Thoughts on New Year's Eve

I thought I'd surely write more on this journey, but things were a bit wobbly at first. I'm slowly settling into the routine of cancer fighting while simultaneously trying to continue living a worthwhile life! I've had my second chemo treatment, suffered through several days of nausea and am now feeling a little better and thinking about the coming year.

I guess I have not said it here, but I will be having chemo in Houston every other Friday for six months, twelve treatments in all. So the first half of my new year will be somewhat consumed with getting well. But I want more in my life than just fighting cancer. I know I want to live less wastefully. And with more awareness and intention. I want to live deliberately. I don't yet know exactly how that will look in the coming year.

Practically speaking, my house is a wreck. I want to clear some things out and lighten things up. I want to make room for serenity in my home. I want to fix some things that have been broken for a very long time. I am speaking both literally and metaphorically. 

I want time for creativity and art making. I want to do small kindnesses for others in ways that only I can do. I always have such good intentions. I want to make good actions.

I want simplicity. I want to take better care of myself. I want small rituals and consistent routines in my life.

I want less of my time spent mindlessly perusing Facebook!

I want to blog more.

Most of all, I want to live several more years. Cancer free, please.

That's all I have for now. 

A very Happy New Year to each of you....

A Poem (of sorts) and Voices of Friends After a Dark Night

Wide awake at 2:38 a.m. might be one of the scariest, darkest, loneliest experiences in the world. I'm back to sitting up at my laptop, trying to also move around a bit more.Working on making the necessary changes to keep my gut from hurting with the tension of all the adjustments I need to make. Sometimes, doctors don't tell their patients all they need to know, and they are left scrambling to figure things out.

Given Truths

#1: Low moments come.

#2: You're gonna need some help. It's okay to ask.

#3: Sometimes, acknowledging the darkness is enough to send it packing.

#4: If not, find yourself a safe place to scream, whine and b*tch without the need to feel perky. 

__________________________________________

I'm having trouble adjusting to the dietary changes that are necessary after my surgery. It's a matter of seeing what works for my body. It's like walking around with a bit of a tummy ache all the time, because you aren't feeding your tummy what comforts it and helps its little feelings. Food in the South is a source of comfort and love and eating is a way of enjoying life. My tummy is not at all happy, most of the time. I told my family earlier today that it is distraught, and misses its little colon friend. I don't know how to comfort my tummy.

________________________________________________

I should soon know what stage my cancer is in, and will have an idea of what further treatment I will have to endure. I'm told my body will adapt. I even know of some folks whose bodies have adapted. I'll keep you posted. I've been told I'm courageous. My aim here is to be as vulnerable and honest as I can be. I would appreciate your prayers and holding the light for me. Even in the depths of darkness, there is light and love that will carry us through those times.

I Been Draggin'

I don't know why it's been so hard for me to begin to write the news of what was begun at MD Anderson. It took a little while for me to absorb, and there were people I had to talk to in person, and through texting, to let them know what was going on, and I ended up not knowing who I'd told what, and then just plain got tired of talking about it, partly because, well, I'm still waiting.
 

Turns out, the surgeon wants to take more of my colon that I thought she would. I wasn't sure I wanted that, and she seemed to be offering me the option of taking less, but she ended up saying she really recommended taking the more aggressive route. If the insurance will cover it, they will do genetic testing to see if I have a certain genetic marker which would indicate future problems, and help them know how to watch me in the future. It seems hardly anyone ever gets colon cancer after the first time, and this puzzles them, so they are looking at a possible genetic cause. So, I'm waiting on news about that.

In the meantime, I have a date for surgery. I will go for pre-op appointments on the 29th, with surgery on the 30th. I will not know the time of surgery or even the location of the surgery (inside MD Anderson) until I call them between 5 and 7 on the 29th. It will be like before, 5-6 days in the hospital, with anywhere from 4-6 weeks recovery time (including the hospital stay, I think).

 I won't know until about 8 days after the surgery whether or not I will need further treatment (chemo or radiation). If needed, I hope to be able to do that in my home town under the direction of MD Anderson.

I've had a roller coaster of emotions and imaginings since I've come home. There are a lot of possible variables but I trust that I will be all right through whatever comes, as always, by the grace of God.  This does not mean all will be easy (dang it!).

The dragon is an art project that was done with the help of some of the younger cancer patients at MD Anderson. There are lots of peaceful areas to sit and be still. We explored a bit in between appointments when we were there. And when I am able to walk the halls after my surgery, I will explore a bit more.

