JY's Holiday Special

Yesterday, I discovered something wonderful: a trove of cheesy, made-for-TV holiday specials on Netflix, all boasting a variation on the same theme. I watched 3 while working on my Christmas crochet projects. It was a glorious way to spend a snowed-in Sunday.

The binge reminded me that while I do love Holiday Specials, they can sometimes be cringe-inducingly (and sometimes intolerably) cliche, smacking you in the face with the same messages over and over about (re)discovering the true spirit of the holiday, showing kindness, cherishing every moment, appreciating the people in your life and letting them know you do, being grateful for what you have, giving to those who have less, etc.  This is especially true, I've noticed, when a character has cancer.

Here's the thing though, these (predominantly) family channel movies may punch you in the gut with so many blatant lessons of morality that it makes your eyes roll, but that doesn't mean the messages are untrue, or unimportant. As someone who finds themselves living out one of those cliche cancer patient movies, I increasingly find myself having the very same "revelations" as the holiday special heroines.

There are three themes in particular that dominate my thoughts of late.

1. Smile more.

If you can't do anything about whatever is making you sad, thinking about how sad it is and how sad you are will just make you more sad => cycle of sadness :(. If, however, you can find a so-called silver lining, you'll feel less sad. And if you continue to find more, you get practice at finding silver linings, and then it gets easier to find them, and soon you don't have to look for them anymore they're just obvious and *presto changeo* => cycle of happiness => more smiling => more endorphins :D

My friend Shannon summarizes nicely: "While we go through bad times, eventually we'll go through good times once again. Statistically speaking, the good and bad cancel out to a net zero effect, but with the right attitude the positives can take precedence and we can start to see the negatives as building towards a positive result."  'zactly.

If you can do something about what's making you said, whatever are you waiting for?

1b. Do things that make other people smile. It will make you smile too. Don't buy your friend a gift basket for Christmas, spend time with them, and reserve time to do so in the future (see number 2). When we were kids my sister and I would make up little coupon booklets for our parents with IOUs for extra chores and breakfasts in bed. I would totally dig a coupon booklet for Christmas.

2. Pay attention.

Don't just go to the party or family dinner, BE there. Enjoy it, savour it, make moments to think of when you're having trouble with number 1. Good things are happening all around you. Don't miss out. "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." Word to John Lennon.

3. Trust the universe

This is not meant as a passive statement. I don't mean to suggest we should sit back and observe our lives with faith that everything will turn out peachy without any effort. Rubbish. Sometimes the universe hands you a pretty sweet deal, but usually after a lot of effort, and then you still have to notice it, accept it, and sometimes recognize that it isn't exactly in the format that you expected. So, trust the universe to present you with the opportunities that you have earned, but pay attention so as not to miss them, and maybe you'll have reason to smile more. See what I did there? :)

My current silver lining opportunity: our Love the Snatch campaign. It would not have happened without my diagnosis, and was certainly not a direction I expected to be pointing my efforts. But we have a vision and big dreams for where it could go, and I find myself feeling much  more excited, optimistic, and generally forward looking than I expected to be when they told me I had cancer.

Health Update

Speaking of cancer, a brief update on where I am right now. My chemo is done (woot!) and my MRI shows no visible tumor (double woot!). I had a successful surgery a little over a week ago to move my ovaries. They live up under my ribs now, hopefully out of the field of radiation, so that I will continue to have hormones in my life (tripple woot).

The surgery was relatively minor. I felt sore very sore for a couple of days and had trouble getting out of chairs and such, but was mostly able to manage on my own thanks to frequent Tabata planks. One of my abs felt strained, I suspect due to the inflation of my stomach so the doctor could see in there (he said I had a "lovely belly - very easy to work with...I don't expect to receive that sort of compliment ever again!). The worst part was actually the trapped C02 gas, which hangs out next to your diaphragm causing radiating shoulder pain. It's like normal gas, except you can't fart/burp it out because it's in a body cavity, not your stomach, and so you have to just walk around until it absorbs in your body. Meanwhile, it acts like the bubble in a level; every time I bent over or rolled to my other side it gurgled pver to the most upward facing pat of my body. Horrid. It's been 1.5 weeks and I did my first WOD with no more than 15 lbs, no jumping or situps, and slow controlled movements and nothing split open or seems otherwise worse for the effort.

Radiation starts at the end of December and will involve treatments 5x per week for 5 weeks with the aim of zapping any stray cells that might see fit to wander elsewhere and cause trouble.

I'm feeling generally back to normal energy-wise. I have lost strength, but not any weight (stay tuned for the body composition analysis to see if I lost any muscle). Looking forward to getting back to lifting now that I'm not being poisoned! See you around the gym!