One week from today, the moment we've all been waiting for!
Right now, some reflections on the undeniable war...
Springtide Blessings, Dear Ones!
This is just a quick note to let you gorgeous lot know that my big scan is coming up next week!
My appointment is Tuesday, March 29 at 2:00 pm Pacific.
Many of you have indicated a willingness to send prayer and good vibes in times like these… so I wanted to keep you posted with the plan. I feel and appreciate all your support and care — and if you’re ever in a predicament like this (and I pray that you’re not!), I’m more than happy to lend whatever energy I can to your cause as well.
In this dispatch, I share some reflections on finishing strong, and what that has meant to me in this chapter of healing since my last scan (along with some hints of what I hope will come next). I also share some thoughts on an evolving (semi-Ukraine-conflict-inspired) metaphor of my healing body as a battle-ravaged city on the mend, as well as some worldly indigenous perspectives and deeper thoughts on cancer.
As always, I welcome your support, whatever that looks like. Small donations and shares are appreciated, and I’m always happy to hear from you. I am also honored just to be considered for a moment in your private thoughts. Much love!
Finishing Strong
When I went in for my last scan in December, I was hoping it would be the one — the big No Evidence of Disease Scan I’ve been praying for since this journey began.
As the above chart shows, though, the lymph node we’ve been watching was not quite down to “normal” size at last measurement. YET. It had decreased in size by more than 60% since the end of chemo, indicating that my body was successfully metabolizing and disposing of any unneeded tissue remaining from the days of cancer — but I learned in December that I still had a bit more cleaning up to do.
These last couple of months (including these last few all-important weeks), I’ve been going about the essential process of finishing strong — doing my best to keep my eyes on the prize of remission now more than ever.
According to the trend in the chart and the rate of decrease in the node size over the previous three measurements, it was estimated that the node would reach normal size (that is, less than 1 centimeter in diameter) around February 5th. So I’ve had an additional few weeks on top of that to continue working toward the goal with ongoing healing practices and healthy living.
The time since my last scan included my trip to New York with Satya (and the travel-time culinary indulgences) I wrote about a few weeks ago — but it has mostly been a time of green juice and healthy meals, herbs and acupuncture, afternoon walks with Phoenix and evenings at the gym, adventuring and creating with my darling daughter, organizing my life and writing — all the good things. It has also included visits to the IV clinic for treatments like ozone therapy (pictured above) and vitamin C infusions, as well as lymphatic drainage sessions and bulk runs on supplements.
Returning to Work
I’ve also begun getting closer to my return to work. In these last few weeks leading up to the big upcoming scan, I’ve felt the need to keep my eye on the ball and focus on the healing project, but I’ve also spent a few days back on campus, reconnecting with students and coworkers, playing basketball at lunch, participating in a couple of field trips, and sketching out my responsibilities for my impending return to full-timeduty.
I’m excited to be taking the lead in producing this year’s graduation — which will be particularly meaningful to me, as the graduating Class of 2022 started as freshmen the same year that I began teaching at Quest Forward Academy. I've taught their social science classes every year except this one, and I am so proud of them all. In addition to coordinating their commencement ceremony, I am excited to be working with the seniors to plan other year-end activities, including a field trip to San Francisco and a beach cleanup for Earth Day.
First, though, I am hoping for the great release of this “clean” and “unremarkable” scan I’ve been looking forward to ever since my chemo ended back in August.
Getting the Message
I am more committed than ever to maintaining the consciousness and awareness of life’s preciousness to which this healing crisis has helped awaken me. I am committed to truly living, savoring the path, being of utmost service, and singing my song while I am here! I will live boldly, share fully, breathe deeply and give thanks and praise. I will be authentic and courageous. I will create.
I promise — to Great Spirit, to myself, and to all my sacred witnesses out there — that I will remember these lessons and live them.
And I believe that I have enough reminders surrounding me and within me, and enough practices in place, that I no longer need any physical evidence of dis-ease to get me to tune in. Message received!
