Down Days

Don’t let anybody kid you! There are lots of down days on this journey. Yesterday was a particularly tough chemo day. The nausea was bad and I spent a good chunk of the afternoon and evening chatting with Ralph on the great white telephone!

Surgery, radiation, chemo… they each take there toll. Recurrences and metastases contribute their own special horror. Add to this the stress of scans and blood tests, the emotional rollercoaster of fear, frustration, anger, and despair alternating with relief, joy, peace, and hope… well you get the picture. It’s tough on survivors, and just as tough on their loved ones.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m as positive as the next person when it comes to living with this beast. I think the right attitude and the “will to live” are important. But so is honesty and authenticity. Part of the reality of this disease is that it knocks the stuffing out of you!! Some days are really dark and tearful. We need mechanisms to release our sadness, fear, anger, and despair. It is not a sign of weakness, of losing, or of giving up. It is a sign that we are human, and an acknowledgement that letting go and release are part of the journey.

Music, meditation, and movies can be helpfully “cathartic”…
Catharsis : a Greek word meaning "purification" or "cleansing" derived from the ancient Greek kathairein "to purify, purge," and adjective katharos "pure or clean".

My colon cancer friends will appreciate that this word has also found its way into the medical lexicon as a bowel cleanser or purgative, cathartic. But I’m thinking of it more in terms of the emotional cleansing, or catharsis, that can happen when we are moved through compassion by tragedy, death, love, redemption, hope, or any of the other "really real" things in life.

TTFN… Rob; in Vancouver

“I cry a lot. My emotions are very close to my surface. I don't want to hold anything in so it festers and turns into pus - a pustule of emotion that explodes into a festering cesspool of depression.” Nicolas Cage