I am in Caregiver Mode.
Someone close to me was recently diagnosed with cancer.
This has stirred up a lot of things. The life that we live is largely routine. Even the ways we try to get deeper, more ‘inside’, more ‘connected’, becomes a routine. Then suddenly something knocks on our door. A wake-up call. These things happen.
Cancer is a hard number. For everyone, it’s hard. For the patient, the family, the care-givers – even medical staff dealing with this issue. It’s not a cold or a ‘flu or ingrown toenails. It’s a life-threatening thing. And its dimensions and ramifications are complex and often irreversible.
There is something at the root of consciousness that knows all things. Sees all things. Witnesses all things. Loves all things. This is such a key kernel to life itself: both a mystery and a marriage to our soul. To have this asset at a time like this is extremely fortunate; to know that underneath this bizarre and unpredictable parade, there lies sweetness, substance & support – there are no words that do justice to this gift.
For the cancer patient, choices are limited. The allopathic (traditional) medical establishment has their protocol of “cut, burn & poison” in order to drive the devil out. This is euphemistically called, “surgery, radiation & chemotherapy”. It’s scary. At the best of times, it’s outrageously invasive. What’s even scarier is the consciousness and character of the established medical profession. You’re basically a number on page, to people who punch the clock and slave under fluorescent lights in stuffy concrete bunkers. They smile at the right time, and occasionally even show their humanity, as they strap you on the conveyor belt for a nightmarish science-fiction journey through cold, high-tech machinery.
The surgeon we were referred to was a young woman – likely a recent medical graduate, who worked in a stuffy office with no pictures on the wall. I had to eventually walk out of the office because I could no longer breathe the air. When asked about how much experience she had with the procedures we were optioned, she gave evasive, run-around answers that basically said nothing. When asked about the nature of the ailment and more detail on the type of surgery indicated, she conveyed rehearsed, monotone statements that conveyed little wisdom, insight or understanding. We walked out of that office, never to go back.
The Alternative World seems like a game of Russian Roulette: sensational testimonial-based “cures” and stringent regimes of dietary changes and supplementation. Works for some, not for others. And the medical profession won’t even look at it. Diet? The food we’re putting in our mouth? Affects our health? Not a chance. Amazing that only recently in medical schools, has the importance of training in diet and its effect on health been timidly incorporated.
So, this is a “tight-rope walk”, this journey. For anyone, for all of us. For care-givers and patients alike. How do you make decisions and what do you base them on? How do you deal with the mingling of the hormones of life and death as you walk on?
And it does, and it really does, come back to consciousness, time and time and time again. Truly my one and only gift, my one and only friend, my truest, most stable, most dear, most precious, and most vital companion. This gift of consciousness – and it’s blessings of love, kindness, insight and support – are all I can really offer my friend at this time. The journey will be his, for now and forever: that walk we all have to silently walk. That talk we all have to silently talk. The lineup we all patiently wait in, that moves slowly and moves fast; that moves to a doorway we all know so well is written in the contract of Life.
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From my exposure to the world of alternative health care, there are some things that make sense to me. Healers I have known have helped people through cancer; some have cured cancer in themselves. The theme that most seem to come back to, is healing from within. Diet, lifestyle and supplementation, it seems, do play a role. However, a significant issue is the healing and transformation of things that plague us at our core: the mental and emotional traumas that we’ve swept under the carpet. The compromises, failures, heart-breaks, wounds that we internalize and incorporate into the deeper fabric of us.
Much of this resonates with me. People who have dug up their inner garden, pulled out the weeds and barbed-wire, dealt with the toxic, buried waste: these people have a particular quality of expression and energy that I would say is “authentic”, balanced, and inspiring. On the other side of the coin, people playing out the “masquerade”, wearing the makeup of fashion, deceit and distraction – people whose core experience is based on injury and anger – come across as being extremely unbalanced, unhealthy and disconnected. This is the only statement of “health” that makes any sense to me, because my spirit, my intuition, my guts, immediately recognize this as an undeniable truth.
Whatever path the cancer patient chooses – whether it be traditional, alternative, or a mix – it seems that the best choice would be made under the auspices of light, joy, clarity and a sense of inner resolve. It seems the best gift we could give each other in times of duress, is a reminder of the connection to the heart of life itself. From that heart, all good things proceed. All nourishing things proceed. All substance, light and joy – gifts we can truly, and remarkably, call our very own – truly proceed.
And each day is a new dance. A new challenge. A new lesson.