Thanksgiving '07

On this day of thanks, I feel a bit more at peace than I have in a while. Perhaps it’s the lengthy, unbroken sleep I enjoyed last nite, the fine sunny day outside, or the feeling of resolve that all that matters is right here, right now. Humorously, it has taken Dr. Doolittle, a contrary though humble name for a man who was my first Zen, vegetarian master. Not Eddie Murphy silly, but Rex Harrison as a man who could talk to the animals, wouldn’t eat them and defended their feelings and rights. He thinks only of the future in terms of expeditions he will do such as searching for the Great Pink Sea Snail or the Giant Lunar Moth, a month of planning the only time frame the audience hears about as he humanely exhibits the Push Me-Pull You at the circus to raise money. Emma Fairfax pines for his approval and affection and only in that moment of being asked does he consider his own feelings for her. It seems much of my time in relationship is thinking about it versus being in it. The Vedic scripture says yes, take action, buy that nice car, but don’t be attached to the outcome of anything. To love someone but not plan for a future with them. To make love and not want more or feel depressed after. To expect nothing from those I love, giving without an expectation of receiving. Words that roll off yet are so elusive in practice. This has been my work since I have last written, as well as grieving the passing of my best friend.

Jenny was the best friend I have ever had in my entire life. I don’t care that she was a dog because to me she was a spirit, greater than most humans I have come in contact with. She was my greatest teacher and sent to me for 14 years. She enhanced and affected many lives. In our time, this time, I learned how to be alone, to work thru my karma that was passed on to me thru generations of unrefined, painful emotions. For the first time I feel I can be a good friend, in a loving relationship, a valuable community member. This has taken the severing, reevaluation and rebuilding of many ties in family and friendship, on my terms, unpopular though necessary for my survival.

The 49 day mourning period of Bardo was the most helpful practice I can imagine for doing what I could to feel involved with aiding Jenny’s spirit to find a beautiful rebirth and for me to truly digest and integrate her physical presence being removed from my life. The gaps of the nasty daily chores were initially missed, just the opportunity to serve her. On each Friday at 2:21 PM I meditated and prayed for her spirit, those prayers changing each week as I felt her more and more distant from this world, my world. I made walks, pilgrimages several times a week, with her bones and ash, creating altars all over Rio en Medio, to some of our favorite natural spaces. In nature is where I felt her most. In the first week I became sure that birds are the vehicles for the recently departed. They followed me in droves as well as a very large bear, or perhaps I followed her. Native America sees the bear as introspection. I seem to cross paths more and more with Indian healers and Shamans, their medicine becoming mine. This weekend I will do a peyote ceremony that will go from sunset to sunrise. Known for it’s powerful healing individually and for the collective, I have waited many years to be ready to be part of this ritual.

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer just over 2 years ago, I stopped my life. Jenny’s passing allowed me that same opportunity. In the 7 weeks of Bardo, I did not socialize very often outside of my home, mourning feeling palpable. I also grieved for bombing my being with poisonous drugs that my body is forever different as a result of. Almost 2 years since the last chemo and my hair is just starting to return. I am in menopause, brought on by the drugs, symptoms of which were exacerbated with the intense emotions of Jenny’s last days, hot flashing, bipolar and sleep deprived for the past few months. My teeth are brittle, shifting which naturally occurs when a person gets old, generally older than me who will be turning 41 on Wednesday. In a nervous moment I question if the drugs are still in me, after all the intense detoxing I have done over the past 2 years, and if they are just starting to leave, does that mean the chemo is what has kept the cancer at bay all this time? Given the route I have chosen post chemo, it’s very hard to know where I stand as a breast cancer recipient. Financial stress can’t help though the lessons from buying only necessities, learning to create whatever I need from clothes to food is empowering and part of my rebirth away from the initial energetic I came into this life thinking were the most important essences.

Money is an issue for everyone. In my family, I feel it was the motivation for what one translated as love and success. It wasn’t a priority for me personally, except when I unconsciously was trying to win approval by taking jobs that did not suit me. When I look in the mirror, I admit to having had an innate sense of entitlement. This manifested in staying in roles and unhealthy family relationships so I essentially would get paid. I also mutated money as reassurance of being loved since emotionally I had frequently felt unconditional love not present. Accepting my current profound poverty and debt has been arduous though liberating in being autonomous emotionally. Would I have preferred to have my letters to my family of need responded to with kindness and assistance? Sure. But obviously, that is not my path from here on in.

