For now I'm going to get back to the more central issue, and the part of it my focus has been most directed towards recently. The Body. I've found that this time on chemo has given me an opportunity/forced me to get in touch with the basics of what is going on in my body and looking after it. This first showed itself in the medical limitations. I had to be careful of what I did to avoid risking harm or any such. Then the symptoms began. First I had to control and change what I ate. Processed foods just don't work, greasy fried stuff became nauseating, large amounts of grains stopped being good, meat quantities even had to go down! The way I eat has become fundamentally different than when I was not on chemo. I hold to some similar core tenets, but I eat a ton less, of much more healthy, clean food. An interesting particular point of insight I noticed lately in how it's changed my digestive system: I need to chew way more. I know you're not supposed to, but ever since I was a little kid I took big chunk bites and just ripped em and ate em. I don't know why, I guess I felt like it was the carnivorous way. To do that now however, which I finally noticed a few days ago I was still letting myself do a bit, was irritating my stomach a ton. It gives me acid reflux and just discomfort, and I can feel all my blood pull into my stomach. I now need to make sure to pre-process food that I'm taking into the system as much as possible. My digestive system is still working, it's just high maintenance.
Next, the tension and stress brought pain out in my back, so I began stretching. Then I signed up for some physio and massage. During the massages, I went for a bit of an "aggresive" masseuse, who was quite cute and surprisingly willing to push on those muscle knots to that satisfyingly painful point where it actually has an effect. During these, I worked on breathing exercises to help them work. Then I kept working on those, and stretching. More and more this has added up, and I think today I spent nearly 6 hours doing stretching. I felt myself build up huge stores of lactic acid, and twice in the day did contrast showers to flush it out. I've gotten conscious of flaws in my posture, and have begun to change things that have been big problems for me for ages. My shoulders are coming back to the right spot, hips lining up better, back and neck straighter... The stretching methods I've done have been... different than I tried in gym class. I've spoken to a couple people who do yoga and the breathing methods I've done are apparently the same as some of theirs. I've shocked myself at my ability to break muscle knots and reposition joints though, it's very hard to explain but last night and today in particular things seemed to be working so well it was surreal. I noticed however, in the few weeks before I started this blog when I was in a bad place, I was less on top of this, didn't get any massages, and things got bad again very quickly. I was extremely sore all the time prior to getting back on top of it. Seems like my body in general can work just great, but it's higher maintenance now. As a note, I am WAY better at stretching if I smoke a doobie. I find it really supports my conscious awareness of the body, I can way more readily identify and stretch the one particular muscle that's knotted, or find just the right angle to stretch/release the knot that's been bugging me for ages and I can't figure out. I'm sure that's not true for everyone though. I think it's that it calms me down a whole lot and makes me more restful and at peace. Anyways, moving on.
So, the interesting point I'm coming to is this: am I coming out of chemo healthier than I went in? Perhaps this time of facing a daunting challenge of health has actually awakened a very valuable inner part of myself. I've lost 20 lbs, I'm straightening up, and feeling great (most of the time). I'm not saying it's taking no tax on me or chemo is a new way of going to fat camp, just what if it is possible to make lemonade out of lemons to that degree? Just another goal to add to the list. I think that it's an interesting reveal to me of the level of body awareness that is attainable and the value it can have. I hope to keep improving. I feel like chemo can be a valuable lesson for me.
It's like as a car owner, going from being owner of a truck to a Ferrari. Quality hasn't gone down, but it's a lot easier to break, and needs way more checks and maintenance. While the truck doesn't need those things, if you did look after it as well as you do the more sensitive car, it will last longer and work even better. That's something I hope to keep in mind moving forward from here. While I was healthy and okay, I was not looking after my body nearly as well as I could have and took a great toll on that. I hope to make use of this forced rest time to deal with alot of the residual scar tissue and other things, and once I break all the broken bits off, rebuild the right way.
Time to get back outside to the big fire and burn a little one just for me I think.
Time to get back outside to the big fire and burn a little one just for me I think.
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