Christopher Titmuss Dharma Blog

Thankfully, the flight touched down right on time at Brisbane Airport at around 6.30 am. My mother greeted me. “I need to go to the doctor and the hospital,” I told her.At the clinic, the doctor gave me an examination. “Without x-rays, I cannot be sure of what the problem is, he said. “ From my initial examination, it could be that you have a swollen liver.”

“A tumour?” I responded.

“That diagnosis is a long way down the line. Nothing can be ruled out.” I then gave a blood, stool and urine sample to go to the laboratory. The doctor arranged for me to have x-rays the following day. Continue reading →

By 5 pm on the Saturday afternoon of the weekend retreat with Nicole in Germany, I could unmistakably feel that there was major distress in the body. Intense pains and a sickening nausea began emanating out of the stomach area. I could feel myself wanting to retch. Two or three hours later, I experienced the wrath of the body as intense pain raced through the body. Every cell seemed on fire.

At times, I bent double with the pain or kept walking up and down in my room at the Waldhaus retreat centre, an hour from Bonn, or retched over the toilet with nothing but spittle emerging. These were a different level of sensations to those experienced on the meditation cushion. The pain had spread throughout the stomach area into the diaphragm, the liver, and back and to the top of the shoulder. Continue reading →