not terminal
As I was waiting for my yoga friend to pick me up tonight, I got a call from my specialist. Without going into too many details here, she told me to get a CT scan to assess whether I have a benign tumour. She knew my background well enough to not use metaphors or worry me uncessarily, and I agreed to continue the diagnostic process, and in fact was quite impressed that she'd reviewed and identified a minor detail skipped by everyone else.
However, I then allowed myself, for a minute or so, to imagine the worst case scenario. For the most part I was committed to believing that the best thing I could do for my health is commit to methods that reduce and minimise stress. So I streched and breathed at yoga. But when we were lying in yoga nidra I imagined for myself a worst case scenario that involved me having the worst case treatment I could imagine. I even embellished the details to the point that I imagined the sense of relief of hitting rock bottom and only being able to go up. It was both a relief to imagine I could cope with things going wrong but also unnecessarily emotional: I left tear stains on my lavender scented eye mask pillow.
The old imagination often gets the better of me; I used to love reading the Judy Blume book called "Otherwise known as Sally J Freedman" because the character suffered from the same case of melodrama that I still haven't grown out of. Whilst the melodrama that turns into catastrophizing is quite bad, the melodrama and ability to creatively imagine worst case scenarios that I can survive is quite useful.
However, I then allowed myself, for a minute or so, to imagine the worst case scenario. For the most part I was committed to believing that the best thing I could do for my health is commit to methods that reduce and minimise stress. So I streched and breathed at yoga. But when we were lying in yoga nidra I imagined for myself a worst case scenario that involved me having the worst case treatment I could imagine. I even embellished the details to the point that I imagined the sense of relief of hitting rock bottom and only being able to go up. It was both a relief to imagine I could cope with things going wrong but also unnecessarily emotional: I left tear stains on my lavender scented eye mask pillow.
The old imagination often gets the better of me; I used to love reading the Judy Blume book called "Otherwise known as Sally J Freedman" because the character suffered from the same case of melodrama that I still haven't grown out of. Whilst the melodrama that turns into catastrophizing is quite bad, the melodrama and ability to creatively imagine worst case scenarios that I can survive is quite useful.
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