In music there is a symbol for rest that looks like a hat. It was one of my favorite symbols to see on a piece of music because it meant I had a break. A pause, a shift from active to inactive, a stop, etc.
My band teachers taught me about how good musicians used this time in music to rest, to feel at ease, to be ready for the next step. In fact, there were techniques that professional musicians mastered to calmly play music and not feel like I felt.
And I felt like the rest was always a time to play catch up. Catch up on my breath. Catch up if I had skipped a few notes. Catch up on where we were in the piece.
I like playing clarinet and I tried my best. For the most part, I was considered pretty good, but I was not always first seat in the first string of the bands I played in. And I never came close to being a good musician. But what mattered is that I liked doing it, so I kept doing it.
During my time between the end of radiation therapy and my surgery, I hopefully approached the rest symbol in my piece. I expected a pause, a shift from (more) active to (less) active, a stop, etc.
What I played into was less of a decrescendo and more of a crescendo. And when I thought the cues were building to rest, I was suddenly surprised with an accent, perhaps even a marcato.
During radiation therapy, I would spend three days a week traveling 20 minutes north to work, leave work and travel 20 minutes east to the outpatient radiation clinic, then another 25 minutes back home. The two days a week I would work remotely simply cut out the commute from work.
Once radiation therapy ended, there were less commutes because I didn’t have to receive radiation therapy each weekday. However, my time quickly filled up with other appointments, scans, tests, and discussions with my insurance provider about how they were processing my claims from radiation therapy incorrectly.
On top of that, my doctors were not honoring our plan for my treatment in terms of scheduling surgery and maintaining a timeline. SO, I was often connecting with their offices to figure out what was going on.
When I think of rest I imagine stress flying out the window. But just like my teenage music career, my post radiation therapy rests did not entail stress flying out the window.
My saving graces were my family and friends. The diners and laughs. Football and food. FaceTime pie making tutorials with friends over Zoom. Smiles, flowers, packages, cards and limitless outpouring of “you’ve got this Maddy” and “we’re with you every step of the way.”
I’m working up to writing posts that are more like those I’ve written in the past. And to a certain extent, because I struggled to write how I wanted to write, I stopped writing. I realized, however, that I really miss writing and it shouldn’t be about the perfect post. So here’s to me taking a rest from beating myself up about writing and turning a new page in my journey. More to come soon!
P.S. Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself
