On February 28, 2022, I unknowingly drove right into a deep snowbank, shortly after discovering myself in a unusually unfamiliar panorama. Suspecting a TIA, my main care doctor urged me to go to an emergency room for a doable CAT scan. There, a lesion in my proper parietal lobe was rapidly found.
The docs needed to do a direct biopsy, with permission to resect the tumor if a malignancy was detected, and certainly it was: Grade 4 glioblastoma multiforma, (GBM ), an unusually aggressive main mind most cancers And so started what was to grow to be my sudden and unpredictable “therapeutic journey”: first with six weeks of every day radiation and chemo, adopted by two extra craniotomies and several other extra programs of chemo, together with one which left me fully debilitated and in want of two blood transfusions. Many months of twice-weekly bodily and occupational remedy have fortunately introduced me to the level the place I can now learn and write comparatively simply, stroll with out falling and speak coherently, sometimes keep in mind the place I put my cellphone and my eyeglasses—and, most significantly , acknowledge my dependence on others for my day-to-day wellbeing. My brother flew to be by my aspect once I first acquired sick, and has remained as an virtually every day companion; my husband watches over me wherever I am going and no matter I do; he additionally retailers, cooks, cleans, and does laundry for the 2 of us; my mates go to recurrently to maintain me related related to the bigger world; dwelling well being aides watch over me as nicely, whereas my docs. nurses, technicians, and therapists convey the most recent science to bear on their therapies and checks. I take part in two assist teams: one for GBM survivors, led by a social employee in a hospital division of neurosciences, the opposite, led by an Integral Yoga minister, targeted on honoring the Divine Mom, the Goddess in all her names and kinds. Recently, I’ve been fascinated about Carol P. Christ’s emphasis on the “internet of life” as a key ingredient of her thealogy. I’d all the time understood and accepted this idea intellectually, however now I really feel it viscerally, as my hard-won, individualistic feminist independence (my means to navigate life by myself and by myself phrases) provides solution to a deep expertise of what I can solely name feminist interdependence. Once I first found I may now not stroll down the road on my own, once I acknowledged that my work as a scholar and instructor would possible by no means be resumed, I spent days sobbing. However lately one thing new has come into play –-a rising acceptance and embrace of my embeddedness within the “internet” Carol celebrated. For the second my most cancers has stopped rising, however I do know that every day may nicely be my final, and somewhat than lamenting, I’m grateful now for the teachings it has introduced me, in addition to for the dedication, compassion, and talent of the docs, nurses, technicians and therapists who’ve helped me, for all for my brother, my husband, my mates, neighbors, and kinfolk have achieved and proceed to do. Most significantly, I’m studying to ask for assist and to just accept when it’s supplied. Extra confidently and deeply than ever earlier than, I can now say … the Goddess is alive, and She is everpresent. I’m held in an intricately woven and infinitely supportive internet of life. Blessed be.