I don't know if I will post again before I leave. If I don't, I will see if I can get one of my Facebook friends to leave word in the comments on this post (or on my most recent post) to let you know how I am faring. As always, I would appreciate your prayers and warm thoughts. I am grateful for them.

Deja Vu`

For those of you who are not my friends on Facebook, and do not know, I was found to be anemic at my last check-up. That prompted the doctor to recommend that I have my colonoscopy in September (I was due to go in for it in October). They removed a couple of precancerous polyps and found a tumor inside my colon. I did blood work and a CT scan. The blood work was clear, the CT scan showed no swollen lymph nodes.

I was referred to MD Anderson in Houston. I had some trouble getting my records sent out in a timely fashion. For one thing, the radiologist who read the CT scan said there were no masses. When I asked about what the doctor that did the colonoscopy saw, they said they would have the radiologist reread the CT scan. Well, that took, like, forever, and the radiologist finally said the tumors just sometimes don't show up on scans. And by "forever," I mean, about a week. But when you know you are facing something like this, it can feel like forever while you're waiting on the paperwork to be shared.

In the meantime, MD Anderson, having not received all my paperwork, moved me to what they call an inactive list while waiting for the rest of my paperwork. Everything eventually got delivered and now I have an appointment at MD Anderson for Friday, October 10. And Monday, October 13. And Tuesday, October 14. Friday will be more blood work, an EKG, and another CT scan. Monday and Tuesday will be appointments with two different doctors. I hope when I leave on Tuesday, I will have a date with a surgeon.

I'll be in and out around here, I'm bringing my laptop with me. I'm also going to try and do something fun in Houston over the weekend.

I'd appreciate all the prayers and warm thoughts you can muster up!

Can't Keep Dancing

This is another one that is done completely on my phone with an app that allows me to combine two pictures into one. The angel is one of my most favorite cemetery angels ever. The background is a page of handwriting from my journal with the words blurred. I found the poem while looking through my email draft file for suitable quotes (I used my draft file as sort of a picture-less personal Pinterest account to save things that are interesting to me, mostly quotes and links, and sometimes bits and pieces of my own writing).

Anyway, I wrote the poem sometime in January of 2012. I'd just had the first colon cancer surgery in November of 2011 and my son died in December of 2011. One could safely say I was pretty raw at the time. But here's the thing--I am still dancing, or doing my best to dance. And I realize there are arms that are stronger than mine holding me up, along with a bevy of friends and family who are surrounding me with their love and prayers and support. I'm very grateful.

Another thing I am slowly learning is not to keep telling myself "I don't think I can...." The fact of the matter is, I can, and I have. We must be so very careful about the stories we tell ourselves.

Beauty and Pain

 

This is the work I feel like I've been doing, particularly with my last two blog posts.

This one was done entirely on my phone. I have a new app where I can combine two different photos, and then I go in and add the text. I have gotten a little better in my ability to add a large block of text, such as this one was.

Spiders and Drones and Poems, Oh My

The night before I saw the spider, we were watching a show on TV that depicted drones flying around with automatic weapons on them. The drones were flying into the crowd and randomly shooting people. There was no place to escape the shots. 

I imagined how seemingly easily this could happen. There were drones taking pictures at the Color Run I’d done earlier in the year. They were kind of creepy, dipping in and out around the crowd, snapping photos.

And suddenly, sitting in my little house out in the woods, the darkness, looked so much darker. And the world felt so much scarier. 

What I realized early this morning as I sat to write in my journal was that the anxiousness about the drones shooting people and the experience of the spider hanging from his web in the tree laid bare my sense of vulnerability that I have been feeling, but not acknowledging, as I have been trying to get things together so I can see someone at MD Anderson about my cancer. The waiting and the sense of having no control over the situation are places of extreme vulnerability for me.

Yet, we are all often more vulnerable than we care to admit. When you are confronted with the death of a child, or a serious health problem, you tend to become aware of your own vulnerabilities. 

I’ve been reading a book about writing personal poetry. Sometime over the weekend, inspiration struck and I wrote a piece of personal poetry. The poem explains the photo, the scene in the photo was the inspiration for the poem. Please understand that I am allowing myself to go into dark places, and I am sharing my vulnerability with you, but I really am about as okay as I can be with my health situation. People say I am courageous. This is where I can usually agree with them—I am not afraid to go deep and explore the dark crevices. 

Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. … Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light. -Brené Brown

HOPE  

On my kitchen windowsill:

   watermelon seeds rest

on dried tea bag papers—

   the intentions being:

the seeds will be planted

   to grow in the darkness

of next summer’s ground

   while the tea bag papers

will be used to create a work of art

now lying

undiscovered in my heart.

   “The problem is:

you think you have time.”

   No one knows:

The seeds, the tea bag papers,

   they are my talismans,

visual and tangible symbols

   of my desperate and unspoken

hope: that I will have time.

Irrational Fear

My mind has been a bit preoccupied with fear lately. Perhaps it has to do with the looming date with a surgeon to remove another cancerous part of my colon that is hanging over my head, a date that has not yet been set, for various reasons mostly having to do with doctors who don't seem to see any need to rush getting my records over to MD Anderson.

I've got some smart people affirming my courage and my braveness. But still, I was newly challenged by this quote from one of my Facebook blogging friends:

"Look. It is blowing my mind how afraid women are of apparently everything these days. Ladies! Listen to me! One of the most powerful things you can do right now to change the world is STOP BEING AFRAID." --Lois Johnson

After reading the quote, I put my phone down and went outside to see this guy hanging around. I immediately went back into the house to retrieve my camera and very bravely stood under the spider and his prey to take pictures while the words STOP BEING AFRAID reverberated in my ears!

One of my biggest fears before the last colon cancer surgery (in 2011) was the tube that was going to be coming from my stomach and up out of my mouth. I fretted anxiously over that silly tube until a very good friend finally said something on the order of "Listen, the tube is not your enemy. The cancer is your enemy." I did finally put that concern out of my mind. The crazy thing was that I was so out of it after the surgery that I was never really consciously aware of the tube! It wasn't totally an irrational fear, but it was a fear on which I spent way too much time and energy, considering the other things I was facing.

So, I don't know. Somehow the spider became a messenger who "spoke" to me of fear and the crazy ways we sometimes handle fear.

There was a spider web above the picnic table. There was a large spider in the web and an even larger grasshopper in the web with the spider.

The spider scared me. Knowing he was hanging there above my head scared me. I was afraid of accidentally getting caught in the web as I walked outside. It was an irrational fear—the web was ten feet above the ground. I am barely five feet three inches tall. But, hey, who says all fear is rational? 

My husband asked if I wanted him to knock the spider web down. With a little hesitation, I said, “I guess so” and so he did. Is this not often the tactic we use with the objects of our fear? We take it down, we stomp it, we get it before it gets us. And some of us cower down and slink off to another spot, which is what I was quite prepared to do had my helpful “Mr. Fix-it” husband not intervened.

Yes, I know sometimes those tactics are necessary. Evil is real and there are plenty of legitimate things to fear in this world. But—a spider? Well, yeah, there are some spiders to be feared but I don’t think this one was poisonous.

I thought of an essay I’d read where a woman saw a spider in her bathroom, attempted to eradicate him, failed to do so, and eventually made her peace with the spider as she became aware of their shared energy.

“Did you kill that spider?” That’s what I asked my husband after I remembered the essay and began to think again about how we are all connected and interdependent, about the whole huge, beautiful (corny, cheesy) circle of life in which we are all ensnared.

It’s true—death is a part of life. And there are real dangers in life that stir legitimate fear. But how often do we mistake legitimate fear for irrational fear, and what irreversible damage do we do in reacting to an irrational fear?

Random Thoughts on Grieving Openly

The Well of Grief

Those who will not slip beneath
     the still surface on the well of grief

turning downward through its black water
     to the place we cannot breathe

will never know the source from which we drink,
     the secret water, cold and clear,

nor find in the darkness glimmering
     the small round coins
          thrown by those who wished for something else.

  -- David Whyte
      from Where Many Rivers Meet
      ©2007 Many Rivers Press

This is why I post on Facebook and write on my blog about my grief. There is often something to be gained from going downward into the black water of grief. I suspect I have friends, and maybe even family, who worry about me when I am so openly expressing my grief, that maybe they think I have no comfort for my loss. That's simply not true. I am comforted even as I experience and acknowledge my loss.

There are so many happy stories that I have remembered, so many times when we have laughed as a family at some of the things we remember. But we are here, and he is not, and in spite of my comfort and my ability to revel in the memories, the hole in my heart is still here.

I've said it before and I say it again, the very landscape of my life was inescapably altered when I lost my son. I am sad, I am happy, I am comforted, I am hurting. I walk in darkness, I walk in light. My son is gone, my son is in my heart.

I will not run from that well of grief. I will not stand at the edge of the well, and refuse to dip into the dark water.

