Port o potties, poetry and Pete : Read on….

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I emerged from a port- o -potty near the main entrance gate for the 2013 Clearwater Revival festival, turned right to find my friend Susan and there he was right in front of me. I was in my 6th year working as an educator with the Clearwater land-based Tideline Discovery program and I had yet to meet Pete Seeger.

What do you say to Pete when you meet him? I thanked him for his dedication and then told him I worked with Tideline. He looked at me, smiled and said: “Good thing!”

There was something about his simple economy of words and the fact that we were both feet from a line of port o potties that seemed so right. So ordinary. So “we are in this together”. It all seemed to fit with the humane humility that Pete Seeger was known for.

Shortly after moving up to the Hudson Valley, after a hike along the west bank of the Hudson at Esopus Meadows- at the very spot where months later I would be part of a staff that introduces school groups to the workings and wonders of the Hudson- at the very spot that I had appropriated for my meditations and river gazing- at the very spot where the photo below was shot and where our school children learn to catch fish with seining nets- this short poem emerged.

This poem titled “Hudson Geese at Sunset” is now dedicated to Pete Seeger. If there ever was a true “Good thing!” Pete Seeger was it.

Hudson Geese at Sunset

As though the bell was rung by the master

cushions laid out

incense lit

temple doors closed

they settle on the skin of the water

wings tucked, necksImage folded

rising and falling

rising and falling

in soft, silent

repose.  ~~   Donna Sherman

Strange Dissonance by Donna Sherman

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“Thyroid cancer, isn’t that the good cancer?”

The good cancer?

Who wouldn’t want there to be a good cancer? It’s human, and often very well-meaning, to want to put a positive spin on the undeniable bad news that is a cancer diagnosis; however, the stark reality is that there is no good cancer and just hearing the term “good cancer” creates a frustrating dissonance in those of us who live with the realities of thyroid cancer.

How thyroid cancer became known as “the cancer you want if you have to get cancer” is beyond me and beyond all of us in the thyroid cancer support network. There is not one kind of thyroid cancer with one kind of treatment and one likely treatment outcome. Thyroid cancer is like every other cancer in that it has a wide range of cell types, stages, risk levels, potential or already embedded metastases, lymph spread and cell variants. A thyroid cancer diagnosis will not place you in a cookie cutter treatment protocol. There is no single template by which a person is treated for thyroid cancer; treatment is based upon a complex assessment of all of the above.

Types of thyroid cancer include:

Papillary   (with or without variants)

Follicular (with or without cell variants)

Medullary

Anaplastic

While it is true that some thyroid cancers caught early, staged low and with no metastases can be treated surgically and leave a person with good chance of having no reoccurrance or metastases for the first 5 years post treatment; many thyroid cancers do not fall into this category.  Most people with thyroid cancer endure a type of radiation therapy called RAI (radioactive iodine in which millicuries of radiation are swallowed in a pill) and many go on to face multiple surgeries, more radiation, and chemotherapy.  A good number of people who are diagnosed with thyroid cancer are dealing with aggressive variants.  I know many  people from the thyroid cancer support networks who are valiantly trying to educate and advocate while in the midst of exhausting and aggressive treatment.

We are fortunate to have thyroid replacement drugs to keep our endocrine system going, and, quite frankly, to keep us alive; however, despite our dedicated physicians best efforts to titrate our biochemistry we are missing something vital. A pill is a poor substitute for the real deal. The importance of the thyroid gland to the whole of the human body is not to be underestimated. What is missing from our bodies may not be visible from the outside but we feel it’s absence and we live with the consequences.

We are altered. We live with losses.

Here is some of what we live with:

We have what I have come to call the “dubious honor” of feeling both hyper and hypo simultaneously. Exhausted yet unable to sleep. Suddenly cold and unable to warm our bodies or conversely hot and unable to cool down. While we are in the phase of post surgical (thyroidectomy- often with lymph removal) treatment called suppressive therapy, we may feel like we’ve pillaged the Starbucks inventory only to be overwhelmed by sudden and profound drops in our energy levels. In this suppression therapy period of treatment we are placed on a therapeutic high does of medication to suppress the spread of remaining cancerous cells.   Often our voices can remain permanently altered and strained due to our surgeries and scar tissue.  Many of us live with mild to sometimes severe choking sensations because the internal architecture of our necks is altered. We often have limitations in how we can move our necks. Pain in our neck, jaw and throat.  Damage to our salivary glands. Possible heart damage. Joint and bone pain which can be quite severe. Brain fog when are levels are off. Chronic insomnia. A lifetime of medical tests, possible invasive procedures and the anxieties that are associated with any cancer. There are numerous side effects from the RAI (radioactive iodine) that we swallow. Swallowing radiation is awful. (Worst nausea of my life after the anti –nausea pill wore off.) Preparing one’s body for RAI by stopping your thyroid medications and becoming extremely hypothyroid, or taking injections all while on a very strict low iodine diet is to experience a level of fatigue that is downright scary.  To put it bluntly: The body starts to shut down. And, if that isn’t bad enough, there is the literal isolation one has to adhere to after swallowing RAI. You are toxic, emitting radiation and can’t hug, be hugged or simply touch another for several days. At a time when you are under extreme duress, you must vigilantly keep yourself apart from your loved ones so you don’t infect them with radiation. We learn to live with a lifetime of tests, scans, blood work and medication adjustments. People who are being treated for late stage and pervasive metastatic thyroid cancers are enduring multiples surgeries, multiple radiation treatments and rounds of chemotherapy.

