It is a cold damp day here in Mullumbimby, winter is welcome and invites a turning inward, keeping the fire burning, cooking kidgree with lots of fresh turmeric and ginger…chopped kale that gives a burst of green through the yellow. i wanted to share this article i wrote recently. i hope you enjoy it. Becoming bald. In May 2013 I am diagnosed with breast cancer. ‘No chemo’ I declare and hold the gaze of my soon to be surgeon, triumphant in my sureness. She feels the now obvious lump. It’s hard, tender and moves with the flow of breast tissue. I am amazed and ashamed that I had no idea it is here, growing steadily in my breast. Yet I knew something was amiss - the tiredness, the constant succumbing to colds, and the tender ache over my heart. Breast cancer? No. Never. She feels under my arm and the response is sharp. ‘We need to do a biopsy of that’ she tells me. I sit again with my sweater on and both breasts pointing hopefully forward. *** Cancer cells are found in the lump. I have an 8cm tumor in my breast, 5cm’s is carcinoma in situ, which means contained, and 3 cm uncontained. And now, the discovery of another in my armpit. ‘Well at least you have got what you want’ my surgeon tells me, ‘we will do surgery first’. A hopeful sense of victory - I’ll go under the knife and then move on. Have the cancer cut out and then take matters in to my own hands of healing. Loosing a breast is inevitable - if I can hold on to my waist length hair I will. *** I rise like Lazareth from the dead and shuffle to the bathroom. Negotiate the drip stand and drip, two drainage bags from the wound, one full of blood the other a yellow lymph fluid. I look in the mirror and a stranger clings to the metal stand, knuckles white, her face ghostly and eyes, ringed with dark, hold possibly fear. Unable to straighten up from the pain in my shoulder I stare at the disheveled self. This is me I whisper as the figure in the mirror mouths in response. I lift my shirt and see the long wound - my breast cleanly and completely gone. A clear dressing covers the bloodied scar, blackened and crusty. Two drainage tubes hang from my chest. I stumbled back to bed and sobs escape my lips. *** 10 days later I am back in the surgeons office. ‘It isn’t good news I am afraid’. She leans across the desk to show me the pathology report. Stage three cancer stands out as if written in red ink and bold capitols. Stage three, apparently of aggressive nature, already formed a blood supply of its own. The main tumor was close to the chest wall, hence the feeling of the scar about to burst open. I have been scraped to the ribs and sewn up with little skin to play with. The tumor in the lymph nodes, and the last node, the apical node, also has cancerous cells. 16 nodes were removed. ‘It’s on the move’ she tells me. ‘In the lymph and likely the blood. I wouldn’t take any chances.’ I am 48 years old. My daughter is nine and my son seven. Of course I will do chemo. I’ll fly to the moon too if it helps. Chemo penetrates with ruthless brutality every aspect of ones being. Smashed me against the jagged rocks of my limit again and again. No part of me left untouched. Hideous unrelenting nausea, pain through out the body, mental agitation, as my thoughts darkened and threatened like an intruder the night. My guts cramped and twisted. In the half sleep dreams gave no respite. Violent images pass through as I wake wet with sweat. I cling to the stark beauty of the honeysuckle vine on the neighbors’ shed, the vivid splash of bright orange shimmering in hope. The way sunlight highlights shapes and shade. Precise details noted. The astonishing, yet ordinary miracle of every day as dawn wrestles free from the cocoon of night. An initiation offers the possibility of the world being sanctified anew. This aspect of chemo had not occurred to me, nor how deeply distressed my whole being would be with this toxic intrusion. An image came when I began to emerge from the nightmare, of an old shaman woman stumbling from a wooden hut perched on a ledge amidst high mountain vistas. She knelt on the bone bare earth to cry her prayer to the great spirit of creation: let thy will be done let thy will by done as the sun rose somewhere far away and shed gold all around. With a simple ceremony I cut my hair. It hangs to my waist. A letting go of all the energies held over the last 23 years when I shaved my head in Macleod Ganj - a small Tibetan enclave perched on the edge of the Himalayas. I offer a small clump of hair to the fire. The flame crackles as it shrivels up and disappears in a moment. I murmur mantra and renew my vows with myself. Next round of chemo I am given a lower dose. Once the steroid cover ends I descend again into the hell realm. I find a profound gap, an utter aloneness that brings images of a vast wasteland - face down on bare, naked earth, drought, devoid of life. And the miracle of it all is that this place of despair can become a silent sacred temple, a place of worship also, and this is where grace pours in. Tired of the distress of finding the remaining hairs on my pillow the final shave happens. As the cold water touches my head I remember watching as Sadhu’s shaved their jutta [dreadlocks] at the source of the Ganga, where she flows from a huge glazier, bluish and mysterious, as crystal clear icy waters. Those brave enough plunge under whilst others dip their commundal and pour her waters over their heads. A bare torso, a red lunghi, and perhaps my favorite of all Himalayan peaks rising high above: Shivling. I stare at the sink and see the remaining bristles float in a cold white enamel sink. Enough of trying to make something beautiful, it is nothing other than a truly awful experience. And it is happening to me. My son cries when he sees my baldness: ‘I wish you never got this cancer mummy’ And to sit again in the garden like an invalid. The subtle fragrance of winter in the early morning chill, the prolific bird song, the shining glory of such sunshine filled days. The first jasmine releasing promises of spring. Witnessing the day-by-day unfurling of flowers, the stocks planted when this story was still unknown, in perfect shades of mauve, purple, deep magenta pink. Life has slowed down, skidded to a halt. How often did I wish for my life to be simpler as I rushed from one day to the next barely able to keep up? Loosing myself endlessly. I am slowly making friends with my baldness. I run my hands over the prickly bristles on top, the much smoother softer skin at the base. It is a secret, private liking. With the scar and one breast sometimes I think I look like a warrior. A friend tells of his sister’s death after the initial breast cancer went to her bones. She was dead 18 months later. Yes she did chemo. There is no guarantee - a gift regardless of the wrapping. We hope that death will be tidy, timely at the end of a long fulfilled life. I’ve been privy to death often. As a young nurse, at the bedside of a dying patient, an experience of vastness opened me to new possibilities. A few years ago a toddler died in my arms at the scene of a tragic road accident. I felt her leave as sure as a butterfly’s wing against my cheek as blood bubbled from her nose. Sitting with my father’s body in a funeral parlor on a wet cold spring day in England. Silenced by the utter finality of death. But I am a mother and the thought of leaving my children in their delicate prime of childhood brings a gasping sorrow that cannot be contemplated. Love and loss perhaps felt all the more acutely when held hand in hand. The earth beneath my feet, the sanctity of a new day as the sky ripens and blushes and filigree branches of the gum trees turn an ethereal shade of pink. One morning it is raining. I take off my beanie to let the drops fall on my naked head. In Sanskrit there is a saying neti neti - not this not that. When we are taken beyond our perimeters the two wings of existence - the light and shadow, the known and unknown, the wanting and the not wanting, fly side by side. It is in this somewhere in between place that I can hold both with equal tenderness.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 03:30:29 +0000
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