The good old song “Take me home country roads” starts with the lyrics “Almost heaven, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River”.
This little story tells you how Blue Ridge Mountains seem to have been playing a role in my life since I was a little kid in Finland without me knowing it for over 40 years.
I’ve always loved music, at some point I wished to learn how to play piano, then drums and lastly guitar. Even if I never learned to play any instrument I still am a huge music lover and always listen to the music.
The Song “Take me home, country roads” was the very first song I remember loving as a little girl back in Finland.
Of course I had no idea what the lyrics were saying, since I spoke only Finnish then. I could just remember ‘take me home, country road’ and kept singing it. This song stuck in my mind as a symbol of my childhood favorite song. This was long before rock music and heavy metal were the number one during my teenage years.
The Song “Take me home, country roads” was the very first song I remember loving as a little girl back in Finland.
North Carolina
Interesting detail, all these years I was never really a country music lover… not until I moved to North Carolina and I learned to listen to it and then love it. I lived in Finland when I fell in love with this country song. I also lived in Greece and finally arrived in the U.S. So I’ve been exposed to many different music genres through the countries I lived in and the countries I have visited.
These frequent moves and changes made me very adaptable and able to expand my interests, likes and loves. So it didn’t take me long to appreciate this music genre too.
Last winter I decided to create a playlist with songs that have played an important role in my life, or that I just really loved for some reason. This idea sparked as my friend shared his playlist and I found the idea very inspiring.
So…the obvious number one was “Take me home, country roads” even if I hadn’t heard this song for years.
‘The place I belong’
As I was listening to the song in my home in North Carolina and heard the reference to the Blue Ridge Mountains, I got goosebumps… For a moment I felt like some kind of prophecy come true:
“Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong”.
Here I was now; living in North Carolina and had just recently visited Western North Carolina falling in love with the Blue Ridge Mountains… and feeling for the first time in my life that I could actually settle my roots somewhere in this area which I had started to consider as my home. If you know me, you know I call myself a nomad, as I have been on the go for a long time and haven’t felt certainty where my permanent home should be.
Even if recently I moved away from the South back to Massachusetts.. I believe at some point my calling will bring me back to the South, somewhere close to these mountains, to the place I belong.
Have you ever had that nagging feeling that something is physically wrong with you?
You feel your intuition was talking to you, but did you listen to it?
Before I share my personal story of how the voice of Intuition was poking me, let’s see what this intuition means after all. Defined by Merriam-Webster.com “The power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.” Or by Wikipedia “Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without the resource to conscious reasoning.”
For many, maybe even the majority of humans, this might sound challenging, as many rely only on science based evidence in everything in their life. Despite what you have learned to be “true” in this life, it is beneficial to open your mind a bit and accept the possibility there’s more wisdom given to us. Why not learn to listen to it and have it guide you in your life?
Wouldn’t you appreciate an inner voice showing how to solve a challenge you’ve been facing?
This voice might actually save yours or your loved one’s life if you listen to it.
My Story
Let me tell you my story now. It changed many things in my life and ultimately I believe it saved my life.
I’ve always been relatively healthy in my life and have followed a somewhat healthy lifestyle. But I knew the amount of stress and heartbreaks in my life was not good for me. I have always been interested in holistic healthcare and was aware how this type of stress could negatively affect our physical body.
So it was Nov 2011 when I first felt the nudge of my Intuition talking to me as I felt a lump on my left breast.
This wasn’t my first time finding a lump, as I had been followed up by doctors since my early twenties due to having benign cysts in my breasts. All my dear lady friends out there, you know the story..dense breast tissue..etc. etc. But this time something was different. It wasn’t hurting, nothing looked different, but I felt it was not a friendly one I could just ignore.
From November 2011 to April 2012 it took all my determination to manage to have these additional doctor appointments scheduled.. The insurance companies here in the U.S. cover certain things, like we have an annual physical examination and everything follows the pre-scheduled plan… anything extraordinary…you need money and a dose of grit and you need to be an advocate for yourself.
I started by making an appointment with my PCP in order to get a referral to the hospital where my check-ups were done. The doctor could not find anything on my left breast and just wanted me to wait for my next annual check-up. I did not feel comfortable with this and asked to have a referral for an ultrasound.
Well… this request was finally accepted, but instead of my requested hospital I was referred to a local Urgent Care Clinic with a small department for women’s breast health. A mammogram and U/S were taken and again the doctor could not see or feel anything.
At this point I had two professionals telling me I am fine and that I should just wait for another year.
What would you have done in my shoes? Think this very carefully!
The Voice of Intuition
My intuition was not silencing at all. The lump was still there and I had this feeling that things are not ok. I then took things in my own hands and called my regular hospital in Boston, Massachusetts where I lived and made an appointment directly with a surgeon. Boston has several well known and respected hospitals, Brigham and Women’s Faulkner hospital for example cooperates with the well known Dana Farber hospital. So I was in good hands and trusted these doctors.
