Going Through The Motions

The Original Threat To My Health.

As I wrote, edited, and repeatedly performed Breastless, I gained personal insight into how I was swept along by the process, the medical tasks to be completed, the practical steps. Curiously, my own story-telling revealed to me how I was barely coping with the psychological impact at the time.

I am grateful and amazed at how quickly I was put into the process and system, but there was little time to come to terms with the fact that I was no longer in charge of my life and I barely knew the people who were. They weren’t really people to me in fact, they were experts in their field. A field whose authority I was expected to trust. I was told I would have a team, but I was never allowed to meet them and was scoffed at for making that request.

We have an excellent public healthcare system in Canada and this is not complaint at the people working within it. I know there are those who are trying to promote change, but the assumptions of the system regularly turn you into a case and override the human - on both ends of the scalpel.

I wrote the following in the heat of my creative process. It was since cut from the script, but I believe is still worthy of sharing:

How have we got to this place where our modern-day healers prescribe what’s best for you, hold all the answers, don’t have time to develop a relationship and involve you in a healing collaboration? In fact, a well-trained and efficient doctor keeps a clinical distance, using a mechanical process to eradicate symptoms. 

How is it that when it comes to saving or losing your life, you don’t get to choose a person who you feel in alignment with and who will listen to your concerns, devising a route through this with you. I know, I know, that’s not how the system works; there’s no money or time for that. But why not? Has the system intentionally removed love from the healing profession?

And what happened to “First, do no harm”? It seems to me that blanking whole aspects of who I am, how I view this “disease”, spurning my emotional and spiritual needs is a form of harm. 

I don’t feel heard. It is a life-long sensitivity so yes, I’m bringing emotional baggage into the room, but find me one single cancer patient who isn’t!

The compliant, authority-pleasing bag of “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it, Doc”, is the easiest to carry. No unpacking required, in fact. Everyone in their roles as delineated: Patient and Expert. The expert is clearly burdened with all the responsibility and the patient can simply do as they are told. 

I catch myself in that role more often than I’d like to admit. In the consulting room, I seem to lose the perspective I’ve gained from books and podcasts by experts who make sense to me. It’s like there’s a force field warping my brainwaves as my sense of self diminishes. Then as I exit the sliding doors to the outside world, fresh air hits me and I wake-up out of it. I feel immense irritation at myself for not holding true to my convictions but wanting to please at all costs.

I held genuine concern for Dr Radnor. I made sure I appeared pleasing, partly due to the power imbalance that is taken for granted. On the outside I was all smiles and sweetness, but inside lurked a familiar inner resentment. Imperceptible to me at the time, I now would label it as full-blown rage. I slowly and guiltily discovered it was there buried under good girl - “Don’t make a fuss”, “Why should you be treated any differently?” - rules.

And I am not alone.

Dr Gabor Maté’s book, When The Body Says No, reports a detectable profile of people prone to certain diseases, including women who get a breast cancer diagnosis. I had studied the mind/body connection for over 30 years and had read the book with professional interest many years earlier. I avoided it after diagnosis with breast cancer myself.

This year, Dr Maté published a book for our time, The Myth of Normal - Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture. With more self-understanding under my belt, I was able to read it with personal recognition and gratitude for the work that has gone into the exposure of this dynamic on our health:

“A 1982 German study presented at the Symposium on the Prevention and Detection of Cancer in London found certain personality traits have a strong association with breast cancer…emotional suppression, rationalization, altruistic behavior, the avoidance of conflict, and [a] super-autonomous self-sufficiency.

…In a previous study at King’s College Hospital in London, it had also been shown that women with cancerous breast lumps characteristically exhibited “extreme suppression of anger and other feelings.”

There is ample reason to believe that this is true in my case. There are countless examples in my life of me suppressing, repressing, depressing - the whole damn pressing down of everything. However, there was no way in Hades I would have thought I was a people pleaser or particularly caregiving at the cost to myself. I thought myself self-absorbed, entitled, and lacking good grace; ungrateful even. Certainly capable, sceptical, cynical, critical, controlling and competitive - because that’s how you get on in life, right?! Or so I had grown up to believe.

And with this life-event I was no different.

In those first weeks I wanted to shield my children and keep it all in a manageable container - a side dish - so it didn’t touch anyone else, didn’t cause a disturbance to our normal. I would stay rational and reasonable. I would get done what needed to be done to gather information and go it alone to maintain control.

Many friends have asked, “Why didn’t you call? I would have driven you! I would have come with!” It’s not that I was lacking very close friends, just that I couldn’t afford to feel their closeness if I was going to stay rational and, frankly, dissociated.

I showed all the hallmarks of a woman not feeling into her needs, wants, desires, emotions, not hearing the inner screams on which cancer was feeding.