08 June 2009

living in gratitude 75 : 2 steps ahead 1 step behind

It's been exactly a week since I got back to my appartment after 3 weeks at Rose's home on the left bank with its elevator to get me up + down. It was really lovely to find my own space - I had actually been away for a month! (including the week in hospital)

text : 5 weeks after surgery
9 1/2 weeks after radiation
exhausted
depleted
depressed




text : shattered

text : 4 general aneasthetics, 120 hours of radiation + surgically induced menopause
depleted depleted depleted depleted depleted depleted depleted depleted depleted depleted


The myth is that now I don't have cancer, I am well... mmmmmm... let me clarify: that I don't have cancer means I am cancer free... so that means I have a sense of relief (no longer have that sense of having a heavy sentence upon me as I don't have to do any more treatment) but I'm still in the recovery phase + it feels like it is 2 steps ahead and 1 step behind. Although my brain may tell me "I am cancer free", my body doesn't believe it.
My body answers back to me : " Are you kidding??? Do you really believe that I am going to trust you??? After all that you've made me go through... yeah ... sure.... how can I know you are not sending me off for some more gruelling treatment???..."


text : keeping myself excessively busy to not feel the pain
and now I am depleted
(this is in reference to my excessively busy life before being diagnosed where I was constantly travelling + working + exhibiting)

text : depleted


At the moment, I limit myself to an activity a day (which is usually a doctor's appointment).

For 1 or 2 days I am relatively OK (exhausted but ok) if I don't do anything else. And it seems that on the 2nd or 3rd day I am so depleted that I don't go much further than horizontal on my sofa or my sketching pad.


I'm coping pretty well with climbing my five flight of stairs - it's exhausting but do+able.


text : feeling so fragile

text : living with so much pain for so long


text : shattered

My cousin asked me "are you feeling better?" And ... well... frankly not particularly... the main difference is that the stomach area from surgery is healing + I can move much better + get up easily now from a sitting or lying position. But it does make a difference to know I don't have to have any more treatment for the moment.

4 comments:

Unknown said...
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Nathalie Latham said...

oops I deleted this quote... soz Kym... was playing around + don't know how to put it back. xxx

eddy carroll said...

A while ago I thought about your drawings in relation to beautiful cave paintings in France made by ancient humans-
that they come out from a dark place

Last night I watched a documentary on a french woman who looks at the same cave paintings from an astronomers perspective, from the view of the drawings mapping the night skies constellations of the time.
The woman, Chantal, proposed that in fact they were drawn and illuminated by low winter sunlight that shone through the cave entrance at particular times and illuminated the walls
They not only told of what animals were available to the season, but also corresponded to the constellations, hooves and eyes matching major star points
Everything that had been proposed about the artists and why the drawings existed, had been seen in new light, this was particularly challenging for many ancient history researchers.
When I saw the walls of the caves lit by the new light I was breath taken, they were the same as they had always been but they now had another quality, something special, something else...
They existed both from the darkness and about a darkness that was seen with a new light
... and I though about how you were ...

ef said...

hi natalie

can't find your e-mail online.
got a roll (dunno what's in it, cardboard, 1m+) standing around here in berlin that, if i recall correctly, the lodz foto festiwal folk dropped here for you. you're prol'lly long gone from this town. are you?

contact me via ernstfischer.com, if you read this.
best,

e