I was able to make an appointment for Friday, April 9th, 2012. I still remember that day like yesterday.
MD, FACS Laura D. listened to my story. She asked me to step into the examination room next to her office and put on a hospital gown. It didn’t take long for her to find the lump and send me to get a biopsy immediately.
I watched that little unusual looking “thing” on the screen as the biopsy was performed. I have been through this procedure in the past with benign cysts. This was not a benign oval shaped cyst that I had seen in the past. This “thing” had blood vessels feeding it, had rough edges and was over 2cm long. The nurse kindly said: “I am sorry, but it looks a little cancerous.
The doctor will call you on Monday.”
The weekend before the final verdict.
That one hour drive home…thousands of thoughts running through my brain and tears running down my face. But I had listened to my Intuition and it just might have saved my life.
The Verdict
We had an emotionally loaded weekend while waiting for the verdict.
I had to mention the word cancer to my daughters, then 16 and 19 years old. Cancer wasn’t visiting our family for the first time; about ten years earlier my daughters’ father was diagnosed with Hodgin’s disease (cancer of lymph nodes) and went through chemotherapy and radiation for that. He recovered well, but my girls still remembered the challenges we faced then, not only their father, but the whole family.
That weekend I was also trying to prepare myself for the possible changes in my physical appearance. For women these details do matter, even if it possibly sounds shallow. But we all would like to have control over how we look and some treatments don’t treat you kindly. The emotions were fluctuating, and I already knew the verdict in my gut.
On Monday, April 12, 2012 my doctor confirmed I had stage 2 invasive hormone receptor positive breast cancer. My first surgery was scheduled for May 14th, this surgery would be a lumpectomy, with a purpose to remove the lump locally and get clean margins around it. Before this surgery I took several tests, one of them was a test where blue dye was injected in my left breast in order to detect if the cancer had advanced to my lymph nodes. Thankfully it had not, so during my surgery only one lymph node was removed from my armpit for further examination.
So the surgery happened and now we were waiting for the results of the oncotype test and pathological report to come back. The oncotype test determines the type of cancer, how aggressive it is etc. The results also determine the future treatment plan. In my case, the cancer was not fast growing or aggressive, but we had no clear margins…meaning more surgery was needed. I could choose to do a second lumpectomy or I could choose to have a mastectomy.
These types of decisions are brutal…no one can really tell you what you should do. Your doctor will tell you what they know, but in my case honestly it wasn’t a lot. I remember sitting on my patio, pondering on what to do, praying about it and feeling an enormous amount of responsibility on my shoulders. I didn’t want to go through another lumpectomy knowing the possibility of needing additional surgery in case we couldn’t get clear margins (enough clean tissue around the cancerous tissue). From the other side, was I really ready for mastectomy and facing the complete change of my identity as a woman? At least that is how I felt then. Obviously knowing now our identity doesn’t depend only on how perfect breasts we have, there is so much more to being a woman.
When such big decisions are in front of you and you have to choose one or another, the inner guidance and wisdom are truly needed! You should not make this type of decision based on other people’s opinions. The answer has to come from within you, based on what you feel is the best way to go. My answer was to move forward with a double mastectomy and start the simultaneous reconstruction process. It wasn’t an easy decision, but it felt it was the right one out of the two choices I had.
The Roughest Day
Early summer morning on July 12, 2012 two of my kind friends came to pick me up and drove me to the hospital. You might wonder why my friends and not my family. We were on separation number two or three at that time with my then husband. Yes, what a time for a separation… And I had wanted my daughters to spend the summer in Greece with their father’s side of the family. It was easier for me, as I could be weak when I wanted to and didn’t have to be strong for anyone. I really wanted them just to enjoy the summer and feel the connection with their large family in beautiful Greece.
So I was alone that day which would end up being the most painful day of my life – both physically and emotionally. I woke up later in a hospital room, it was already dark outside. Alone, scared and in extreme physical pain. Connected to a morphine pump. I really would have appreciated having a friend in that room that evening. It was rough, v e r y rough.
My Savior after double mastectomy and reconstruction surgery!
But I was blessed to have a support group of friends who were a great help after the surgery and without them I couldn’t have gone through all this while I was recovering.
The surgery had been successful and we were waiting for the new test results. Reconstruction process also started and I had plenty of visits to the hospital to have more saline injected to my temporary tissue expander implants, which would be changed later to the permanent silicone implants.
This expanding procedure is quite uncomfortable and painful, I was often out of breath and experienced throbbing pain around my chest.
The pathological test results came in and even if these results were scary they made me trust my intuition even more. I had made the right choice!
