Adventure As Medicine
What I learned about healing myself on the road.
Last April I hit the road with a haphazard plan of having an adventure in my new camper. An odd aspiration for a woman who (almost) never camps, covets expertly-made lattes, and takes particular pleasure in dress-wearing. I ached to be well enough to travel during the endless months of treatments. To be vital and part of life in my mind’s eye was to be immersed in the natural world.
Cancer wasn’t the problem. It was the four surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation that left me unable to work and alone for long stretches of time. The fog of chemotherapy made reading a challenge, a pleasure I counted on all of my life. In the months after, I recuperated as best I could, but like many patients, there were ongoing issues to work through well after the treatments concluded. I started and quit a job that wasn’t a great fit for me and occasionally slipped into bouts of fatigue, leaving me lonely and depleted. In addition, I began visiting a young woman struggling through her second cancer diagnosis. The visits and our friendship were pure pleasure. I knew it was coming but was still shocked and sad when she died.
The coup de grâce was falling in love with an unavailable man. Things ended gracefully, but I was unable to move on. My already diminished circumstance set the stage for…
