The Listening Post

This is a post about listening. I've been conducting an experiment over the past few weeks in really trying to listen to my body.

It started when we went north on our soon-to-be-aborted trip to Seattle. We started off at our friends' farm over Labor Day. Because I had a whole week off and because it was going to be so relaxing going up to Seattle on the train (I know, I know, I just say that to make the gods chuckle now and then), I thought I'd try to stop taking the various medications and over the counter pills that I had gotten pretty used to taking.

It wasn't an actual issue, but I was starting to notice that there was a little bit of Judy Garland going on. I had started taking an Ativan at night to sleep when I was riddled with anxiety prior to the first surgery. I then kept taking it during chemo because it has a double benefit of calming me down as well as quelling nausea. It didn't seem to have any negative side effects, and I would always get a good night's sleep after taking it.

After awhile, though, I thought that maybe I shouldn't be taking an Ativan every day. So I switched off on some days and took a couple Ibuprofen PMs to go to sleep. That was also a good idea, mostly. I would wake up with slightly less soreness, and having had a good night's sleep.

So that has been my protocol for sleeping the past five months or so -- Ativan or Ibuprofen PM. And it's been working just fine.

During surgery and chemo, I've also gotten used to taking a whole smorgasbord of pills prescribed for pain. Besides the usual go-to bottle of ibuprofen or acetaminophen, there's been an array of fancier stuff. After surgery, I became well acquainted with Percocet and its little brother Norco. Percocet works super well for me... and puts me in a lovely state in which all care wafts away and I find myself blissfully breathing oh so deeply, just floating on a pillow of pain free relaxation. It's almost too good, so I didn't take it all that often. It also has some side effects like constipation, and even though it is wonderful when in pain... when not in pain I find it nicer to be alert and coherent, even though it's harder to breathe fully and floating away is not quite as accessible. Or, well, possible.

Norco is pretty good for pain and I tend to take it when I need something good, but not too good.  I also have the big granddaddy of all pain killers in my arsenal... Dilaudid... and while I have only had to resort to it once, it's nice to know it's there, like having an M16 in the closet just in case I need to get all NRA on somebody's ass in a pinch.

I actually don't overdo any of this, at all. If the bottle says one every six hours, I end up taking one every six days, if that.  But the reliance on external aid becomes habitual. And since I've been part of the medical machine, I've just gotten used to altering my physical state with chemicals just to get through all this shit. But on Labor Day weekend, I figured hey, chemo is over, I'm on vacation, let's see what happens if I skip, say, the Ativan for one night.

So, I skipped it. First night: horrible nightmares. Woke myself and Roger up. Intense anxiety, creepy things, worlds crumbling. Well, I thought when I finally extricated myself from all of it and gratefully woke up, that was interesting. I must be... you know... somewhat less easy going with this whole cancer thing than maybe I've been letting on.

Good information.

The rest of the day was fine and I didn't get any headaches or need anything else to change my body chemistry, so we visited with friends and, while everyone else altered their chemistry with copious amounts of Knob Creek, I was very happy with water and food and feeling my own natural ebbs and flows.

That night, no Ativan: no bad dreams. I slept OK, as I usually do when with these friends.  And so it went. I stopped taking everything at night, and then gradually I realized I had stopped taking anything during the day. If I had a headache, which happens frequently, I would just watch it for awhile. If it was not going to tip into a migraine, I wasn't going to medicate it.  It ended up, all but once, moving through my body like a high pressure weather system, eventually resolving itself.

The week we were out of town, everything worked great. I felt pretty good, except for the ongoing fatigue of the chemo, which still hasn't fully gotten out of my system.  And it was great to not have any other chemicals in my body. In my attempt to listen to my body, I figured that it was better to take the ear plugs out.  If it hurts, or feels tired, having no extra chemicals enabled me to know that better. It was like removing the baffling from the walls, the pillows from over the head.  If something was happening, I would be able to feel all its colors, and then decide from there how to deal with it.

It felt good.  Feeling the  clarity of my feelings (even when bad) felt like good information.  I had a few headaches, but they resolved on their own in just about the same amount of time as when I'd pop a few motrin.

Coming home, however, has been a slightly different story. I have been working on this blog for awhile, waiting for a really great happy wrap up in which I can state, with wisdom and great modesty, that I have figured out how to waft through my life now with very out any help at all from any of my little friends in pill bottles.

HAH!

SO not the case.  We came home to our only bathroom demolished (intentionally.... I decided to give myself a major remodeling project for my birthday).  Our life now consists of moving back and forth from the office to the bathroom, carrying in our toothpaste, our shampoo, juggling where to hang our towels, invariably getting into the water and realizing we've forgotten the soap, etc.  It has been challenging, for some of us more than others, and it's put the collective's teeth on edge.

