Can't You Just Imagine You Are Lying On a Beach Sun Tanning!?

   This is not a question I have ever asked anyone else (and it is not the question in the title) ~ so prepare yourself a little.

  Have you ever had someone (a man) put their hand in your vagina and go up with that hand as far as it could go so they could feel your uterus? In this case he had another hand on my stomach pushing it down so he could feel the orange, or was it grapefruit size tumor, I had growing in my uterus at the time. Before this I had never had anyone stick their hand up there. Especially a strange man I was only meeting for the first time that day. He was my Oncologist (cancer doctor). I remember he had an Australian accent but I dont remember his name. I was twenty two at that time in my life.  He told me he was going to be doing this to me weekly to make sure the tumor was shrinking. I felt incredibly overwhelmed at that thought. I was such a private person, and this was so intensely invasive to me. I asked if there was any way he could arrange for a woman doctor to do this instead of him. He expressed his frustration at my uncomfortableness, but thankfully each time I went in for chemotherapy a sweet and completely kind woman doctor came and did the procedure. She understood just a bit of what I was going through. She was empathetic and apologetic and tried to be as gentle as possible as this was just the beginning of the hell I would experience each time I went in for chemo. Thank God for her ~ and really ~ every kind individual that crossed my path during this time in my life.

  However, at my last visit to the Oncologist, after my last chemo treatment, he decided that before I left he wanted to do the invasive check up one last time to make sure that the tumor was gone. I expressed how uncomfortable it was and how I absolutely hated it. After I had stripped down and was lying flat on the bed with my legs in the stirrups and he was going to start he said to me with frustration in his voice, 'Can't you just imagine you are lying on a beach sun tanning!?' I did not know how to reply. Those were some of the last words he spoke to me and that was the last time in my life I ever saw him. However I have never forgotten those words as I lay in such a vulnerable state. I have never forgotten how they made me feel either. I had gone through such an odd and unexpected, horrifying and traumatizing experience. One that left me scarred forever. It changed my entire life. And those words were how it ended. I got up, went home and never saw any of the doctors in that cancer clinic again. I had to get blood tests weekly for a year to make sure the tumor was not coming back but that was it. There were no further instructions, encouragement, or anything...other than, 'don't try to get pregnant for at least a year and we dont know if you can get pregnant at all.'

    Since I have been in counselling this Summer I have been examining some of the roots of where certain thinking came from and where I started feeling like I didn't have a voice or being that really mattered. I had felt this before but it was during my childhood. This cancer experience happened to me when I was twenty two. I had been married a year. I was a young adult just starting to try to make my way in the world and figure out who I was. My Oncologist was not the only doctor who refused to treat me with kindness or humanity during this time. My Gynecologist was also incredibly horrible to me and most of the time refused to talk to me at all. He would direct all conversation to my mother. She had to accompany me to my appointments as I was so weak from blood loss that she had to help me walk and drive. When I would ask him questions he would refuse to answer. He made me feel ridiculous.  Why? What was so wrong with me? What I was going through was not something I had done to myself. My cancer was a result of a Molar Pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage!

 This month every year there is a day I take to remember the child I lost and let myself feel a bit of the grief around that. I am realizing more and more how this monumental experience I wrote about above shifted me into a state of survival. I am also realizing how many damaging things were said or done to me during that time that cemented certain beliefs I had already in me that were unhealthy. As I went forward from that time on I had those messages dictating my life in a powerful way. Why write about it here? Only because this might strike a chord somewhere in you. You might have gone through something completely different, however it might have cemented certain negative beliefs in you that to this day you live with. These beliefs might dictate many of your relationships and actions.

  In survival mode you just cope in whatever way you can. You put up boundaries where you feel capable, you go through whatever motions you must. Yet deep down if you give yourself a moment you know that you are not whole. You know there is sadness as well.

   Has anyone ever told you that you are valuable just as you are? Can you tell that to yourself? You don't have to prove it to anyone, but you need to know it deep within you. When you can look at yourself and really see that fact with clarity it might not look so pretty for a while. It brings about change. You might need to shift out of survival mode and into really living. You might feel emotions more than ever before (and have to own them) and need to redirect messages and thoughts. Yet at the end there might be this beautiful strong graceful tree growing that is you! Someone who has deep roots, who can give with grace and dignity to those around you and yet accept love and kindness as well. It takes a life time of growth, discovery and change. That's okay. It is worth it because you are you!

Blessings on your journey ~
Xo
Tansy