Stan the acupuncturist

I went to see an acupuncturist yesterday. Stan. Stan the acupuncturist. Imagine that. 

I went to Stan for help with the neuropathy in my hands and feet, hoping to invite the nerves that may have died to choose rebirth. He put needles in here and there, felt my various pulses, checked my tongue, asked about what I eat -- all those good Chinese medicine things. All seemed copacetic with my chi at that point. I'm thinking he's going to be impressed by my chi, in fact. But he tsked and tutted once he probed pressure points around my shoulders and neck (ai ya! as they say in Chinese -- it hurt). Stan queried me about my activity levels, then informed me that I am getting too much aerobic exercise.

He looked at me kindly, but as he spoke I could tell that he thought he was stating the obvious: "You are supposed to be getting rest." He advised me to run 2 miles instead of 3, to do more yoga, to take more naps, to get back to my meditation practice.

Stan said that the whole idea of Chinese medicine is that below the dantien, the physical center of gravity, one's chi should be strong, grounded. Above the dantien, one's chi should be light, clear, flowing. He says my chi is too heavy above my dantien, and that I'm not helping things by how active I've been, how little I am resting. If energy gets clogged up in one's chest and head, sometimes tumors appear. Also, that heavy energy may be behind the damned nose warts! Sold! That's all I needed to hear.

Resting turns out to be pretty difficult, though, as does making the energy in my shoulders, neck, and head "light and clear." I still live by my to-do list -- I like my list. I am like a happy kid in a marching band, with the music propped in front of her. I'm having a good time, but I'm following the notes, and maybe I am marching more than is good for my upper chi.

It's not like my list is heavy, thoiugh. Today includes "weed garden, pick up petals, water houseplants, meditate, run, call electrician, fix front step, call Elizabeth, go to organic farm." Come on, this makes one's head chi heavy?

How can I be lighter, clearer in my upper chi? Probably not by thinking about it too much, but thinking is one of the melodic themes in the music dangling in front of me -- has been for as long as I can remember.

Anyway, I am working on lightening up my upper body chi. Back to Stan in a couple weeks. Stay tuned; stay light, stay clear. Send upper body chi pointers if you have them.

Full disclosure in closing: It's true that I've stopped meditating regularly since all these twenty-somethings have moved into the house. It's been fun to have them around, but it's harder for me to find quiet time. There's a lot of activity, tidying up, talking, directing traffic. Plus these people are like locusts, except they take longer showers.

first things first

This is the kind of thing one learns only by having chemo: nose hairs grow in more quickly than head hairs. Nose hairs grow to their full length as fast as a chia pet -- then they stop, praise Be. What a mess it would be otherwise.

Though not all my head-hair follicles are visibly at work yet, I now have my full quota of nose hairs. Clearly evolution has conveyed to the body that this is the first order of business: filter the air first -- worry about covering the scalp later.

When they fell, nose hairs stole away like thieves in the night. I never saw one hair on all the kleenices I blew into during chemo. And that's a lot of kleenex, since chemo removes the washer from the nasal faucet. If the hairs didn't come off upon nose-blowing, it leaves me wondering -- did I inhale them? Did they fall off during an air puff over a witticism while I was reading? Are they hither and thither on rugs around the house?

Well. The upshot is that my nose drips more slowly now by virtue of these new plantings on the nasal hill. It still drips, but I can usually catch it in time, if you know what I mean.

While we're surveying the upper acreage, here is a shot of my eyebrows coming in. These hairs are very short, but promising. With the eyebrows it went entirely down to the wire, literally. Until yesterday, there was just one (relatively) long, wiry hair still standing from the old eyebrows. While the new stuff has been growing in, that one hair has been like a grand old mature oak tree you see in a forest, surrounded by spindly maple saplings. Anyway, the old oak fell sometime last night. Now it's all saplings.

