Chapter 16: This Witch is Healing Her Cancer
Drums Keep Pounding Rhythm to the Brain....
Monday – Aug 19, 2024
Checked my portal this morning; gobsmacked to see that I have a sigmoidoscopy and a pet scan booked 2 days apart. I thought I had the sigmoid this week and the pet scan next week and I’m pretty sure that was what was originally scheduled, and it was changed. Then again, it’s been a hell of a Mercury retrograde and I might be losing my mind. I am confused as to why I need a sigmoidoscopy AND a Pet Scan and am beyond frustrated with trying to reach someone to ask why. Dr. V ordered the pet scan for me. Dr O the cancer surgeon I first met with, who would later took out my appendix, ordered the sigmoidoscopy.
A sigmoidoscopy is a partial colonoscopy for the lower colon to determine if the radiation worked. Prep is the same as a colonoscopy (a total nightmare), they don’t put you out for the procedure, they blow your belly up with gas, and thread a tube up you. The point being to determine if the radiation worked. I was told they didn’t sedate people for the procedure. I was also told if I had to have a Zanax for the procedure, they’d give me one.
A Pet scan scans the whole body, will also determine if the radiation worked, AND equally important if it’s spread anywhere. I’ve had the Pet scan, it’s way easier than either the colonoscopy or the sigmoidoscopy, meaning I don’t have to destroy my insides with the harsh of prep. Some doctors are starting to use clear liquids – patient drinks nothing but clear liquids for a certain number of days - before the colon/sigmoid thingey. I hear it’s equally effective. Last time I saw Dr V back in July, I asked him for a Pet Scan. I said, “I want, I need, my whole body to be scanned,” and he called it in for me.
…..PET) scans can be used to stage colorectal cancer and check for cancerous cells that have spread outside of the colon. PET scans are often used in conjunction with computed tomography (CT) scans, and the combination is called PET/CT imaging. PET/CT imaging has several advantages over colonoscopies, including:
Non-invasive
PET/CT doesn't require cleansing or distending the colon, which some people find more acceptable than colonoscopies
PET/CT is more sensitive than laboratory tests, including tumor markers, which makes the technique more reliable for surveillance in CRC patients when compared to colonoscopy plus computerized tomography…
Tuesday - Aug 20 2024
I tried once again to find out why a sigmoidoscopy and a pet scan were scheduled a day apart. Phone call after phone call and leaving messages that have not been answered. I went to my portal and cancelled the sigmoidoscopy. I feel relieved, like oh- thank-goddess-I-did-this-for-myself. I have been going back and forth with my own knowing that a sigmoidoscopy and a pet scan a day a part makes no sense. I’ve been back and forth knowing that a pet scan will give me all the info a sigmoidoscopy will give me, and more, without the nightmare of prep. Friends tell me getting the sigmoidoscopy can’t hurt, and it will give me more information. Well, it certainly isn’t going to give me more info than a Pet Scan.
—
Trusting in my truth. The problem with being raised to believe I was stupid (the exact words – you have a great deal of charm and very little else) is it makes it incredibly difficult to trust my judgement. When I make a decision for me, based on my own judgement, that runs counter to the status quo, I get triggered. Then I’m following Virgil through Dante’s hell for a while.
There’s something about showing up for the sigmoidoscopy that’s tied up with being – “a good girl.” My choice to navigate my treatment makes me “a bad girl.” This bad girl is not putting my gut through another colonoscopy/sigmoidoscopy prep. Radiation did some serious damage to my body and the jury is still out on whether it worked on the cancer or not. Ergo – a pet scan. I have spent the entire spring and summer committed to reclaiming my health and it’s not been easy going. Every day I am more sharply aware of the damage done by radiation. Traditional cancer treatment severely underplays the side effects of both radiation and chemo and the drugs they prescribe to “counter” (I use the word loosely) the side effects.
Wed - Aug 21 2024
O’Connor called wanting to know why I hadn’t shown up for the sigmoidoscopy.
“I cancelled that on-line,” I said. “Clicked the red x next to the word.
“That doesn’t work,” the booker said.
“Perhaps you should tell people,” I said.
Feeling incredibly defensive, I launched into why I cancelled, which did not interest her at all, because she was no doubt panicking with filling the spot, otherwise the surgeon might kill her because he came to O’Connor in Delhi from his home base in Cobleskill.
“Yes, yes, yes,” she said and hung up.
Time for my modified citrus pectin.
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Last I saw Dr V., in July, when he said he’d order the pet scan for me, I told him I’d need a Zanax, just like the last time I had a pet scan. He was fine with that and told the nurse to call it in. The script was not called in. As I was out of THC, I had to go the dispensary in Oneonta and since the dispensary is right down the road from Fox Cancer Care, I figured to stop by and ask Beautiful Katie to pass on the message re: my script for 2 Zanax. You can’t get anyone on the phone anyway and this way I knew it’d get to Dr V. and I could skip the frustration dialing, re-dialing, and of waiting for the return call that never comes. Commercials on T.V. for medications that say, “Talk to your doctor about…..” make me hysterical.
