Envy P.S.

My friend Monda says there is a quote that says envy is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. I can't find the source. Any help with this?

It's a great quote!

Dogs, Cats, Ancient Philosophers and Envy

I have a favorite cartoon that I can’t find right now but it shows an eagle soaring high in the sky and looking down at a cozy nest with a sparrow reading the paper and smoking a pipe. At least that’s how I remember the picture. The caption asks, “Does the eagle envy the sparrow safe in his own little nest or the sparrow envy the eagle soaring above all the rest?” Well, it was something like that anyway.

I sort of expect that animals don’t experience envy as we know it. A dog might want a bone because another dog has one but he doesn’t think that the other dog is necessarily better than he is. On the other hand, dogs have the good sense to submit when they are overwhelmed by a bigger, stronger dog. Is that just survival or does he know the other dog is superior?

I often observe our “Deck Cats”. These are the strays of the neighborhood that seem to accumulate on our deck because they know my husband is a sucker for cats. They peer in at the “Inside Cats” and the inside cats peer back at them. Does one envy the other? On the coldest nights, I imagine the outside cats must be envious but if they are capable of that feeling, do the inside cats envy their freedom?

What do cats think anyway? Do they think dogs are stupid for being so subservient to humans? They do seem disdainful and indifferent to human commands, demands or wishes—unless, of course, they want something—usually food.

Maybe that’s why the Egyptians worshipped cats. They couldn’t believe that cats could act so superior and condescending without good cause. It’s certainly hard to imagine a cat envying any other creature. If there is something they want, they go get it. If they can’t get it, they decide they didn’t want it after all.

Cats may be on to something. Things are what they are and we might as well make the best of it. What, exactly, does that mean? “Make the best of it.” Does that mean we should submit and not struggle against whatever we might feel is getting the best of us? What is this envy thing all about anyway?

Envy is resenting another person who has something we want and wishing them to be deprived of it. Can we envy without resenting? Can we want something someone else has and not want them to be deprived of it? My friend Joanne balks at the second half of the definition and thinks we can envy without the wanting to deprive aspect. I wonder about that too.

Envy is one of the “Cardinal” or “Deadly”sins. The others are wrath, greed, pride, sloth, lust and gluttony. I’m pretty sure I have been guilty of all of them at one time or another. How can these be deadly? Shouldn’t the deadly sins be more serious offenses? I’m thinking of things like murder, pillaging or really dirty dancing.

In Dante’s purgatory, the punishment for the envious is to “have their eyes sewn shut with wire because they have gained pleasure from seeing others brought low.” Aquinas described envy as “sorrow for another’s good”. Both of these descriptions would imply that there is a very ugly underside to envy.

If we covet something that belongs to our friend or neighbor, do we necessarily want to take it from them? The above definitions would indicate that we do. Why bother forbidding or punishing envy if it is merely a gentle jealousy?

This whole train of thought started because of a discussion I had with Joanne about envying friends for their interesting and active lives. The vacations my friends take, the closeness they enjoy with their children and grandchildren, the weekend get-away trips to the coast or wine country, the plays and musical events they attend—all generate a feeling I can only describe as envy. Can’t I want their active, healthy lives without wanting to deprive them of what they have certainly earned for themselves? I hope so.

Now, having considered it all in the context of cats, dogs and ancient philosophers, I think I can conclude that it’s ok to envy a little as long as I keep my focus on the things I enjoy here at home—my man, our pets, our garden, our friends, our DVR capabilities and my mountain of wonderful books waiting to be read. As I grow stronger and begin to think about the activities I can add back into my own life, I realize that I might have an enviable life my own self.

So, maybe it’s ok to hear about a friend’s adventure and feel a moment of envy as long as it’s just a moment of feeling that I would have enjoyed that too but I certainly have no desire to take it from them. I can live with that.

And, by the way, we leave for Kauai next Monday so feel free to experience a moment or two of envy.

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Un-Decorating

It’s that time. The tree and decorations must all come down. It’s a sad undertaking for me. I’m not sure why that is. After all, the New Year is here. Shouldn’t I be ready to make a clean sweep and start the “New Year” with enthusiasm? Is it the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010 that has me down?

I didn’t put the tree up this year. It seemed beyond me somehow to muster the energy and enthusiasm required to open the boxes and get out the decorations and ornaments—to sort out the Father Christmases and snowmen and find just the right spots to place them all.

Chuck put our aging artificial tree together and Christmas Eve Luke and Lisa decorated it with Lucy’s help. It made for a lovely photo op. The twinkling lights were lovely and Lucy’s enthusiasm for all the ornaments was charming. Christmas morning Lucy even by-passed her gaily decorated presents to admire the ornaments again. She lacks something we have come to expect of children on Christmas. She doesn’t have that over-the-top enthusiasm that makes them rip into their presents and open them all at break neck speed. This high pitched enthusiasm is usually followed by a disappointed funk when they realize they didn’t get every last thing on their extensive Christmas lists.

