steering my little canoe

It's day 11, and I had expected smoother waters by now.

I keep trying to identify what kind of sick this is -- it's unfamiliar, and the mind wants to fit it into a schema. Is it like the flu? Like a hangover? Is this what the very old feel? None of these schema work, though there are elements of each, I think. I'm guessing about very old age.

I get winded going up a flight of stairs, but it's not my lungs or my muscles. I feel like I'm coming down with something that's going to be really fierce, but the fever never appears. My head feels heavy and achy, but it's not a headache I recognize.

Bone pain; that's new. My tongue is rotting and turning white. My thumbs and big toes hurt, just on the skin at the knuckles. Those symptoms don't fit anywhere.

In my little mind I am developing a new schema to understand chemo sick. How often do you get to develop a new schema? None too often. Everything gets compared to something else, squished into an existing schema -- even if it doesn't quite fit, as in "it tastes like perfume," "it tastes like oily cardboard."

I don't know what to compare this to. It's an interesting place to sit.

Last night Laura and I sat by a crackling fire and talked. I came to realize that my sadness is right under the surface much of the time. I fight it back, as it scares me to plumb its depths. I am not sure what's in there -- all the recent losses, from parents to breasts? Or the losses of all time, losses sustained by the human family? Is it the loss of youth, a body that for so long took such good care of me? Is it just plain death, the ultimate loss? Or just that I've lost my rhythm. I'm not sure.

I'm not depressed, which is great and good. But I guess I am sad, underneath. I feel torn about airing it out -- in my mind, here, or anywhere.

As I write, I realize that I am not unhappy, though I am sad. I don't know how to explain what that means, but it is true.

Whatever this chemo-sick is, it is such that I am feeling like I may need to take a leave from my practice for awhile. I really had hoped not to have to do this. I don't want to be a hermit for the next 3 months, but I also don't want to under-serve my clients. They need me to be fully present -- that's the main thing that happens in therapy, in my view: you bear compassionate witness, for real, to whatever matters most to the client. If that really, really happens, growth just takes place. It's like providing good soil, sunlight, and water. Growth will occur. But I am not sure I have enough light to spare right now.

The idea of sacrificing the practice while I focus on taking care of myself chafes. The shape, the pace, the size of my work was just right before cancer came flooding into the flow of my life. But am I supposed to be using this as an opportunity to make some kind of change in my life? Am I supposed to be undergoing a sea change? Really? I kind of liked where my canoe was going.

Laura is encouraging me to stop the practice, even to take the bulk of the summer off to get my strength completely back after chemo ends. There is a part of me that likes this idea, but I'm scared to do that, too. My work not only brings a decent income, it is part of my identity. What an effort to rebuild and reshape both things. And what about the clients I'm working with now?

On a different note, at supper last night Laura came up with a new plan for eating during chemo, and it's been helpful. She encourages me to picture a fuel tank, to listen to my body to determine the percentage of fullness or emptiness, then to refuel accordingly. I need to give up on fuel tasting good, and just act according to what the gauge indicates.

We're still working on embracing this new schema for understanding food, apparently. I just announced to her, "La, I think my fuel tank is empty." She said, "Okay. Let's take your car when we go to Whole Foods. We can get gas on the way."