Lastly, here is the pate. It's not quite the romantic horizon shot I achieved in the previous post, but this way I can show that there are finally some dark hairs coming in. The new hair is as soft as a duckling, and once you touch it you can't stop. I'm telling you. I just spent five minutes rubbing it back and forth while deciding what to write. Now I feel all peaceful and sleepy. It's like rubbing your blankie when you were a kid.

Soon I'll be writing about our We Could Have but We Didn't Weekend, where we ducked out (more ducks!) of the American Cancer Society We Can Weekend and instead went to Gloucester. Oh! Just lost another few minutes rubbing my head.  Everyone in the house is touching my hair (head hair, not nose) all the time, oohing over its softness. I feel like I could make a pret-ty penny standing out on Main Street, charging people for the chance to rub my head for good luck and comfort.

Except for the cancer thing, I guess, which tends to creep people out.

homebody, incurable, part 2

The kids, Laura, and I were scheduled to take part in the upcoming "We Can Weekend" sponsored by the American Cancer Society. This was going to repair my group experience at Stowe Weekend of Hope, from which I returned feeling acutely aware of my sometimes too solitary nature. I felt kind of like a -- what are some solitary animals? Wikipedia says: leopards, jaguars, almost all spiders, most species of rhinoceros, polar bears (except for mating), the maned sloth. Not much to work with. Certainly nothing maned. At Stowe I felt like a rhino at an elephant party. No offense to the very kind elephants who were enjoying the group experience.

Anyway, the kids were willing to go with us on this weekend designed to support the cancer survivor and her family. It offered groups for, among others, young adult "children," where they could talk about the impact the cancer has had on their own lives. I thought maybe that would be good for the kids, good for me, good for Laura. But as the time approaches, we all feel like doing something unprogrammed as a family might be better. And we already talk about cancer a lot. So we backed out. Homebody, still and again.

One thing, though, would have sent us to the Hell Yes We Can Weekend, homebodiness or no. Laura had an ultrasound on both breasts early this morning; she got called back after her mammogram two weeks ago. We exhaled around 8:30, chests pumping from holding our breaths for ten days. All clear. Her breasts are pretty bulky, so we saw all kinds of things in the ultrasound -- cysts, fat globules, my favorite striped sock, and that missing earring I wrote about in December.

Needless to say, we are relieved, as we had been entertaining some weird fantasies about being the bald and breastless lesbians walking together down Main Street, Farmington. Aside from being scary, painful, and extremely inconvenient, it would have been creepy to have Laura hit with cancer, too.

Despite our relief, Laura confessed that there was a part of her that had been curious to know what I have gone through. There is no thought that is so weird I can't imagine having it cross my own mind, so I understood this. Surely we all hold an innate curiosity about experiences, particularly things that test our mettle. How would we each cope, we wonder, given any conceivable trial that others have faced?

Truth be told, I haven't felt great about my mettle. I had hoped I'd be more of a brick through chemo; less needy of attention and sympathy, less fascinated by symptoms, less anxious about the whole thing. Maybe even more of a rhino, in some ways. The elephant in me came through more than I wanted it to. I like the sociable pachyderm in me, but am not always as accepting of the elephant that is clinging anxiously to the tail in front of it.

Here's an almost pastoral shot of my cranial horizon, hair slowly rising. The furrows in the foreground show you I am smiling.

missing the blog, part 2

I am still missing the blog. It's supposed to be writing therapy for me -- tales of how I am dealing with the cancer, tales that in the telling would help to lighten the load. And it absolutely has done that for me. Now that I am working hard on moving past the cancer, I feel unsure of how to use the blog.

We have a full house for the summer, and perhaps for a whole year, beginning this weekend: beloved first-born, 25-year-old T'ai, is moving back home from Boston and looking for work. He's been accepted into UConn Law School, but can't manage the $54K (!) out-of-state tuition at this point. He's also not entirely sure that law is what he's meant to do. He recently went through the fascinating career testing at the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation (www.jocrf.org), and he's off the charts in several aptitudes (99th percentile in analytical reasoning, English vocab, spatial reasoning and spatial relations, and more).

But what do you do when you were an English major 3 years ago and your aptitude testing says "you should be an artist" or "you should be an architect" or "you should be a doctor"? In terms of law school, the upshot of the report says something like "you'd love law school but might really hate law." Now what? It is painful for me to have him feeling so unsettled and stuck.

For T'ai, Laura, and me, there is a risk of frustrating each other this summer, list-followers that Laura and I are -- and absentminded-professor-in-the-rough that he is (in fact, professor came up for him over and over again, in areas in which he either hasn't studied or else has no interest). T'ai has an amazing mind, but agency and pathways are not his forte. "Find a job" is to him as "straighten out this Rubik's cube -- and no peeking" is to me.

I want to make sure T'ai feels more loved than exasperated with, to enjoy his good company and help him figure out where to from here. I want to guide him without shoving. It is easier aspired to than done. I've been invoking my mom's spirit a lot lately; she was very good at loving people exactly as they were.

Emily, my beloved brother's beloved oldest, has a year-long graduate internship nearby, and is also moving in this weekend! Emily, too, is really good company, but it will at times be a challenge for a 29-year-old to move into a different family culture, with her own routines (e.g., gluten-free) and ours (e.g., wash your dishes right away).

Beloved last-born Yani is home for the summer, working part-time at Nine West and part-time in the shower.

Hello, beloved middle child, Ting! Please visit often, but don't expect the washing machine to be available.

So we are going from an empty nest to a densely populated one, beginning tomorrow.

Grocery donations may be dropped off on the back porch.

And keep your ears open for jobs.

Part of me would like to blog about the adventures we are likely to have, this motley crew of adults in various stages of metamorphosis, but it has been easier to write just about myself because I can't step on my own toes. I'm already going to catch heck for the shower comment.

I'd love to write about my clients, about the practice of counseling itself, but I would have to so distort stories as to make the telling less useful for me. I would spend all my energy disguising identities. That's important, but might make the writing less fun, less rich for me.

And what do I do with the blog that was so alive from November to April, the blog that is buried in wires somewhere out there? Does it just corrode with time, and go down in my own little history as something I needed while I dealt with cancer? If the cancer recurs, do I resurrect the blog, call you all back to see if you want to listen in again?

I am open to ideas. Please send them to paula@paulachu.com

Okay, hair update in closing: peach fuzz on head, a bit in nose, two or three eyelashes. Yani and Laura tell me that I am not allowed to say "bare pud."

missing the blog

I miss writing in the blog as often as I did during active treatment. Cancer's aftermath and potential reappearance are still present much of the time, but repeating that fact in a blog is not as compelling as ruminating about it seems to be in one's mind.

And though daily I take the magnifying mirror to my nose and eyelids (tiny, tiny hairs appearing in both locales), watching nose hairs grow through a blog is not as interesting as seeing that they are gone and that you can temporarily see my brain.

I'm running again, turtle pace. Not like turtles when they are trying to get away from you, but like turtles when they are strolling along taking their sweet time. Today Laura and I "ran" my loop until I got dizzy and needed to walk for a bit. At first I thought, "Say, is this the 'runner's high' wot I heard tell about?" And then I realized that it was merely lightheadedness, and that if I explored the phenomenon any longer I would have to lie down in the cemetery (which is where this sensation occurred), and that just seemed like really bad ju-ju. So we walked through the cemetery and then started up again.

Yep, my loop goes into the cemetery, to the back, along the river, and then out again. There were times during chemo when I thought maybe this wasn't a good idea; one passes a stunning number of graves of women (mostly) around my age who have died in the last few years, and the ruminating can sometimes begin. But avoiding the cemetery seemed like a poor option, too; a coward's choice. I want to feel as free as possible, and that includes being able to bear some of the feelings that come with passing those graves.

I would just rather not have to lie down with them.

Never say die! so to speak. Tomorrow we tackle the loop again.

hair it comes

The first visible, single hair growing back is the wispy, blond one that has grown out of my right (facial) cheek since I was a kid. This one hair is so light and thin that I don't usually notice it until it's almost an inch long. That's an alarming length of hair, considering its location. Anyone else have one of these?

Laura spotted it while I was waxing philosophical in the kitchen last night. I thought she was listening very closely to me, absorbed by my story about yoga class. Turns out she was checking out the hair. Hair is now such a scarce commodity that I am considering letting this one grow till it's about shoulder-length.

So, yes, I've started taking yoga again, something I do now and then. I outed myself from the get-go when the instructor asked us to speak up about recent surgeries or limitations. This was a week after my treatments had ended, and I briefly mentioned the mastectomies and the chemo.

Yesterday's class was great until the instructor gave her ritual closing reading. Last night's was about how (I am quoting as exactly as I can) "our society is experiencing an epidemic of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc. because people have failed to attend to their primary hunger for spirituality and relationship." That made me feel pretty un-zen and shitty, suddenly.

There I was, hairless (well, I didn't know about the one hair at that point) and in a meditation pose, feeling exposed and blamed for having failed to attend to my hunger for spirituality and relationship. I continued to sit quietly, because saying what I felt at that moment did seem to be kind of non-spiritual and not terribly relational. I rolled up my mat along with everyone else, and left with a quiet "thank you."

But I drove off feeling hurt. I was surprised by her insensitivity as well as my own sensitivity. 

Thank goodness Laura spotted the hair while I was telling my story when I got home. It totally shifted the mood when we saw that silly hair. Here comes hair! Praise be. I went to bed feeling kind of spiritual after all.

no fond mammaries

You may recall that I loooved the sedative concoction they gave me when they put in my port before chemo. It made me feel so relaxed that I came to understand that relatively speaking I move through life as anxious as a mouse that's been dropped into a snake cage. This was a startling realization for someone who prides herself on being pretty steady, grounded, and, well, relaxed.

Here is the port where it sat for months in its subterranean position. You can just make out the tube that snakes (more snakes!) up and over the clavicle, above the port, on its way to my jugular vein.

I was awake during the whole procedure, back on that fine January day. While I was being operated on, I passed the time admiring the ceiling tiles and the metal tracks along which they can maneuver various large machines. Here you can see how lovely and interesting the tracks are.

Given how pleasant that first experience was, I had very much been looking forward to the surgical procedure during which the port would be removed and they would give me those yummy sedatives again. In January, the procedure and the drugs only lasted about 20 minutes, but a roller coaster is only about 3 minutes, and it's still worth it for the thrill, right?

Well. There was a different doctor this time. One who doesn't like the patient to be in the way of his work, I think. When he arrived, he shook my hand, and said to the nurse, "Start with the Ativan." When I asked the nurse why I needed that, she said, "Dr. X likes to have patients start with Ativan. You'll feel it in a second." I guess maybe after that I got the happy drugs, but I don't remember the next, um, several hours. Laura says that in the recovery room I sawed wood for an hour and a half. Now and then we would converse. Converse? I have no memory of any of it. I was puzzled to find an appointment card in my bag a few days later. Apparently I had discussed and agreed upon a time for a post-op check up. And how did I get out of the building?

I do recall that right before we left, the nurse observed me scratching something on my wrist, and she said, "You're itchy. Take this Benadryl." Ohhhkaaaaay, I must have said, in a slo-mo voice. I was a rag doll. All floppy. Too floppy to enjoy being floppy.

Laura drove me home (this is my best guess) and I slept for FIVE hours. At one point, Laura brought me up a bowl of cereal. I must have asked for something to eat? I no longer trust my mammary (ha). I fell asleep 3 times while eating the cereal, and woke up when the spoon clanged against the bowl.

Here is the port, sitting on the kitchen counter, having served its purpose well. But there are no fond memories of its removal for p. No memories at all.

Fun chemo trivia for the day, just to end with something educational. Here is a shot up my nose. As you can see, I have no nose hairs left. Unfortunately, it is difficult for me to capture this phenomenon by camera, as the flash can only penetrate so far up before the cavern darkens. But when you look all the way up my nose, you can actually see my brain.