Also, there have been quite a few stressors at work... deadlines/people/the very fact of having to work. I've been putting in more hours than usual and that's kind of kicked my ass.  If that wasn't enough, we had a little meeting with our accountant last week to finally do our 2013 return, with results that were not as... um... good as we'd hoped. And all this is really bringing home the point that I'm not getting through the side effects of the chemo as quickly as (I feel) I should be.  With some kind of stresses I'm fine, but with others I become crushed with fatigue, the energy violently abandoning my body as soon as the negative energy levels hit any kind of critical mass. I am suffering fools not gladly at all. And my sleep has been getting worse, and worse, and worse.

And meanwhile... my little experiment of listening to my body.  Which, by the way, is pretty much constantly telling me some variation of FUCK YOU.

It's ironic. When I was going through the worst of the chemo, on days I didn't feel totally like a rotting, stinking carcass... I felt pretty good.  Sure, my throat was sore and my bones hurt and my head hurt and I was so fatigued that I couldn't really walk from room to room without my heart pounding... but... hey! not feeling like a rotting, stinking carcass felt pretty damn fucking good!  So, I'd walk around with a cheery countenance and two thumbs up saying, right on right on right on, I'm feeling fine.  

Cut to: five weeks after chemo. My brain is telling me I need to pull up my big girl panties and be better already.  It's high time to be fine and to be getting back on the bike and start training for that century.  At the VERY least, it's high time to be able to get through the day without falling apart.

Wrong.

In my new experiment of listening to my body, I really want my body to be purring with gratitude that it's not being poisoned any more. Which it is, mostly. But bodies are fickle, like a dog.  The punishment is over, now it wants to go out on a walk, run and play fetch, do the things it used to do.  But... it can't.  It's tired.  It's very anxious.  I'm starting to worry about the reconstructive surgery I'm having in six days. My brain is telling me that the new normal should be feeling great.  But it isn't. Not all the time. What I'm hearing is my body now kind of whimpering, saying it's tired, and scared, and pissed off at all the people and things in the world that are impeding its ability to rest, and feel safe, and heal up in total peace.

One of whom is, well, me.

So this is what daily life without buffers is like, I'm finding out. It is loud. It is annoying. It is a heavy weight on my shoulders. And there is nowhere to hide if the outside world starts punching me out. If I start getting a headache, well, then I'm getting a headache. I can't take a couple of pills and soldier on, in my new experiment. I have to notice that I have a headache. I have to pay attention to what's really happening. Somehow I have to develop new strategies, rather than reaching for the pill bottle.  Rather than crouching into a fetal position and buffering myself up with padding, I have to get all Jet Li on life's ass, and learn how to fight back, or extricate myself gracefully from the situation. Maybe fighting back is doing more yoga. Maybe fighting back is telling more people they need to solve their own problems, or move to a place where their problems don't become my problems. Maybe fighting back is, literally, fighting back. I don't know.  I've always put on the shin guards and kevlar and hoped for the best.


I'm not so sure about this experiment any more, to tell you the truth. I've caved in twice, and have been happy for my decision both times. One day last week, with the temperatures soaring above 100, I hit a place where my energy was so drained I couldn't even move. I finally took a Fioricet, a great medication that usually works well to combat a migraine (as long as I don't take it too often, at which point it starts to cause a migraine).  I made it through the day.  And was happy about that.
But then, the daisy chain started up again. The pill contained caffeine, a substance I am pathetically sensitive to (the last time I had a small green tea in the morning, I was up until 1:40 am).  This time was no different. I took the Fioricet and then could not sleep. Which meant I was exhausted the next day.  And then I couldn't sleep the next night either. Which meant I wanted to reach for something to help me sleep.  Which I ended up doing last night because I was going to start to cry if I didn't get a good night's sleep.

Insidious stuff.  Once you stop listening, it's just so easy to keep not listening. And our lives these days are stressful and difficult, and it's built into our culture to not really feel that very acutely.  And the culture gives us hundreds of ways to artificially make it through a day/week/month/year/lifetime at the pace that it kind of wants us to keep.  I'm living within my own nervous system these days --- I don't drink, smoke, ingest caffeine, or even eat sugar any more. I don't taking anything that pumps me up or calms me down -- and that's a very tough place to live for me within a normal working life. We are all encouraged to be little Judy Garlands, tweaking our systems to feel up, but not too up, and down, but not too down.

How to live within my own nervous system? How to engage in a work life and family life and creative life without external uppers, downers, relaxers, enhancers, or other types of buffers?  Is it mandated that in order to live in this society, with its implied demands and conventions, I have to push and pull and tweak and ignore my body's basic messages?  Boy, I hate that equation.

Is there a way to do this?  I don't know. Maybe it's not possible to do this every day... maybe balance and harmony aren't possible during that short a time. But I need to figure this out enough so that I don't feel my heart constricting with fear that I'm literally killing myself every time I get stressed out at work, or angry at some person who just simply isn't getting what I'm trying to say.

I don't think I have an ending to this blog.  I can't tell you I've figured this out.  I took an Ativan last night and slept like gangbusters. And I'll probably do the same tonight.

And maybe, with that good night of sleep under my belt... maybe I'll figure out how to do all this better tomorrow.