Feeling, Disease, and Anxiety

I have been feeling exceptionally well for a couple of weeks. The treatments for my multiple myeloma have pushed the level of cancer in my system way down, and though I sometimes feel a little bit tired (particularly when I do not have the "assistance" of steroids), I have been feeling rather normal.

Hot flashes and night sweats have returned with regularity, but the intense need to drink great amounts of water all day and all night have subsided. I have the occasional age-appropriate ache and pain, which I had trouble noticing when I had intense pain caused by the (now dead) tumor on my sacrum, and my regular doses of steroids and other anti-cancer medications.

Now, with the exception of a daily aspirin and thrice-daily doses of a drug that protects me from getting shingles, it is just me in my body for the rest of May. Then I have to inject myself with human growth hormone to prepare for next week's festivities: the harvest of stem cells for my bone marrow transplant at the end of June.

After the "harvest" my major task is to show up at the hospital for a big dose of chemotherapy to wipe out my (still a wee bit cancerous) bone marrow, and then build up my immune system after my harvested (and I guess cleared of cancer) stem cells get poured back into my system.

During the past few days I have noticed a kind of free-flowing anxiety surging through my system: anxiety about being in the right place at the right time, anxiety about packing everything I need for my time in the hospital and my time near the hospital, anxiety about cleaning, and anxiety about recovery.

I have also noticed that when I practice music that allows me to release emotional energy, I feel better. During the past six months or so, since cancer-related circumstances started taking over my life, I went through a period of relative emotional numbness that I found was relived by music. When I was playing, I felt alive. The feeling lasted for a while after playing, as long as I was thinking about the music I had been playing.

I also noticed that I could become emotionally connected to prose passages, people, and circumstances in the books I was reading.

This (now pretty much under control since I have been able to talk about it) anxiety could be happening because my body is no longer in a constant combat mode. I now have the leisure to feel, which I like to think of as a good thing.

Practicing now seems to be a little bit different from the way it felt a few weeks ago. I can think about the "how" of making a phrase sound better with more objectivity, which is something that makes practicing more productive than simply playing because I need some emotional relief.

Knowing where to be in the bow, for example, is something I can only accomplish through focused practice. And when I am in the anxiety-informed state of performing, the practicing I have done allows me to enter a more free-flowing and expressive state than I would be in if I hadn't practiced properly.