In a comment on my last post, my dear friend and author of the incredible As the Lonely Fly, Sara Dowse, exhorted me to ‘forget the Methodist upbringing’ and rest big. That reference to my distinctly Protestant Christian childhood hit me like a B-Line bus barrelling down Pittwater Road. I’ve never considered myself a blamer but if I had to point the finger at the root cause of my own personal work addiction madness, I’d blame the Methos and the Scots. Allow me to explain.
When Lucy Pevensie meets Aslan on her second trip to Narnia in Prince Caspian, she asks why he didn’t jump in and save them like the previous time in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Aslan answers, ‘Things never happen the same way twice, dear one,’ which sums up precisely my feelings about this second go at chemotherapy.
Recently I’ve gotten back into the pool, slowly building up my lap numbers and time in the water to around 45 minutes. It’s hard work but very satisfying and the toning effect on the old treatment-ravaged bod has been almost instantaneous. Even though my togs have a pouch for my breast prosthetic, I’ve never worn one to swim anywhere let alone in a chlorinated pool, fearing degradation of whatever material is used to shape that fake left bosom. And that’s all good from an aesthetic point of view because when one wears body-hugging racing cozzies, being one breast down is barely perceptible. From a functional perspective, however, the one-breasted swimmer can’t help but feel a little lopsided when coursing through the water.
Yes folks, it’s my anniversary. On 17 December three years ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer. At the time I didn’t dare think too much further ahead than the next treatment hurdle, which in my case was a mastectomy two days after diagnosis. Oddly enough, the 17th December in 2016 falls on a Saturday – Law of Dharma or Purpose in Life Day in Deepak Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. A little spiritual tingle is travelling up my spine right now because it was after I came home from the hospital that I started writing my blogpost on that 7th Law, a post I’d been putting off for over a year as I came to terms with my own mid-life crisis, for want of a better description. That post led to the Big Breast Adventure series and the rest, as they say in the classics, is history. It seems fitting on this day of reflection (for me at least) to reprise my Law 7 – Purpose in Life post as a reminder to myself (more than anyone else) that time does indeed march on and finding one’s purpose continues to be a ‘work in progress’.