This comes from my brother's blog. It is well worth reading.
Deep Wellbeing: Caught in the act of being mindless: Last night I found myself searching Google for "achilles tendon rupture." My leg is in plaster with this condition and I wanted to learn mor...
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Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Saturday, January 01, 2011
The Challenge of Choice
I wrote this a few years ago. It seemed appropriate to print it again today.
It is not just at New Year that we can wipe the slate of the old year clean and chose to start again. Although we can chose to make this the start point for our new choices or the time to jettison some old ones, we know that there is nothing intrinsically magical about the New Year Bells. The world does not come to an abrupt halt at midnight of the outgoing year and the laws of time are not suspended to allow us to erase the past in order to give us a clean sheet for the future. We can do this at any time. It is our choice.
We are gifted with creative imagination and with this we can chose in each and any moment to put time on pause, to visualise a glistening blank canvas waiting for us to paint whatever we wish upon it. We can chose to create our lives anew in every moment of each new day and choice is the key to transformational change.
The complexity of who we are is in part a product of our past experience but we are not our past experiences. Failure yesterday does not mean failure today just as it does not mean that I am a failure, just that in one discrete part of my life I did not achieve what I set out to do. Should yesterday have been shrouded in sorrow for me for whatever reason it does not mean that I cannot chose happiness for myself today. Every thought that we have, every choice we make, every experience we process, creates a new version of who we are.
Sometimes we freeze frame our perception of ourselves so that we chose to remain a picture of our past selves but even then the reality is that we have changed - we are now someone else holding on to a snapshot in time of who we were yesterday.
We chose to hold ourselves back in the past. We “wallow in misery” ; “we are lost in grief”; “we slide into depression”. Yes, it is hard to make alternative choices in the face of real emotional and physical challenge but that is what makes the human spirit such an enigma - we always have choice unless we have certain psychiatric conditions.
Sometimes it is not us who freeze frame ourselves but our closest loved ones and those whose opinion of us touches us most. They hold our image in the past and refuse to accept the evidence of all their senses, that we are not today who we were yesterday. Once again it is our choice whether to permit the reflection we see in their eyes to be who we perceive ourselves to be, to hold ourselves back, to be less than we know ourselves to be. We always have choice. We can be who we have become or we can subjugate our true expression to the transient needs of others.
This is especially the case for those who begin to tentatively step out of the chrysalis of change, shrugging off our old caterpillar shape to spread our wings as a butterfly. We still long for the security of the cabbage patch but there is no nectar of creativity to be found there to feed our dreams. We need to move on or something very precious will die within us. Sometimes our loved ones seek to hold us back out of fear of being left behind, or out of jealousy of our transformation and sometimes they do not see our newly developed wings and fear that being incapable of flight we will hurt ourselves. What we do with their perception of us is once again our choice. We can gently help them to shift their perspective to see who we truly are or we can conform to their old image of who we once were. There is always choice and with choice comes consequence. We can be who we are or we can be less.
When we wake up in the morning, we can curse the darkness or we can switch on a light. We can be bad tempered or we can smile. We can dwell on all that is wrong in the world or we can bless each and every gift we have been given, every wonderful person in our lives; we can rejoice that we have been given another day to paint glorious pictures on that blank canvas.
Even in the midst of grief, we have choices. We can bury ourselves with our dead or we can live our lives gloriously, fully, vibrantly in honour of the love that we have for them. I see so many people who channel their pain
into creating something that makes the world a better place, not to take the pain away but to transmute it into a gift of loving service. Several years ago, a young girl was horrifically murdered in my home town. Her parents were
devastated but they chose to honour her memory by setting up an organisation to help parents through the same situation.
Several years ago an 18 year old boy from my son’s school was studying in Israel during the gap year before taking up a place at medical school in London. Joni was killed in a suicide bombing and in the midst of their anger and grief his parents made a magnificent choice. They honoured Joni’s life by allowing his death to save the life of a young Palestinian girl who needed a kidney transplant. They also went on to create a prize in his memory for community service here in Scotland where he grew up. Choice is sometimes all that we have to bring light into the darkest places of our lives.
So my friends, what choices will you make today?
Will you let light and love into your lives?
