The Year of Dying.

It's coming up to the 1-year anniversary of the shit storm year that began with my father's death. And lately, I've been thinking a lot about dying. I think, in part, because I came so close to it in October of last year when I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The tumor had begun to envelope the carotid artery in my brain. Luckily, it was benign and the surgeons successfully removed most of the tumor.

The surgery was only 3 ½ months ago and if you were to meet me today, you would have no clue as that I had just had brain surgery. I work as hard, maintaining the same long hours as I did before the surgery.

Aye, there's the rub. Something did happen. In fact a lot of something happened.

I last saw my neurosurgeon (how many people can say that?) in January and he suggested that a. I could get back to running and doing yoga, two of my favourite activities and b. that I start on craniosacral therapy (CST).

Here's wikipedia's explanation of CST:

”A craniosacral therapy session involves the therapist placing their hands on the patient, which they say allows them to tune into what they call the craniosacral system. The practitioner gently works with the spine and the skull and its cranial sutures, diaphragms, and fascia. In this way, the restrictions of nerve passages are said to be eased, the movement of cerebrospinal fluid through the spinal cord is said to be optimized, and misaligned bones are said to be restored to their proper position.”

CST is a weird experience because, well, it feels like nothing. I go in, lie down, and the therapist puts her hands on my head, spine, and feet. But it’s not like massage therapy where you can actually feel it physically. Instead, what you sense is an internal rocking, as if the bones in your head are moving.

As a scientist, before trying CST, I wanted evidence that CST made a difference. Before the brain surgery, I read all about the trans-sphenoidal approach to removing pituitary tumors. I even watched videos on YouTube. I learned as much as I could about the success rates, side effects, recovery times, etc. But for CST, there isn't a whole lot. And what's even more odd is that this therapy is covered by insurance but acupuncture is not. It seems random what American health insurance companies will or will not cover as far as alternative therapies go.

Although, there isn’t much evidence that CST works, I don’t care. For whatever reason, something is happening in those sessions. And I don’t mean just the physical.

In my last session, as I lay there on the table, I could hear it rising in my body as she was working at my feet.

I made her stop, explaining that I was feeling suffocated and experiencing great anxiety and fear. What was the fear and anxiety about, she asked.

Dying, I said. Dying.

And then I began to sob.

Since then, I have been thinking a lot about My Year of Dying. A year where my father passed away and I got a big, fat, yummy, brain tumor. I imagine these have probably affected my feelings about death and dying.

There’s an obvious loss of family that comes with a parent dying. But because my mother is dead as well, with the death of my father, all ties to culture and family history have been severed. In normal families, aunts and uncles would serve as that connection. The generation that consists of my mom’s brother and my dad’s sister live in fear and from fear. It’s hard to know how to love if fear is your skin. They never call us. Not when my mom died. Not when my dad died. And certainly not when I had a brain tumor.

My relationship with death has not been peaceful. I have never, in my life, seen anyone die without some kind of clinging. Neither my mother nor my father died peacefully or at peace. When I was about 10 years old, my mom took me on one of her rounds at the terminally ill children’s ward. Since then, I’ve seen a lot of people die – friends, family members and it has always been painful and a struggle. Part of reducing our fear of death is to experience it without strife.

There is also a death that comes with a major life surgery. It is the loss of youth. Unlike the typical slow decay of aging, this is a front-end assault. And I guess, it’s just taken a bit of time to catch up to the experience of post-traumatic stress syndrome.

It’s been hard to start running and exercising again, even though, my neurosurgeon (gotta love that) said it would be okay. For some reason, I can’t. Unlike before the surgery, I can’t consistently practise yoga or run. There’s always an excuse. Or I’ll start a yoga session or a run and then I just stop. At first, I was literally afraid my head would explode (ridiculous, I know), but then I realized it was because I no longer understood my body. It was not a healthy, young, fit woman. It was this diseased tumor filled sac ‘o water.

Today, I am learning how to befriend my body again. I am learning gratitude. I am thankful that my body was able to recover from such an assault. And I am learning to give up hope of a better past.

I heard this recently, “In the pursuit of knowledge, something is gained. In the pursuit of freedom, something is let go.”