Twists, Turns & Surprises: Reflections of a 4/24/84 Baby on Life's Weird Idea of "Special"

This baby in space is me, Anastasia Louise Forrest (born Anastasia Louise Spiecker).

I was a 4/24/84 baby. I’m not superstitious, but I do experience an enormous amount of synchronicity. Because I was born on these numbers, I tend to think of them as nice, friendly numbers. Growing up, I liked when I happened to look at the clock at 4:24 and I figured my 24th year would be pretty special. 

As it turns out, life has a different idea of special than me. A few days after I turned 24 I graduated from college. Nine months after that, I was diagnosed with cancer. My chosen education in Philosophy/Religion suddenly turned into very vivid life lessons as I grappled with my mortality over a year of treatments and recovery.

I was told I was in remission 4 days before I turned 25, after only 4 chemo treatments. I would go through 8 more and then go on to get radiation, because that is what was done back in 2009. 

I got a special opportunity. A brand new facility and a study had been created that seemed like it was meant for me. They published the protocol on my birthday. The head of the program had started working with Lymphoma patients the year I was born. The co-director of the study was the son of a prestigious Lymphoma doctor, very kind, and rather handsome. 

Most importantly, they said this would be the most sure way to make sure the cancer didn’t come back. I didn’t want the cancer to come back. I wanted to get on with my life. I wanted to go to grad school to study Music Therapy and help other people with my God-given gifts. So I did everything they said. 

I was cancer-free and side-effect-free for over a decade. I was able to attend college, fall in love with life again, get married, have babies, and live out some major creative dreams, like publishing books and recording original music at home. 

In late 2021, the veneer started to crack a bit. Clenching pain in the left side of my chest with deep, full-bodied laughter. Very infrequent. Infrequent enough to ignore. Then, tight muscles over the left breast, nothing a little massage can’t fix. 

My cardiac workups are good. My bloodwork is good. My health is good. I’m alcohol-free, gluten-free, and caffeine-free. I pray. I meditate. I take care of my mental health. I exercise 5-6 days each week. Apple Watch says my cardio fitness is "above average."

However, it’s 2024, and instead of winning the HGTV Dream house or the lottery, it’s back to grappling with my mortality (14 years and a handful of months after my radiation treatment in Sept 2009). 

In true, upside down, inside-out world, fashion, my mysterious dance with "24" is showing up for me yet again in a way contrary to my human ideas about "special experiences” in life. 

The area that was treated with radiation is showing signs of being fibrotic. The tissues aren’t soft and supple. They are hardening, I guess. It’s called radiation fibrosis. It happens to some "special" people years after treatment. I haven’t read too much about it since I found out. I don’t want to know too much.  

I do know the term “progressive” can apply. I do know there are survivors who experience relief and perhaps even reversal. I am aware of survivors who deal with this kind of stuff and have been for years, and they are, overall, fine. 

Right now, it seems just to be affecting a couple of muscles, and I really don’t want to wonder too much about whether it will affect other types of tissues in the area, and if so, how soon that could be or what that would look like. The fact is, radiation fibrosis happens differently in different people.

There’s no point in positing guesses about something unknown. I’d rather be proactive and do everything I can to reverse and heal any damage to my precious body. I have already begun going to physical therapy, and I will be getting further guidance from a survivorship clinic. 

I am going through various emotions. At first there was a lot of anxiety. Now, it’s more often grief. I have become super aware of the preciousness of every single moment. I see death a very real thing now, however far away it may be. I have a constant reminder in my chest. I think this hyper-awareness will fade once the newness of this stage of the journey wears off a bit.

The other night, I couldn’t sleep and so I got up. I turned on the TV in the dark, and there was a cheesy romance movie playing called “Harmony From the Heart.” I soon realized, to my shock and awe, that the main character, Violet, was a music therapist in training. 

The actress who plays Violet, Jessica Lowndes, is absurdly beautiful, so much so she almost didn’t fit into the film. I later learned that she wrote it, sang in it, and directed it, so I guess she does fit into the film.

