Diagnosis: Afterparty

Much like the episode of Sex and the City where Carrie is struggling to come up with content for her column, and winds up talking about men as socks, I bring to you a blog entry about shoeboxes.

I don’t have much to update, since everything is going so swimmingly; side effects of chemo are still minimal (even with the low iron thing) and so long as my CEA continues to drop, I’m fully convinced it’s a matter of when, not if, I beat this thing. So with nothing new to disclose in this journey, I want to take a moment to talk about what I call my shoebox theory. I’ve never really put this into words, and I definitely don’t talk about it, but this little mental trick has carried me for most of my life. I’ve used it for any difficult time I need to get through, while still allowing myself to feel joy along the way. It’s worked for so many things in my life, but now and especially with cancer.

You can also think of the shoebox theory as the end of a sort of decision tree. I always start with the problem at hand, and it always starts with the question “is there anything I can do about it in this moment right now?” If the answer is yes, then obviously the decision tree branches out into things like “what action can I take right now?” and so on. But the shoebox theory comes into play when the answer to “is there anything I can do about it in this moment right now?” is no.

Nothing I can do about it, right here, right now? Even if there’s something I can do about it tomorrow, then that’s a bridge to cross tomorrow. But right now? If there’s nothing that can be done about it, then in comes the shoebox theory

Mentally put your problem into a shoebox.

Find a place in your closet, mentally.

Put the shoebox away, and let yourself forget about it.

It’s pretty simple, and when you whittle it down to the bones, it’s just a visualization of mentally compartmentalizing. Knowing I have given myself permission to not worry about the problem in this moment frees me up to enjoy the moment. This day is going to happen, as far as I know, whether I’m worried about something in the future or not. I woke up, I’m able bodied, my brain is working, and today will go down into my memory books, just as every day before it. It’s a fact proveable with personal historical data. So, why have this day flawed with worry in my memory? Why have this day be a melancholy memory and not a good one, when there was nothing I could do in that moment to change my circumstances? This day is going to come and this day is going to go. Better to enjoy it, with my problems sitting in a shoebox in my brain, than to worry about what the future looks like.

Zoomed back into my current circumstances, cancer might be happening in my life, but I’m the one in control of my life. The shoebox theory isn’t about procrastinating actionable items by putting them into the shoebox- it’s definitely the opposite (and quite honestly, I find taking action on the actionable items provides just as much relief as putting the unactionable away into a shoebox- it’s really a win-win strategy).

And I also can’t entirely write this entry without acknowledging the fact that it’s much easier to put cancer into a shoebox when I’ve started seeing the early signs of a ridiculously good response to treatment. If my CEA wasn’t dropping at an absurdly fast rate, or worse, going up, would I still be able to brush this off my shoulders as easily? It’s very unlikely. And I’m also fully aware that my positive mental health being so extremely tied to this drop also means that it’s also tied to an increase as well- and should that happen, I’ll likely use the shoebox theory to the best of my ability to take action on what I can, and not worry about what I can’t make an impact on.

That being said, I put all my problems into a shoebox over the last couple of weekends, and simply enjoyed them. Being cautious, of course, of the fact that I’m severely immunocompromised, even if I don’t feel it. A highlight was joining the Colorectal Cancer Alliance’s Scope it Out walk in DC, and seeing how many people are affected by this disease. I was recognized as a survivor with a special orange shirt and blue beanie (sidenote: it feels weird to call myself a survivor since this isn’t necessarily “over,” but so long as I’m alive, I’m a colon cancer survivor) and it was so reassuring to see all the other orange shirts on this walk. We got to go through a huge colon to see all the phases before a polyp becomes colon cancer, and I got to take a picture with Krang himself! Another mental tool to add to the toolbox, and certainly a memory to help the next shoebox sit easily in the closet.