12-13-09 – Lessons?

As I have mentioned before, surgery is the pivotal event in modern breast cancer treatment. Everything that is done therapeutically is done either to prepare for surgery or to clean up after it. It is the centerpiece, and a breast cancer patient’s life builds up to an energetic crescendo around it.

In my case, that crescendo included the prayers and remote healing efforts of literally countless others. Family and friends from around the world have given me the benefit not only of their own prayers, but have added me to prayer lists at their churches. Other friends who practice healing techniques have given me hands-on as well as remote healing sessions, sometimes involving a whole group of their friends who don’t know me directly. And of course, there have been my own constant and often anguished petitions to God/The Divine/my guides/the angels/Mother Mary….call it what you will.

In short, when it comes to metaphysical power, I was packing quite a punch when I went to surgery on December 3rd.

So how do I account for the fact that the surgical experience went down as it did? With all of that angelic firepower behind me, why did I totally lose control of my pain control and anesthesia? Why did my surgeon so blithely ignore the agreements she and I had calmly made about who would cut on me and close my wound?

Granted, in purely physical terms, the surgery appears to have been a success. But in psychological terms, it was pretty much a disaster.

I am no longer anxious. I am no longer afraid. I’m not even grossly angry. I *am* very, very disappointed. Very sad. And I now have yet one more example of how you just can’t trust the medical profession; you have to keep your eyes peeled at every minute when you have to work with them, because too often they will run rough-shod over your personal needs and desires (even the ones that should be fairly easily accommodated). This was not the psychological result that we were trying to achieve.

So what happened? Were the angels on vacation? Was God asleep? Were the prayers and energies that have been offered up on my behalf only half effective—only in the physical realm, but not at all in the psychological?

Or did things unfold as they did for a reason? Is there a lesson here for me? And if so, what is it?

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On the Friday after my surgery, when I was taken from the short stay unit to my hospital room and my cell phone could get a signal again, I was able to listen to a couple of voice mail messages before the phone’s battery died. One was from my medicine woman, Marianne.

She told me that late in the morning on Friday she had gotten a sudden “rush” of energy from me indicating that something had broken through. That some kind of “jam” or obstruction had been moved. She felt that the energies or circumstances surrounding me had become unblocked in some way, had changed, and that now things would begin to flow smoothly forward.

At about the same time that Marianne had her psychic “rush,” I was watching Dr. S, the anesthesiologist, walk away from me, and I was breaking down inside, thinking, “I give up. I give up. I can’t do this any more.” And I was calling Dr. N and Dr. S to deliver my apology. And I was feeling very, very numb and defeated.

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If the angels and God were not on holiday when I had my surgery, if the most sincere and fervent prayers and energetic efforts of dozens of people were not just partly effective, if the timing and significance of Marianne’s psychic rush was not just a coincidence…then the message I would have to derive from the whole surgical experience is that I should give up trying to exercise control over my health care, even in non-critical areas and in the context of calmly reasoned exchanges with my health care providers. Perhaps the message is even larger—that I need to give up trying to exercise control in my life?

Do I only think the surgery was a psychological disaster because the outcome was not the one I had been working for? If I really believe that the angels and God were *not* absent that day, then was even the “negative” result part of the answer to all of those prayers—including my own?

And if so, is there some lesson for me in what happened? Some “take-away” that I should be getting?

And if there is, is this it? That I am not in control, no matter how much I try to be?

It’s one thing to be out of control in a kind of existential sense—in the face of things that qualify as “sh*t happens.” No one can control those kinds of things, and it’s foolish to expect otherwise. I understand that.

But is a planned surgery that you have thoroughly discussed with the care providers ahead of time such a thing? Or is it a different kind of thing that one could and should expect to have some control over?

I am still trying to process everything, still thinking it through. The thought of giving up, of submitting to the feelings of defeat I felt that Friday morning and incorporating them as positive things into my life—that is difficult. I don’t know if it’s the right “take-away” or not.

I’m still trying to process everything. Still trying to think it through.