September 22, 2014

He was born on September 22, 1987. I was on bed rest for a couple of months before that. They put me in the hospital a few days before he arrived. The night before I was to be induced, there was something a little different about the way I felt. It was supper time. I debated whether or not to mention anything about how I was feeling. I told the nurse, missed out on supper, and delivered my boy sometime around 9:30 that night.

He was a chunky little baby and he was a clinger. He would wrap my hair around his fingers and hold on tightly. We were tight. He grew into a serious, tall and thin man with the prettiest hands and the longest fingers (and toes).

He had a tender heart and a sensitive nature. There were many times when I could have pinched his little/big head off. He tried my patience and he taught me so very much about love in the too-short time that he was here with me/us.

He would have been 27 years old today.

How I wish I could hug him once more, and hear him say "Mama" in the way that he did. I can still almost hear his voice in my head.

I Grew A Tumor

After much strife, I received the results from my colonoscopy. The nurse from that doctor's office kept making missteps in her communications with me. She never had all her information ready when she called, she told me things that weren't accurate, she called on Wednesday after I had the procedure on Monday and told me to schedule the procedures. On that day, she told me I probably wouldn't get my results until this week, and she explained perfectly reasonable reasons why that would be. But then she called last Friday, and left a message asking me to call her, that it was about my results. Thirty minutes later I tried to return her call and could not get through to anyone. I finally called the number you use to make appointments and left a message there. 

On Monday morning, she called me, all bright and cheery, wanting to know how she could help me! I told her I had been returning her call on Friday and proceeded to tell her all about how thoughtless it was to call me and leave a message knowing I would not be able to get back in touch with her. It was a hot mess! She kept making excuses and explaining things. Finally I just told her "let's just drop all this and you tell me what I need to know."

She began fumbling around and said she had to find the results and did I want her to call me back. I told her no, that since we were connected, I would wait, if she thought she could get herself together and give me the information. She responded by telling me, "Okay, I'll call you back" and she hung up!

When she called back, she informed me that the tumor is malignant. My regular doctor had called late Friday afternoon and told me most of what was going on, so I wasn't surprised by the nurse's news, though I was still peeved at her for hanging up on me earlier when I had clearly said I wanted to wait while she got herself together.

Anyway, the gist of it is that he took out two precancerous polyps and discovered a tumor where my upper and lower colon join together. I did blood work this morning and I will soon be drinking a delicious berry barium smoothie in preparation for a cat scan tomorrow morning (Wednesday).

I have decided I am going to MD Anderson in Houston this time around, mostly in hopes that they can do laparoscopic surgery to remove the tumor. I worry about my stomach muscles and about scar tissue. But of course, I will go with whatever is best for my situation.

And so the next chapter begins. . .

Throwed Off

Several years back, I participated in a writing group where we were given a quote prompt, and we were to write about the first memory that came to our mind after reading the quote. Mostly, the point was to write early memories, and to write them like we were there, in the moment of the memory, without worrying too much about grammar and spelling. I miss that group. 

Anyway, my current (and forever) bloggy friends writing group tries to do prompts fairly regularly, and this time around, the prompt is "throwed off." I remembered this little story and it is my contribution to the prompt. I can't guarantee that I haven't already posted the story on this blog. The poem is extra, and is also about the land and the woods.

The reason people lie is to avoid the pain of challenge and its consequences….

One of the roots of mental illness is invariably an interlocking system of lies we have been told and lies we have told ourselves.

Scott Peck

The Road Less Traveled

Tree Riding

We are walking in the woods after lunch. My grandfather always seems particularly pleased when we do this. Sometimes, just the men get to go on these walks. When we ask where they are going, they always say they are going to see a man about a dog. But today, all of us are going--Mom and Dad, Paw-Paw and Granny, Linda and Timmy.  Granny is finishing up in the kitchen and then we can leave.

Sometimes we go and check the hog pens to see if there are hogs in the trap. Most every time we check the fox feeder to put corn out or to see if they have eaten the corn that was left for them. Paw-Paw always has something going on out in the woods. He loves the woods. He will usually point out tracks in the sand for us to see. Fox tracks, rabbit tracks, dog tracks, deer tracks, hog tracks, all kinds of tracks. He can’t see that well, but he can see those tracks.

Once he cut a branch off a dogwood tree and told me if I would scrape the bark away, the branch would turn pure white, just like it had been bleached. I saved it and took it home and scraped the bark away and sure enough, it is pure white, pure white.

