Today marks an anniversary that's meaning reverberates throughout the masses in the U.S. and far beyond. We feel it fully as we see the images again and hear the voices of the children from that time deepen into the adolescent noises emerging from the mouths of older, more seasoned - or should I say jaded- teenagers today that are speaking of distant memories from their childhood.This is not to minimize the catastrophic events that are being memorialized everywhere today - I join in the memory and tears of the most painful events to hit this nation in my lifetime. This is just a telling of my story - far smaller, but indeed real to me.
Today has significant meaning for me as well, but in an alternate sphere and almost within a different universe. My shadow side reminded me in subtle ways throughout the week that this time, this season has meaning for me - I chose not to listen. It spoke louder, through threads of anxiety fingering its way across the fibers of my body until I couldn't avoid it any longer.
This time has meaning in more ways than one. This week marks the seventh anniversary of Dr. D finding the first case of cancer that invaded my body. Oddly enough, 9/11 occurred just two days later.
As if the universe played a dirty trick, just six years later and several states away, doctors at the Mayo clinic on 9/11/07 marked the occurrence of my second episode with cancer by sticking needles infused with ethanol into the cancerous area within my neck. Invasion after invasion until they were certain they could obliterate the disease - the enemy. The initial invasion was magnified by mammogram machines in another space at Mayo on this same date, and the appearance of another white-cloaked human probing the source of "suspicious activity" in another are of my body that may compromise my safety.
As I spoke to my dear friend L. today, I realized that it is impossible to leave the shadows of those episodes from cancer treatment within the walls of those rooms. The shadows from those painful minutes and hours in the white-washed rooms when I was but a specimen in the hands of medicine creep into my everyday world in unexpected places and beg to be felt and hopefully understood.On the one year anniversary of my Mayo Clinic treatment, I carry the scars of cancer with me but they are not seen on my neck nor do they appear on the charts of the doctor's that treated me. They appear in odd and unusual ways that aren't always understood at face value- the sudden fear of crossing bridges, the panic when lifted to high places that never would have made my heart jump out of my chest years before, and the dread of being put on the spot to speak in a public scene.
The fear of being exposed and unable to move or "leave" in the present day mixes in the shadows with the muffled voices of the doctors a year ago that implored me not to move a centimeter as I lay on the cold metal procedure table for fear
that a wayward needle with ethanol would inject a jugular vein and kill me - as they held my neck down to the table in an effort to ultimately save my life as I lay awake, eyes blinking, forcing my brain to go to another world and another time.Tonight, as I spoke with L., it all began to make sense. A late "ah-ha" moment for one that is supposedly a "mental health expert" and can so quickly diagnose such points of connectivity in others.
I hear the echoes of a favorite professor from graduate school ringing in my ears - "physician, heal thyself". So, I shall work towards that, but perhaps, that may be the most difficult task of all.