It still hurts to be misunderstood. I feel grossly misrepresented by having money donated in my honor to organizations that I feel are reprehensible in the medieval practices around breast cancer. Double mastectomies (a big word for cutting off your breasts) as “prophylactic” and radiation (cancer causing energy) as well as massive chemo (poison) are even more extreme, archaic methods of “fighting” cancer than my grandmother endured. The fear-based business of cancer has me beside myself with anger at times and that I am considered fringe for taunting these methods, willing to be a guinea pig on film to document some options. As I write this, I’ve just been told my aunt who has been diagnosed with breast cancer 3 times and had a hysterectomy for pelvic cancers, is on life support. She was supposedly unable to take the next chemo and stopped breathing. I pray for her to be free of pain and sadness. I feel she inherited generations of unresolved angst, like me, in what I refer to as the “genetic energetic”. God rest her soul and let love permeate her being now and at the time her body dies. Is she better off for taking the Western medicine that may have prolonged her life? We spoke on camera about this as part of “the ME film”.

I want to live a long life in this body though am daily becoming friendlier with death. After all, it is part of life and I will not pretend it doesn’t exist, for me or anyone else. I do pray that my lineage hereafter will benefit from my work in looking for the root of our breast cancer. If you want to help make a difference, please consider contributing to “the ME film” or the Lexie Health Fund so this anecdote may be televised.

Namaste’- I bow to the beloved in you who bows to the beloved in me.
lex

Poke, poke and poke again...

A week of needles, IV’s and hidden veins. Seems my chemo arm was not interested in this type of business again. Started the day at TriCore Labs getting a variety of blood work. These are tests I have decided make sense as markers of my cancer and overall health. I have chosen them because Medicaid will pay for them. Getting stuck is a drag but one of the least detrimental ways to monitor my health. I choose to do the poking on the left arm. My right arm is “congested” as Caryn from the White Cloud Institute put it. My lymph nodes are still enlarged but feel like they are working hard to move the toxins or as I visualize, the dead cancer cells, out of my body. After the blood tests, I got a breast massage
http://www.whitecloudinstitute.com/classes/WellBreastMassage.html and some Chi Nei Tsang
http://www.whitecloudinstitute.com/news-articles/index.html
Caryn is doing a 15-year study on the effects of breast massage and lifestyle on breast health. There’s a DVD that Gringa Productions produced that comes with the study, check it out. Stayed for the 12 noon Qi Gong class and made it in time for my MRI at X-Ray Associates at the Cancer Institute here in Santa Fe.

Popping an Atavan left over from round 1 of cancer diagnosis, I prepare for the tunnel of claustrophobia and another poke for an IV of a metal called Gallium or something like that. My veins are hiding out, my skin ”tough”. After several pokes, they call in the specialist whom I joke with saying “this is a perfect job for an ex-junkie.” He smiles knowingly as I notice what looks like a gang tattoo under his sleeve. Good, no great, I’ll take the guy who really understands the purpose of how to find a vein any day over the squeamish tech. My breasts are dropped into the slots and the half hour of tapping and banging commences. I like that they have headphones and my choice of local radio stations. Everything’s ok in my haze until they shoot in the liquid though the IV. I’m squeezing the ball in my hand frantically to notify the tech that I’m concerned I’m going to puke. She assures me it’s typical. I want to cry, probably am, hating what I’m asking my body to tolerate. This compromise of my principals, a means to an end, makes me angry and sad. My friend Deborah is waiting for me in the lobby and I hazily make my way over to a local restaurant where she kindly buys me lunch, giving myself some time to sober up. By the time I get home I am pissed off, feeling mean and depressed. That’s prescription drugs effect on me. Many thanks to Governor Bill Richardson and the state of New Mexico for finally passing medical marijuana.
http://www.drugpolicy.org/marijuana/
I believe my Mom, not a user, would have gone out and scored it on the street for me during chemo. For some, no medicine can create the positive shift of physical and emotional consciousness that the blessed weed can.

