Healing

What is healing? How does it work and why does one person heal and another die? Great questions to be asking if you or someone you know has been diagnosed with a serious illness. When I was a kid, I remember having a particularly bad cold. I was out of school for 4 or 5 days, and not feeling much better. Until my mom brought me a chocolate doughnut. I don't know what was in it, but after eating it I felt immediately better! Was I ever really sick? Maybe I was depressed and the sugar knocked me out of it. What ever it was, it worked. For years afterwards, if I was sick, it was the only thing that would make me feel better! Imagine a 48 year old man begging his partner, to drive to Winchell's for the cure to his cold. It doesn't work! Especially, with my partner who is fascinated by nutrition. You don't need sugar! In fact that is the worst thing you can do right now! Damn logic! Still when he would go to work, I'd sneak out and get my chocolate doughnut and suddenly feel fine! It is my personal placebo effect! The thing is, that I am old enough and smart enough to know that stuffing my inner child with doughnuts won't cure my cancer.

So back to the question. My new friend Csaba, who is a member of a group that I call my Survivor Team, suggested that I read "Love, Medicine and Miracles" by Bernie S. Siegel, M.D. For the last week I have been devouring the book. In many ways it has been like readyin about myself on it's pages over and over again.  For me the following was the most telling:

(Dr Segal is speaking of a patient that is not healing. He has been thinking that some people don't actually want to get better) "One evening when I first began to understand this, I happened to be in the room as one of my partners was discussing treatment with Harold a middle-aged color-cancer patient and his wife. I could hear his resistance to every option. Finally I broke in and said, "I don't think you really want to live."

His wife was enraged. But Harold himself spoke up. "Wait a minute." he said. "He's absolutely right. My father's ninety and senile and in a nursing home, and I never want to be like my father, so it's perfectly all right if I die of cancer now."

Shocking, isn't it? I saw myself in that paragraph. I had suspected that my disease was trying to tell me something, and reading this page, I realized what it was. I had grown tired with the life that I had been living. I wanted more, much more, but didn't know what and had not had the guts to really sit down, be quite and figure it out. I lived out of a since of frustration and inerta each day. Coming home from work and watching TV in order to avoid the boredom and still aware that these actions were boring me to death. When I read that I asked myself "Ran, do you want to die?" the answer came "No, I just don't want this." (Interesting fact that for so many men and women, cancer hits around mid-life). It had nothing to do with my relationship. I love my partner and feel blessed every day just to have him in the same room with me. What had happened though was this: throughout my 30's I always felt like I was on the fast track. My career was, if not taking off, at least continually moving forward. It was fun, I traveled. I was creative. I felt alive. Until I failed at it! Loosing job after job, until one day, I made a decision to start all over again. I went to school to learn to do upholstery (more for fun that a career) and became a barista at Starbucks. I liked Starbucks and suck with it moving quickly up to store manager. Then I felt stuck again. It wasn't creative, fun. I wasn't traveling. I then got fired! After a few months I then took a job in retail management. I love the company, but when forced to be honest with myself, can't see myself making a long term commitment to them unless I could figure out a way to safisfy some of my basic needs I will upon completion of Radiation, no doubt, return to work, while I research and figure out what the next step is for me. I still have to make a living.. I may not know how it is going to play out, but I want to create! I want to travel and I want to feel myself moving forward in the world. For years I thought it was about becoming rich. It's not about possessions. It is about waking up in the morning, rejoicing that you are alive and get to be part of all of this! In terms of money, I want to be at a place where Ken never stresses out about our finances. I don't know exactly what all of this will take, but I do know this. The ultimate cure is riding on my figuring it all out.

Reading Dr Siegel's book has been eye opening. That there are people who don't want to live. I was always taught that the instinct for self preservation was our strongest. And yet when we get tired and feel stuck, we can make ourselves sick and even die. So many people have told me that I am brave lately. It never felt like it. I knew the moment that I heard the diagnosis, that I would survive. What I didn't know is that I wouldn't be saving that life. I see clearly now that the life that I am to save has yet to be revealed to me. I remember being prepped for surgery. An elderly Irish Priest came by and offered to pray with/for me. After he left my prep area something strange happened. My body grew hot and I could feel energy moving thru me. I knew then that that energy was God's healing energy (no doubt increased by the team of people praying for me at that exact moment and you guys know who you are). I have written a fair amount about prayer in my blog, but now understand something else. That energy, is the same I felt all throughout my 30's and every time in my life that things were working especially the first time I saw Ken across a room. I think that just maybe that energy is God, or God's path or what ever you want to call it. Allowing yourself to be divinely guided. Allowing yourself to be open to the help of others in the form of prayer. Allowing yourself to be open to love and open to giving love. That to me is healing.

It's funny to me that we are called survivors. It sound like something you'd say about a antique piece of furniture. "This desk has been in my family for five generations. It survived Hurricane Katrina." I think the reality is we are more than survivors. We have gone thru a metamorphosis! We are changelings in the best possible sense of the word. I don't have an exact phrase for it, but I can tell you that I am different today. Today I choose life. I also get to choose what that life will be. So now when people say to me "you're brave", I have one thing to say. "You're right."