Breathing Room

Walt running while we are enjoying the spring weather,  having a BBQ at Chrissy Field 

Running wild - wait a minute, did he just bust out of Alcatraz?

The last few weeks have been full to brimming with both stress and fulfillment.  I will go right to the heart of it;  I had my MRI and appointment with my neuro-oncologist on Wednesday and it was continued good news.  I must say again, my tumor is not gone but my doctor said that it is the "best" it has ever looked in the two and a half years that she has been treating me.  The radiation can continue to work slowly, long after the treatment is finished, and that is what seems to be happening.  I'm also on the seventh cycle of my second round of chemotherapy and so far, I'm still tolerating it well.  It is very exciting and more than I could have hoped for.  My brain has a little more breathing room in my skull and I can feel the difference.


I attended a retreat over the weekend in the San Juan Islands in Washington State.  It was focused on developing a mindfulness practice for patients living with cancer.  I felt that this is a part of my treatment strategy that was constantly falling by the wayside.  Good diet (check), exercise (check), acupuncture and Chinese Tradition Medicine (check), having a supportive community (check), meditation or mindfulness practice, hmm, not really.  There is strong evidence that this can improve outcomes for people living with cancer.  I would try in fits and starts but I felt that I could never really develop a "practice" that I could draw on.  Perhaps it was that my first exposure to this came in high school reading about Zen Buddhism and getting it stuck in my mind that there is a "right" way and everything else was failure.  In any case, I felt that I wasn't doing this enough or correctly and I wanted to finally incorporate mindfulness into all the complimentary care practices that support my continued wellness.

The flower garden at the Whidbey Institute

The Sanctuary - amazing space, inside and out

The retreat was wonderful with an amazing group of fellow participants and excellent facilitators.  Just being in the incredible forest on the seventy acres of the Whidbey Institute, I felt I was getting twice the amount of oxygen I would normally take in.  That in itself felt remarkably healing.  Maybe I'm just a slow learner but I realized before the retreat was over that I actually do already have a consistent mindfulness practice.  On all of my solo walks through the park, back and forth, to undergo my radiation treatments, I was practicing mindfulness.  In choosing not to be overwhelmed by the stress of not knowing what the next MRI will bring,  I was practicing mindfulness.  In being honest and attentive to what my body was telling me throughout this process, I was practicing mindfulness.  There is always room to improve but it was reassuring to discover that I didn't have to start from zero.