Three hours after the dendritic cells entered my system, my temperature hit 101.4, my body sweated, ached, and the pains felt worse than last month. I considered the discomfort minor as I kept my eyes on the prize.

The next day I felt tired and drained, yet with increased energy compared to last month’s day after. I went by the clinic and received an intravenous infusion of alpha lipoic acid and B vitamins to stimulate my immune and nervous system functions.

Barb, my mother, arrived this morning. I am very grateful for her visit and the quality time we will spend together. Only hours off the plane, she joined me at the clinic for my localized hyperthermia and cocktail medley. I watched her watch me underneath the machine with a large device resting on the left side of my head, my body sweating, and a large needle in my outstretched arm attached to an intravenous drip. As my mother walked in and out of the room several times, I wondered about her internal journey to find some place of comfort entering my world of cancer treatments. Through a small mirror behind one of the medicine cabinets visible from the treatment table, I witnessed a micro-expression of my mother’s angst. I caught a glimpse of her perceived helplessness. Asking me if I needed anything, I told her I was fine. I wiped the sweat off my face with the towel next to me. I reached down to wipe the sweat lines between my thighs. Tension intensified in my legs, and I kicked them upward attempting to shift their muscular rhythm. Watching the timer tick away on the hyperthermia device, my relief burst out when the minutes became seconds until there were none.

I felt relieved my mother would only see me in such form for one more treatment next week. There are moments in life when children feel a need to protect their parents from pain and struggle. This I’ve felt many times before. And yet, the dynamic today was different. Instead of wanting to protect my mother from her pain, I wanted to shield myself from my mother’s desire to take on my pain. I recognize the tremendous challenge for parents to interpret their child’s pain and struggle from the precise vantage point in which the child experiences it. If I had the conscious awareness in the moment, I would have embraced my mother and explained that I’m an individual, an adult, and my pain and struggle is my own. It is vast, glorious, integrated with much light, and integral to who I am today. Rising off the treatment table, I smiled at my mother and thought that some things in life need to be done alone.

I am very irritable. I just finished week five of treatments and my body is exhausted. Exercising at the gym this past Tuesday, I definitely noted my decreased stamina level. And I haven’t been sleeping well in Cologne. The last several summers in Germany have been record level scorchers. Nobody has air conditioning, except for the five star hotels. The city is also noisy. People party until all hours of the night. I happen to live on one of the biggest party streets in the city. I told the housing agency I wanted a quiet apartment, and then inquired with the apartment manager about the same, but alas, I landed in party central. I plan on moving the end of August when my contract ends.

I’m not surprised that I feel irritable, and increasingly so over the last several weeks. My immune system is working hard to integrate the therapies and hopefully mobilize against the brain tumor. Hopefully tumor cells are dying off.

What do I mean by irritable? I feel fatigued and with a short fuse. I feel physically uncomfortable in my own skin. As a highly sensitive person, I might feel certain aspects of my body’s responses to treatments more than most. At the same time, my strong body, mind, and spirit help me persevere. And I recognize that what I’m experiencing is very mild in comparison to what most cancer patients endure from treatments.

The colonics that I’ve had twice over the last two weeks have provided temporary relief to my irritability. But even with the colonics, my irritability surfaces again. Earlier today, I felt strongly compelled to visit Cologne’s largest city park called Stadtwald, which translates to “urban forest.” After finding a sunny green patch in a spacious field surrounded by trees, I surrendered to the Earth. Within a short time, I became completely relaxed.

Although I continue to track why I might be feeling one way or another from moment to moment, I remind myself to sometimes pause my internal tracking feature. My internal sensations ebb and flow, and sometimes it is impossible to identify the source of the emotional highs and lows, aches, and pains. Since mind-body research has demonstrated that the mind exists within the body, my evolving emotions are likely a partial reflection of my transforming internal biochemistry.

Being in another country for cancer treatments definitely adds another level of challenge. Although I lived in Europe during college for one year in both London and Spain, and traveled in Mexico and Guatemala for four months alone, my previous experiences in cultural immersion only go so far due to the added challenge of receiving cancer therapies in a foreign land.

I’ve acclimated to my environment and feel quite comfortable in Cologne, and yet my system is still constantly confronted with new stimuli. During a time when I need all of my resources for my health and healing, I don’t always have energy for the extra stress. However, I’d likely be experiencing some stress whether I’m living in Germany, California, or anywhere else. The stress from cultural immersion is a minor inconvenience for me. And, as I’ve written in previous blogs, I’m really enjoying many aspects of being abroad.

