Dear Raffaella, thank you so much for this lengthy response to my letter to you about your poem, and much more. I have already followed Pink Planet because there are so many women who are either facing breast cancer for the first time, or who have a long history with it. None of it is easy, and sadly, there aren’t many support groups, either face-to-face or online, to help gather its survivors. I’m so grateful to you that you started this publication. It seems like breast cancer and its massive medical fallout and emotional scarring is a hidden mystery. And it certainly shouldn’t be. Not in this day and age when almost no topic is off-limits!
I kept telling doctors and therapists over the past three years that I had medical PTSD, especially associated with the first hospital and transplant center I was waitlisted. Yet, every time I tried to google that specific term (and I did it yesterday, too), I’d come up with the usual combat survivor or accident victim, and even just rarely about sexual trauma. So I’m calling it what it is — anti-woman, misogyny, all the labels women acquire.
And yet, I came across an article in the Washington Post just recently (Sunday?) about a young man from the US who contracted Ebola in Africa, was flown back to the US, survived, then released back home after about 6 weeks. To run into the emotional and physical terror of PTSD. I thought, finally. It’s a real thing, and all the things I’ve been experiencing over the past 3–1/2 years (since transplant) fall under that heading, and not just depression from one therapist, to grieving from another, to anxiety and xanax (not a drug on the PTSD list). A rather lethal combination. AND at the same time I had finally found a therapist who recognized precisely what was going on with me! Yay! (You can find this article by googling Preston Gorman Ebola, and if you don’t subscribe to the Wash Post, I copied it and can send it to you.) This therapist recommended a book to me — “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk, MD, psychiatry specializing in trauma, and I bought it right away.
I feel like I have so much to tell you. You told me about the new complication and surgery, which sounds terrifying. And you named it — this is a forever thing. My best friend here has a forever story, and in fact is going to Cleveland Clinic in search of a diagnosis this month, after having gone to Mayo Clinic in September for the same problem. She’s getting closer, but also worse.
On the brighter side of things, I have turned back to my Course in Miracles study (started in 1995? here in Denver) and words of love (and not fear) from my friend who taught the many classes I attended. Once again, she’s helping me with one of her daily practice books. We must tend to our spiritual selves, whatever that means to each of us. YOU have inspired me to begin writing and posting again on Medium. I have a lot to say. Thank you so much, Raffa.
