The Whole Person: Joy and Laughter - Mind-Heart-Body

My chemotherapy room was small, only 6 chairs. During my 4 chemos and one year of herceptin, I have to say there were many times when the joking and laughter between the patients and staff got so loud that the doctors would come in to find out what was so funny.

What an interesting, uplifting, conversation here. Yes, kindness heals. I had many such moments, even epiphanies, about human kindness during my treatments.

The author...(somebody - can't remember his first name) Moore, who writes about the soul, has a book out about healing and hospital experience. I want to photcopy certain parts (like the part on how to decorate an examination room and how to lay out a hospital floor plan) and make whoever directs our new oncology centre read it (I went to the old onc centre when it was all crowded and crammed in all of us toegther and quite liked it). Now for my 6 month clinicals I go to the new centre.UGH!. Mindboggling but true, one wall of each examination room is painted a liver colour. Liver, barf, vomit, weird bodily fluids - whoever designed this is a walking disaster. and its all brand new! I have stopped flipping out about it and now just think yuk poor other people who are receiving bad news....its all large and sterile and impersonal and painted plain ugly. Do they not have a clue? evidently, no.

But this was my only soul-defeating experience. 

My surgeon, his resident, and the nurse navigator met me, introduced themselves by their first names,, and shook hands. I was part of a TEAM! In the room adjoining the or, there was a volunteer, an man who just sat there, reading, or chatting a wee bit with another patient on her guerney. Suddenly, I sat up, bawling and sobbed "I guess this where they break into tears!!!" and he ran over and took my hand and never let it go until we went through the swinging doors, telling me he'd go in, too, if they'd let him. Bless him.

I came out of anaesthetic starving and happy as a clam and my surgeon came by to see me and since I was still loopy  chose that moment to tell him he'd gained my confidence by wearing all black on the day I met him - like - COOL! he didn't wear a white lab coat with a stethascope around his neck! He was wearing black jeans, just like us! He muttered "We aim to please" as he scurried away but I could hear someone else behind me cracking up and saying - yeah, doctor death...I laughed my head off.

next morning very early he cme by to tell me what he tok out didn't look all that bad (ie lots of DCIS cause we were all expecting stage 4, my tumor was so big... I was on the 9th floor of the hopital, they unhooked me from my iv, I watched an ambulance helicopter land and the sun rise over the lake...not a bit of pain - ever - and I mean not one aspirin (had a mx)

Got home, in Cananda a nurse then comes to your house every day to empty drains and check on you - I recovered in our beautiful sun porch, cats everywhere..could not have been more beautiful, no tylenol...all i did was heal...

and so it went. It helped more than I can know that my guy was there 100% every bit of of the way ..I thought well, I might die, but I'll die happy in his arms.

then chemo - not bad, and I felt alive, alive, i would stand transfixed at the beauty of the deep blue fall sky. I was so filled with the joy of life! Some people asked my guy if I was on drugs..lol yeah - acid flashbacks?

Rads time - we get volunteers here who give you free rides courtesy Canadian cancer society - loved it - sometimes rode with people nearing death. they were my calm teachers.

I honestly don't know what happened - but i knew that if I fell into depression my immune system woud suffer and it would be game over.....and it was like I was filled with love. Love for my body, my breast, everyone who was so stunningly helpful - I said goodby to my breast tenderly. 

the morning I was to receive my pathology report (1 month after surger) I had a dream. My mother (dead 25 years) and i had brooms, and we were vigorously sweeping away big yellow balls that came floating down the street, which was covered with a flowing sticky liquid. I knew I was going to be all right. I cannot help but think this was a message from my cells, my immune sytem,my lymph glands - we are all connected with neurotransmitters not just in the brain...

Most of my life I have fought depression. but now I'm the happiest optimist! We flourish in love and kindness. I now donate a lot of my time to our no-kill humane shelter. Giving back, it fills me up and I feel so rich and thankful. It's spiritual work.

