappoint you in the end.  The moral of the story is “your life’s emergency many times will only be considered an urgent care episode to others”