Depths that reveal me to myself Shampers Bluff, NB
"And you wait, keep waiting for that one thing which would infinitely enrich your life: the powerful, uniquely uncommon, the awakening of dormant stones, depths that would reveal you to yourself." Rainer Rilke
I want to scream in this office of a renowned neurosurgeon. Why not? Where is the simple solution? Can’t anything be easy for me? Wes sits beside me, quietly, continuing to write notes on his mental typewriter. I sense his worry building a tower, right next to my own. His eternally supportive and peaceful nature, only present while not worrying. When not fearing the unknown that comes with life’s uncertainty. When not fearing the worst. Which is right now, sitting in Dr. C’s office, at Toronto Western Neurosurgery clinic.
I am generally a great patient. I avoid being high-maintenance or ruffling any feathers. I want them to like me, as if they will only then take better care of me. But as I sit with shoulders hiked to my ears, I sense my fix-it options being tossed into a slow-burning fire. I feel powerless and hopeless, yet I must beg him to do something to get this problem to disappear, and fast.
“What can I do?” I plead. Doesn’t he know how good I am at “doing"?
“There is one thing you could do,” he says unsmiling.
“Slow down. Lower your stress. Do less. We will continue to monitor their size. It’s a wait-and-see to prevent them from putting pressure on your cranial nerves, specifically the optic nerve.”
“What? How?” My face is blank after his advice.
I slowly digest his words, looking to Wes, who also hears what I hear. What does said life of slowing down, and stressing less, even look like? I cannot even imagine a different way of being, I cannot fathom working less while still paying off our piles of debt. I see no alternative to my hustling waking hours, the ones I use mostly to prove my worth and pay the bills. I know Wes feels the same, if not more so.
Back then I always computed exhaustion as the tell-tale sign it was time to leave work. “Sleep when you’re dead,” seemed to be the motto I endeavoured to live up to. It is more than culturally acceptable, it seems absolutely necessary. How else do we survive if we don’t nearly kill ourselves?
If you read my Rope Ladder Story you know that I decided well over a year before this neurologist appointment, that my new life mission was to learn to love myself after attending a workshop called “Discovering your Passionate Purpose,” by Vanessa Long, who calls herself a Capacity Coach. Maybe that mission to love myself included Dr. C’s remedy of stressing less, of slowing down the pace of my life. It seemed simple enough, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t. Not for me. I didn’t know another way to be here.
Fortunately, I had decided to hire that coach to help. I sensed she was my ally. At 30, she had become her mother’s caregiver, watching her suffer and succumb to cancerous brain tumours within 2 years. She was mostly silent when I shared about the ones inside my own head. While not malignant, anyone who knows anything about brain anatomy, acknowledges that there is precious little space for any growths that may easily impair vital nerve function to entire body systems. You might talk to someone who has had a concussion if you want to know that happens when the brain is pushed around.
A few friends and I labeled these tumours “dumb and dumber,” since my left was significantly larger than the right. My coach would tell me later, after we became friends, that she had named them “grace and wisdom,” as she witnessed the shape of my life becoming one that resonated with body awareness and care, also known in the field of science as interoception. She worried about me, I know that. She also told me what I needed to hear. “Physician, heal thyself.” Or something like that. Her coaching was a jolt, a mirror held up close enough for me to see that my ego was running the show and if I didn’t change, my life wouldn’t change.
It’s fascinating to me that deciding to love myself would look like tumours that would take the wheel of my life, for at least the next 10 years. Almost as if I was allowing them to do it. To drive me where I wouldn’t go willingly. To pull over, into a rest stop. A station for permission for me to live within my personal human limitations. What might happen if I ignored the call of my soul? Would I listen? Would I do it right?
