What Would One Do Without Pep Talks?

You have all heard me often reference Chiara's "pep talks". Well, they are as good a medicine as I have ever had, and I cannot put into words how much they have managed to soothe, inspire, make me giggle, or simply envelope me in a hug that makes it all alright. So I had to share the following: This past weekend, I hit a moment of a "low" - I felt awful, frustrated, fearful, and wishing so desperately that my health had not taken this turn. Yes, one of those "human" moments, when I was struggling to shift gears back to the positive mental mindset which is more typically my daily stance. Chiara and I have often talked about the power of visualisation with this cancer, and I believe in it fully. To date, my visualisations have been friends and family with huge miner's picks, hammering and chipping away at the boulder of my breast cancer and lymph node, chunks of rock coming away into piles of insignificant rubble and dust, and the boulder getting smaller and smaller. The chemo is ice-cold Corona beers and cocktails for all that are working on this, so when it arrives, there are whoops of joy and cheers, and the chipping and hammering just gets all that more vigorous. As for the spots on my liver and bones, I imagine James with a wooden rake, sweetly raking the "pebbles/spots" from the earth of my body or kicking them off with his feet - getting the trouble spots unstuck, and smoothing the earth with his pudgy hands. The earth is then ready for planting with health and vitamins and all the good foods that I have been feeding myself.



Now, in the low of this weekend, Chiara introduced another visualisation, saying that my body is full of troops that are itching to fight this cancer, but that heck, my blue attitude is doing NOTHING for the camp morale.... and so the following transcript was sent to me by her, via Messenger... and I just loved it:

• Chiara says: Hey, don't be blue you have to be up! Because you're almost at the end of your third bout of chemo, so half way through the crapola and well on your way to getting better. And you have been eating so much better which means your body is so much stronger even in the worst of times and so you are proving that we're slowly getting your body back to being fighting fit.

• Chiara says: Army morale is very very high, so keep it up - not going to help if they see the Lieutenant moping around the barracks. You've got "Cry Me A River" playing over the army base tannoi -NOT going to help. Instead send the Vietnamese strippers in to cheer them up in me-love-you-long-time style. (How un-pc is this??)

• Chiara says: You'll have the White Cell boys riled up in no time - cue much whooping, pelvic thrusting and stroking of guns in lewd manner.

• Chiara says: They'll be so adrenaline pumped that they will go absolutely ape-shit on the Tumor guerillas. So much so that word will spread about how barbaric your boys are.

• Chiara says: That those that haven't even had face-to-face combat with the White squadron will be hauling their sorry asses out of Danda territory fast, and being the fanatic martyrs that they are, will be fed the Berries-call-to-martyrdom and self-destruct, ie commit suicide, purely so as not to be defeated in face-to-face combat with the Whites.

• Chiara says: Operation Boom-bastic will be the pinnacle of success and your boys will aptly celebrate to the tunes of Shaggy (Mr Boombastic). Hey maybe you can get that song on your CD. Cue, more lewd activity, pelvic thrusting and bringing in of the strippers.
  

I have attached a photo of Chiara playing with James. If I love her pep talks, I cannot begin to put into words how much I love her.