Submission
The theme of my days lately seems to be submission. I think I'm noticing this because submitting to a process is what I am, by far, WORST at, historically. I usually need to argue with everything, deconstruct it, make an ass out of myself and then resign in humiliation until the next process. But, apparently, a little over a decade of putting my butt in a chair at AA meetings has made me more calm, more willing, more open. I think this is good, generally, but I admit to feeling dismayed at what I'm willing to submit to.
A list:
1. I just submitted my med school app. Again. This was an emotionally excruciating process in '07-'08. One particular school in Arizona led me to believe that they'd back up a dumptruck of dog poo onto me, if such a truck was handy. I think it's fair to conclude that the verdict of that app year was "I'm not worthy." So here I am, again, supplicant to a process that's WAY out of my control, and I can either worry or not worry about how it's going to turn out, fear of dumptrucks notwithstanding.
2. I'm expected to show up at an oncologist's office in Williamsburg pretty soon, to start the 5 years of endocrine therapy that'll help keep me cancer free. I stopped giving myself blood thinner shots on August 4; so for a few weeks now I've been completely off drugs and out of the treatment arena. I actually took some ibuprofen last week, after a year of not being allowed to - I had to take narcotics for pain all year.
I'm not feeling great enthusiasm for going back into cancerland. Before I left Seattle, I had one last big scary pow-wow with my oncologist, where I apparently misspent a ton of energy making my case for how I'd be handled during endocrine therapy. This was misspent energy because it's all up to my new unmet oncologist now. I recruited almost a dozen of my physician friends and their friends to help me understand my anticoagulation choices and how to present my interests, and I invested heavily in the whole thing.
But here's the deal. I can handle being on endocrine therapy, and I can handle being anticoagulated. What I'm not sure I'm willing to sign up for is the other stuff. Such as the two nodules in my left lung that aren't an infection and aren't causing any symptoms and shouldn't be cancer because I just did six months of chemotherapy...but they're something to follow up on. Also the "sclerotic focus on L2" which means there's something on my lower spine that showed up on a CT scan in April that bothered a radiologist enough to make him/her actually say something about it...and my back hurts around there. And such as the polyp above my vocal chords, of which one of my pulmonologists gave me pictures in May after he took a tour of my lungs, and for which I'm supposed to seek follow up.
I don't want one more fucking biopsy. If I've got lung, bone and/or throat metastases, and/or they're a new and less fun kind of cancer, I'd like to find out about a week before I die. I don't have another year of treatment in me, at least not right now. I like my new apartment, I like my new school, I like my new boyfriend, I like my new AA sponsor. I'd really like to feel free to be invested in all this new stuff. I'm not actively worrying about all these worrisome things, not actively. But this is kind of like how all last year, whether I was thinking about having cancer or not, I had it, and I was carrying it, and I couldn't put it down, and maybe I was enjoying a breather before my next invasive procedure but that procedure was going to damned well happen.
But submit I will, even though nobody would even know if I didn't. As soon as my Aetna card shows up in my mailbox at school, I'll make that primary care appointment, and show up with my records, and worm my way into the system and fight to get to see the oncologist I want to see, and play the game. And take the drugs, and get my finger pricked (hopefully not a full blood draw) every couple of weeks to check my anticoag status, and be honest about the worrisome spots and try not to be obstinate about letting people look at them and maybe collect some more souvenirs. All by myself this time.
3. Yes, I have a new boyfriend. He lives in Seattle. I met him about three weeks before I left, and I was completely clear on needing to leave the whole thing behind me and make a clean getaway. How this relates to submission is that while it's all fun and new and sexy at this point, it's going to start being thankless day-to-day WORK pretty soon, and I know it, and I'm doing it anyway. Because, just like the poo dumptruck that I'm signing up for again with med school apps, I'm signing up to get really hurt if that's what happens. Because what if it doesn't. Because this guy brings out really, really good stuff in me.
4. And I've already got a new AA sponsor here in Norfolk, which is ahead of schedule, and I'll be working the steps with her this year. That's huge submission - I've done it several times before, and I'm doing it again. She'll be getting to know my dirt and she'll be trusted to say things about it and I'll be expected to be willing to do what she says I should do. Sounds like a recipe for abuse, but it's what makes AA work. I wouldn't feel any optimism about the sponsor-sponsee relationship if it were anything other than two alcoholics trying to stay sober by following some time-tested guidelines. When I was newly sober, I submitted to five years of Jungian therapy, averaging twice a week, costing about $50,000, and that got me somewhere. But I expected therapy to fix me completely. What's different now is that my submission to the process of working the steps with a sponsor is that I know better than to have expectations or any agenda at all. I'm not fearing the dumptruck in this area, but I do fear finding out that there are things I have to work on. Bet you $50 it'll be my ego.
5. Lastly (although I'm sure I could come up with 5 more), I'm sitting in med school classes all week with 22 year olds, some of whom are very, very upset about how hard it is to figure out what they're supposed to do to succeed. I had a conversation with one of my classmates where I used the actual words "acceptance" and "submission" and that's what got me going on this whole submission thing. The usefulness of these med school classes is not mine to judge. The fairness of the testing is not mine to judge. The quality of the instruction is not mine to judge. My job is to submit to the process, accept the process, and do the very best work of my life at it. My job is to identify and define the hoops through which I'm to jump, to jump through them like a Jack Russell, enthusiastic as all hell for the jumping and the hoops and for how there will ALWAYS be jumping and hoops, blissfully enthusiastic even though the jumping and the hoops are not "productive" and are not "definitive" and are not anything other than hoop jumping.
I feel really lucky to be willing to submit. I honestly would not have predicted that this would happen.
A list:
1. I just submitted my med school app. Again. This was an emotionally excruciating process in '07-'08. One particular school in Arizona led me to believe that they'd back up a dumptruck of dog poo onto me, if such a truck was handy. I think it's fair to conclude that the verdict of that app year was "I'm not worthy." So here I am, again, supplicant to a process that's WAY out of my control, and I can either worry or not worry about how it's going to turn out, fear of dumptrucks notwithstanding.
2. I'm expected to show up at an oncologist's office in Williamsburg pretty soon, to start the 5 years of endocrine therapy that'll help keep me cancer free. I stopped giving myself blood thinner shots on August 4; so for a few weeks now I've been completely off drugs and out of the treatment arena. I actually took some ibuprofen last week, after a year of not being allowed to - I had to take narcotics for pain all year.
I'm not feeling great enthusiasm for going back into cancerland. Before I left Seattle, I had one last big scary pow-wow with my oncologist, where I apparently misspent a ton of energy making my case for how I'd be handled during endocrine therapy. This was misspent energy because it's all up to my new unmet oncologist now. I recruited almost a dozen of my physician friends and their friends to help me understand my anticoagulation choices and how to present my interests, and I invested heavily in the whole thing.
But here's the deal. I can handle being on endocrine therapy, and I can handle being anticoagulated. What I'm not sure I'm willing to sign up for is the other stuff. Such as the two nodules in my left lung that aren't an infection and aren't causing any symptoms and shouldn't be cancer because I just did six months of chemotherapy...but they're something to follow up on. Also the "sclerotic focus on L2" which means there's something on my lower spine that showed up on a CT scan in April that bothered a radiologist enough to make him/her actually say something about it...and my back hurts around there. And such as the polyp above my vocal chords, of which one of my pulmonologists gave me pictures in May after he took a tour of my lungs, and for which I'm supposed to seek follow up.
I don't want one more fucking biopsy. If I've got lung, bone and/or throat metastases, and/or they're a new and less fun kind of cancer, I'd like to find out about a week before I die. I don't have another year of treatment in me, at least not right now. I like my new apartment, I like my new school, I like my new boyfriend, I like my new AA sponsor. I'd really like to feel free to be invested in all this new stuff. I'm not actively worrying about all these worrisome things, not actively. But this is kind of like how all last year, whether I was thinking about having cancer or not, I had it, and I was carrying it, and I couldn't put it down, and maybe I was enjoying a breather before my next invasive procedure but that procedure was going to damned well happen.
But submit I will, even though nobody would even know if I didn't. As soon as my Aetna card shows up in my mailbox at school, I'll make that primary care appointment, and show up with my records, and worm my way into the system and fight to get to see the oncologist I want to see, and play the game. And take the drugs, and get my finger pricked (hopefully not a full blood draw) every couple of weeks to check my anticoag status, and be honest about the worrisome spots and try not to be obstinate about letting people look at them and maybe collect some more souvenirs. All by myself this time.
3. Yes, I have a new boyfriend. He lives in Seattle. I met him about three weeks before I left, and I was completely clear on needing to leave the whole thing behind me and make a clean getaway. How this relates to submission is that while it's all fun and new and sexy at this point, it's going to start being thankless day-to-day WORK pretty soon, and I know it, and I'm doing it anyway. Because, just like the poo dumptruck that I'm signing up for again with med school apps, I'm signing up to get really hurt if that's what happens. Because what if it doesn't. Because this guy brings out really, really good stuff in me.
4. And I've already got a new AA sponsor here in Norfolk, which is ahead of schedule, and I'll be working the steps with her this year. That's huge submission - I've done it several times before, and I'm doing it again. She'll be getting to know my dirt and she'll be trusted to say things about it and I'll be expected to be willing to do what she says I should do. Sounds like a recipe for abuse, but it's what makes AA work. I wouldn't feel any optimism about the sponsor-sponsee relationship if it were anything other than two alcoholics trying to stay sober by following some time-tested guidelines. When I was newly sober, I submitted to five years of Jungian therapy, averaging twice a week, costing about $50,000, and that got me somewhere. But I expected therapy to fix me completely. What's different now is that my submission to the process of working the steps with a sponsor is that I know better than to have expectations or any agenda at all. I'm not fearing the dumptruck in this area, but I do fear finding out that there are things I have to work on. Bet you $50 it'll be my ego.
5. Lastly (although I'm sure I could come up with 5 more), I'm sitting in med school classes all week with 22 year olds, some of whom are very, very upset about how hard it is to figure out what they're supposed to do to succeed. I had a conversation with one of my classmates where I used the actual words "acceptance" and "submission" and that's what got me going on this whole submission thing. The usefulness of these med school classes is not mine to judge. The fairness of the testing is not mine to judge. The quality of the instruction is not mine to judge. My job is to submit to the process, accept the process, and do the very best work of my life at it. My job is to identify and define the hoops through which I'm to jump, to jump through them like a Jack Russell, enthusiastic as all hell for the jumping and the hoops and for how there will ALWAYS be jumping and hoops, blissfully enthusiastic even though the jumping and the hoops are not "productive" and are not "definitive" and are not anything other than hoop jumping.
I feel really lucky to be willing to submit. I honestly would not have predicted that this would happen.
posted by Cy at 1:15 PM
3 Comments:
Hi Cy. Whew, submission is hard work. So glad you have so quickly gotten connected with AA and a sponsor in your new community. It is nice to have the program as a framework to wrap the rest of life around. Thanks for keeping the blog going. xo
Cy- good stuff, well, not all good stuff what with the whole cancer thing and all (she stammered...) Seriously, though, I love the way you put words together. I'm not going to say all the "oh, you are so brave in the face of cancer" shit because I can't imagine how you feel. I only have my dad's cancer to compare it to and I only watched that from the outside. I'm a student, too. Not in med school but I can definitely identify with your take on the kids and their whole "Life isn't fair" wake-up call. Kinda funny, isn't it?
Ellen J from AA
Thanks for the hoops stuff. I need that tonight. I have new hoops too, that do not require my judgement, I just have to DO them.
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