Patience and Patients
Living gratefully today, I embrace the stretching and strengthening of physical therapy exercises for my hip, and I greet the moments and hours ahead with an open heart and mind.
The "p" words just keep coming, so I will wrap up this letter with two more words today: PATIENCE and PATIENTS.
As a recovery friend of mine likes to say: "I want patience and I want it now!" Patience to live life on life's terms, to not force outcomes, but rather let them unfold. Forcing means I am trying to control. Unfold means I am allowing Higher Power/Great Spirit to lead the way. I lack patience when I lack acceptance and faith.
The good news: I have tools and habits that help me acquire the necessary amount of all three of these--patience, acceptance, and faith--each day. Sometimes action is needed, sometimes inaction is key.
PATIENT. Cancer patient. I have emotional and physical responses, even years later, when I have walked into the cancer center where I saw my oncologist, had many blood draws, four rounds of chemotherapy, and a few PET/CT scans. A visceral reaction to a challenging time in my own life, made deeper by the impact of cancer on my family.
After my active treatment, when my hair grew back and the wig and chemo caps went in a box, I walked in to the cancer center looking and feeling healthy, seeing many others in various stages of treatment and levels of vitality. I often wondered how many fellow patients had died since my last visit. I would look around and wonder who might be next. A morbid exercise, but a way of facing the fear that cancer imposes. A way of grieving the sense of security that cancer steals.
Last March, my sister Zita and I joined our sister Mary Jo for an appointment with her oncologist, the three BC sisters together. The exam room was opposite the hallway that led to where she had radiation treatments, attached to the hospital where Mary Jo would spend her final hours of life less than three months later.
It was very meaningful for me to attend that appointment, just as it was a profound experience to walk the hallway of the hospice unit where Mary Jo died before we left town for our flights home after her celebration of life. I took that walk with Zita, my sister Leonice, and my sister-in-law Annie. Leonice is the other cancer patient among my siblings. We took an emotional walk in that hospice area, those still standing. We walked out again.
And I return to patience, which is a necessary part of the grieving process. Patience to let the grief come when it does, and the peace to come when it does. Do the grief work and the peace comes. It doesn't always stay, but if I keep working it returns.
I also give thanks for the many medical professionals and workers who have shown me and my cancer patient sisters so much compassion and patience over the years.
The best I can do today is be patient with myself and others, kind and gentle as the day ahead unfolds.
The "p" words just keep coming, so I will wrap up this letter with two more words today: PATIENCE and PATIENTS.
As a recovery friend of mine likes to say: "I want patience and I want it now!" Patience to live life on life's terms, to not force outcomes, but rather let them unfold. Forcing means I am trying to control. Unfold means I am allowing Higher Power/Great Spirit to lead the way. I lack patience when I lack acceptance and faith.
The good news: I have tools and habits that help me acquire the necessary amount of all three of these--patience, acceptance, and faith--each day. Sometimes action is needed, sometimes inaction is key.
PATIENT. Cancer patient. I have emotional and physical responses, even years later, when I have walked into the cancer center where I saw my oncologist, had many blood draws, four rounds of chemotherapy, and a few PET/CT scans. A visceral reaction to a challenging time in my own life, made deeper by the impact of cancer on my family.
After my active treatment, when my hair grew back and the wig and chemo caps went in a box, I walked in to the cancer center looking and feeling healthy, seeing many others in various stages of treatment and levels of vitality. I often wondered how many fellow patients had died since my last visit. I would look around and wonder who might be next. A morbid exercise, but a way of facing the fear that cancer imposes. A way of grieving the sense of security that cancer steals.
Last March, my sister Zita and I joined our sister Mary Jo for an appointment with her oncologist, the three BC sisters together. The exam room was opposite the hallway that led to where she had radiation treatments, attached to the hospital where Mary Jo would spend her final hours of life less than three months later.
It was very meaningful for me to attend that appointment, just as it was a profound experience to walk the hallway of the hospice unit where Mary Jo died before we left town for our flights home after her celebration of life. I took that walk with Zita, my sister Leonice, and my sister-in-law Annie. Leonice is the other cancer patient among my siblings. We took an emotional walk in that hospice area, those still standing. We walked out again.
And I return to patience, which is a necessary part of the grieving process. Patience to let the grief come when it does, and the peace to come when it does. Do the grief work and the peace comes. It doesn't always stay, but if I keep working it returns.
I also give thanks for the many medical professionals and workers who have shown me and my cancer patient sisters so much compassion and patience over the years.
The best I can do today is be patient with myself and others, kind and gentle as the day ahead unfolds.
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