Filling the "magical" reserve

I haven't been online for a while. Every post that I do, I feel a need to be positive and help someone, but I haven't felt much like that lately. So now I've decided that being honest about how I'm feeling might help someone too.

Medically, we've both been doing well. Can you believe it will be September tomorrow? We've enjoyed catching up with many friends over the summer, made a trip to Regina and my parents cottage to see family and friends and then just got back from Vancouver for work and some family visits. Yesterday we took Talyn to the Lion King. I didn't know if he would sit still or not, but he had his mouth open with amazement the whole time. The whole family loved it.

In an hour, Ryan will go in for another MRI and we will get the results tomorrow morning. If you'd asked me 2 weeks ago how I thought it might go, I probably wouldn't have given you a very positive answer. He has been experiencing some intense anxiety, which we believe has been creating some seizure like symptoms. The good news is that since he went to see our amazing therapist, he hasn't had any further problems. So, I am feeling fairly positive about tomorrow but with a mild sense of normal nervousness.

Over the past month, I have felt those familiar feelings of anxiety building up again. It's weird, I have been really good since February, but lately I wake up and often feel that sense of "grey" all around and a feeling of anxiety building up inside of me. If I have somewhere to go and something to do, then I find the feeling goes back down when I leave the house or else I feel a sense of nausea for the morning, but by the afternoon I feel good again. Anxiety and the "grey" are really scary feelings, they come out of nowhere and feel like they could spiral out of control quickly.

I have just been getting through week after week and been happy that things have seemed to go away mildly, but deep down I know the situation has not been solved. Tricia has a way of making perfect sense of everything and when I told her about this, she did it again. She said that everyone has a magical reserve of energy that is used up in times of trauma. When you have cancer, it takes so much energy to get through the physical treatment, that those reserves are used up to deal with the emotional stuff going on underneath it all. For my family, we have been operating on very low reserves for some time and with each month that passes, we need more energy to deal with the ongoing stress of our life and keeping that happy attitude while we do it.

Since my last treatments one year ago, I might have been able to build up my reserves for 6 months at a time. But now my reserves are empty again so I need to find a better way to do this. Things with Ryan might be up and down for many years, so I need to build a reserve for 40 years, not 6 months.

So the question then is how do we all build up that reserve to ensure we have enough to get us through? One thing is to make sure we are doing enough of the things we love in life, that we feel a surge of energy from. Do you know what those things are for you? Think back to 10 years or to your childhood to give you some clues. Then find a way to incorporate some of those into your life. That is the hard part. We are already doing a great job of balancing so many things, that how can we add one more? The answer is that if we don't, they will all fall eventually. So, I am working on that.

That is my life these days. In the next while, I will try Reiki, more visits to my therapist, some homeopathy's to help me "release" my emotions from time to time and anything else that might help. I hope by the next post I will be telling you of what else I've learned to help me fill my reserve to last for 40 years!