Cancer and Hurricane Helene
This is also what living looks like 🩵
Hi Y’all,
Tony made me a soy mocha this morning. It took tremendous effort on his part, and it was glorious. Can you see all the love in this mug? This little mocha moment might just carry me through the day.
Maybe you know I live in Asheville (maybe you live in these mountains, too), and saw the way Hurricane Helene ravaged our communities. We’ve been in the thick of it: trying to get water, checking on friends, doing the basics by candlelight, making decisions about our business, evacuating to get me a new dosage of my cancer medication, washing and sanitizing a small amount of dishes each day, figuring out how to support artists who lost studios and friends of friends who lost homes, and on and on. We are back to having electricity at home and work. We mostly have internet, a bit intermittent. But no running water (now think about making a mocha without running water).
Severe raining started Wednesday, September 25th, and did not stop until Friday, September 27th, late morning. I was already struggling to adjust to Verzenio on the highest dose prescribed. This is a drug I’ll be on for two years; it’s a critical part of my treatment plan. Let’s just say I had a lot of side effects. The most challenging one, especially without running water, was severe dehydration. On Friday, Hurricane Helene storm day, my appointment at the cancer center was canceled, which was reasonable considering the winds, falling trees & power lines, and flash flooding. Plus, no electricity. Then, as my symptoms worsened, we heard that the hospital was strained and understaffed. Then, we lost cell service, and I thought, this is too dangerous. I took myself off the medication, trusted my own intuition and Tony’s intuition. It was the best choice I could make in the moment (and my doctors agreed once I could get ahold of them four days later).
I am grateful for our friends who delivered well water to us. I am grateful for our neighbors who started flush brigades and set up non-potable water stations so we can use our toilets. I am grateful for the anarchist bookstore who was the first group to get to the most vulnerable folks on our side of town with water, food, gas, medical supplies, and whatever else they needed. I am grateful to strangers who have become buds, who invited me to sit in their yards and listen to the radio briefings, who offered me a way to charge my phone when we still didn’t have power. I am grateful to friends in Atlanta who provided us a safe and comfortable home (and a lot of dog love and meals) so I could take a breath, get oncology support, wait for a new dosage of my medication to be delivered from the speciality pharmacy. So many people have shown such kindness, care, and compassion toward each other. Even without basic resources, this is a beautiful place to live.
I’m in awe of people around the world who live and survive and maybe even thrive without running water. It’s difficult. I’m not liking it. I’m trying. I’m trying to meditate myself into a state of hey, this is alright and guess what…it’s not working! No surprise; this isn’t how meditation works. So now I’m trying to reconnect to my body, pick specific things I can do for my communities (Asheville, cancer, artist and music communities) instead of scrolling the socials for hours, dig back into Chemo Sessions ‘cuz cancer is still here for me and for you, and I’m trying to cook, walk, move, exhale. I’m trying to breathe.
At 4am today, I was wide awake. This has happened a lot the last few weeks, quite similar to the early days of cancer treatment. Racing mind. Ruminating thoughts. It’s like I sometimes believe I am capable of saving the entire world and the whole world is my responsibility (I know. I know. What ego! Who am I kidding? Give me a break! Really, though, give me a break).
My Infusion 7 post, which I was writing the day before Hurricane Helene decimated our area, is about resilience. This is life. You think you know resilience, and then the rough stuff piles on. It requires you to grow and expand and find a new depth to your equanimity. I’m writing about resilience as I witness such resilience in the people in our communities in Western North Carolina. The work is tough; it’s also tender.
Still, there is humor. We are finding shocking laughter from reading my phone’s translation of messages from the city of Asheville. Friends are sharing their messages with each other to see who got the weirdest one that day, with lines like “Can you give me the healing?” and “Lasagna, Lasagna. What message?” and “Asheville I need you to be so stupid every day” and “I will be beautiful and physical.” They get stranger and funnier. We are all becoming performance poets, sharing new interpretations of the words.
Soon, I will share Infusion 7 on intuition and resilience. Soon, I will record more meditations for you. Soon, I promise.
In the meantime, sending love and laughter, always,
Kel
I can almost taste that soy mocha.
I love you so much. Sorry I’ve been such a grouch.