"Why aren't you mad?"

You gotta love March. Less than a week ago, I was camped out in my "no electricity" living room, huddled around a fireplace on a 9 degree night; tonight I went for my evening walk wearing a thin white t-shirt. It's about 65 degrees out, which will seem a little chilly next October, but feels like the French Riviera tonight. While walking I talked on the phone with my mom.

Mom (and please don't wait to get cancer to start talking to your mom on a regular basis) is mad at my family doctor. She's mad because he blew it--I showed him what turned out to be swollen lymph glands at my annual checkup eight months before this sleigh ride began. I went untreated for two-thirds of a year after I should have been diagnosed. Mom's mad and we've talked a couple of times about why I'm not. It's come up enough that I thought I would share.

I'm not mad for a couple of reasons.

First--as polyanna as it is to say--it would be a waste of emotion and a waste of energy to allow a place at the table for that kind of anger. I'm sure there are times when anger at another can be a powerful survival tool (think Clint Eastwood in "High Plains Drifter"), but not when your real 'enemy' is inside your own body. I need my energies channeled into more productive outlets.

Second, I truly believe I'm now in a lot better place to deal with this disease and treatment--and to deal with my future--than I would have been eight months ago.

If I had started Chemo last May, I'd be done now. But I wouldn't have started practicing yoga, and I believe yoga is giving me powerful tools to get through the next several months of Chemo. More importantly, I believe it will help me tremendously in dealing with the emotional challenges inherent in living with CLL for the rest of my life.

I started taking yoga classes last spring, just a few weeks after my physical. Largely through yoga, I lost another 35 pounds and got into the best shape I've been in since we moved to Maryland. I also have begun to discover the spiritual side of the practice. It has given me glimpses of a steady, calm harbor in a sea of emotion and fear. I can only hope that as my practice grows deeper, that calm will spread.

So maybe Dr. X was supposed to misdiagnose the lymph nodes. Maybe he didn't find the cancer because I hadn't yet found the tools I needed to meet all the challenges that this will bring. He didn't find it, because I wasn't ready for him to. I can't be mad at him for that.