Thursday, December 10, 2009

Sex in the City (Tumour style)

”Is there a fine line between intelligence, feelings and cognitive –can we get the balance right?”.

Two weeks ago Julian and I went away for the week which meant that there was a bit of planning for me and therefore a bit more anxiety provoking - packing and those sort of things. I think, as a consequence, old habits appeared; I wanting to be in control, a traffic jam, the car play up; things were not in our favour.

As time passed I realized that I was extremely anxious which was a combination of anxiety, steroids and not knowing how I would go being away from the hospital if things got worse. From that experience I decided to take myself off the steroids. The consequence of that was that I got lots of sleep; I felt like myself; the anxiety went away and we went into a relaxed state. We were laughing more and it was evident that the steroids were the problem.

As the days went on and the effects of the steroids were less, I started not being able to talk properly and I’m still having problems with my speech and other things I can’t do as well - email, texts and all that stuff has become worse. As a consequence I became worried again as to what the meaning of all this is. Could it be things have got worse or was it because I had less steroids inside of me?

By the time Julian went back to work I was feeling a bit more hopeless and this last week feeling really sad. I noticed that it was like a downward spiral by focussing on emotions only, I was not my normal pragmatic self. Basically I stopped doing things like the meditation; I stopped the brain test; I stopped emails and was just getting into myself. I was still seeing people but not telling them I was feeling that way and in some ways I wasn’t telling myself how it was affecting me. I noticed that I was avoiding it. That’s another old habit.

I was getting more and more sad about it but really just sitting with it and not doing anything about it. When I was with people I was just being myself but really underneath I was really despondent. It’s a habit I know and people don’t know that that is happening for me.

It came to a head that weekend. We had a long drive - really in hindsight we shouldn’t have gone so far. We could have done something in the city rather than driving for 2 hours. We weren’t thinking about me; we were fitting in with other people and as a consequence it was a sporadic drive. We both tried to be helpful with one and another but it wasn’t working because really underneath we weren’t looking after ourselves. We were looking after other people’s needs – not our own.
The people that where there with us were also being affected by our mood so that didn’t help. It was a good experience but the underlying for us was we weren’t helping ourselves. Then, at the end of the day, we ended up getting a fine for being in a no standing zone; a $100 fine. That was almost a sign that we weren’t looking after ourselves. It was the piece de resistance of the whole experience.

That experience cemented my whole week. But as a consequence, we ended up talking about how it got to there and having a very meaningful talk about it and how we would do it differently. From talking about it and actually expressing my emotions of feeling depressed and experiencing crying with Julian was like halving the problems…. It didn’t feel as bad afterwards. Feeling the emotion and talking didn’t feel as hard as I it thought it was. Having expressed it I was then able to see what was there.

I think it was a combination of cognition and expressing the emotions that helped and the next day I was feeling quite happy. Nothing had changed; I still cant’ speak properly and I have problems with my right hand but emotionally I feel OK with it.

What I’m trying to say is it lifted the depression a bit. Despite not knowing what is going to happen, hence I’m not sure, there’s a line between emotion and expressing how I feel and being OK with it. There’s something about … I was able to be logical. I had expressed my emotions so I was able to look pragmatically and logically say that no one knows what is going on; sharing it and having a bit of emotion – all of that helped.

There’s a fine line between being too emotional – too much of that brings the downward spiral and I realized that afterwards that was happening. Just emotion is not enough. The whole point of this is it’s a fine line getting it all in the right place. I have noticed all week - while it’s frustrating trying to talk – I’ve picked up the weights; I’ve sent emails (even though they don’t sound quite right); the more I do it the better I’ll be. The more logical I am the better I do things. My first blog was about me wanting to be more emotional but I realised that going all that way can be damaging for me.

Hence the title – what’s the right line? She’ll (Carrie from Sex in the City) have one line. Her gossip column - what’s it all about? The tumour. That was what I wanted to talk about. My zest for being more emotional doesn’t always help – just that alone doesn’t help. It’s a combination of all of it. Emotion and logic. That works.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Donna,

    My name is Lisa, and I lost my son to GBM in May 2009. He was 9 yrs. I've read a lot of your comments, especially the bits about steroids and the way they make you feel. I totally understand, because was the same. He was on Dexamethosone for 17 months, and there were a lot of behavioural changes in him. But he found the physical changes harder to accept, and this caused me much pain, to see my beautiful child calling himself ugly. We now need to educate nursing staff and other professionals on the effects of steroids, and notto expect total compliance, especially from children. I think you are doing great, and I would love to see you beat the 'statistics' of thismost disgusting disease. Fight on Donna!!!!!!!!!! Lisa

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  2. Hey you... thanks for sharing your journey... helps me understand more about what it is for you.
    Love you lots
    Fi

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