Ned Henry February 14, 2021 · nedhenry.medium.com
3 PM — I have gotten some very heartfelt encouragement in the last few days to continue to be open about exploring my experiences and feelings as I go through cancer, but also to reflect on my past and what that means and how it lingers and influences my present and so affects my future. I have taken a few days off from that pursuit and ….Mark showed up on the family zoom call so I went there.
11 PM — As I said I have gotten encouragement about continuing to be open and public about what I am going through but have also been made aware of moon wobble and mercury retrograde right now which impairs accurate communication. I have been back giving in to my addiction to TV lately. Not to pass judgement, we all relapse and beating myself up about it will not help me get back out of it. When cancer no longer seems so urgent a villain to confront, one’s life slips from the proverbial 4th quadrant — urgent and important — back into the third quadrant — not urgent but important — the one where the real work is done. Not out of the drive to survive in the face of real possible death but out the the drive to actually do the work for the work of creating change in your life, creating a better life. When this journey started for me 2 days before Thanksgiving when I was told I had cancer and then on December 11 when I was told I was stage 4, everything changed. I was in complete utter panic mode. I could no longer be fat dumb and happy. I was dying and had no idea what my life would even mean to anyone let alone to myself. It had no continuity no thread of joy. I had become someone who was simply existing but not living. Cancer was like a wake up call. But now here I am. I can’t say I beat it but I can say that I am half way through my chemo now and that I can and do notice that the cancer in my mouth has receded and I can brush my teeth. The cancer on my skin is retreating and the open sore from the biopsy is smaller and is healing. So my unprofessional diagnosis is I am getting better. They will do a PET CT scan before my next chemo in 3 weeks to see if this chemo is working on the cancer in my bones. I have the numbness in my left foot but there could be a reasonable orthopedic diagnosis for that. I do have mild lumbar spinal stenosis that links nerves in my back to nerves in my foot. One reason I may pursue acupuncture to help stimulate the nerve pathways and open up that energy flow. It worked on my shoulder after a skiing injury. It is not a quick fix — it takes over a year to work. But the oncologist thinks if this problem was due solely to the Vincristine in the chemo cocktail, that I would feel it in both feet and in my fingers as well and I don’t have those symptoms. So here I am at a crossroads again. I am probably getting better, what I have been doing appears to have been helpful. But for the last week I have abandoned a course in miracles and have slipped back into mindless TV watching and even back to that other nameless addiction which I must confront in order to find that elusive joy in my life. Sure I’m tired and need a break but will a break last for the rest of my days. Do I want to die on a break? For now I will take the words of encouragement to heart and take the words of caution about the astrological conditions into account, and leave it here for the time being. I know the hard work is done in the third quadrant — not urgent but important. And that is where I am right now. I can choose to go back to not urgent not important and give in to the addictions or even to the urgent but not important and get all side tracked with things that have to be done but don’t really matter. It’s all right here, right now. There is still much in my past that needs to be explored as it relates to how I have shaped my life and how I will shape my future. There was a story on CBS Sunday Morning this morning about a woman who survived cancer — Leukemia — with a much worse diagnosis than I got. She wrote a book I think I will read. Between Two Kingdoms. Just bought it on Kindle.