On why how we look matters

 I just got back from the evening radiation session and I'm tired, but want to finally publish a post marking that I'm half way through treatment now. I've had 28 doses of chemo and I've undressed and been under the proton beam 28 times. 24 to go. (I'm not counting down :-), just marking time and acknowledging the passing of it. I'm actually feeling quite content being here.)

I still feel great (still no nausea, yay!), but the bloodtest today (they do a weekly bloodtest) revealed that my immunesystem is nosediving from the chemo. 

My body is a patient body in both meanings of the word. I feel no restlessness, no desire to be anywhere else right now. My movements are like walking meditations, back and forth between here and the Particle, here and the ocean, with a deep acceptance of this now as it unfolds. All my movements towards other places have stopped. In that way my body is patient. It's also a patient body in that it tolerates, bears with, waits, surrenders to everything that the treatment asks of it. The constant monitoring, the weighing (losing weight here is a bad thing and they keep a keen eye on us, which means being weighed twice a week), the scans, the bloodtests, All that because there's a reality I can't see or feel, but is real nonetheless. Without the scans and the biopsy I wouldn't have known there was a cancerous growth deep inside my pelvis. 

I'm grateful for the penetrating eyes of science and that there's a treatment, that is precise and targets the tumour. It makes sense. It's a gift. But the patient's body is not my only body and not the only reality. The observations and the measurements and the tests are a way to know the body, but not the only way. 

(I had a conversation with one of the other patients today and he said he didn't want to know any of the details of his cancer or the treatment, he preferred just to receive the treatment. I'm not like that. I love to understand all the details and I tend to read and ask a lot about cancer and treatment, but it's not to be in control, but just out of curiosity. But it's true, that sometimes information can kindle fear. If there's medicine I have to take, like the chemo, I try to not read about the possible side effects. But that's a whole new blog post right there about nocebo.)

I need to trust the science and it's keen eyes of observation to be able to trust the treatment, and I do, but I can't know my body in that way. My only way to know this body is by softening my gaze and by paying attention to the body as movement and breath and pulse and rhythm. I can't feel the cancer cells, I can't feel my struggling immune system, I can't feel the effect of the proton beams on those deep tissues of my pelvic ligament. This body, that I know through paying attention, is an ever changing inner landscape. Subtle wavelike movements. The sounds of digestion, the sound of my breath, the rhythm of my heart beat. All sensations. 

The way we look matters. If I look with the penetrating eyes of observation and description at the body as an object, my body hardens to a thing with clear cut outlines. When I soften my gaze and pay attention to my body as movement and process, there's a softening of tissues, outlines soften into breathable membranes. Awareness and body are woven together. 

The same body that undeniably has cancer is also a body connected and whole, healthy, vibrant and joyful. The cancer doesn't negate that. There's disease, I know, but I'm not defined by the cancer. There's freedom in that. No matter which reality can be observed or described I'm more than that. This body is so alive and will continue to be vibrant till my death. Disease and death doesn’t deny life, it's part of it. 

The first time I read the description of the cancer in my body, more than three years ago now, I was overwhelmed by fear. The words were razorsharp and precise and cut through my tissues and alienated me from the body that I thought I knew so well. They took my body away from me and instead there was a body contracted around what was wrong with it. My wise sister reminded me I was more than that reality. (At that time I was overwhelmed a lot by possible losses of my body as I knew it and a lot of fear.) 

And I know this to be true, and these days with so much practice meeting fear I find it easier to remember. 

Whenever fear slips in through the gap between this now and an imagined future I come back to this body I know through paying attention. 

And with mindfulness of body I can wrap a cloak of care around the fear.