I’m crying because it really hurts. It hurts even though an hour ago, I took half a cannabis gummy with three ibuprofen. Each day I take pills, they take longer to have an effect, which is to make me feel normal. I don’t often use gummies because I’m pretending my life is fine, everything is fine, so I want to keep myself clear to see clients and plan my vacation and read my emails as if nothing’s happening. As if I am fine.
This is why we humans, with our big dumb egos that fool us into pretending that we can control our reality, have pain: to cut through the bullshit and stop us when everything is not fine. Pain is what brought me back to the clinic for a second time. (The first visit, when I had no pain but felt weird stuff in my belly, I was told I was feeling my own poop, so I should eat more fiber, including psyllium husk, which made me look like I was wearing a basketball in my pants.) For Visit #2, the pain was hardly noticeable, a prod down past my stomach, a little poke. But the painful lump I felt was on the right side, down low, where it might be my appendix. The second doctor said no, appendicitis pain is steady and gets worse. I was sore to the touch, but my appendix was fine, my urine tested fine. If it gets worse, go to the ER. It didn’t. The pain was dancing with me - a prod here, a few minutes of ache, then it vanished.
This dancing, glancing pain even allowed me to perform an intense weekend of Thai bodywork, twelve massages in two days, with the help of micro-dosing cannabis gummies, which caused the pain to step aside. By the end of the weekend, I could barely move my arm, but my stomach was all right.
Two days later, a Tuesday, I was back to my original doctor for Visit #3. I could still feel the lump, and the pain dance had resumed. I reported its patterns: worse after meals, worse after movement, pain while driving when I used my right foot to hold the gas pedal down. The doctor still believed the lump was a bit of stubborn stool. If so, this little piece of shit was set on killing me, as the pain had begun dancing faster; by Friday, I decided to do the very most disgusting thing a person can do - go through a colonoscopy prep - to soften and flush this thing out of me and stop the dance. On a phone call, my doctor agreed to the prep and advised: If it gets worse, go to the ER.
After shitting myself all night brought no relief, the volume of the dance jumped to an 8 out of 10. On Sunday morning, my husband Woods Man and I went to the ER, where the doctor chastised me for not taking any pain medicine. I tried to explain to him that I needed the pain to get me there, even if the pain still came and went, like a message on a staticky radio.
Now, Wednesday, Woods Man and I strap on our skis and go out on last night’s inches of first snow before the morning rains come and wash it off. I need fresh air and exercise, a break from telling people the bad news I got from the ER, where a CT scan revealed the lump’s identity. It is wonderful skiing in the light rain, no sticking, just gliding through the snow and taking photos of the misty hills in the distance.
A momentary break in the dance
We avoid steep slopes, as what goes down must move herself back up, and moving my right leg is part of the pain dance. But Woods People on skis have to do it, sooner or later the lust for speed returns and we decide to zoom down a steeper hill. As I start down, a blast of protective energy from the center of my body causes me to tense up - to protect myself from falling - and I pull my skis into a snowplow so fast that I wobble.
As we slice through the wet snow on the way back up, the pain returns, despite the half-gummy and 3 ibuprofen. I ask Woods Man if he has any weed. Yes, he does, but oops, no lighter, which is just the same as not having any weed. Without the promise of relief, the pain has stopped dancing and settled in to my body. Women, imagine this pain as a menstrual cramp that doesn’t stop cramping - a clenched fist inside. Guys, imagine someone punching you in the stomach. Women could also imagine a punch in the stomach.
We slog back to the car, punch in the stomach, no weed. I revert to yoga. I hear an Indian voice inside reminding me that all pain, even this one, is only sensation. I can simply witness it and note its characteristics instead of getting swept up in the drama of pain. Only sensation, madam, the voice adds because it’s Indian, and because I will be turning 50 in 11 days.
Thinking of my 50th birthday adds to the clenched fist in my gut. Less because of the insult of time aging me - though I fear I will age so much during this trial - but more because Woods Man and I, along with thirteen other friends from all over the country, have plane tickets to fly to Belize and frolic on the beach together. Our plane tickets are for next week. After spending my 40th birthday in Montreal, hung over and depressed by the loneliness of winter, I resolved to enter my 50s somewhere warm, surrounded by friends. I began planning the trip in April; it is now late November, which means I have been dreaming of it for several months. Never have I organized a group of friends to travel in this way, and this trip has become a bright beacon for me.
