I have been blessed to have excellent therapists over the course of my adult life. Their advice and wisdom have made all the difference, across the board, not just in regards to whatever particular issue I was trying to abate. Today I’m thinking of Judith Prebluda, and her excellent metaphor for life in general: we are each of us driving a bus of some sort, filled with personifications of our worries, fears, and younger selves.
My bus is a short bus. (If you want to envision your group vehicle as a stretch limo or a Humvee, feel free. This metaphor is mine.) My passengers do not know how to sit quietly, wear seat belts, or prevent themselves from taking the steering wheel. Yes, this makes me feel challenged or even disabled sometimes. Judith spent years reassuring me that this internal chaos is perfectly typical. Very few, if any, people are piloting a psychological vehicle filled with Pleasantville extras.
Last time I wrote an entry, I said (bitterly) that the worst thing about cancer is the uncertainty – and that the hardest part is counterbalancing that uncertainty with just the right amount of knowledge. After being diagnosed with shingles, I no longer have any certain idea who came along for this ride.
The neurological and cerebral side effects keep getting a little bit worse: the neuropathy, the muscle pain and weakness, the insomnia, the thick mental fog. Now in addition, I do have intermittent surges of nausea. Most afternoons I need a nap just like a toddler. Sometimes I feel a deep unmanageable feeling of coldness radiating outwards, starting in my bones. I’m experiencing the most typical side effects, though they aren’t ‘in order’ or ‘as expected.’ That’s okay, all things considered, because people with experience gave me a heads up.
The shingles, however … no one explained that phenomenon until I was in the doctor’s office with my sleeve pulled up. Now I’m left to wonder what other diseases might spawn a sequel. The doctor asked me, with studied casualness, if I’ve ever had MRSA. I told the truth – yes, I have, and I’ve also had mono. Will those viruses make a comeback, too?
If you buy into the ‘life vehicle’ metaphor (there’s some psychological term for this theory, I’m sure) every time something significant occurs, some part of yourself splits off and becomes frozen in time. That part joins the chorus of all the other splinter-parts, the bus gains a new occupant, and the journey gets a little more complicated. The only part of that process that’s unique, or different, for me is the instigator: illness. For every serious, chronic, and/or disruptive illness I’ve ever had, there’s a person-shaped incarnation of that experience riding along on my bus.
Crohn’s Disease is a high school sophomore, a semi-manic fifteen-year-old who starves herself to control her symptoms. Mononucleosis is a first-semester college freshman, struggling to keep her newly adult life on track. MRSA is a broken-hearted near-newlywed who has to trade a romantic trip to New Orleans for several days in the hospital. (I’ve already introduced Anxiety, Chicken Pox, and Encephalitis. They’re hanging out in their seats, back there, somewhere, too.)
I’ve also got the same, more typical splinter-parts of me as other people: those created by graduations, by marriage, by career achievements and sexual experiences. But those ‘parts’ of me aren’t coming forward to the front of the bus right now. The other clique is crowding around me, offering their opinions, grabbing for control whenever I get discouraged or worried.
In fact, this cacophony is so loud and distracting, it’s drowned out some very good news: that the first three-month CAT scan came back clean and clear. There’s no recurring cancer growing in my abdomen, and no new cancer rearing its head anyplace else. This milestone is amazing: it means the chemo is working, it means all of this strife and suffering means something immediate. It also means that, for the next three months, I’ve got one less weight on my shoulders.
Yes, I’ve got shingles and all the emotional/psychological gunk it’s stirred up alongside, but in the grander and present scheme of things, I’m good. I don’t want to lose sight of that. I need to learn how to focus and make use of that kind of news: to be here in the now and do what is necessary to heal this malady, to survive this experience, more or less intact, even as I splinter once more.
medicinal sausage 