After that appointment with Dr. C, it was a wait and see. Every 6 months I would pop an Ativan and experience a full MRI scan of my eyes, optic nerves and brain. I hated it. The claustrophobic tunnel I endured for 45 minutes was nauseating, even with a sedative. I saw several neuro-opthamologists who closely monitored my eyes, since I was showing signs of optic neuropathy, and everyone wanted to ensure timely intervention to prevent blindness. It seemed like every other week was some specialist’s appointment or procedure or imaging. A decade before, my outgoing email signature, read “Those who don’t make time for health, will sooner or later make time for illness.” Here I was living that reality. It wasn’t a guilt trip. It was an awakening.
I eventually altered my work schedule, taking one week off, for every six weeks, further reducing my income to sustain what was already nearly unsustainable. I gave up 15% of income to rest myself. This felt so, so hard. But blindness and full blown brain surgery, or radiation felt harder. Both were dangerous, the risk of not making a full recovery, too high. Either option involved a full year recovery with no guarantee that I would be the same Jaclyn. I was encountering a slow fix method. Would it work?
Meanwhile, dumb and dumber continued to grow, taking over the beautiful brain cells of my frontal lobe, where all of my imagination and creativity lay in wait. I had developed tremours in my right hand and left leg. I experienced levels of dizziness and brain fog and my ability to function well was weakening. I told nearly no one in my practice, less they think me incapable or weak. I kept pushing and pushing, and even though I was changing things, it wasn’t enough, yet.
How could this happen? Wasn’t I doing everything right? Running from work to bed, praying that an overnight rest would recover me enough to function at a high level with tomorrow’s patients. When it stopped being enough, I reduced my hours more, borrowing money from our parents to offset debt costs. The financial success of my clinic was too dependent on me - I had set it up this way - the only way I knew how.
I was grateful for my team of doctors who carefully monitored my brain. In the meantime, it was my responsibility to slow down. I began reading books again. I learned about meditation, that it wasn’t some eastern new age method of disconnecting, rather it was a scientifically proven way to re-shape the brain into a healthier version of itself. I learned and reciting affirmations to nourish, rewire and reprogram my unconscious mind. I prayed more. My personal meditation began by simply shutting my eyes and staying still, with a 5-minute timer set on my phone. I honestly didn’t give myself any more direction than that. In those few minutes I was training myself how to be still. Like the photo of me smelling the flower above, I was watching as silence and stillness was revealing myself to me.
Eventually, meditation felt like a mini-vacation from producing and accomplishing. I began waking earlier, rising closer to six-thirty am. I began sleeping by midnight. And then, before eleven thirty. And then, before eleven. Occasionally, I meditated to a famous musical arrangement by Arvo Part, one that had been shared with me by one of my patients and fellow writers. (I have shared the link below, in case you’d care to listen and or meditate.)
Every 6 months we held our breath for the follow up appointment after the MRI where Dr. C would review the hundred image slices with me. My person reduced to cross sections of my optic nerves, my sphenoid bones, my eyes. The once jubilant “I am Superwoman” theme song (Alicia Keys) for my life, now reduced to a prayer to stay alive, to keep my sight, to have a second chance. Loved ones prayed for the growth to grow slower. To reverse. To shrink. To let the trauma and weight of my self lighten.
During one of my silent meditations, I imagined a white beam of light entering my head, filling my head space with a warm glow, from my shoulders into my hands. From my trunk all the way down into my feet and toes. I visualized my brain cavity, my skull, my intra-orbital spaces filling up with the pure, white glow. My silent healing. I imagined the white light overtaking the tumours, slowly disintegrating them. I repeated this meditation whenever I felt it.
One day, I was meditating in our basement apartment, on a red chair. What happened next was one of the most pivotal moments of my entire life.
Part 3 coming next week.
Listen to music by composer Arvo Part
Peace and love,
Jaclyn xo
I love it when you
Yes, the power of meditation and prayer...constant support through your difficulties. Arvo Part also one of my favorites...evokes a sense of surrender and acceptance...you are so brave Jaclyn.
Thanks you for your open honesty and vulnerability !