But this pain. When we get to the car, I am panting. Instead of getting a diner breakfast, our original plan, we go home. I finally crack open the Gabapentin I got from the ER. I smoke a joint, chanting Om Nama Shivaya, as I always do, paying homage to Lord Shiva, the Hindu God of yoga and of stoners. Then I spend the rest of the day in bed.
Lord Shiva Himself, in his own pain dance
I marvel at this: only three days ago, we were unsure if an ER visit was warranted. Now I am crying because it really hurts. And I am crying because I fear that we might not go to Belize with all our friends after all. The ER doc, when I told him of our plans, suggested that the surgery I would need could be put off for a few weeks and that I could take some pain meds and still go to Belize. Have some fun! I miss that guy, who knew not to tell me that I have to cancel my trip in the same breath that he had to give me some bad health news.
My health news was so bad that his urgent referral got me an appointment at a bigger hospital the very next day, two days ago. There, a gynecological resident examined me and confirmed what the CT scan showed: the lump is not stubborn stool but a large mass on my right ovary. There are other masses, too, including a smaller one on my liver. But this is not why I am crying, because cancer is still something that happens to other people, including my brother, who is currently struggling with cancer that spread to his lungs after ravaging his kidney.
I am crying because it hurts - punch yourself in the stomach - and because the resident was quick to deliver another blow. She told me that it’s not advisable to travel to another country with a mass so large that it has shoved my uterus aside and presses against my bowel. “You don’t want a bowel obstruction in Belize,” she said.
She’s just a resident, I told myself, hoping when I get to see an oncologist, she will agree with me that I should have some fun. That night, however, I awoke at 3 am and remembered an intention I set for myself a few years ago. Since the day I set it, this intention visits me in the night sometimes, not unlike a bad dream. Seated before my altar, immersed in a wave of yogic bliss, I made this intention: to release my ego during this lifetime.
Noooooo, screamed part of me, the same part that screamed again at 3 am. For the ego I planned to release is more than just the part that brags upon success; the ego is the part that wants success, that wants everything it wants. And the bigger the want, the better to release the ego when it is lost.
Om Nama Shivaya. Lord Shiva brought the Belize birthday dream to me when I was in Belize in April. I was staying on San Pedro, a tourist town of sea resorts, golf carts, and day drinking rum drinks, and felt underwhelmed by the place. But on a snorkeling trip, we stopped at the little island of Caye Caulker for lunch, where a local guy in Rasta dreads came by with his basket of cakes.
“Got any special brownies?” I asked him, tired of day drinking.
He did. I gave him ten bucks for a little packet of brownie dough wrapped in plastic. “Eat half,” he told me. And I know that when the Rasta cake guy tells you to eat half, it’s best to eat half.
Within the hour, I was getting my hair braided on the beach. The lady tugged at the mats in my hair, tangled from snorkeling. She used this green goo to straighten it out, but mostly she tugged and ripped at my hair with her comb. Only sensation, madam.
Stoned, I fell in love with Caye Caulker, which had few golf carts but was quiet with bicycles. It was small enough that everything was on the beach. I returned the next day, ate the other half of the brownie dough and wandered around, trying to decide where to hold my 50th birthday weekend. I found a resort made up of brightly-colored cabanas and spent the day there, dipping in the ocean, rocking in a hammock, and imagining that my friends would fill the place for my big birthday.
When I sobered up, I still planned to organize a trip to the cabanas in Caye Caulker, but I doubted that anyone would want to spend the money and time to go away with me. The value in cannabis for me - Om Nama Shivaya - has always been its power in allowing my mind to shift past worry and self-doubt. However, when I sent a group email proposing the idea to nearly everyone I knew, I was amazed to find that people wanted to come. And be with me.
Now I am crying because my friends have spent their money and planned to take a trip of a lifetime with me and I have a clutching fist in my gut and an appointment with a gyn oncologist in two days. Woods Man and I consider shortening our trip, to reduce the chance of bowel obstruction, but we suspect what the oncologist will say.
Because Lord Shiva got his joke on me. He gave me the dream and waited until the very last minute, when travel arrangements become nonrefundable, to take it away. On Friday, the oncologist will show us the CT scan, revealing not one but two large masses that she describes as the size of cantaloupes. Seeing the urgency of the situation, as I can barely move from the pain, she will fit me in to surgery the following Wednesday. The same day we have tickets to fly to Belize.
This is why Lord Shiva is called The Destroyer. He can take your life, or he can just take your ego. And what is left?
Only sensation, madam.