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January 04, 2005
NOTES OF INTENSE PERIOD – Jan 4 - 8, 2005
Peter had been having lots of little seizures….lasting just a couple of minutes. Took P to Yugi for a massage. When I picked him up he was having a mild partial focal seizure that was lingering. P felt like I could drive him home. On the way the seizure was piquing …..erection, sweats, stiffness behind the neck, olfactory hallucinations, taste hallucinations, very mixed up thoughts plus upset stomach and intestines….. It was quite intense half way home (15 minute journey) Chloe and Dylan were getting noisy in back ….. upsetting P and causing me great stress while trying to quiet them and stabilize P. Thought maybe I should take him to emergency room but he wanted to go home and take valium first and see if the seizure would stop. I felt pulled to make the right choice ….. this is often a question for me…. When to watch and let an experience that is intense and potentially harmful unfold and when to intervene and stabilize or dampen an experience. I used to watch and play that edge when working with art and somatic therapy clients, with Chloe when she is upset and now with Peter. I decided to follow Peter’s wishes. We could see what the valium would do and besides, we live just a couple of minutes from the local hospital.
Got valium into P and luckily Leela showed up to help with dinner and kids. Seizure didn’t respond to first dose of valium. P was becoming extremely fearful and didn’t want me to leave his side. I called Dr. Heyning and was directed to wait an hour and if still seizuring give more valium. A half hour after the first valium P was still very physically distressed. On toilet, feeling severely nauseous, bowels disturbed …. physical pain and fear were strong features. I called Dr. Paul Parritt in Sydney. He is the ex NASA forensic pathologist who we have been working with. He healed himself of leukemia some years ago and since has devoted his practice to researching and developing alternative management of cancers. He has treated “many� astrocytomas but because of NSW health and privacy laws can not talk about his success rates do to possibly giving terminally ill patients false hope. I understand terminally ill patients and their families are at risk for being taken advantage of by unsavory shiesters but god knows cancer patients could benefit from being encouraged to explore many levels of healing and hold the possibility for recovery. Taking responsibility for one’s healing process and thinking both positively as well as outside the box is precisely what could “miraculously� create a survivor against all odds. Even if the disease isn’t “cured� and the body dies I believe much healing can happen. But I have gone off on a tangent.
Back to calling Paul. We were wondering if the mushroom tea Peter had been taking was making him sick. Paul said he’d never had a patient have an adverse reaction. For prudence sake we took P off the mushroom for three days.
Once Leela came I was able to fully be with P. He felt he had to make himself throw up because nausea was so intense. He waited till we were sure valium would have been in bloodstream. The amount of vomit he actually got up was not much but the effect energetically was impressive. It was very physical, violent even, and he had huge wretching spasms.
Peter moved to bed and was crying strongly. He said it was the worst he had ever felt in his life. His stomach and guts were so painful and the nausea so strong. He kept saying over and over, “I feel poisoned, I feel poisoned.� P was also very frightened and the combination of the physical and emotional started to make me question again whether we should get him to emergency. I called Paul Parritt again. He suggested we take the second dose of valium (I had been trying but P felt like he couldn’t swallow even a small pill and sip of water). Paul also said he would contact a colleague in the States and get back in touch with us the next day regarding the ongoing nature of the seizure and the intense reactions. He felt we had to decide whether to take P to emergency since he couldn’t see him.
The intensity ratcheted up yet another notch. Peter was in tears, terrified, and in great pain. I initially felt like all this was a sign of detox, a healing crisis, a purge of poisons being released from his physical and emotional body. If so this was something to embrace and ride out.