Can you imagine my reaction when I read that my left breast had quite a few tumors that had never showed up in any testing (about twenty..from tiny ones to 4 larger appr. 1cm) and my right breast was showing some atypical cell growth. If I had done the second lumpectomy instead of the mastectomy and we were lucky to have clear margins… we wouldn’t have known those hidden twenty tumors existed. We wouldn’t have known the atypical cell growth on my right breast existed.
Do you see what I am seeing? Should I not have chosen wisely, based on my intuition, what would have happened a few years later?
The second oncotype test came back as well, and the cancer type was slightly more aggressive.
My doctors explained I could decide either to decline chemotherapy or go for it. I chose not to do it and instead, I started a 5 year plan on a daily medicine called Tamoxifen. My chances were similar with either treatment and I was thrilled that I didn’t need to go through chemotherapy!
I celebrated life and the fact not needing a chemotherapy by taking my girls to a roadtrip to the South , visiting Charleston, Savannah & Atlanta. This photo is from Cypress Gardens in South Carolina, just six weeks after my double mastectomy and reconstruction surgery.
Tamoxifen has a lengthy list of side effects, but besides those effects for the first 6 months, I was lucky and my body took it relatively well. This is not the case with all women. This medicine can bring you to early menopause, it can (and to some extent affected me as well) cause hair loss, it can damage your eyesight and the worst it can cause uterus cancer….
My symptoms were mainly pain, sharp muscle pain, tiredness and short term emotional impact.
The Growth and Change
Now 8 years later I have been off the medication for three years already. I do my annual check-ups and thankfully everything is well. This journey definitely sparked my further interest in the power of:
Intuition – Holistic healthcare – Meditation – Balanced lifestyle – Positive mindset – Gratitude – Living a life with purpose.
I actually learned to meditate back then – as I was a part of a clinical study doing research with the benefits of either physical activity or meditation prior to a breast surgery. I was part of the meditation study, and I truly felt the benefits of the daily guided meditation. Meditation has stayed with me since then and I am sure it has helped me through many moments that otherwise would have been overwhelming with stress.
I’d like to finish by reminding you of the power of intuition with these words by Albert Einstein:
“I believe in intuitions and inspirations…I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am.”
If he trusted his Intuition, why wouldn’t you trust yours?
I had the opportunity to experience the feeling of utter darkness (and yes with my eyes wide open) when I recently visited The Linville Caverns in Western North Carolina.
Did you know there are only two areas in the world where this absolute darkness can be experienced? One is in the deep, deep ocean (in depths below 3,280 feet where sunlight does not penetrate and the zone is bathed in darkness) and the second one is deep underground in caves like the one I visited in the Linville Caverns.
While doing my tour with a small group of visitors – small, due to the Covid guidelines – suddenly the guide stopped and prepared us for this short moment of an absolute darkness. Gradually he turned the lights off…and there we stood in pitch blackness. I saw nothing, only total darkness around me while my eyes were open.
Honestly you appreciate light a lot differently after losing it, even if it is just for a minute!
A differend kind of Darkness
During this 2020 pandemic, we’ve been living for almost half a year now in partial “darkness”. This darkness is the uncertainty that has come with the virus, the uncertainty of our health, jobs, finances and future.
Most of us have been affected somehow, either by experiencing the virus first hand and becoming ill, watching a loved one fighting it or more commonly having been stung by the financial impact.
Don’t we all simply want some light at the end of the tunnel right about now?
Without knowing all the facts or the timeline as to when our lives will be restored fully back to the ‘kind of new normal’, all we have left to substitute the lack of this “light” is hope.
Reminded me of this quote by Chirag Tulsiani:
“As a rope is to a mountaineer, as a candle’s flame is to the darkest of caves, as a current is to a stream, as a drizzle is to a desert, as shelter is to the nomad, as food is to the hungry, as an oasis is to a weary traveler, as freedom is to a prisoner, as faith is to a theist, Hope is to man.”
If you were literally stuck in a dark underground cave, what would you do? Would you just give up and wait until someone possibly comes and saves you? While I cannot answer this question for everyone, I believe most would not just wait around. We would use all of our inner power to calm down. By using natural instincts and intuition we would try to find our way back out hoping to see the light!
I don’t panic easily but I must admit, I was feeling quite uncomfortable. For a second I reflected on what would happen if the light wouldn’t come back! How on earth could we find our way out of this darkness…
Hope in Horizon
So, let’s keep that Hope in the horizon! We can do that by continuing to explore what we can, where we can as true nomads desiring new adventures!
There might be hidden treasures right in your home state that you didn’t know of, like the Linville Caverns here in North Carolina.
If you are in the area, go visit the caves. And specifically pay attention to how an absolute moment of darkness can make you feel. Maybe on top of a fun weekend getaway, you also gain some new insight about yourself!