WE are meant to feel love, the natural cosmic love of the universe, which we  ARE. We are it's latest amazing product, recycled stardust after billions of years. but of course we don't feel it, don't know it, have longings for unity.....will stop there before I get too long-winded and on to Buddha, Jesus, enlightened beings, quantum physics and spirituality "why" we're here..... and all the rest

i only have a minute-enjoyed reading so far!

i have been caregiver to my hubby for almost 9 years before my own dx...i was blindsided by so many drs who wanted "just the facts ma'am" that i actually dismissed a few doctors in that time frame.

my own MO comes across like someone who only wants to stick to HIS speel but he does listen...my hubby asked a few questions the other morning which i thought would be dismissed and doc took the time to answer- he could tell they were important!

the staff at my center all seem to be friendly and compassionate..there is a center for mind body and spirit there and i was welcomed , toured and have signed up for some of the activities and services... i truly believe that the WHOLE person is the person involved and thank you , truebff, for starting this thread!

Hi Flannel,

Just popping in to say, I think you were reading Thomas Moore Care of the Soul, based on his reading of and work with James Hillman, a Jungian psychologist.  Care of the Soul is still in print. 

Great quote Truebff, Quote... "He helped me to focus on what gave me the most satisfaction rather than what was going wrong."

All my studying for decades has bought me to believe that we first have to find anything that makes us feel good about ourselves and use that, magnifying it and forget our troubles, and from there everything else will improve.  This is along the lines of "The Secret" and Law of Attraction, except the emphasis on those systems is too much on manifesting "stuff", money, lovers and outer things to make us feel good, but that was necessary to get people interested.

The point is to 'feel good first' because that's the reason we want the stuff.  The big house and vehicle make us feel important and powerful, so why not try to feel important and powerful just because we're wonderful miracles, our bodies performing amazing biochemical feats every second. All living things are miracles, and our achievements are amazing too. Look at the technology that surrounds us. How many bits of information are coming from the ether, giving our screens thousands of instructions when we watch a video or run a complex program?

Imagine someone entering the room where you're sitting reading this, they are annoyed and complaining.  Everyone within earshot catches the mood and things go downhill.  Then imagine if instead they come in with a big grin, saying what a great day it is.  Again the mood will spread around the room.  So go ahead and be selfish about feeling good.  It's catching, so it needn't be selfish at all.  It's like handing out little happy pills to everyone we greet.

Being cheerful when someone is genuinely feeling bad is inappropriate and we need to listen to their fears without agreeing with their conclusions or adding to them, and without judging.  Being heard tends to bring relief.  If we feel trust in their ability to overcome their difficulties, then we will not be dragged down with them.  Once they're feeling better we can gradually lift the mood.  Do something to spoil them, share music, a film, take a walk, whatever works for them.  The feeling from that shared uplifting is more powerful than any new outfit or more money in the bank.

Now I've put this in writing, I know I've got the theory, but need to be more mindful in my everyday life.  People can only improve gradually as their general mood can't be changed drastically overnight, so I need to keep plugging away at this. I must make a commitment to stop, say every hour, and just clear my mind and fill it with happy thoughts. Sharing these ideas makes me happy.  I'm about to exercise, that gets my blood pumping and I feel energized and alive. Even thinking about it feels good.  Woohoo, my first feel-good recharge today.

Oh, I like that idea of recharging.  I now have a new image to remind me to keep the feel-good batteries charged or I'll be run down and spread misery to my loved ones.

I just added this to my favorite topics. We definitely need to keep this thread alive. 

I have been practicing Buddhism and meditation/minfullness. When I was diagnoced with cancer, it seems that all of that training just "kicked in." People still tell me they are amazed at how I handled getting a cancer diagnosis. Believe me, anyone who knows me knows I've gone to pieces over little things many of times!  I sort of knew in my mind that if I started with the "pity-party" and the "why me" I'd sign my death warrent. 

There's an author named Jon Kabat-Zinn who wrote "Full Catastrophe Living". He pioneered the Mindfullness Based Stress Reduction Clinics at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.