At the emergency room the seizure was STILL going on…. about two hours at this point. Still an erection (one of the telltale signs), chills, strange headedness, smells, etc. And the severe nausea and all continued with it. We got the same doc on call that had helped the last time we were in Emergency when we still had the herpetic encephalitis diagnosis. She was calming and kind. When I told her the astrocytoma diagnosis I could see it hit her strongly. She quickly regained her composure and gave P an injection to relieve the nausea. He was soon able to take the valium. The physical stuff (tummy and bowels) ebbed a good bit but the fear was so strong and the seizure continued. P was incredibly sensitive to smell. My breath was disturbing him yet he wanted me close. He was afraid of just about everything around him with moments here and there of calming. At one point when I had gotten up from his bedside to get something he asked me to come back and hold his hand because he was even feeling afraid of me. Holding my hand helped. He also asked the doctor to hold his hand.
She released us home after a couple of hours even though the seizure was still happening to some extent. She was confident that with all the anti seizure meds in him that he wouldn’t have a grand mal. She also supported him being wherever he felt most secure for the night. He was clear that was at home with me.
I asked Saul to come spend the night because P didn’t want me to leave his side. I knew I would have to in the night with Dylan still waking periodically so he agreed that he felt safe with Saul and that would be OK.
There was complete chaos at home while waiting for Saul to come. P was unable to tolerate the kids near him and only able to feel safe with me (at this point he felt afraid of Leela and didn’t want her to be with him while I put the kids to bed). All hell broke loose but P briefly fell asleep and I went to kids and then Saul arrived. Thank god. Before P fell asleep he said some very mixed up things to me. I knew what he was trying to say but I felt an iron fist clutch my stomach when I heard how he was speaking. My mind questioned if this was a by product of the seizure, the tumour growing, the valium, all of the above or what?? The radio oncologists guess that we would probably see serious deterioration of P’s mental state within six months felt like a hot and dangerous breath on my neck. What the hell was happening and why wouldn’t this seizure stop? Tick…tick….tick.
Saul moved Peter into the air conditioned living room and he fell asleep. (It was a very hot night). After an hour and a half he woke up and seemed much better. The seizure had finally stopped. The seizure had lasted approximately six hours. Damn.
He still didn’t want to be alone though. He was extremely vulnerable. Saul spent the night and all went fine.
The next day P was sleepy and vulnerable but less afraid. He slept in the living room a lot (we had moved a futon in to sleep on for the coolness). Nirala came around to chat and look at our research (she’s a friend who is visiting who happens to be a naturopath). She spent a lot of time with P. Dylan demanded a lot of mama that day after so much intensity the evening before.
It seemed like things were calming down. We slept in the living room again due to the heat. Dylan woke me at around 4:00 am and I brought him into our bed in our bedroom so as not to disturb Peter’s sleep. At 6:00 am P got into bed with me saying he was feeling fear again and couldn’t be alone. Snuggled between Peter and Dylan I went back to sleep. Maybe 20 minutes later I heard Peter sobbing. He felt terror and his bowels were upset again. We went into the bathroom. The intensity came up full force but this time it was more emotional than physical. I left him briefly to get the phone. It was almost 7:00am. I called Leela and explained. She was at our house within 20 minutes. Thank god for good friends. Luckily Dylan and Chloe were still asleep. Peter went through one of the most intense catharsis that I have seen. (And given my training as an expressive arts therapist and somatic coach as well as all my personal therapy and groups I have done I have seen quite a lot).
I sat with my back against the bathroom wall with Peter in front of me leaning back against my chest. The fear was gripping him and he prayed for help. I felt like a midwife supporting a woman in transition (the most intense part of laboring in childbirth).
Peter’s body was riddled with a fear that seemed so pure. By that I mean that it wasn’t attached to a particular story. One might hear he was in fear and think, ‘well of course, he is afraid of death’, etc. But that wasn’t it. It was more as if all the fear that he had ever felt (and perhaps not expressed or admitted to himself?) was being purged from a cellular level. And he was feeling it acutely as it came to consciousness.
