Hope4Cancer: Day Nine: Time to Think
On this day, after eating breakfast and greeting all my fellow warriors, I was off to greet my physical therapist Flow, "Ola!" By then, I didn't even notice I had my I.V. pole in tow; it was like a third appendage. Once in the therapy room, Flow and I began my daily Spanish lesson between talking about PEMF—Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy.
The EMF pulse feels a little like an ultrasound. Because I had three lymph nodes removed from my armpit, they wanted to confirm the disease had not spread to my liver—which is sometimes the case with breast cancer. So for forty minutes, they worked on my liver, and I practiced my Spanish. "Caliente! Caliente!" was my trigger word when the treatment temperature rose too high. We'd laugh. By the time three weeks had passed, I had mastered about 50 words. Every day I practiced speaking their language because they communicated with love. And what I learned in that experience was they didn't need words; all it was presence.
So though I may have thought I'd be a beach baby loving the ocean and taking lovely evening walks, I was so worn out after the therapies and the at-home coffee enemas that I spent the evenings as quiet time and reflecting on what I learned during the day.
For a year, I had been asking God for quiet time to process the death of my brother, my mom dying, my dad getting sick, and me getting cancer, and now I'd been given stop-in-your-tracks quiet time. As the saying goes, "be careful what you ask for."
A little part of me was grieving that here I was in Cancun, Mexico, one of the most beautiful places on earth, and I was having cancer treatment. It was a balance to say "how blessed am I" to be able to have this experience, but I also knew that I had to make it an adventure for me versus a duty.
Another therapy I underwent was the use of a near-infrared lamp. One was put on my breast and one on my tummy, for 40 minutes. During these moments, I closed my eyes and imagined my sunny beach scenes. The state I could put my body in while I was receiving the red light therapy was incredible. Not only did it heal my body, but it was also healing my mind.
Another experience we all had was the “Shaky Shaky”. It's a small machine platform that you stand on for 10 minutes, and it shakes your body to improve your lymphatic drainage. So much of the therapy is sitting or lying down; getting shaken up a bit keeps your body stable. Because there were three speeds: slow, medium, and fast, of course, we had to challenge each other.
I wanted to ensure that each therapy was healing me, and because we had so much time to reflect, I was grateful that my fellow warriors and I could share our stories with one another.
