Gardens for Life
The plants for our beautiful newly renovated vegetable garden went in yesterday in spite of the rain. Always an organic garden, this year we solicited the help of our friends Jeanne and Verd Nolan of THE Organic Gardener to help us repair our fences and get the best garden ever. We will be helping them trim and remove some trees in exchange.
So much of life has metaphors in gardening and cancer is no different. When we garden organically we spend lots of time with the soil to maximize nutrition to the plants. Plants create their own food from the sun's energy but their "vitamins and minerals " come from the soil. When healing cancer we work on the "terrain" of our lives to maximize our health. We do this by providing the best possible nutrition and supporting healthy growth and healing through good eating, adequate rest, daily exercise and hydration, and paying close attention to our spiritual and psychological landscapes. This aspect of the healing is what we have been spending lots of time working on over the last 3 months.
I'm learning that my pending chemotherapy is a lot like weeding. It is an often difficult and unenjoyable task, but so satisfying when completed. The weeds in a garden are an inevitability, and when the time comes that the other plants and good soil mulch are being overcome, its time to do serious manual weeding. I view that as a lot like cutting out my cancerous tumor. Even the best of surgeons can't get every cell of cancer out and so that is why we do chemotherapy. I'm still struggling with the need, in the same way I struggle when I pull a weed and don't get the entire root. I think, well maybe it won't come back, maybe I've gotten enough of it that the garden can take care of the rest. That almost never works, I'll find the same weed later back just as strong or stronger 😁
I'm trying to view the chemotherapy the way I view the use of occasional herbicide. When we are trying to get rid of huge woody Buckthorn plants we know if we simply cut them to the ground they will return stronger than before. We have to paint the stubs with a chemical herbicide to kill the living growing cell layer of the cambium or we will be worse than when we started.
In an effort to not panic about submitting to chemotherapy I am trying to view this next step as the needed careful and responsible use of herbicide in my body's garden that has the killing weed of cancer, which is just like Buckthorn in the garden 😬.
When working with two of my healthcare practitioners (Dr Will Schafernak, DC and Maryann Morse, NP) who use applied kinesiology to assist in healing we were discussing in a joint session yesterday about how what I am doing is like clearing the weeds from the garden. They are helping me move through my fears about chemotherapy and come to a place of peace.
My chemo begins on Monday June 13
I'll begin with a surgical procedure that morning to install a catheter port so We can preserve the veins in my arms. Then I have chemo that afternoon and the next 2 days. Praying for peace and that I will allow my body to take what it needs for healing and let go of the rest, without side effects.