Rest Days

Essential to every journey, is a plan for rest.  At high altitude, rest days are essential for acclimatization.  On long treks (>100 miles) rest days are all about doing laundry.  We can carry less, if we can bulk launder (versus sink launder and air dry) a time or two along the way.  Sometimes rests are engineered to spend time with pals, extend the pleasure of a stunning vista,  or enable "We may never pass this way again," cultural experiences.  And sometimes, rests are extemporaneous celebrations of life on the trail.  Regardless, rest happens.  Rest is good.  And rested, we resume our journeys with balanced bodies and minds (and definitely less stinky packs 😉). 

This week we gained awareness that this unexpected journey, like its well-planned and trained for counterparts, will include some rest days.  Upon review of my routine pre-treatment blood tests on Wednesday, Dr. Rixe mandated a chemo rest.  While my blood tests remained astoundingly normal overall, my white blood cell count had ebbed to a point (pretty normal for chemo patients on Flouracil, among other treatments) that prompted a chemo vacation of one week to allow those blood cells time to rebound.

A chemo vacation!  I simultaneously felt a surge of relief and a pounding curiosity around how this impacts my progress.  My resolution of these somewhat conflicted feelings arrived mid-stride (where else?).  Chemo is not about chemo.  Chemo is about getting 100% well (versus feeling 98% well).  While this may seem intuitive to the reader, from the perspective of this being who is going through treatment, the cure often feels worse than the cancer. 

Putting it in perspective: It is pretty natural, in anyone's development of goals (in my case, beating cancer), to get focused on one's measurable objectives (in this instance, successful chemo progress) as a way to gauge strategic achievement.  Aha (my mid-stride brain elbows me), this unexpected journey proceeds on a path paved with objectives -- to include 12 treatment cycles.  And these objectives, which move me toward my goal of  beating cancer and hitting the Via Francigena healthful and joyful, are where the give and take, the acclimatization, the laundering and opportunities for expansion live.  They are the flex for success.  They happen and they are good.

Surviving chemo is not my goal, surviving cancer is.  Keeping my greater focus on my triumphant end state is hugely motivating and grounding.  In this way, while the treatment cycles are no less onerous,  I find it easier to keep them in context.  Visualizing my big picture sightline,  I am filled with purpose and fired by potential.  After all, I've never traveled any trail (even those previously trod) knowing beforehand every inch of terrain and premniscient of every turn of the weather.  I feel powered by each present-moment step that confirms, yes I can -- and with that, I can do more!

Without question, objectives are important milestones to progress.  Objective achievements award us with self-efficacy super powers.  Still, objectives are not all-consuming, must-have accomplishments in and of themselves.  This awareness helps me to make sense of my week-long chemo vacation; to enjoy fully these days of beautiful sunrises and sunsets, time with pals, space to move our home remodeling projects forward without the post-treatment malaise and yes, to continue dance.  Every. Single. Day.

On dancing: A friend asked me this week if we really are dancing, or if dancing is a metaphor for our way of being on the path.  Well, yep, we really are dancing -- Every. Single. Day.  In fact, my next blog will be all about the dancing.

Progress: Chemo vacay: One week.  Next appointment with Dr. Rixe, 16 October.  Expect to resume chemo, 17 October.

Quote of the day:

 Take a rest; a field that has rested gives a beautiful crop.

                                                                           ~ Ovid

VIA FRANCIGENA, 2020!