Sometimes I felt a historical narrative going with it. For instance early on he expressed being so confused and afraid and not knowing what was happening. The quality of his voice was very like a young child or a foreigner in a strange country. I felt quite sure I was hearing from baby Peter in his birth process. Peter’s mother was induced with drugs because the doctor was going on holiday and wanted her to have her baby before he left. Peter wasn’t ready though. He was pulled out with forceps and was a skinny little baby. When would he have come had he been left alone to a natural course of communicating between mother and baby’s hormones? How would his birth been different and how would that have affected his over all life patterns? Who knows? I could go off on another tangent here about my political views of medicalized birth but I will restrain myself.
Waves of intensity kept welling up and taking Peter. He prayed for help. He committed himself to feeling whatever he really needed to but asked for the rest to be lifted from him. He asked to be relieved of whatever unnecessary burdens he was carrying. He did this while leaning back against me, palms lifted toward the ceiling, tears streaming down his face. Even having his palms facing upward and open became too much for him. He didn’t trust the ‘light’. He was afraid that maybe something not benevolent would enter him. He was afraid of the darkness …. More praying for help. Then he would become somewhat calm for a minute or two. During one of these moments after asking for whatever he didn’t have to feel and go through to be lifted he saw shapes like black rectangles lifting out and leaving his body. There certainly seemed to be tangible support around us from the intangible realm.
More waves of anguish took him and crushed him against my body. At times I felt my back aching but there was no way I was going to move out from behind him. I felt like a container and safe haven for his process and I was both honored and grateful for my experiences that allowed me to be with him wherever the ride took us. I felt an overflow of love, concern and compassion. The experience went on in waves for hours.
At one point on the bathroom floor, I had my hand on Peter’s chest. He had the experience of feeling some kind of energetic being there at the same time and place that he felt my hand. The two co existed yet were very separate experiences seemingly on two different planes of reality or something. I asked him about the “creature� as he referred to it. It was black, shiny and kind of like a two legged crab. It wasn’t aggressive but seemed to be very fearful. I think at one point P said that the creature was pure fear. Not ill intentioned but exuding fear. P was also a bit fearful of the creature at first but as he started to explore it and realized it was not ill intentioned he became curious and watchful. A smaller version of the creature left Peter’s chest and went up into the tumour. It hid there. Peter was clear that it wasn’t a second creature but the same creature existing in two sizes and two places. He didn’t know what it did in the tumour….hung out there. Then it crawled back down over his face and back to the bigger version in the chest. Peter seemed to be able to feel it there and just let it be.
Chloe and Dylan woke up and at some point I needed to interact with them to get them ready to go out with Leela. They needed a morning check in with Mama. Peter was past his abstract fear of Leela and so she sat behind him on the bed as I had done. He seemed calmer with her and rested a bit. I got the kids out the door and resumed my position with Peter. He was very happy to have me back and the intensity swelled again. It seemed his intimacy with me allowed a depth of experience that brought the intensity to new peaks.
The waves continued. I tried to call Faisal for guidance. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of the intensity but I could feel exhaustion coming on. Once again I wondered how much to delve into and allow the wild ride and how much to contain the experience. I was periodically reminding Peter of breathing deeply, I was speaking calmly, I assured him that he was OK and was experiencing a healing crisis, etc. A part of me wanted to guide him somewhat in the kind of inquiry practice we use in Faisal’s Diamond Heart Approach. I also felt careful not to lay my interpretations on him or take over his process. I felt like we both could use a check in with Faisal. I called his cell phone but unfortunately only got his voice mail. Then I thought of Turiya. She had been around a few days before and felt very tuned in to me and Peter. I really enjoy her presence and I have been enjoying getting to know her. I thought her many years of skill as a therapist as well as her knowledge of Faisal’s work would be a good support. She came soon after I called her.
While waiting I remember a moment when Peter expressed feeling the ‘darkness’ nearby and was trying to get rid of it. I had a hunch that the darkness wasn’t necessarily a bad thing (based on an inquiry experience I have had and my knowledge of the Diamond Heart Approach). I asked Peter if he thought he could maybe get just close enough to the darkness to have a good look at it. Check it out before chucking it out. It seemed tough at first but as I spoke to him about it without pushing him I noticed he got quiet. I didn’t want to disturb his experience so I didn’t ask any questions at that point. Then I noticed he got very quiet and calm as if he were asleep.
