From Blackness to Light

Recently, I had what I would call an overwhelming day in my treatments, which was a little bit of a crazy thought given all that I went through in 2020. Here was I at the beginning of a new, hopeful year at the hospital to get my weekly chemotherapy (Velcade) injection. I was given an IV and they took a number of vials of blood to check me out before starting treatment. This different nurse then arrives in the room with this tray and tells me she is there to give me my first set of childhood immunizations, five of them. Another nurse again arrives in the room with a bag of something called Zometa, a monthly infusion I receive to strengthen my bones. (On a related note, I have lost another inch in height!)

Even though I felt overwhelmed, it was hard at the beginning of a new year not to compare myself to where I was a year ago. At this time last year, I had been hospitalized because my cancer was playing havoc with my kidneys. I was at times in unbearable pain because of the lesions in my back and the fracture in my spine. I was not able to walk more than a few steps without assistance, particularly at nights if I needed to go to the bathroom. I had been on my chemotherapy treatment for only a couple of weeks. I was hopeful but frightened.

Now a year later, as I waited for the lab results to come back and my treatment to start I wandered up and down the corridors freely, with no pain. The lab results came back and my kidneys are functioning...absolutely normally. Quite the contrast! The greatest testament of my progress is learning recently that if I had not undergone treatment that my life expectancy was about 7 months. I am glad that I did not know that figure at the beginning.

So why am I about to speak about a fly in the ointment? Even with all this hopefulness and my somewhat miraculous "recovery", even in the minds of my doctors who call me a "rock star", I have recently been experiencing a blackness surround me. My thoughts have been negative about almost everything. It is not logical to be thinking this way and it has brought with it feelings of guilt. The guilt has fed the blackness with a voracious appetite. It was a recurring thought that I was upset about being upset. These feelings are a surprise to me because for a whole year I have been keeping my head above the proverbial water line. So what gives?

Alan and I have been speaking with a special life coach who has helped so many cancer patients over his career. He now also has cancer and as I shared with him my feelings of depression, I was relieved to hear him say that he too had experienced these feelings. He described a perfectly natural process by which our bodies and minds need to grieve as a result of the cancer and sadness or depression were part of that grieving process. It might not happen immediately upon diagnosis but these emotions were part of letting go of "what might have been."

I had some further insights that have literally shed more light on the situation. Darkness often either precedes or follows light. For those of you who know the story of Joseph Smith Jnr, the boy prophet and founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he went to the woods to pray and ask which church he should join. As he knelt to pray, he describes being enveloped by a thick darkness so much so that he felt threatened with destruction. He further describes being almost ready to sink into despair before the light came in which he saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. I have felt for years that this was more than just opposition but that it was a preparation for what was to come.

In a similar vein, Abraham Lincoln suffered terribly from depression and yet he was able to lead the United States towards some of the greatest changes for a more equitable society. He commented,  "A tendency to melancholy.... let it be observed, is a misfortune, not a fault." Likewise, Winston Churchill also suffered from the same illness. Though plagued with intense personal, emotional pain, he was able to lead his country to victory against an oppressive foe. I have had the feeling that these leader's respective personal trials actually helped them to become the leaders they were.

While I am hopeful that this darker phase will pass soon, I am no longer running from it. Memories come to my mind as I recall that it has been in my darkest moments in my life that I have learned the most, that I have been personally stretched the most. There is a difference for me between wallowing in the negative which is not a good approach and asking myself, "What do I need to learn from this?" Feeling down also makes me appreciate my happy moments which are in direct contrast to my current mood. 

I  am not some great leader but in my own little world, I know that after the dark will come the light.