Believe In Your Outcome

Just to reiterate, I do not re-read what I write. It comes from my heart and lands here. There will be typo's etc... Hope you don't mind.

After I left Dr. Almost Killed Me's office, I walked across the street to the parking lot with a lot of paperwork in my hands. He had given me papers with a place to get a CAT scan, a surgeons name and number, and I don't even know what else. After the words cancer came out of his mouth, all I heard was blah blah blah blah. So you know, I don't use a capital "c" when I write the word cancer. It doesn't deserve a capital letter.

I got into my car and started to cry. I felt lost, scared, and helpless. I called my mom and told her. I had seen her over the holidays, she lives in the Midwest, and her mama intuition had whispered to her while I was visiting, "Your girl has cancer." I was really thin and she just knew. In fact, she secretly made a doctors appointment for me with her doctor while I was there, but I said, "What's the point? I have my own doctors appointment scheduled for when I get back to LA?" I made her cancel the appointment. My mom never told me that she feared I had cancer. So, when I called her from the car, she broke down. She couldn't speak. She was sobbing. It was a sort of primal cry. The kind of cry a mother should never have to experience. Thank God my step father walked in from work and took the phone from her. He not only did that, he TOOK OVER. He got me home. He talked me through it. I had to drive all the way across town from Santa Monica to the Hollywood Hills. Pretty far of a drive when you're in shock.

The next day my sister ditched work, picked me up and drove me to the CAT scan facility. It was there that I tried to gain my footing. Being a Libra, I'm all about balance and this had kicked me way off of my feet. While I was drinking the gunk that you have to drink in order to get a CAT scan, it was all sinking in. I knew I had cancer even though it hadn't been made official yet and suddenly I knew I had just stepped into an episode of "Party of Five," and I was Charlie. Remember when Charlie got cancer? This was real. Shit just got REAL.

When I walked into the dressing room to change into a gown is when I decided I needed to take some of my power back. I've done this thing since I was a little girl where I will only accept certain outcomes in certain situations. No one taught me this. It's a natural instinct. Maybe it's the stubborn part of me, I don't know, but if something is very important to me, I don't allow any other possibilities to be on the table. I put all of my energy into the outcome that I want, and leave no room in my head for other possibilities. There is only one outcome that I will accept, the outcome that I want.

I was laying on the table inside the machine with the technicians coming in and out of the room. They had been viewing the scan and me through a window in an adjacent room. A female technician came in to adjust my position at one point and through small talk asked me if I had been feeling sick at all lately. Then a male technician came in at one point to do the same thing, again with the small talk and trying to be nonchalant asked me if I had been having any fevers recently. I am well aware of the fact that technicians aren't supposed to ask you questions like this. They have nonchalantly showed their hand to me and I know they see something major. Inside my head I didn't go there. By "there" I mean that ugly,horrifying, dark place. That place where you panic and feel like your brain is melting. I chose to remain calm. I turned on my automatic pilot.

The next thing I knew, I was picking my mom up from LAX. She came with a suitcase full of clothes for a week. Everything was moving pretty quickly. I had an appointment with a surgeon for a biopsy and my mom wanted to be there. She landed kind of late at night so when we got to my house, we went to bed. We fell asleep crying and she spooned me the whole night. The next morning we walk into the surgeons examining room and I see what looks like a sword (to me) laid out on the table. I said, "HO-LY SHIT," and my mom says, "Don't look at that, it's not for you." I said of course it's for me! Have I mentioned that I have a fear of needles? And doctors? And hospitals? And SWORDS? Turned out I was right and my mom was wrong. She, of course, knew all along that the sword was for me, too. After the surgeon was finished impaling my neck with her sword, she said "I am 99.8% sure that you have Hodgkins Disease, which is a form of Lymphoma." This was the first time I heard these words. I didn't know anything about Hodgkins. I knew that Charlie on "Party of Five" had it, but that's about it. When the surgeon told me that, I did feel myself start to slip into the dark place, but I made myself quickly snap back from it. I did what I always do and told myself there is only one outcome here that is acceptable and that is that I survive this beast. I WILL LIVE.

The thing is negative thoughts are exactly like cancer. If you give them an inch, they will keep growing. The mind is so powerful, you have to be very careful what you fill it with. If you want something really bad, don't let any thoughts other than the outcome that you want, enter your mind. Eat it, breathe it, live it. Believe!


Next post on angels:-)

Mama Love XO

Intuition

Someone once told me, "You see life through rose colored glasses." This wasn't meant to be nice. But this person was right. I do! The person who said that to me happened to be a Negaholic. I already knew they were a Negaholic so I took it as a compliment. A Negaholic is someone who is addicted to negativity and more common than not, feels they are a victim and that the world has wronged them in some way. This same person also didn't happen to be around years earlier when I was told, "YOU HAVE CANCER." I used all caps because that's what it sounds like when you're told that.