Lucy had to be coaxed to open presents. She would comply, open a present and then want to play with it. Her method made her gifts last the better part of the day and she enjoyed them all—even the clothes. She didn’t know what to expect of Christmas and so she loved every part of it. The tree was beautiful, the Christmas program at church was greeted with the enthusiasm of a Broadway spectacular and the gifts were all wonderful. What made that possible for her? Her innocence? Her lack of expectations? Her lack of experience?

I’m not sure what accounts for her enjoyment but maybe there’s a lesson here for me. My sense of malaise and disappointment must somehow be related to unreasonable expectations. If I could understand that maybe I could find a thread of hope and enthusiasm for 2010.

Somehow, it all seems tied to decorating and so I wonder what that’s about. Why do we decorate for Christmas? If we don’t decorate, we are suspected of being “Bah, Humbug” types who don’t revel in the joys of Christmas: the gift giving, the entertaining, the celebrating and maybe, to an extent, the joy of surviving another year.

I don’t feel like a “Bah, Humbug” type, but I do feel that the whole Christmas season has devolved into greedy excess. We didn’t give many presents this year. We donated to the Heifer Project and kept our gift giving modest. That was hard. I still want that wonderful feeling of giving just the right gift. I love the “wow” factor when you find the right thing and watch someone open it and just know that you hit it out of the park and they are truly happy. It seems harder and harder to achieve that feeling. Everyone seems to already have everything they really want or need and so we sink into excess trying to capture that feeling of surprise and pleasure in our gift giving. We forget that all the gift receiving may be creating a numbness that prevents true surprise and gratitude.

My mind took a peculiar jump here and I started thinking about make up. Maybe house decorating is akin to a woman putting on her make up. It’s a signal that all is well. The fact that she makes the effort to look better makes her feel better. Maybe decorating makes us feel more like we have the holidays under control even if we are collapsing under the weight of expectations beneath it all.

Since my diagnosis, I have worn little make up. I’m bloated and my skin is blotchy and I don’t have the energy to worry about it. My hair is coming back but there’s not enough to comb yet and so I seldom even look in the mirror. When people tell me I’m looking good, I think they must be crazy or are trying to be kind.

I wonder--if I started “decorating” myself again, would I feel better? I went to a class of looking and feeling good during cancer treatment. There are plenty of women who make a great deal of effort getting the right wig and keeping themselves made up and smiling. I still have the bag full of free goodies they gave me. If I did start using them, would it be to benefit myself or to reassure others that I am doing ok? Maybe I should put on the wig I’ve never worn and get out the make up and see if it does make me feel better. Maybe decorating isn’t the worst idea after all.

Of course, I still have to un-decorate the tree but after processing all these random thoughts I do feel a little better.

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Excuse me ma'am

I worked out last night. It was the first time in a while and I'm feeling it. I came home and told my husband about my work out and my encounter with a young woman at the club. Today he wrote about it. Just when I think he can't possibly understand what's going on in my head, he proves me wrong. Here's what he wrote:


Excuse Me, Ma'am

by Chuck Stromme

“Not bad for an old lady” she thinks, smiling, toweling off the sweat. It's hot in her exercise club.

It's been a hard year. After a good start – a two week trip overseas, a lovely early spring, a flowering garden – she had found that lump. That damn lump. Spring flowers gave way to a lumpectomy, gardening to chemo, harvest to radiation. Now it's winter again.

She's always been secretly proud of her breasts and her once copper-penny red hair. I mean really, who wouldn't be? Her breast is, well, different now. Her hair fell out. Again. There are new scars. Getting old sucks, she thinks. Well, OK, the hair is coming back at least but the rest of growing old still sucks.

But today, today is one of the good days. She's working out with her buff and younger masseuse friend. Even keeping up a little, sort of. Stretch this, lift that, faster pace, smile through the muscle strain. That kind of good day. She's wearing one of her breast cancer shirts.

“Excuse me, please.” Who... oh, a kid needs to get by. “Oh, sure, no problem.”

A moment later “Excuse me, ma'am.” She looks, sees for the first time. A very small, severely handicapped, twenty-something young woman is shyly trying to get her attention. The woman, not much more than a girl really, has one of those pink tied-ribbon shirts on. She says, in not much more than a whisper, “I had breast cancer, too.” Then, “I lost my breast.”

Life, of course, isn't fair. For each of us who is fortunate, there are those less fortunate. For each of us who are multiply blessed, others are multiply afflicted. We don't see the others very often, mostly because we don't choose to, but sometimes we encounter their reality. Sometimes we have no choice. Sometimes it taps us and says “Excuse me, ma'am.”