This cheesy movie broke me. 

There were so many elements that resembled aspects of my life in the form of dreams, fantasies, and aspirations from over the years. It was a bit uncanny. Not to mention, I was wearing my Music Therapy shirt from my college days this particular evening (!).

A few of the film's synchronistic themes were:

  • Violet’s graduate professor in Music Therapy resembles (in appearance and style) Dr. Jayne Standley, the head of the Music Therapy program at FSU, who oversaw my graduate studies.

  • Violet was working with a patient to help him regain his speech so he could say “I love you” to his wife on Valentine’s Day and she kept playing “their song,” “It Had to Be You,” which I learned during my time at college, in the early days after cancer. I particularly liked this song and added it to my repertoire.

  • Violet had a deceased grandma named Louise who inspired her with music and saw 11:11 as a special sign from her. I have a special connection with my great grandma Louise (I have her middle name), she sang and danced, and obviously I have a thing for special numbers.

To summarize the crux of the film, Violet helps the patient regain his speech, nails her dream Music Therapy job, falls in love with a rich cardiologist, and lives happily ever after. 

Like I said, this movie broke me. It was like a vision of what my life might have looked like if I had been a more perfect version of myself. Not only did she look better and sing better, she made better choices, had a better disposition, and made much more of her opportunities. 

I never got the manual. My life has not been like that. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my life, which is why I am so shattered at the prospect of losing it, but I was tempted to give into self-condemnation and feel sorry for myself, and I did. This is why I sobbed for fifteen minutes after the movie was done. 

As I cried, these types of thoughts ran through my mind, "Maybe those people who are saying 'cancer is evil and not of God' are right. Maybe it is because of your sin and your bad choices that your life did not go like a Hallmark movie. Maybe this is some kind of punishment or proof of your imperfections. Maybe synchronicities are bad and this movie is bad. Maybe you are bad."

It was a “tempted in the desert” moment for sure. Very appropriate for Lent. Thanks to an extremely formulaic Valentine’s Day movie, I had a full-out existential and theological crisis in the middle of the night. 

After all those emotions had flooded out of me, I grabbed an apple and ate it in the dark. And I came back to my senses. 

Has my life been a bit more messy than a Hallmark movie? Well, yes. 

But my life has been so full of a lot of really neat things. Music, education, travel, romance, and family. I have two beautiful children and I am married to the man of my dreams. I have an enviable lifestyle where I have the freedom to be creative and productive. If I look out of the window in front of me, I see a gorgeous view of the Intracoastal.

I can walk down the street, sit on a little hill, and look out and see the set on which much of my life has unfolded. The hospital where I dealt with bleomycin toxicity and where my second baby was born. The college where I studied Philosophy/Religion and learned so much that has shaped who I am today. The 312 bridge, which I’ve driven over hundreds of times. Anastasia Island. 

The thing is, I’m a much more complicated person than the main character of this movie, because the character in this movie isn’t real. 

Real people are flawed, broken, and imperfect. Yet, they are beautiful. I am beautiful. 

People get hurt and they heal. People are born and they die.

Nothing stays the same. Life is still beautiful. 

I want to embrace the imperfection— the flux. 

Instead of demonizing it, I want to accept it for what it is. I want to love it. 

I don't want to be at war with what is. I want to be at peace with life.

Life has its ups and downs. It's "unfairness." It seems to be a part of living on this plane.

I don't know why I would stumble on this movie in the middle of the night with so many weirdly particular figments of my life and imagination.

I will probably never know. 

But, maybe it is just another choice presented to me. 

Will I be swept into despair, comparing my imperfect life with an unachievable perfection? Or, will I peer with curiosity and amusement through the looking glass, marveling at the strange dream-like nature of this reality, and thank God for the beautiful, special, perfectly imperfect life He has blessed me with? 

Can I thank God for my experiences? Can I praise God for all of the twists, turns, and surprises? Can I forgive myself for not being perfect and fall in love with myself this Valentine’s Day just as I am? 

Yes, I can. 

-February 14, 2024

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