Yesterday I watched the video of “The Secret”. It’s a highly philosophical discussion of the secret to happiness, health, wealth, and spiritual well-being. It’s based on the law of attraction, meaning that if you emit positive energy, you will attract positivity, and similarly, if you emit negative energy, you will attract negativity. I’ve always been a pretty positive person, so this was no surprise to me. It just made sense. It’s how I’ve always tried to live my life.
It also talked about achieving goals and dreams. When you want something, you have to not only wish for it, but you have to make that goal or dream a part of your very being – feel it, visualize it, believe it. It’s not like magic and poof! – it’s there. It’s more like this dream, being a deeply rooted part of you, will motivate you to make it happen, and attune you to recognize opportunities that can help you achieve that. Again, that’s how I’ve always tried to achieve my goals. I can honestly say that every reasonable goal I’ve set for myself, I’ve achieved. But you have to dream in a positive way. It’s no good to hope that something doesn’t happen. That’s a negative thought. You have to envision it in a positive sense.
I spent several hours digesting all this information, and applied it to my own situation. Sure, I have hopes and dreams of going back to school, retiring, selling my house and moving up to our cabin, and I have visualized myself doing all these things. But I haven’t been doing this with melanoma.
When I was first diagnosed, I was devastated, of course. I was totally ignorant of my disease, I put my faith in the doctors unconditionally, and I believed them when I was told 3 months later that I was essentially cured. I went back to work, back into my positive mode, grateful for every single day, visualizing myself in a healthy state, and completing the next four years to retirement. When I recurred six months later, I took it in stride. I got through it before; I’d get through it again. But when that recurrence manifested two more tumors, and 2 more surgeries couldn’t achieve negative margins, I knew I had to take control of my own life and my treatment by learning as much as I could about melanoma.
I was ravenous for information. Fortunately, having recently completed my M. Ed. Program, my research skills were finely tuned, and being off work and home alone all day long afforded me countless hours, days, weeks, to feed my insatiable appetite for knowledge and understanding. Looking back, I can see how visualizing and positive thinking played a huge role in what was to happen next. I sensed stress and negativity from Dr. Rorke, but positivity from Dr. Pace. So I gravitated towards the latter. Even though Dr. Pace is a general surgeon, and admittedly knows very little about melanoma, he spoke on my behalf to his medical school friend, Dr. Giacomantonio. As a result of all my research, what I really believed was my best shot at a cure was an Isolated Limb Perfusion, which is exactly what Dr. Giacomantonio suggested.
It was a terribly rough treatment, and recovery was long, but I drew from Dr. Giacomantonio’s positivity, and envisioned myself cured, made plans to go back to school in September, and get on with my life.
I never lost touch with the reality of my disease, and the possibility that it could possibly return, so I continued throughout the following year to have every suspicious lump and bump biopsied. And they always came back negative – except for the one I had found on May 9/08. I had it biopsied on May 13. (Dr.Pace is wonderful at getting me in quickly.) At first, it came back negative. But Dr. Clarke, my dermatologist, wasn’t satisfied with the thoroughness of the report, so she pushed to have it re-biopsied, which Dr. Pace did on May 29. This time, it came back positive, and I got that news on June 18, one day short of my first anniversary of being disease-free. So really, when you look at it, I was only disease-free for less than 11 months – or was I ever truly disease-free at all?
On a positive note, it was quite fortunate that Dr. Clarke was as thorough as she was. Dr. Pace had taken the first pathology report at face value, and assumed all was well. Dr. Clarke, however, wasn’t satisfied, and if she hadn’t gone that extra mile, the melanoma could have spread like wildfire. So for that I’m unbelievably grateful. This, to my mind, is the law of attraction in full swing.
But with this unexpected recurrence came a flood of fear. Although the PET scan in July confirmed no distant metastases, and my surgery in September achieved clear margins, instead of being thankful and positive, I was inwardly doubtful and scared. I knew it was only a matter of time before it would spread. I started envisioning myself wasting away from chemo, envisioning being on my death bed, worrying about how my children, step-children and husband would handle my death. When I found myself consumed by all these negative feelings, I thought it was my spirituality preparing me for the worst, and steering me on a path of acceptance. I was also more aware of the negativity of people around me. My husband Jim was particularly negative. Not intentionally, but he was avoiding me, didn’t want to discuss anything, wouldn’t look at my surgery sites, wouldn’t change my bandages, got frustrated doing things around the house, complained about what the kids were NOT doing to help out, rechannelled his energy into his work. As wonderful as he had been in the past, this time he wasn’t dealing with it well at all.
In a way, I probably brought on a lot of his negativity myself. One night he even told me that I kept telling people that I was going to die from this, and he found that hard. My response was that I wanted to prepare everyone for the worst, and help everyone accept what would inevitably happen. On reflection, I realized I had been not telling, but "assuring" people that melanoma is a fatal disease, that I have a six-month prognosis once it spreads to my organs – and it WILL spread -- and that I don’t expect to live to see my 55th birthday. But after watching “The Secret” yesterday, I can see how I have been negative, and how my negativity has been attracting more negativity. In my efforts to prepare myself and everyone else for the worst, I had in fact given up!!! I was unconsciously envisioning myself in my coffin, envisioning my family grieving my death, making those images a part of me. I also realized that if I kept up those thoughts, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN!!!! I have all this knowledge that my positive mindset guided me to learn, yet I was ignoring it all, and allowing fear and negativity to take over my whole being!!! I had fallen victim to hopelessness and despair!
But it’s not too late. I’ve been given a wake-up call. I have to resume being pro-active, not reactive. I have to think positive, envision myself at my children’s weddings, holding all my grandchildren in my arms when they’re born, living many years into my retirement at our cabin with Jim, going on trips, and most of all, I have to envision myself HEALTHY AND DISEASE-FREE!!!! That, my friends, is the power of THE SECRET!!!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment