Contemplative Play

Last week sat with C during chemotherapy infusion for facilitation of a guided meditation session. : Dx: Apprehension and Anxiety before, during and after with post-treatment stress-induced nausea refractory to Ondansetron and other pharmacologicals. —C said she would like to be able to take home practice for following day.

5.1.13. C stopped by my office on way to treatment today. Reported practice as helpful with lessened apprehension. Probable setting timing of therapy later in day to not disrupt morning regimen at home also had influence. Considering meditation, whether beneficial due to physiological response, or, designated time for gaining clarity of mind to declare her needs without anxious thought — probably a synergistic effect. Anxiety is highly exhaustive as well, so it is likely her energy resources improved as possible associated anxiety decreased. C uses wheelchair with post-polio syndrome. She was interested in discussion of how weightliftimg may be accomplished without weights but rather intentional internal message of tensing aka in place of lb per tension applied in order to support her maintaining physical strength through therapy.

6.10.13. This week C used our time during treatment planning to discuss a phenomenon she discovered. This past Cycle 4 of Bendamustin and Rituximab she experienced very mild post chemo-adverse effect that she referred to as, “somewhat quesey, less than mild nausea.” She attributed her mild upset to an anxiety related, this time, not to apprehension or side effects of treatment, but something else that she calls paradoxical insight:  C had good news this past week. Her CT scan showed a positive response to treatment with a significant reduction in her tumor. During the course of the week, she began to worry about how her life would be if she didn’t die. All that she needed to take care of, how she would care for herself, if her husband, who was 90 and her primary caretaker, was to get sick before her. “Before, when I thought I was sure to die soon,” she described, “I gave myself full permission to live in the moment. Now looking back, I recognize a certain freedom I felt,” she said. “I have practiced meditation for 35 years. There was never a time in my practice as effective in honing living in the present, as the overriding thought, that I could could die within the next month.” C was interested in exploring how she might take what she learned from that imposed period of perceptual impermanence in order to calm, once again, what she described as her overactive mind that tended toward worry and projection. I listened, and asked questions as the many lightbulbs went off in her expressions and dialogue on the true practice of mindfulness and what it means to be present. What an honor, to be in the intimacy of this exploration.