Will you put aside the past and allow the richness of the
present?
Will you chose to smile at a stranger?
Will you chose to be the being of light you truly are?
Will you chose to exercise the gift of choice today?
“Create each day anew.” Morihei Ueshiba - Founder of the
Martial Art of Aikido from The Art of Peace
To every man there openeth
A way, and ways, and a way.
And the high soul climbs the high way,
And the low soul gropes the low.
And in between, on the misty flats,
The rest drift to and fro.
But to every man there openeth
A high way and a low,
And every man decideth
The way his soul shall go.
John Oxenham
We are our choices. - Jean-Paul Sarte
(1905-1980), philosopher, writer, and critic
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Friday, November 05, 2010
Kidney Cancer - the silent killer. The beginning
Health is a gift; it is not a given.
A year ago I was diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma, the most common and most deadly of kidney cancers.
The journey to that horrifying diagnosis had taken 15 months. . I had assumed that the intermittent vaginal bleeding, joint and soft tissue pain, slight nausea in the mornings and tiredness were all symptoms of a late menopause. It was not until the end of July 2008 that I was finally made to take notice that something was seriously wrong with my body. The thought that it might be cancer had never entered into my mind until that night.
My mother had just suffered a stroke and was home beginning what was to be a full recovery. I was spending the night at her house to keep an eye on her when I woke in the middle of the night soaked to the skin with sweat. My body ached all over and worst of all was the relentless pain in my lower back, as though someone was trying to drill a hole in the base of my spine. When I went to the toilet, I discovered that I was bleeding.
I used a combination of breathing techniques, Reiki and EFT (emotional freedom therapy) to bring the pain and the fear under control, changed my bedding and night dress, and slipped back into sleep. The following morning I made an appointment with my doctor.
A cervical smear showed that there was nothing wrong with my cervix; blood tests indicated anaemia and raised inflammatory markers; tests for ovarian cancer were also negative. I was referred to a gynaecologist and endured two biopsies of the lining of my womb; the first did not have enough tissue and they lost the results of my second for almost six weeks before they finally showed up again. I was referred for ultrasound to check for any gynaecological abnormalities and other than a slight thickening in the womb lining, nothing was wrong.
Had I known then what I now know about kidney cancer, I would have asked for them to scan my kidneys too. That would have shown the problem immediately. However, once more assumptions created delay in dealing with the real cause of my symptoms. Not once was it suggested that my kidney might have been responsible for the bleed. They had ruled out menopausal periods as the source as blood tests showed my hormonal levels to be that of a post-menopausal woman. I had been through the change of life without even noticing it. The bleeding was considered to be the effects of a hormonal imbalance, nothing to be worried about.
The gynaecologist was very kind but having ruled out all of the problems under her specialisation, sent me away with her contact details and the promise to see me if I continued to bleed. I was so relieved to know that I did not have any of the gynaecological cancers that I did not even ask if there might be any other cause. It had taken from August to late January to reach this point in the journey.
I will continue with the next stage tomorrow but I want to raise the following red flags which might just save your life or the life of someone you love.
Never ignore bleeding however slight.
Never assume that anaemia is benign. Too many woman accept it as part of being female and due to losing blood every month.
If you start to bleed again after cessation of periods, even if it has been less than the usual year we use as a sign that menopause is over, do not assume that it is gynaecological.
Insist that all possible causes are ruled out.
If your inflammatory markers are high (CRP and ESR), do not allow any delay in investigation of the causes, particularly if you have other symptoms. If they rule out one set of causes such as gynaecological, ask what needs to be looked at next.
Do not expect your general practitioner to refer you on automatically to another specialist.
Do not expect your general practitioner to call you back in to discuss what else might be explored to explain your symptoms. You need to be the one who makes sure this happens.
Ask for your kidney function to be tested.
If you have high blood pressure, also ask for your kidney function to be tested. The three medications I required for high blood pressure prior to my operation are now no longer required.
Be prepared to be a persistent but polite pest if there is a delay in getting consultant appointment, tests etc. If your records go missing, create merry hell until they are found.
Without being paranoid, we must all be our own experts about our bodies. There is an abundance of helpful information on the internet. Use it.
Do not rest until you have your answer. Your life depends on it.
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