2010 and the last chemo

This is a most wonderful holiday. Long days of leisure, no appointments to keep, reading novels, time at beautiful Stanford Valley, friends and family... It is a deep rest time with sunshine getting into the bones and even making my head a gentle brown. Tomorrow we return to Stanford Valley for another 3 days with friends and family to welcome the new year and let the old year go with  a sense of blessing and gratitude for what has been. It is good to make space for the new.
We return on Sunday and early the next day I will have a blood test to check out my blood count. If it is high enough I will have my last chemotherapy treatment. It is 18 weeks since I began. I was remembering the first session and the subsequent intense and deep fatigue - the nature of which has never returned. I remember Marian massaging my sore back and later gently attempting to get me to eat a slice of toast. How different everything is now. My body is strong and vigorous, my fitness is slowly building up and my appetite is enormous! All my hair is gone - yes all - and I have developed a little expertise in placing my false eyelashes on more or less correctly. My head is tanned - same colour as my face and I feel confident walking around without a head covering.

It feels strange coming to the end of the chemo sessions....
We have navigated one territory and now I am on the threshold of a different land. The chemotherapy provided a structure, rhythm and ritual. It gave me a pattern which made some sense. That scaffold will be removed - that is how I see it. A month after the chemo I will have a CT scan to review the state of the cancer in my liver and also whether there is cancer anywhere else. Although the results at the half way mark were positive there are no guarantees. I think that one of the lessons of the past four months is to increasingly feel at ease with the unknown. Everything is unknown for all of us, but somehow we quickly latch on to false illusion /assurance about how life will flow. Life does indeed always flow and is consistently true but it is so much more winding and mysterious than we can imagine. In preparing to enter this new territory I am thinking about the plan or structure that I will design with the help of others, to continue a more conscious support and love for my system.  There is a sense of empowerment in choosing what to do and how to act.

What an amazing year it has been - and you know, I would not change the last 4 months. This time has been such a potent gift in understanding what matters to me and in deeply experiencing the power of love given in such diverse ways. Steve has been an extraordinary and genuine partner in this whilst managing his own unique journey. 

I wish you all a most happy new year. May 2010 begin to reveal the shifts in many people's hearts, may we give with generosity of spirit and may we love with no attachment. May we do what we say.