A Thin Place

The Latin word limen means "threshold," a transition point between two spaces--one room and another, or the indoors and the outdoors.  From limen we get the phrase "liminal space," used by professionals in a variety of different fields to refer to being at or living through a point of transition in one's life.  Sometimes it can be a relatively brief experience, sometimes quite an extended one.

Odysseus spent twenty years in the liminal space between fighting in the Trojan War and returning home to his faithful wife Penelope and dog Argos.  The entire Odyssey is the account of that liminal space, full of adventure, danger, and strangeness.

A significant characteristic of a liminal space is that we generally know a good bit about what we're moving out of, but not nearly so much about what we're moving into.  Hence the sense of adventure, danger, and strangeness.

Celtic culture would identify liminal spaces as "thin places," places where the boundary between the everyday and the everything-beyond-the-everyday is thin, allowing us a glimpse, a touch, a shiver of that mysterious, wider realm.  There are both spiritual dangers and spiritual opportunities in such places.

It just came clear to me this morning that that's where I am right now: in a liminal space, a thin place.  I'm about 2 1/2 weeks past my last taxol plus decadron (steroid) infusion, and still three days from my first radiation treatment. I'm a little over a week past my first triple-strength herceptin infusion, something I will be having once every three weeks from now until the end of September.  Radiation, coming up Monday at 11:15, is the last of the unknowns in this intensive treatment phase of my cancer journey.

Looking back, I notice how crisp the demarcation was at the start of chemo.  One day, never had chemo; next day, and for the next three months, here's the chemo experience.

The transition out of it is far less clearly demarcated.  Because the chemo came regularly once a week like clockwork, my body was never really done with one infusion's effects when I had the next one.  Now for the first time I am experiencing the transition out of the taxol and decadron.  Some side effects are just now showing up for the first time (a bumpy rash on my forearms, for example). Others seem to be just slowly waning (insomnia). Others seem to wax and wane unpredictably (the fatigue, the "down" moods).  And what life will be like on the other side of all this, I don't really know.  All I know is, it will be different.  It will never again be like I never experienced being regularly poisoned for three months.

So I reflect on Odysseus.  For him, too, the transition in was clearly demarcated.  With an army of others, he left behind everyday life and sailed briskly off to war.  Then there was the long slog of war itself, an experience I imagine to be one that keeps a person firmly rooted in the present moment, just doing what one has to do right now to stay alive.

The three months of chemo felt a lot like that.

And then it's over, and all of a sudden an undefined future opens out before one.  It's disorienting. What now? And who am I now, having gone through this intense life or death experience?

Maybe it was a very good thing that it took him twenty years to get home--he had monsters to wrestle with and a new self to forge.  Polyphemus, Circe, Scylla and Charybdis, and the Sirens appear in a new light when seen from that angle.  I've seen articles that say a real issue leading to PTSD in today's military personnel after deployment is that they are flown home so quickly, depriving them of the processing time with peers that the long ocean voyages home provided for World War II vets.

I doubt if I have twenty years available for my liminal journey, since I'm already 71. But I find it helpful to name to myself that that's where I am: in a liminal space, a thin place.  It allows me to embrace the experience of just being here and letting it unfold, resting in the knowledge that whatever lies on the other side of that thinned boundary is vast and mysterious, with challenges and possibly dangers, but also offering opportunity, adventure, potential spiritual enrichment. 

"Possess your soul in patience," my mother would often say.  Yes.


UPDATE:
The last two weeks of chemo and the two weeks after were somewhat brutal: extreme fatigue and general malaise, compounded by a nasty persistent dry cough that began a few days before Christmas and is still with me.  Then just as things seemed to be getting better, I suddenly ran a fever for two days this week.  Could have been a bug, could have been a side effect of the triple herceptin dose.  But now my temp is back to normal and has been for over 24 hours, so I am modestly hopeful that I will be leaving the chemo effects behind soon.  The surgeon had me get a left side only mammogram last week, which showed no cause for alarm, and the oncologist had me get an echocardiogram (herceptin can cause heart failure).  Mine was normal.  So that is good.

What I did on my last steroid high day:

making savory gummy bears.

The light tan ones are chicken broth, 

the dark ones are beef broth,

and the red ones are V8 juice.

How my hair looks after chemo:

Most of what you're seeing

is the hair that never fell out

and has been growing since the last time I shaved it.

There are a few little tiny hairs, not much visible here,

that have grown back in.

Rest assured I will not be going about

without a hat or scarf for a while yet.