In Praise of Slowness

I've been thinking about Mindfulness and picked up a book from the library this week called "In Praise of Slowness" by Carl Honore (2004), which provides a thoughtful discussion about how our lives have speeded up, how we try to "save time" and are often "time-poor". I have attended several courses about Mindfulness while I have been recovering, which is all about attempting to remain in the present moment and not thinking about what is ahead or behind us; after all, the past is gone and the future we are imagining probably won't happen as we imagine it. This is a type of meditation which I have found useful to calm my mind a bit and stop certain thoughts going round in circles. 
After I first went back to work, I often found myself thinking "how am I going to get through today?".  The answer has been varied, but at first I found it absorbing to spend time in my tiny back garden after work, and to plant and nuture vegetable seeds.  I think it basically gave me something physical to do which was not too strenuous and did not require any detailed thinking, but was absorbing enough to reduce whirling thoughts about my illness. 

I have since expanded the gardening a little bit by volunteering at a small local patch of community garden, and through this met some very nice people and taken advantage of a few opportunities that would otherwise not have presented themselves; for example, a group of us were asked to go along to Hampton Court Flower Show to take part in a photo-shoot for a national newspaper.

I really appreciated and enjoyed the day, which enabled us to wander around the show gardens and talk to the designers and exhibitors before the Flower Show opened to the public.  I seem to have digressed a bit.  The point I was thinking about which I have found to be true is that in our world of "buy what you want when you want it" I have found infinitely more pleasure in watching my own peas and strawberries grow than just getting them from a shop and I really appreciate their smell and taste and all the more considering the hard work that goes into looking after them; fighting a battle against the British summer weather, either too hot or too wet, as well as pigeons, slugs, snails, mice etc.  In this way I have tried to slow down my thinking and as a bonus side-effect manage to produce a small amount of food for myself.   I don't think anyone has ever been as excited about a pea as I was when I saw my first pea pod ripening in that Spring a couple of years ago.  In a good vegetable year (not last year, unfortunately) I am able to have something on my plate almost every day that I have grown myself, it may be a few lettuce leaves, some mint or chives, a handful of blackcurrants or some lovely juicy strawberries or tomatoes.  I enjoy them one by one and really it has made a wonderful addition to my life.

Words and Mental Images

I was thinking about how my life was before cancer (BC) and after the diagnosis (AD). At one of my first meetings of the Healing Journey, we had a discussion with a clinical hypnotherapist. He explained to us that even if we see an image of something that unnerves us or causes us stress, the body reacts instinctively to that image and by-passes the conscious thought pathway; for instance, if you hate spiders and see a picture of one, there are physical (even if undetected consciously) changes in the body which react to stress and ultimately prepare us for the "fight or flight" reflex.
By even thinking about how I would use the initials BC or AD in this blog as mentioned above, possibly my body is also reacting to those words with instinctive revulsion and upset, bringing to mind as they do the horrible all-to-near-the-surface memories of my illness.  From now on I have consciously decided to re-brand them Before my time as Cinderella (not going to the ball, stuck at home feeling lonely and upset) and after my time in Disneyland (my time in hospital and recovering at home was certainly another world which felt very unreal).  Surprisingly, I can already feel my mind picturing the cartoon Cinderella and Disneyland and maybe this marks yet another change in thinking.  This does not mean I am denying all the things that have happened to me, rather just a re-branding exercise which may mean I can begin to think and talk about things a bit more freely without the added stress induced by extra unwanted images and thoughts.

The Best Thing I Did

I went back to work 4 months after diagnosis and surgery. (That wasn't the best thing I did). I wasn't coping well; spending time crying in the stairwell or the toilets every day gave that much away, so I decided to seek out additional help. This was after I had tried counselling at work and the counsellor had been made redundant (!). At one of our last sessions I got the feeling his mind was probably on something else (to give him his due, he said he would have been upset if I thought that, but I probably wasn't in the mood for talking much anyway).
 I looked on the internet at home and found a small local cancer support centre(www.paulscancersupportcentre.org.uk).  I booked an inital appointment for a chat.  There I found some very caring and lovely people, who suggested that I may wish to come along to a new course that had been set up - The Healing Journey.  I was a bit sceptical as I'm usually quite a reserved sort of person and was also loathe to be defined by my illness. I couldn't think of anything worse than being amongst "ill people". Anyway, I was beginning to run out of ideas and options for how I could move on with my life, so I decided to go along to the start of the course, which was September 2010, approximately a year after my surgery.
The Healing Journey was to become an important turning point for me. It is a course which was initially developed by Dr. Alastair Cunningham, based on more than 25 years of clinical experience and research at the Ontario Cancer Institute, Canada’s largest cancer treatment centre.  Dr Cunningham, a psychologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, designed a structured educational programme consisting of psychological and spiritual (not necessarily religious) exercises and techniques which are designed to make significant positive changes in the quality of life of people with cancer, at any stage after diagnosis.
These exercises and techniques include:

• meditation
• relaxation
• mental imagery
• setting goals
• planning lifestyle changes
• identifying supportive and unsupportive relationships
• managing distressing thoughts
• making a spiritual connection in whatever way is appropriate.

For more information about this research and about the Healing Journey in general, visit www.healingjourney.ca.
Paul's Cancer Support Centre now also offers this course and others online, and I highly recommend it to anyone struggling with emotions relating to a cancer diagnosis. (Please note, I am not paid to say this and do not work at the centre, I am just going by my own personal experience of the Healing Journey).  I'll visit some of the techniques and exercises that we did in the course of this blog and as they crop up day-to-day.

My First Blog

Ah, my very first blog. I'm just a normal girl who had a normal life.....when Blam! Like a sledgehammer out of the blue came my cancer diagnosis. I remember the consultant saying things twice, "Did you hear me, do you understand what I'm saying?" "Yes, I heard you". I stared at the floor, thinking "I've seen the TV shows, the devastating scene in the film, I know how to react" But I just felt numb, and walked out and I don't even remember if I cried. I don't think I did. Two weeks later, my womb and ovaries were removed, and along with them my chance of a having my very own family. Our chance, by which I mean myself and my husband. Only two months previously we had been planning IVF and maybe our baby. How do you react to that?
Well, I reacted badly. I wept for days on end, at least every day for the next 6 months. I avoided seeing people. I still sometimes avoid seeing people (3 years on). I got angry, I got depressed, I felt it was pointless carrying on but didn't know how to stop carrying on. I couldn't go on like that. How could I face my new life? How could I talk to my old friends who were sympathetic but didn't know what to say? I didn't want to talk about it, couldn't talk about it, yet wanted to talk about it. I found a counsellor through work. After a couple of sessions, I found out he was being made redundant. I didn't know what to say anyway, after saying my life is ruined, I didn't know what else to say. Whatever he said, it wouldn't change things anyway. What was the point of putting myself through the experience again and again every week when it just made me upset and feel worse?
This blog is going to be an ongoing compilation of all the things I have done to get through my feelings and the whole cancer experience.  Many things have helped. If I could talk to the me that was crying on the stairs at work 3 years ago and say "you will feel better, I promise", the me on the stairs probably wouldn't have listened, let alone believed me.  I don't always feel better, but I do a lot of the time. I think it's worth recording the things that have helped in the hope that some of them may help someone else.