Today the grown-ups are talking about the corner lines and about the old spring that used to be back by the creek. Paw-Paw keeps that cleared away so the water will continue to flow. I can’t quite understand their fascination with the spring. It’s just an old hole with water constantly coming out of the ground, like a house that never gets clean, it is always muddy around there.

I don’t understand the fascination with the corner markers either. We are walking through briars now, getting all scratched up. Mama and Granny, who are in their dresses, are stepping high to avoid getting their legs all scratched up. When we finally get to the corner marker, all it is is a concrete stick poking up out of the ground. But the adults all know where these markers are, and they stand around talking about who owns the property that meets up at this marker.

There are also stories told about how you can follow the road and cross the creek “back there” and end up at Aunt Ella’s house. Thankfully, we are not going that way today. We are turning around and heading back to the house. As usually happens on these walks, they are all telling stories now.

Daddy starts talking about how they used to bend a young sapling down and get on it like horse and then let it go and they would “ride” the sapling. That sounds like so much fun! I’m asking if I can do that and the grown-ups are all acting like they are not sure I can. I am wondering now if Daddy made this story up or what. Finally, after my persistent begging (I can be very persuasive, this I already know about myself), Daddy and Paw-Paw are looking for a suitable tree for me to ride.

They have found one now and both of them bend the tree over so I can get on it. I am so excited about getting to do this. I straddle across the tree and receive my last-minute instructions to hold on tight, no matter what. I can’t wait for them to let go of this tree so that I can go flying through the air. I wonder what it is going to feel like…

Well, that was not what I expected to happen. I am on the ground with the wind knocked out of me. That has only happened to me one other time. I hate when that happens. The grown-ups are looking at me with concern and are trying to help me up. Someone is dusting off my back-side. What a stir I have caused!

After a few moments, my wits are recollected and I can now breathe normally again. We are heading back to the house now, and analyzing my failure to launch. It seems my biggest problem was that I forgot to hold on tight. When the tree went up, I went down and hit the ground, hard. I probably should have bent over closer to the trunk of the tree and hugged it harder than I did. I don’t much care what went wrong I don’t think I’ll ever want to try that again. 

SURVEYING THE LAND                                                            

Sitting on a stump by the rippling stream,
barely a foot wider than my stride.
Just enough to keep me from following the procession
led by the machete-wielding land surveyor, who whacks
his way through briar and thicket,
seeking the corner marker to our wood.

Were it not for the steady whack, whack, whack
of the machete and the warning caw of the crow,
I would be at peace, wooed by the shimmer of water
and the rustle of leaves, meditating on a quiet winter day.
Thoreau on his pond, Emerson in his woods. The surveyor works,

carving away a piece of me I still hold tightly in my heart.

When I was a child, my grandfather led the way on this land,
past the Artesian spring that bubbled from the ground
and on to the mound where arrowheads could be found,
stopping at each land marker as though they were sacred monuments,
testimony to places where God touched the earth,
setting boundaries to our own slice of Eden.

The sound of tree limbs being severed by a man

snatches me back to the present. Birds squawk

mournfully above my head, while the briar branch tears
flesh as I pull it idly through my hands. Looking down, I am surprised
to see blood marking the place where I released grandfather’s
memory and walked away empty handed, stripped

of land that meant so much to us both.

Synchronicity!

The weirdest thing happened with the road photo I posted in my last blog post! First of all, I added a small sliver of text from a Mary Oliver poem, "Today". See the poem below.

Here are the pictures I did....

I can't decide which one I like best, the faded text or the darker text. But all of that is not important to the story I am trying to tell.

On Facebook, I accidentally posted the photo with the faded text in the comments section of a friend's post, on her page! The photo didn't show up on my page and I had no idea what had happened until I got a noticed that someone I do not know had "liked" my photo (in my defense, I was doing all this on my phone, which can be tricky)! I figured out what happened when I clicked on the notice and was taken back to my friend's page.

To my surprise, the person had posted a comment about this being a road from her dream 30 or so years ago!

I told her I had not intended to post it there, told her the road was in Kisatchie Forest, and hashtagged it as #oldladytechissues! She wrote back to say thank you for my old lady tech issues! I mentioned how Jung would have said it was a case of synchronicity and she agreed and said it meant a lot to her. 

Is that not the weirdest, most delightful thing??!! 

Here is the complete poem:

Today

Today I'm flying low and I'm
not saying a word.
I'm letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. 

The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I'm taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I'm traveling
a terrific distance.

Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple. 

~Mary Oliver