I've been home a couple days now and it is good to start forgetting about the hospital experience. The cancer ward is a hard place to feel happy in because there is the presence of death hanging about the place. Thankfully I've felt no sense of that for myself. Well maybe I did when all I knew was that I had leukemia but that I didn't know what type or the severity of it. Can I really say I've been lucky? No, "lucky" would be no disease at all. Fortunate, perhaps, if I had to have any leukemia, then, hairy cell leukemia is probably the one with the greatest recovery rate. This single fact has allowed me to keep my head up. I won't allow myself any self-pity. Hey, I've got things going my way now. I've turned over a new leaf, so to speak. What's on the other side of a new leaf, anyway? Never have understood that expression. So many expressions are born of a different time and technology that we use them without knowing the context within which they fit. Strike while the iron is hot.
Today I will go to the doctor's office for a blood test and consultation. Of course, I'm hoping for an improvement in my white blood cells. As I'm still taking antibiotics, and the number of infection fighting cells are down, I really have very little natural immunity. I'd like to see that my body is starting to defend itself, i.e. getting well.
Alas, when the blood results come in, I'm not showing any improvement. Geez, do I need to visualize better or pray more accurately? See, its occured to me lately that simple prayer is not enough. Everybody says they are praying for me. But look at it this way... You have too opposing armies of religious fanatics, both praying fervantly that God, Buddha, Allah or Jehovah delivers them from evil and that they win the battle. Who wins? Both are praying for victory. Simple. The army that prays better! That is the only explanation I can come up with. The Book of Human Tragedy is littered with stories of prayers unanswered....men who didn't come home from war, wives who died in childbirth, sons who were lost at sea, etc. Can't we only conclude that the prayers weren't good enough? Or maybe God is hard of hearing and it's the volume level of the prayer that counts. Is that why the Bulls always win the championship? They certainly have the most vociferous and whining of fans.
Well, regardless of the mechanics of effective praying, the white cell count poses no problem to Dr. Thai who reminds me that this will take time. He is encouraged that my platelet count is up. It is almost to the low end of normal now. Thank God for small favors then. I'll work on this praying angle. Seriously though, I'm spending time considering how best to heal myself with the proper techniques of centering my attention. Early on in the chemotherapy I realized that ignoring the discomfort in my arm was not the way to make myself "whole". My sense of well being needs a left arm too. I thought by ignoring it, I could place the rest of my focus on the bodily feeling that was uninjured and therefore, feel good. Instead I found that if I accepted the pain, drew it into myself, so to speak, that it moderated it, and in time, while meditating, I could feel fine, integrating the feelings into a whole. It was like using feedback. When you type, or swing a golf club or walk down stairs, you are constantly using the feelings of the muscles to send messages back to your consciousness. When you choose not to pay attention to this muscular feedback, you must rely on the habits of learning to accomplish a task. In this case, direct conscious feedback produces the most feeling in my arm, and by focusing on the feeling, the pain diminishes. Get it?
Dr. Thai has given me the green light to be outside. No gardening, or wallowing in the mud. No rooms full of coughing people. Still no fresh foods, these should be cooked to be safe. I'm also taking medicine for yeast infection. These considerations are mainly born of the style of treatment. The 2Cda chemical kills both good and bad white cells, so these precautions and affects are the result of this.
With each passing day I'm regaining some freedom from the chains of this afflcition. It's time to regain a measure of my former life.
July 16th
