This has been a daily blog for years, yet for the first time ever, it has been on an extended pause since Mar 27th as I had major surgery on March 31st after an early-stage colon cancer was detected by routine screening..Suffice to say that this has been, by far, the most major medical episode in my 56 years, so there have been many learnings.
Two of the key learnings have been on the power of pausing and also of being patient. Today I’ll share some thoughts on those, plus on the power of gratitude.
Recuperation has been “routine” and the medical team is very happy with how everything has gone, yet it has been very, very hard, particularly the eight days in hospital after the operation. Once I got home, healing felt like it accelerated, but at the same time, it still felt to me to be so, so slow. I’m a bit amused at myself and how many people who know me well reminded me to slow down and be patient. Hah! Definitely learnings around patience!
As to pausing, for the first few weeks, I simply paused almost everything and rested. I was patient with the healing, and it was also interesting to observe myself and how I felt, particularly when I got a phone call from the consultant surgeon about two weeks after surgery to tell me that I have to have some “mop up” chemotherapy (starting in a few weeks) just to be sure everything is eliminated. For a day or two that news floored me at a time when I was still slowly (and patiently!) healing. That moment definitely felt like a “pause”, as for a time the only thing in my field of focus was upcoming chemotherapy to layer on top of still being at a relatively early stage of post-operative healing.
So, to gratitude. As soon as I received my preliminary diagnosis on March 3rd, I got into my mind that I would adopt an anchor, a context, of GRATITUDE.
Whenever my thoughts have turned away from that, for example when given the surprise news of the need for chemotherapy, I have, as soon as I could, returned my thoughts to being grateful. A partial gratitude list:
- for the NHS for their bowel cancer screening programme
- for the fact that the tumour picked up was early stage and could be operated on routinely with a prognosis for full recovery
- for the amazing NHS staff, including the team handling my journey at St George’s Hospital
- for the fact that the surgery went well (routinely!)
- for my partner, my children, my inner circle of family and friends who have and continue to support me
- for my amazing clients and business friends and all the people expected and unexpected who have held me in their thoughts
- for the fact that, though I have to have chemotherapy, it was based on a measurement of lymph node involvement that could not have been any smaller (“barely measurable” in 1 of 24 nodes removed)
- for the change in chemotherapy protocol in the last few years from 6 down to 3 months of treatment only
- for my privilege in being financial and otherwise secure, so having nothing to worry about when I took a month away from work.
I share all of this to perhaps help one or two of my readers now or anytime in the future when they may feel under stress from unexpected and high impact events, whether medical or otherwise.
Having a focus on GRATITUDE has helped me often in the last two months in remaining centred and so being in the best position to heal and to focus on healing and recuperation.
In closing, I’m also grateful to be back writing. I am going to give myself permission to write daily or not as the mood takes me, but.. I’m back, and grateful!
PS For more on gratitude, I shared this post on Christmas Day 2018, including a link to David Steindl-Rast’s TED Talk