No one is ready for that kind of reality. We're not ready for harsh or cruel. We forget they exist while we're basking in good and fulfilled. We don't know what to do when we meet the others.

Only one response will get you through a time like this. Take in the reality. Embrace it and let it affect you. Know it and make it a part of you and only then can you grow from the experience. Don't shun the afflicted. They've had too much of that. Smile, engage them, touch them if it's appropriate. You can acknowledge that you're both fruit of the same tree, then each can go on her way without pity or envy.

Merry Christmas.

CAST ADRIFT

Since my treatment ended in October, I have felt cast adrift. I haven't blogged because I have had nothing to say that didn’t seem pessimistic or worse. Even the recent articles about recommended later and fewer mammograms didn’t anger me enough to respond.

What has angered me is the added recommendation that doctors stop teaching women how to do self exams on their breasts. Really?! What could be more benign than that? At first I thought it was a mistake; but no, it’s part of the recommendation. The underlying purpose is simple. If women examine themselves, they will find lumps. Most of these lumps are made up of benign tissue--lumpy breasts, fibrous breasts or just plain random deposits of tissue that is different from the surrounding tissue. All of these can lead to tests and procedures and, of course, anxiety. The tests can be expensive and the anxiety is “bad” for women. Therefore, it would be better if all these false alarms could be avoided. Of course that would also mean that early detection would be avoided as well.

The question then becomes, does early detection really make a difference? A recent article in the Fall, 2009, issue of Cure Magazine questions the value of routine screenings. The article compared cancer to an asteroid hurtling toward earth. If the asteroid can’t be stopped, does it really help to know three months or three years in advance that it is on the way? The end result is the same. On the other hand, if there is a way to destroy the asteroid before it arrives, the earlier it is detected the better. The point of the article is that all too often detection and treatment does not add significant time to the patient’s life expectancy and frequently reduces the quality of the time remaining. Findings indicate that this is particularly true for prostate cancer. Men can live for a number of years with this slow gowing cancer while the treatment can significatly impair their general health. This may be the case with other types of cancer as well.

However, the fact that it might rarely make a difference in the final outcome doesn’t matter to those “exceptions” who are still alive years after diagnosis and treatment. Most of them are convinced that they would be dead if they had not discovered and treated their cancers.

I am certainly convinced that my bout with uterine cancer in 1996 would have killed me if I had not had surgery, chemo and radiation. How can we ever be sure though? If this Triple Negative breast cancer is going to ultimately be the death of me and my treatment was all for nothing, maybe I would prefer to have the six months back and go on a cruise instead. How can we dare to make such choices and leave our loved ones wondering if we abandoned them without putting up a fight? For me, that's the toughest question of all.

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Fuzzy Wuzzy

Fuzzy Wuzzy Was A Bear

Fuzzy Wuzzy Had No Hair

Fussy Wuzzy Wasn’t Fuzzy Wuzzy?


That’s me… Fuzzy Wuzzy.

All my too short hair is standing straight up. No curl yet, but maybe there isn’t enough of it to show any curl. I’m hoping for the soft “chemo perm” I got last time but who knows what makes the hair curl or change color. It just does. I guess I should just be grateful not to have hair at all. That is at least a possibility. I have talked to post chemo women who had little or no hair return for a long time. So I’ll rub my fuzz and try to be patient.

By the way, the cute guy with me is grandson Douglas. We love to do puzzles together

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And None to Go

Tuesday was my last day of radiation treatment. Now there is nothing left to do but heal and wait. The fatigue lingers but I am hoping the pain won’t. On the outside, it looks like the worst sunburn ever; a hot, tender bright red with blisters. It’s already starting to peel around the edges. On the inside it reminds me of shingles. Jittery pain messages zip around, careening into each other and reminding me that the worst of the burn is deep inside. I just hope that the nerves don’t take as long to heal as they do with “real” shingles. Dr. Wendland, my radiation doc. advised me that the nerve pain could last from a few weeks to several months. I’m hoping for the few weeks…

My radiation therapists and Dr. W. all gave me congratulatory hugs which made me feel emotional and a little sad. I think the sadness was a mixture of relief and anxiety. It feels strange to be cut loose from the demands of treatment. It feels like I am no longer actively fighting the cancer. I try not to obsess about it but I know from my past experience that it will take a while to get myself to where it doesn’t dominate my thinking. I know the time will come will I can go longer and longer without thinking about it. Eventually, I will only get anxious just before a check up. A long way down the road I may even forget to schedule my check up. (Like I forgot to schedule my annual mammogram) Or, maybe having learned that lesson, I will be careful to schedule and monitor important check ups and take better care of myself.

Recurrence anxiety has at least one positive aspect and that is that it lends urgency to daily life and an appreciation for everyday pleasures. I hope not to lose that but I know it is easy to sink into complacency. I need to find a place in between where I can keep the fear at bay and still relish being alive.

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