Mind and Body

The following was written by Jennifer Acee, a group participant at Cancer Support Community-Redondo Beach (CSC-RB). CSC-RB is a nonprofit organization that offers over 150 FREE monthly programs of Emotional Support, Education and Hope to cancer patients and their loved ones. Jennifer was recently treated for stage II Breast Cancer and is a mother of two.

Mind and Body

I’m 31 years old, sort of. I mean, I’ve been alive for 31 years, but the ravaging side-effects of disease have aged me well beyond those years.

Nursing my wearied body, today I have come to the Cancer Support Community for one of the many very, very gentle yoga classes they offer. And I’m in good company. After making my way through the salty air of the pier parking lot, I enter the lobby amongst a gaggle of older people, also here for the class.

There’s a lot of chatting and slow ambling back to the yoga room. I want to speed things up to get us started. Actually, I generally want to speed things up the entire 1.5 hour class.

This class is a lot of sitting, breathing, and stretching. Right, did I mention it was yoga? Anyway, not my favorite way to spend 90 minutes.

I don’t like meditating. I have found that I breathe just fine without devoting thought to it. And I prefer my stretching to be a warm-up for some sort of strenuous exercise to follow. But I come here because I need it, because I know that it is good for me. It helps my troubled body feel a tad bit better, even if only for a few hours.

So much of me wants to be outside running, to be fast and free. To be 31. But that’s all in my head, because my body fits right in here.

- Inflammation rolls around in my hip and rib joints unceasingly, making me ache and creak and move gingerly. I completely lack hormones and thereby the ability to regulate my own body temperature appropriately. Hot flashes are the bane of me. To compensate, I habitually under-dress and am cold 95% of the day because the other 5% is torturously hot.

- I take a medication (to help keep the cancer away) that causes bone density loss.

- And, the water balloons in my chest and chunk of lymph nodes cut out of my underarm (per a bilateral mastectomy) really put a damper on my agility. High impact exercise is not reasonable.

So, like I said, I fit right in here. I am a 31 year old trapped in an older body.

We’re stretching slowly from side to side. We’re balancing. We’re breathing.

(Sigh.) I was never a very good runner anyway.

 In spite of my tongue-in-cheeck complaints, thank you for being what I need CSC!

Jennifer also blogs at lovelywithaside.blogspot.com.