I complete the need for this visitor. I give thanks for the guidance, and I give a receipt in the form of right action and shining my brightest and most authentic light.
I am grateful for the gift of life, I accept my dharma, and I am ready for what’s next.
An Undeniable War
I’ve recently welcomed some interesting new metaphors for this healing process I’ve been going through.
You may recall that I’ve generally done my best to steer clear of using the language of militarism to describe what’s gone on in my body, and that I’ve written a lot instead about “dancing with cancer” rather than using phrases like “battling” or “fighting” cancer.
And while it stands true that I regard the visitor and experience of cancer as a teacher and messenger, my physical recovery has reminded me that some kind of battle has definitely taken place here. A pretty big one.
Especially with the lingering chemo side-effects I’ve continued to deal with — like neuropathy, various bodily pains, and my gradually-improving-but-not-yet-normal blood counts — I am reminded daily what my body has been through in this last year. And it feels, in many regards, like my body has served as a sort of battlefield.
My heart goes out to the people of Ukraine and other war-torn regions (like Yemen and Afghanistan). Hearing the testimonies of families fleeing for their lives, bereft of their homes and loved ones, has reminded me of how fortunate so many of us are to be in a space of physical safety from harm. Each meal and each night in our beds is truly a blessing.
Meanwhile, seeing images of the destruction in cities like Kharkiv and Melitopol has reminded me of the state of my body and psyche during and in the wake of the "battle" with cancer that I was so reluctant to speak of months ago.
I may not want to admit it, but there was a war in here. My fingers and toes, my blood and muscles and skin tell the story.
We citizens of this body hope we have made it through the worst and pray the battle is over. We have begun to venture out of our bunkers to do the necessary work of cleaning up the streets and feeding the children. But we're also waiting for officials to sound the "all clear" signal.
My recent effort to support myself through this intensive healing process, including helping my lymphatic system purge out any remaining scar tissue, dead cells and other waste from cancer and chemo, has felt tantamount to the physical cleanup of the rubble of war and the gradual restoration of a city once besieged.
I may prefer to think of myself as dancing with and learning from cancer, as opposed to fighting with it and slaughtering it, but my body reminds me daily that it was through bloody sacrifice — literally sacrificing my blood by injecting caustic chemicals into my veins — that I have survived this ordeal and emerged to tell the tale.
While it is not a war of aggression I was fighting, it does feel like I have been engaged in another, more righteous, kind of war here: a war for my own independence and sovereignty, an existential battle, a fight to survive.
Again, the brave efforts of Ukrainian men and women defending their homeland against occupation has been a constant and visceral reminder of what a righteous war looks like.
Seeing the musical Hamilton with Satya and listening to its score on repeat has also reminded me of another war that I consider to be a just one: the American Revolutionary War.
Sometimes, there is no honorable alternative to standing up against tyranny.
As Arjuna realizes on the battlefield in The Bhagavad Gita, sometimes the spiritual path includes taking up arms. As Krishna tells Arjuna during his moment of existential angst and confusion about whether is right to engage in warfare:
Get up with a determination to fight, O Arjuna.
Treating pleasure and pain, gain and loss,
and victory and defeat alike,
engage yourself in your duty.
By doing your duty this way,
you will not incur sin.
As far as I know, I didn’t go out consciously trying to pick this fight. But when I was diagnosed with cancer in my testicle (and even more so when it came back in my abdomen months later) I found myself in the midst of an epic confrontation. And while I would have preferred not to have been in such a fight, truss’n’believe that I’ve done all in my power to prevail!
My recent efforts in finishing strong have been both to ensure that this victory is full and complete, and to clean up and restore the inner landscapes that were ravaged by the conflict. I pray for a lasting opportunity to rebuild in earnest.
Meetings with the Ambassador
In a recent lymphatic massage and energy healing session, I also realized that, in addition to cleaning up this battlefield, I’ve been making peace with the aggressor in a process of truth, reconciliation, atonement and restorative justice.