The next day commences with needles of a different sort, Chinese acupuncture. I’m going with straight up Chingedy, no white woman interpretations. I believe the needles and the pungent tasting herbal regime have their place. The doctor seemed to forget about me and though it’s lovely to have a nap in the noon hour, I was done, tired of some ten needles protruding out my head, another fourteen all over my body. Got out and hustled over to Julie and Michael’s for homemade sushi, yum! The next appointment was at the Integrative Health Center for my first DMPS or heavy metal detox. The nurse tried to coax a new vein spot in my hand to the surface with a warm compress. It worked but really hurt and just agitates the hell out of me. We pumped the serum in pretty fast, my arm throbbing. I started wondering if my vein could explode. It didn’t and she added the trace minerals to the bag 2 hours later. Man I felt weird, annoyed and stopped for a wheatgrass and juice at Wild Oats. I met a man there who was doing the total antioxidant combo of wheatgrass, carrot juice and green tea. I felt completely connected to this man. This became my question for the girls up at the women’s tub at Ten Thousand Waves. Do these connections stop when we commit to someone particularly? Why didn’t he or I pursue it? Am I insane? Yeah, probably. Anyhoo, did the massive hot and cold treatment and wasted myself. I almost passed out and forced some food in aided by the watchful, caring eyes of Tracy and Elizabeth. I convinced them I could drive home which I did successfully, sleeping deliciously though intensely dream filled. The next day I commenced the back up herbs to help eliminate more heavy metals. These include chlorella, kidney support liquid, multivitamins, vitamin C, electrolytes and cilantro tincture (I also make a pesto with roasted sunflower seed or walnuts, olive oil, sometimes some other fresh herb such as basil or oregano and a few pinches of salt). This regime is twice a day with lots of water for a week. Already my vision is improved, a floater that’s been with me for a while in my right eye disappearing. The tumor site aches, as do some of my lymph glands.

Today is Friday the 25th. Started the day at 9AM with Liza coming over to film my daily practices, supplement regime, writing of this blog. Liza has been a very generous supporter of my path by lending her camerawoman talents to the ME film http://www.gringaproductions.com/me.htm
since I was first diagnosed. She and Michael Mierendorf
http://www.mierendorf.com/
came back to my hometown for the first week of horror. I don’t know if I could have made those first steps without their support in giving me some higher purpose for this initially frightening experience. Much love and gratitude to them and Dyanna Taylor who also continues to document this experience, each with their own seasoned and insightful slants. I go to milk the goats and do a short walk in the woods with my dog friends, Jenny, Jake and Basil.

I have just returned from a meeting with Monika Wikman
http://www.monikawikman.com/index.html
Monika is a Ph.D. Psychologist, Jungian analyst and part-time astrologer. She’s written a book that she gave me called Pregnant Darkness-Alchemy and the Rebirth of Consciousness. Monika has had her own story with ovarian cancer in her early 20’s, classified as stage IV and having spread to her organs. I find this combination of experience fascinating. She used my astrological chart and our discussion to make sense of this life of mine, offering affirmation that my own path makes sense and very well may shift significantly for an easier time in 2008. The planet Mars has been squaring Pluto. Mars representing surgery, psychically, spiritually and physically, replaying the themes of death and rebirth.

There is a T-square of many planets in opposition at 90-degree angles. This is very hard on the body but great for creativity. Other planets have pointed to a deep isolation since around 2004. She felt the body and emotional detoxing program I’m doing is right on and by next year, it will be a time of warming, joy and and easing of the isolation I have felt for several years. My birth chart is all about creativity and love. I have the ability to be a cultural changer and to speak to a larger audience.

What does this all mean? For now I appreciate the validation from the universe that there is destiny at play here and that I am pursuing physical, psychic, spiritual and emotional methods that make sense to me and the Gods and Goddesses. That’s my interpretation. That’s it for now. I’ll be heading up to the Neem Karoli Baba temple in Taos for prayers in honor of the Hanuman, the monkey god of selfless devotion. Thank you so much for that generous spirit of giving without the expectation of receiving my very kind family and friends.
All my love
lex