I wondered if he was experiencing the peace and calm of the black latifah.
I had an image of the tumour at some point during this. I saw it as a shell … crusty and worn thin in places and cracking. Inside there was light and within the light a mullosk. I wondered what the hell that meant? My crazy imagination must be going off again. But then I noticed there was something under a fold of the mullosk. There was a beautiful, smooth, shiny, pink pearl. In the Diamond heart work that has meaning. I haven’t studied the pearl essence so I don’t know what the meaning is but it was a significant symbol to me. I must remember to ask Faisal about that.
Turiya showed up. The intensity came back full force. It was interesting (and relieving) to step back and watch Turiya work. She brought him out of the intensity of the experience by holding his feet and helping him feel his body in the here and now. She helped him establish a “safe place� (his feet). She talked about the importance of not overloading the system by creating a kind of ebb and flow rhthym. Go into the experience, come out of it…gently. We took a break and walked out in nature. We looked at everyday things, walked feeling the earth under our feet, Peter and Turiya had a cup of tea and spoke about mundane things. It was work to keep a break happening though. Peter repeated over and over that he was so afraid. The tears spilled and the anguish would grip him for another ride. Turiya would let it go a little and then would bring it back to the simple experiences and physical grounding again.
We eventually lay down together and listened to a guided healing invocation by Faisal. I was trying to be present but I fell asleep during parts of it. I realized I was soooo exhausted. It was really comforting to hear Faisal’s voice. Afterwards Turiya left. She is a beautiful woman and very generous with her support.
I don’t remember a whole lot of details about the rest of the day. Peter was more stable but incredibly vulnerable, weepy and afraid. I mostly tried to have him rest and kept him as best I could from diving too much into the emotions. We both needed a little break. When they couldn’t be contained I trusted the release. When they could be contained I encouraged the rest. So it went all day and all night. Leela cooked dinner that night and I also called Sanjay to come over. It was clear that three adults were needed in the household. One for Peter, one for the kids and one for the house/cooking/cleaning, etc. I can not express enough how grateful I am that we have such a strong network of loving and intelligent friends.
After getting the kids to bed Leela left. Sanjay spent a couple of nights with us. He kept Peter company while I did my research, banking, etc on the computer. At times Peter literally needed to be held tightly. In our homophobic culture I found it refreshing and beautiful to see one man hold another man closely and lovingly. Sanjay has always been like a little brother to Peter and I am really happy he is around. I feel really comfortable with him too. We have become like family. Chloe and Dylan love him as well.
I was fine with the immediate experience of the catharsis but after 36 hours of this new level of need I started to feel overwhelmed with the prospect of the load if it continued on for a long period of time like this. I couldn’t handle being the only career in the household full time. Peter needed full time attention and Dylan needed a lot of attention. He is at the age where he is curious and into everything. I asked Leela to stay with us awhile which she was able to do for four days. That was a god send.
More to journal….the Family Constellation
Posted by Peter at January 4, 2005 01:01 AM
Comments
Dear Peter and Jeniffer: reading your experiences makes me wonder how I could manage as well as you are doing. My prayers for both of you as much as for your children that are going also through the process.
A comment/suggestion, that for me, being outside the "ring" is easy to make, but in any case, it perhaps will shine a ligth somewhere: What about embracing the fear that you Peter feel? What if you welcome it? Your light is stronger than any darkness, your love bigger than any fear.
Perhaps you are a channel for redeeming-transforming this fear that is being presented to you.
Again, it is easy to speak being outside of it. Who knows I would be doing in your shoes!
One more thing that goes along. This is from a series of books that I love and have read and reread many times: Conversations with God. And it says: "What you resist, persist".
May all this be for your benefit and may you feel in peace and happy.
With love.
Manuel Gerardo
Posted by: Manuel Gerardo at April 8, 2005 03:30 PM