*This post hasn’t been edited for grammar. These are my raw thoughts. Editing will be done at a later time*
On October 2nd I woke up from anesthesia to hear these words. “I’m 90% sure the mass is cancerous.”
This is after I went to see my doctor a week earlier and requested a colonoscopy. Eventually, I would have to do more extensive testing like CT scans, MRI’s and another colonoscopy to get a more conclusive sample of tissue that actually contained cancer. (The first colonoscopy only captures precancerous samples).
When I heard those words I knew my surgeon was right. I felt it in my gut. I had spent most of 2020 on edge. Not only was I contending with Covid like everyone else in the world, but I was also in contention with a premonition.
You see I KNEW something big was coming. Something dangerous and possibly life-threatening. I have a sixth sense that way. It’s hard to explain but it’s true. I can feel it and it’s not just in my head, my entire body sends me signals of danger months before things happen.
Is it some supernatural intervention? Perhaps, but I attribute some of my extreme sensitivity to attributes closely related to my autism. Let me explain.
I have sensory processing challenges. This means that I see, hear, taste, and sometimes touch the world in ways that others don’t. My brain doesn’t regulate and filter out unnecessary sights, sounds, and smells. If I could quantify it I would say my senses are 1000 times more receptive than most.
Often times this can be problematic, but this post isn’t about the problems with sensory processing it’s about the way it informs my body about things in real-time.
Because I am so sensitive to the things around me my body is also super sensitive to the things inside me. I don’t get sick often because I have a super immune system. I’ve never had chickenpox as a kid even though I was constantly exposed. My doctor once told me that I most likely did get the virus but my immune system eradicated it before I experienced systems.
My point is that sensory processing issues also mean that my body is just as sensitive to foreign invaders as my brain is to sensory input. A few years ago I literally felt a virus coming on days before any symptoms. I felt it invading my body.
I went to the clinic with no fever, aches, chills, or any other signs of flu and tested negative. I told them to run the test again. After taking 20 minutes of more questions they retested me and it showed positive for Flu A. But barely. The nurse practitioner said that it seemed that it was just starting to show enough to yield a positive result.
There’s a not so known branch of science that studies something called body mapping. I’m still doing my research so I’m not an expert, but what I have found is that as early as infants we began to flail our arms and legs around as a means of the brain starting to develop an understanding of where our bodies began and end. It’s also why you will see young babies start to notice when a foreign object is placed on them such as a sticker on the forehead or a hat and gloves. Their first instinct is to take it off, recognizing that the object is not part of their body.
This scientific study has been aiding with research for disabled persons who have lost limbs. It is helping to explain phenomena like phantom pain and how the body adjusts to the placement of artificial limbs. It’s fascinating stuff really, but I’m a nerd. I digress.
I bring the issue of body mapping to the conversation because I believe that my sensory sensitivity causes a form of internal body mapping that allows me the ability to feel foreign invaders inside my body.
My body is in constant conversation with me about what’s inside of it because quite frankly it’s extremely sensitive to sensory input and new sensory changes internally.
Prior to my cancer diagnosis in October I had just had my annual physical with a complete workup. I was given a clean bill of health. Just a few weeks later I began to have cancer symptoms, the primary one being blood in my stool.
But if I were honest, I think my body was having a conversation with me before the external symptoms.
What I’m about to say maybe TMI for some so feel free to drop out now.
If you’re still here then you’re doing so at your own risk.
A few weeks prior to noticing blood in my stool I noticed that my body chemistry was changing. How?
I have a unique sense of smell due to my sensory processing issues. What that means is that I can smell things others can’t. Similar to how blind people can pick up on the fragrances of the people they are around, or how dogs have been known to be able to detect cancer in humans by their incredible sense of smell, I can too.
It’s weird I know. But it’s true. My sensory sensitivity can differentiate between orders. I know people’s “scent.” Every human has a unique scent, and I can smell it, including my own.
That means that I also know my scent when I have a bowel movement and long before the blood showed up, my body chemistry changed because my body was telling me that we have a foreign invader. I could actually smell the difference.
Here’s the moral of the story. We all map our bodies at a young age. Our brains and bodies draw boundaries to protect us from foreign invaders both externally and internally. For me, autism has afforded me with the ability to be ultra-sensitive to when those boundaries are crossed but you don’t have to be autistic to be in conversation with what your body is telling you.
Be kind to your body by paying attention to the boundaries it has developed because believe me it will tell you when something is wrong by the way your gut feels, or the pain you feel, or the headaches you’ve been having, or the way your body chemistry is changing.
Take notes. Journal about changes. Establish patterns and norms. Know your body and how it works and how it’s supposed to work and don’t get used to feeling bad. Your body may be talking to you. Listen up and save your own life.
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