I've decided to share some of my life with you because for years and years, people have been telling me to write a book. I could never figure out how to end the book, so I didn't. Maybe blogging is a better idea? We'll see.  I already tweet on a daily basis, trying to get tweeps to see things in a positive light. Why bother? Because being positive is EVERYTHING and I feel the pull in a huge way to share this. I do get the sense  sometimes though that some people believe positive people have had a perfect life, free of tragedy, illness, heartbreak, financial hardship, loss, divorce, loneliness, addiction, you name it. Some people feel that those who choose happiness have had a lifetime of nothing but rainbows, ice cream, and butterflies. So not true. In case you missed the word "choose" that I snuck in there a second ago, here it is. Happiness is a choice. We choose to be happy. Period.

I'll being getting into the whole happiness thing in my next post, or the one after that, but for this post, I want to talk about intuition. Intuition is also very important. It's that little whisper inside of your head that is telling you something when sometimes, outside forces are telling you something else. Listen to the whisper. It may save your life someday.

I ignored the whisper once...for three years. Three whole years I listened to outside forces. I really didn't know any better at the time. I was taught, like most of us were, to trust authority no matter what. In this case it was my doctor. I'll refer to him as Dr. Almost Killed Me. For three long years I visited Dr. Almost Killed Me on countless visits. I didn't feel good and throughout those years I had many strange symptoms happening. None of which, in my mind, seemed to be linked because they seemed so random. I brought all of these symptoms to Dr. Almost Killed Me until one day when he brought me into his office. Not his examining room, his office. He sat on the other side of his desk and read off a long list of symptoms to me. He was using a mocking and arrogant tone as I shrank smaller and smaller in the chair with each symptom. I was letting him shame me and I was totally embarrassed. When he finished the list of symptoms, he put his file down, looked me in the eye and said, "You're depressed." I was stunned. That was the last thing I expected. I said that I didn't understand because I didn't feel depressed and he said, "What do you think depression feels like?" All I could think of were those commercials where people didn't want to get out of bed. I told him that I didn't NOT want to get out of bed. Dr. Almost Killed Me shook his head and repeated, "You're depressed. You have anxiety and here's a prescription for an anti depressants and tranquilizers." I left his office shamed and stunned and drove straight to the pharmacy to fix my depression???

The anti depressants didn't "work" because I kept getting more symptoms. A weird rash on my leg, my arm tingled, my skin stung when I put perfume on, I couldn't stop coughing, I had some new veins appear on my chest, night sweats, dropping weight, etc... Halfway through the third year of not listening to my whisper, I started thinking about suicide. This terrified me so I told one of my best friends, Matt. I told him that I was having these thoughts, not that I wanted to die, but that I didn't want to live like this. I felt horrible every single day. I asked him to be aware of my behavior in case I decided to do something stupid. These weren't thoughts that I'd ever had before so the very fact that I was having them was scaring me. I didn't trust myself.   That was during the summer time. By January, I had been to see Dr. Almost Killed Me several times. On January 9, my last visit, he's feeling my neck and starts panicking and YELLING, "What's THIS?! What in the hell is THIS?!! How longs THIS been going on?!!! Have you felt THIS?!!!" I have no idea what "THIS" is or what he's talking about, of course, but you know those tranquilizers I'm there to get? I need that whole bottle right NOW because he's FREAKING ME OUT!!!!!!!!! Why is he yelling? What doctor acts like this? I said, "What?! What is it?! What is THIS?!" I can't imagine what he must be talking about because I had just seen him three weeks ago and two weeks before that. He has me feel my neck on the right side. It is swollen. In my panic, I ask him what it could be. He yells, "CANCER!"

At that moment I felt like I was going to pass out. Dr. Almost Killed me asked for my hand, I have no idea why. I don't even know what he was doing with my hand but all of the sudden, while my hand was in his, I felt a pull of darkness coming from him. I don't know how to explain it and I know this will sound crazy but I felt like he was pulling my energy out. It felt like he was pulling me into darkness and I just remember saying in my head, "FUCK YOOOOU," and I ripped my hand back. I wan't going to get pulled into the darkness, whatever that may be.

I wasn't depressed after all. I was dying. I hadn't listened to my intuition and I was dying because of that. Instead of trusting myself, I trusted Dr. Almost Killed Me and now I had stage 4 Hodgkins Disease (Lymphoma). There's a reason God gave you that whisper. Never doubt it when you hear it.

That's all for today. Will share again tomorrow. Just a warning: None of my writing will be perfect. Grammer might be wrong, the story may jump around, you may see curse words here and there, I may make up words all together! So just hang in there, if you will:-)

Peace,

Mama Love