When your only currency is a wish

It’s very easy to feel resentful or defensive towards the staff and the hospital system. Once the C word has been declared, your world changes dramatically, and these strangers and their institution seem to take control of your life. Endless waiting in uncomfortable rooms, filled with the energy of countless others - their fears and despair. Looks of acknowledgement and sadness pass almost unnoticed and yet screaming and bouncing off the walls. Do we look or wonder if each other still have their breasts? We try not to think that, and we try not to look, but you do find yourself not looking and not speaking, because you really are wondering if the person next to you knows that she is about to have her breasts taken off, or perhaps she is wearing a prosthetic or maybe she is covering a big empty space under her oversized jacket.

The receptionists are always kind and you sense they are trained to be this way and wonder if it is sincere or not. It doesn’t matter- it’s nice. Maybe they all know that it’s just a numbers game and at any moment they might also sit on the other side of the desk. Working with cancer and even specializing in cancer does not give anyone an exemption. I know two doctors who have wives who have had mastectomies and that does nothing much to reassure me. If they couldn’t save their own wives then how is it that I should feel confident?

The day I was told I had cancer; I was walking past a pizza place and noticed people scoffing into pizza at the counter near the window. One man was obese and sat with his pizza, garlic bread and coke. I thought to myself, “How come he doesn’t have cancer instead of me – I take care of myself – why would this happen to me instead of him?” I thought of a woman I knew who had attempted suicide a few weeks earlier and wondered why we couldn’t do an exchange. She wanted to die and I didn’t. And what about all those evil people in the world? Why don’t they get diseases and die and leave us good people to live? As soon as I realized what I was thinking I chastised myself. I thought it strange that I was using wishes to exchange the disease, rather than using those wishes to wish the disease away.

It reminded me of a friend who once looked in the window of a second-hand shop and said she wished she could afford the lounge suite they had on display. I asked her why she wouldn’t just wish for a brand new lounge since how her only currency was wishes.

Anyway, where was I? Ah, the hospital. I decided that I would not go back into the hospital unless I grounded myself first. Being overwhelmed or feeling small and afraid is asking for trouble. I needed to be present and strong and in control. I might not be able to control the disease, but I can be very clear about who we are working with – me. I am the star of this scenario and the buck stops here. I am here to be consulted and I am here to be informed – I am not here to be herded around or chopped up or spat out. I had moments of feeling helpless and vulnerable, it would be easy to just follow and obey, as it is a foreign land with a new language. It’s easy to feel that ‘they’ know the rules and have all of the authority. I might be under attack, but I’m not about to retreat or surrender!

I have had weeks of appointments, biopsies, x-rays, ultra sounds, mammograms and consultations; my life has become “Sonya and her lump”. Before I go anywhere these days, I sit quietly in meditation and surround the hospital and the staff and the other patients in light and love and healing. I visualize everyone as friends and family; everyone in the world loves me and cares about me and brings the best they have to offer. No one is working against me – everyone involved in my journey has been divinely selected to walk with me. I put out a request that everyone is knowledgeable and competent and brilliant and wise, but stress that above all else, they should be healers. I reaffirm to myself that I love my body, I love my life and I love myself. I also state that everyone who touches me or speaks with me will also love my body and love my life and love me. I visualize light streaming from my heart to their hearts and back again into my heart. I surround myself with healing light and I surround them and then I expand that light out until I feel it stretch outward - until the whole world is filled in loving, healing light.

I have done away with thoughts of resentment and the why me and the guilt and confusion. I don’t know why this has happened and it serves no purpose to wonder. It’s so easy to think of cancer as a punishment and it’s easy to think of death as a failure. I know that all will be revealed in time and I am sure it will all make perfect sense and be for a perfectly good reason. I am already aware that my capacity to enjoy and appreciate my life has risen immensely. My relationships have taken on deeper meaning and are now a daily exchange of joy and inspiration. As an inspirational writer I am in a perfect position to lend my voice to countless thousands of people. If having this lump encourages others to pay attention to their own bodies, then that in itself is a very good thing. If someone reads this and it helps them to be less afraid, then that also is a great thing. More than anything else, I am writing this in the hope that women will understand the importance of not allowing others to influence their own body image. If I had known the magnificence of my own body when I was a teenager or young women how much more wonderful my life would have been. If wish I had known what strength I had or the choices I could have made or the love that was available but not accepted.

This information is for you – for your sisters and daughters.

Sonya Green www.reinventingmyself.com