If, in this metaphor, the “land” of my body and my life was attacked and threatened —and I fought back with the heavy artillery of chemotherapy, herbs and supplements, as well as a diet and other scorched-earth practices aimed at “starving” the enemy that is cancer — there remains this important question of where these invaders originated and why they came here in the first place.
While I believe that I am cancer-free, and thus that there are no more “enemies” in my body, I continue to work to make meaning of the cancer experience and clarify the message. And so, whether I’m in communication with an archetypal prisoner of war, or (better yet) involved in ongoing negotiations with an ambassador or emissary from the land where this cancer energetically originated, I like to think that there are peace talks taking place to ensure harmonious coexistence moving forward in perpetuity.
Whatever energy manifested in cancer, it was needing to be seen and heard.
Something was asking for attention. Some change was being requested.
And while I was not willing to let this visiting force take my body or my life, I am willing to consider the perspective of the other. I am willing to consider the voice of whatever civilization felt the need to invade my lands. I am willing to be in relationship with this neighbor and understand what underlying issues caused it to feel the need to venture here to begin with.
I’m even willing to be an ally.
If cancer is a neighboring kingdom that is invading lands here in the human realm, I ask, what is happening “over there” that is causing it to come “over here”?
Just as in geopolitics and foreign policy, any threat to one's homeland (including so-called "terrorist" attacks) ought to bring about thoughtful consideration about the underlying conditions giving rise to the threat. To wit, what are we doing to cause or invite this problem? What can we change upstream that will help avoid such issues?
We have cancer.
In the worldview of many indigenous peoples, when one member of the tribe is ill with a dis-ease, it is considered something we all suffer from.
If one relative, however distant, has cancer, then it’s not “I have cancer” or “you have cancer” or “Uncle Leo over there has cancer” — it is “WE HAVE CANCER.”
It is something for us to deal with and learn from. It is something for us to heal.
And so, while I no longer have cancer (...did I ever really have it ,or was it just a visitor?), I am by all means conscious that the greater world out there — our people, our wider circle of relations — has a major problem.
WE have cancer.
So what are WE going to do to heal it? What will WE do prevent it? How will WE respond to this alarming epidemic?
What can WE do to hear its cries?
And what is all this cancer trying to tell us?
Thanks to my journeys with First Descents and the Send It Foundation, I know many young cancer survivors. There are stories out there that would break your heart. Children and teenagers and young parents dealing with cancer diagnoses. Pregnant women going through chemotherapy with their babies in utero. It's almost too much.
I know that, thanks in large part to medical and scientific advances, our collective life expectancy today is much higher than it used to be. But I also don’t think our ancestors living in the pre-industrial world ever dealt with cancer at levels like this.
In my daughter’s school community alone, I’ve met a surprising number of other parents who have gone through cancer journeys like mine. We may not talk about it much in polite culture, but there are many survivors in our midst. It’s beginning to feel like you can’t throw a stick these days without hitting a cancer dancer.
Why?
Might it have something to do with the industrial pollutants that characterize our modern way of life? Is it the petrochemicals? The standard American diet of additive-laden processed foods and sugar? Is it the chronic stress of overwork and life-imbalance wrought by modern capitalism that produces the inner toxicity and mutations that lead to cancer? Is it the smoking and drinking and overeating and other harmful habits we indulge in just to medicate all this stress?
I don’t know the answers yet. But I know that in my own instance of reckoning with cancer and learning its lessons, I have been invited to look hard in the mirror, ask myself what is most important, and release whatever bullshit toxins and harmful habits of comfort I’ve allowed to come between me and optimal health.
I wonder: if we as a people felt and acted as though WE had cancer, how might we behave? What might we do differently?
What idols might we cease to worship? What essentials might we honor anew?
With hope for what is possible as we expand in consciousness together, I remain yours in service and companionship.
With love,
Nils
