None of these things have happened yet

Staying focused and free

As I progress through treatments, one challenge I’ve noted is being tempted to get ahead of things. Without the preoccupation of weekly, sometimes daily medical visits, I tend to repeatedly ask myself questions:

What side effects will the next treatment bring?

Will my next scan be clear?

Will I start working again next year or ever?

Will I be alive in five years?

Adding insult to injury, I glom onto the patterns established over the past year and am certain they are forever patterns. 

Between April and June, I underwent two major surgeries on my torso and a wide excision on my right forearm, all of which presented major physical hurdles: pain, lack of mobility, physical disfigurement. 

I stopped working. The financial hit is one thing. The loss of a portion of my identity hits harder. I wonder if I’ll get back to work and be able to meaningfully contribute to an organization.

The immunotherapy presents longer term and insidious side effects. Of course, I am grateful for the treatments. Still, I am not gleeful as my immune system is unleashed to attack my thyroid gland and my joints. What else does this drug have in store for me?

Now I’m in a psychological long game. The starkness of the mortality rate of stage 4 metastatic melanoma weighs heavy some days. Add to that the unremarkable process of aging, and I am pissed. How unfair is it that I got sick at this time in my life! I really believed that doing all the right things would make me immune to this calamity. I understand that I am not going back to my 20s or even 40s and 50s. I would’ve appreciated more of a taste of my 60s, however, before being whisked away to the ER. 

These things are all objectively true, and so therefore, I tend to believe the future will unfold in a similar pattern. My fears center around the inevitability and hopelessness of change, loss, death. 

Can I change that script about my fears?

One day as I was in the Headspace meditation app, the nice Headspace man encouraged me to consider that the things I was fearing had not yet happened. Instead of being fearful at that moment, I could be calm, breathe, be happy even. 

I connected with other tools beyond breathing. 

Two months before sashaying into the ER in 2021, I had taken a two-month unpaid leave from work. It was glorious! Yoga, gardening, reading, working out, napping. Activities I loved and never had enough time for while I was working. 

Me in the garden pre ER. I’m clutching eggs from our flock in my left hand.

Before my leave, I had picked up the book Fear by the late Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. I read the book as part of my meditative time every morning during my leave. At the time, reading the book was helpful, evocative. Little did I know how profound its impact would be in the months to come. How I would return to its message.

My fear of death can seem oppressive. Thich Nhat Hanh encouraged me not to push the fear away but to instead engage with it. One method is to reflect on the five remembrances:

1. I am of the nature to grow old. I cannot escape growing old.

2. I am of the nature to have ill health. I cannot escape having ill health. 

3. I am of the nature to die. I cannot escape death. 

4. All that is dear to me, and everyone I love, are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them. 

5. I inherit the results of my acts of body, speech, and mind. My actions are my continuation. 

It was easy for me to memorize the five, and I found myself talking about them with friends and family. At first it seemed morbid, then fascinating, and finally familiar. We all know the bromide: Be Present. The five remembrances get to something deeper by helping me to understand roadblocks in my way to living more fully today.

I won’t ever banish my fears completely. However, befriending them removes some of their power to harm and helps me to live now with more ease.