The German language unequivocally poses the largest barrier. And everyone in Germany does not speak English! I have conversations several times each week where I am trying to communicate with people who don’t speak any English. The dialogue moves back and forth between English and German until I resign that we cannot understand one another. With that said, many people here do speak English, and I have successfully gotten around and found whatever I’ve needed without speaking German for a month and a half. I hope to take some German language classes this fall if I have the time.

As I was concurrently reading three books about the psychology of cancer patients in bed last night, I noted my profound obsession with healing. I have been so obsessed with healing for my entire adult life. My hands are gripped tightly around my healing process. I know I need to let go, or at least loosen the hold. And yet, this is the time I am able to focus more than ever on my healing. Regardless, I recognize I need more balance. I’m not referring to a social life, as I certainly have a busy one here, but the incorporation of hobbies, more meditation, time in nature, and just being. I feel most relaxed and internally balanced when a deep stillness surfaces within me and I’m able to float from one activity to the next. I’m not attached to anything or anyone. I am not looking at my watch. I am not thinking about what I’ll do next. I am not responding to other people’s needs. I am simply in my own, unique, distinct rhythm.

Each moment, day, and week offers new challenges and possibilities, as well as new experiences. This week my mother, Barb, arrives from New Jersey for a ten-day visit! We are going on an excursion for part of that time, and I will have no treatments for one week. Before then, I’ll have a few more therapies, including my second dendritic cell vaccination. I’ll aim to offer a brief report on my response to the second vaccine before Barb and I hit the road.

In a recent telephone conversation, my brother John asked, “Now that you are into the process and receiving treatments, are you still confident about your decision?” Appreciating his question on many levels, my mind wandered back in time. My research into more aggressive therapies, clinics, site visits, decision to pursue treatments in Cologne, and organization of my move took me about ten months. I also had to cultivate enough confidence within myself to take the leap. I hit several roadblocks along the way, many of which resulted from my own fear.

Of course I cannot predict the outcome of the treatments. I only know the treatment approach seems to make sense to me. I only know I’m meant to be exactly where I am. I only know I’m on a healing journey, until the very end.

I avoided the laundromat for 24 days, and yes I brought that much clothing with me. Actually, I have enough underwear for an entire month. After packing my biggest suitcase with my dirty clothes, towels, and bedding, I schlepped my bag through the streets of Cologne. I had been delaying my trip to the laundromat with anxiety for not knowing how to work the washer and dryer, where to insert the soap and fabric softener, and pay for the service. I had inferred that the system would be exceedingly disorganized due to my ongoing and now intensely dreaded interactions with Deutsch Telecommunications, the company providing me with my telephone and Internet service.

My first month in Cologne, now looking back, has been an experience of extremes. I’ve felt overwhelmed landing in an unfamiliar place and negotiating the environment where the people speak another language. Tasks I considered simple in the U.S. such as buying groceries, ordering food in a restaurant, finding my way to new destinations, and reading my mail (in German) have felt utterly impossible in moments. Along with momentary experiences of unbearable frustration, I have also been absolutely enchanted by the European flair, sensibility, global worldview, slower more embodied pace of the people, Cologne’s beauty and marvelous progressive environment, and the kindness I have been blessed to receive from so many strangers. At every turn when I’ve been stuck and in need of assistance, there has been someone to help me through. Sometimes, the assistance has appeared before me, and in other situations, I’ve had to seek it out. I appreciate both scenarios, for when I feel really stuck, I am forced to identify my needs and find the most constructive way to express them.

Many of my loved ones back in the U.S. who are concerned about me being here “on my own” have inquired if I’m meeting people, making friends, and developing sustainable connections. While part of my healing includes cultivating a deeper internal presence with myself during my six months away from it all in the U.S., I am very grateful for the new friends I’ve made in Cologne. In a short time, I’ve been invited to dinners at the homes of new friends, to afternoon teas, to watch World Cup games at private gatherings, to parties, to workout with friends at the gym, to restaurants, and more. This kindness, which we can all give to one another, and that I strive to gift in more abundance, is a part of my medicine.

I’m able to receive treatments in Cologne due to the enormous generosity of many loved ones, and yet I remember how impossible it felt to ask for that help. With the encouragement of a good friend and the assistance of another, I took the risk. I asked for help. My family then asked for help. Some of my friends also asked their friends and family for help. Through the enormous web of inter-connectedness, the assistance came to me from many directions.

I’m learning, and perhaps again on a deeper level, that when I feel like I’m at the end of my rope, the rope’s end is actually another beginning with tremendous possibility.