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Friday August 23, 2024
Drove to Cooperstown for Pet Scan. It’s been a year of this and I am excited to see if what I’ve been doing and the radiation worked. Intake nurse informs me I shouldn’t have eaten. I didn’t know that. No one told me. Another nurse takes me to the pet scan trailer to discuss with the expert pet scan person whether or not the scan is going to happen because I ate something. It is not.
“I been waiting on this scan since March. I am NOT waiting till xmas for another.”
I am re-scheduled for the following week: Thursday August 29th.
“It’s very unusual that we have cancellations,” the nurse told me. “Cancellations usually come in on Tuesdays.”
Saturday - Aug 24, 2024
Woke up low. Not getting the pet scan hit me hard. What’s going on inside my body? I don’t know if what I’m doing is working or not. And what if it’s not? And what if it is? This has been going on for a fucking year and stick a fork in me I’m done. I can see the busted down see-saw, one side on the ground, the other in the air. There are mornings like that, when I wake up and I can’t stop crying, and I just don’t see the point anymore. I met Cathy when I moved up here – she’s the one who stood by me during the appendectomy, the one who said, shall I get you some clean underwear. I wish everyone the kind of emotional support I get from her. So, I’m standing in my living room thinking – fresh hell my ass, this is old hell – when the door opens. We don’t lock our doors around here – we just walk in.
“I had a feeling I should come by,” Cathy said, and I dissolved in her arms.
Jaimie, Cathy’s boyfriend, came by later and the three of us sat and talked. Sharing from the heart – the good, the bad, and the ugly - I honestly think one of the top five experiences any of us can have is being seen and heard. Jaimie and Cathy are conscious people, they don’t have to fix another person’s upset. They know that in the witnessing is the healing.
Sunday - Aug 25th 2024
I slept like the dead last night after yesterday’s visit with Cathy and Jaimie and I woke up changed. I’d the sense of being done with the type of emotional breakage I’d had the day before. That kind of breakage is its own world with its own kind of gravity, sucking you down variety of nasty, stinking worm holes.
A friend of mine texts, she needs to talk. A little background. Her eye-ball came unmoored a couple of months ago, it crossed down towards her nose, and it was the strangest thing. Truly getting old is not for the faint of heart. My friend has been to every ophthalmologist and neuro-ophthalmologist, between Albany and New York City. They don’t know what it is, and their recommendation was for her to wear a patch on the crossed eye, which she’s been doing.
I knew something was up because she’d been getting a whole lot more tests, but I did not expect her to say, she had small cell lung cancer. They’d scheduled her for a pet scan in three weeks and would it be possible for her to switch pet scan appointments with me. She would take my appt on Friday, Aug 23rd and I would take hers on Friday Sept 13th. My initial response was I can’t possibly do that, but the more I thought about it……“Of course I’ll change with you,” I said. There is no cancer more aggressive than small cell lung cancer.
“My nurse navigator is Regina,” she said. “I’ll call her Monday.”
“You have the best nurse navigator you can possibly have,” I told her.
—
I really miss Regina. What a difference she made in my life what with setting up and cancelling appointments. Anyway, I called her even though it was Sunday to let her know I’d change pet scans with my friend. Monday morning at 7:20 am, I checked my portal, and Regina had made the change for me. She also rescheduled the appt that I was supposed to have with Dr V this week to Monday Sept 16th, which is perfect because then we can go over the results of the pet scan from Sept 13th.
I left her a voice mail - “If I had a plane I would write across the sky in letters, Regina Rules!”
Tuesday Aug 27 2024
I woke up happy on Monday. Did a hands on reiki for a beloved friend and how exciting was that!? Have a combo (reiki and a reading) booked for Friday! My readings have never been so powerful and I am careful to gauge my energy because I am no longer willing to deplete myself, for clients, for friends, for anybody. I woke up happy today, too. Even with everything going on during the past 2 weeks, I’ve been easing back into the sacred - tapping, affirmations, meditation, gratitude list, a prosperity workshop - rather than let the worm hole suck me down.
I’m remembering how much I love being a witch; I’m remembering the overwhelmingly profound and undeniable sacred experiences I’ve had in my life. I am floored by the ugly, bitter, resentment I’ve been carrying in my body. I have been to that place of why me and not….oh, I can think of so many evil people. My friend’s husband went to pay respects at the funeral of a mutual friend’s son. The wife looked at my friend’s husband and said - “I don’t understand why my son, who had so much promise, had to die, while your son who has nothing to offer is still alive…”
When my friend told me that story, I was appalled, not surprised because I knew the woman in question. I now know that I have the same ugly and bitter that the woman who lost her son had, in my head. I’ve been spewing resentment over my situation and other’s good fortune - it’s been on a constant loop in my head. Not exactly a pleasant awareness but I also know I can change and I’m willing to change and I have the bandwidth for it now. I can see, I can think outside of being a cancer patient, which before now was utterly impossible.
Quite honestly I have never loved myself more.
Live loud, love fierce, and suffer no fools. Kat x0x0
Art: Niamh Flanagan
Very good stream-of-consciousness writing with interesting perspectives. Thanks for posting.
Big love to you, Kat! ❤️