The good cancer?

All cancers need our attention and thyroid cancer patients should never get the message that they are dealing with a puppy when their reality is more akin to staving off an attack dog.

I’m not a victim of cancer.  I live with the results of a cancer that strengthened my spirit more than it kicked my butt- and it most certainly kicked my butt. The above is a list of some of the difficulties that those of us with thyroid cancer live with, it is not a list of complaints- it’s  bare truth.

I’ve always been a relatively optimistic person.  My love and extreme gratitude for this life has spiked to become deeper, sharper and more immediate; however, being grateful,  and fiercely in love with life doesn’t mitigate the losses and challenges that thyroid cancer has placed into my daily life.

September is Thyroid Cancer Awareness Month and since ALL cancers need research, funds and attention, I am asking you to consider donating your time, energy or however many dollars you can spare, towards this cause that is both dear to my heart and woven into my life.  ~~  Donna Sherman

Please visit the first post on this home page titled: YOGA FUNDRAISER FOR THYROID CANCER scheduled for March 14th, 2015. It’s going to be a lot of fun, good for you and every penny goes directly to a non-profit organization that helps survivors of thyroid cancers. Contact me and I’ll walk you through getting signed up. Tax deductible donation for event 25.00.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Feel free to share it. If you want to comment please do.  ~~  Donna

Here’s how you can help:

ThyCa: Thyroid Caner Survivors Association, Inc. http://www.thyca.org

Light of Light Foundation:  http://lightoflifefoundation.org

http://www.thyca.org

Life on Life’s Terms

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IMG_0195It’s a mess out there, sometimes a beautiful mess.  Daily life, by it’s very nature, is rarely going to present itself to us like a well tended garden. Sometimes it’s easy to hang out with the messiness of life. Other times we can get overtaken by anger, intense emotional reactivity and negative behaviors. How much of our daily suffering arises from our very human, but misguided, attempts to bend life to our liking?

The good news is that we all have an inner capacity to cultivate resilience, insight, behavioral changes and deepening peace in daily life. We don’t need to seek hidden caves or high peaks to gain more expansive perspectives on life and it’s inevitable ups and downs. Nor do we need to spend endless hours on meditation cushions separated from, or avoiding, the very challenges that trip us up. We can learn to meet life, on life’s terms, with compassion, presence of mind, and wise action. We can do all of the above by consistently, and persistently, practicing something called Compassionate Mindful Attention.

During the month of June I will be offering another four week series titled: Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation & Stress Reduction at The Living Seed in New Platz, NY. This series has provided many others with effective, user-friendly tools that help to increase insight,resilience, and skillful decision making – all in a safe, compassionate group setting.

Next series dates: Four consecutive Tuesday evenings June 3,10,17 & 24

80.00 for entire series.  Registration:  http://www.thelivingseed.com click on events or workshops or call 845.255.8212 . Feel free to contact me with any questions at centerpoint2@earthlink.net

Recent Poem: Entangled Particles

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(Quantum Physics uses the term “entangled particles” to describe how particles remain connected–their actions affecting another particle despite the vast distances between them. Perhaps human memory and love work similarly)Image

ENTANGLED PARTICLES    by Donna Sherman

Somewhere in the topography of the heart lay a hidden red “X”

Its location a mystery, its very existence undeniable

You stumble along one ordinary summer night

Your body dancing with just enough staccato

Then just enough smooth flow into absolute stillness

Then, a squeeze

A hand that grips your heart- steady, generous and firm

As if  to say: “You know this. You will always know this.”

Entangled particles

Kinetic at best, nuclear at worst, rarely inert

A lush vine of memory creeps

Travels with friends with names like Subtlety and Paradox

Blooms forth a steady hand

Pumps wakefulness into forgetful veins

Neither wants nor demands

Nudges you back home

Where your vow:

“I have always known this, I will always know this.”

–dls 2013

Refusing Paradise

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Saw this sign in Middletown, Rhode Island a few weeks ago and got a good laugh.

If paradise is a realm free from suffering, and if purgatory is a rest- stop where our stained souls get a good exfoliation, then I’m choosing neither. I’m going to trek ahead into the grit, grace and wonder or ordinary life.

“There’s more than one answer to these questions, pushing me  in a crooked line, the less I seek the source from some definitive, the closer I am to fine.”– Lyric from “Closer to Fine” by Indigo Girls

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