Clear Margins

Body says naw

13 March 2022

Getting a cancer diagnosis certainly gives you opportunities to learn about yourself lololol. When I got mine, one of the first things I realised was that I was very worried about being a good patient. Yep yikes.

Basically I was scared I’d let the side down by not being brave or dignified or something. Pretty fucked up to be concerned about that vs you know, dying young or whatever. Needless to say this hasn’t been the only disturbing / hilarious thing I’ve discovered about myself so far.

Your guess is as good as mine

For my diagnosis appointment, I went prepared. Had been there before with relatives and knew the script, took my wee notepad out and was ready. The doctor told me the news and I thought I felt completely calm. They pause at this point to give you the opportunity to fall apart, I’m like yes I understand, proceed. Went to write the information down and was appalled to find my handwriting was a bit of a mess..!

This questionable version of events was corroborated by my smartwatch which logged a pretty high heart rate during the appointment for some reason. Apparently my body disagreed with my analysis of how I felt.

Sidebar: While waiting for another consultation, my partner’s watch alerted him to a high stress level – aye very good read the room Garmin.

Someone recently told me about compulsively yawning during an appointment to find out if they had the all-clear, thought they were completely fine but were actually in the early stages of a panic attack. Incidentally if you do this yawning thing when nervous or stressed (I’ve done it before public speaking and racing when I was a teenage athlete) you are not alone, animals do it too.

What’s the score

A favourite book of mine is The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk (CW: Trauma). It’s about discovering therapies for healing from trauma, but has a ton of interesting insights on mental health and the body.

Over the last few years I’ve learned that I can find out how I’m feeling by observing my body's behaviour – my conscious mind doesn’t seem to have much of a clue what’s going on in there tbh.

Exercise, especially swimming, has always made me feel happiest. It’s only in recent years that I’ve started to understand why, through learning about mindfulness and interoception. Activities that put me "in my body" reduce stress – the effect seems most pronounced when swimming, I guess because it’s literally immersive, and it forces you to exhale slowly.

Judge, jury, and executioner

Between cancer and a lot of deaths / illness in the family over the past few years, I’ve started to lean more into Buddhist ideas, including non-judgement. I'll be honest, not judging others while waiting for cancer surgery during a pandemic where people can't be bothered wearing masks is a tall order, but as someone raised catholic, not judging myself seems like a decent starting point LOL.

Aside from helping me avoid being in denial – a huge mistake I've seen people make around relatives who were sick and dying – and make the best of what's happening to me at the moment, getting into a regular meditation practice has helped with stress generally (especially in conjunction with keeping physically fit).

Case study: This last week was a tough one, culminating in my surgery getting postponed due to covid, but at my pre-assessment check up my blood pressure was not high. 🤯

We have a cervical screening program where I live and that might have detected my cancer sooner if I hadn't been late to book my smear test (partly on account of the pandemic and partly just me repeatedly putting it off). For someone who could have competed at olympic levels for self-loathing in the past, amazingly I have genuinely not wasted any energy blaming myself for being in this situation:

1. Because it’s fruitless and I can’t afford to beat myself up over anything rn
2. Because there are reasons I ended up here...

Self-care is something I’m really only just starting to get acquainted with in my 40s. Judging myself would be both counter-productive and inaccurate. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Who knows what fun facts I’ll learn next! 🥴