CANCER ADVENTURES

Become a

Facebook fan

reflection

day in the life

Highlighting the everyday life of a couple living well with a slow-growing cancer. Life isn’t always easy, and there will certainly be sorrows and losses along the way. But being alive is good. It is very good.

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Frost in August

I was just thinking how nice it was to be up early on a weekend morning when one had the choice of sleeping in (it's harder to get up early Mon-Fri because I have to).

I put the teapot on to boil, and was going through the ritual of opening window shades to let in the morning sun ... and was surprised to discover frost on the top of Gary's truck. Sure enough, the thermometer says it's 30 degrees at the moment. In August.

Of course September will be here in less than 24 hours. I don't know about you, but our September is filling up rather quickly. We're spending a week at the coast to celebrate a milestone wedding anniversary and Gary's birthday (same day, don't ask); we're scheduled for three tag-team presentations - Portland, Salem and Eugene; we're climbing to the top of Mt. Bachelor; and we have a September deadline to get my book to press. More about that later.

Gotta run ... the teapot is whistling!

Comment

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Reading list

I’m in the middle of two books – Jan Karon’s The Mitford Bedside Companion: A Treasury of Favorite Mitford Moments (I actually have the full Mitford series). The second book is Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller with the subtitle of Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. (Actually, if the truth be known, I’m really in the middle of 4-5 books, but these are the two that I’m currently reading every day.)

Why two books? Because one is for the simple pleasure of reading and the other is a thought-provoking tome.

Father Tim and all the other delightful, zany, down-to-earth characters in the Mitford books are people you might be friends with in real life. Even though it’s a fictional series – mostly just easy reading and pure enjoyment – it's full of truth and I've learned from it. Father Tim often makes reference to “the prayer that never fails”, which happens to be a prayer that Christ prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Thy will be done.”

Donald Miller, the author of Blue Like Jazz, is a rebel against religion and televangelist preachers and anything that smacks of phoniness. Come to think of it, so am I. He writes about a friend of his:

“I think [she] was looking for something rational, because she believed that all things that were true were rational. But that isn’t the case. Love, for example. It is a true emotion, but it is not rational. Plenty of people have been in love, yet love cannot be proved scientifically. Neither can beauty. Light cannot be proved scientifically, and yet we all believe in light. I think one of the problems [my friend] was having was that she wanted God to make sense. He doesn’t. He will make no more sense to me than I will make sense to an ant.”

I love to read. And I love learning new things and having my old way of thinking challenged. A good book – fiction or otherwise – does that.

Comment

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Soaring Spirits

We got home a couple hours ago from a weekend in the mountains at Suttle Lake. It was the annual cancer survivor family camp, and we had a record number of attendees this year – the oldest near 80 and the youngest camper a 3½-week-old baby (not to mention 3 expectant mothers!).

Part of my job is to facilitate the planning of this annual event and I have a great crew of co-workers and volunteers who help make it a successful camp each year. Gary is my sidekick and we are both exhausted. There are weeks of planning and last minute shopping and setting up camp and checking in guests and being available 24-7. (It was a co-worker's idea to make and decorate newspaper hats this year, which, as you can see, was a huge hit with the older and younger ladies alike!)

Gary and I slipped away mid-afternoon yesterday for a canoe ride. I sat in back so he couldn’t see when I wasn’t paddling. At one point, we pulled in our oars and drifted. It was the most relaxing moment I’ve had in days.

We love this camp. We attended as guests two years ago. Quite by accident, we came across an article about Soaring Spirits and said, “Hey, let’s go.” And that was the beginning of getting plugged into our local cancer community. From there, we learned about the DEFEAT Cancer program, got involved and did some volunteer work. And then I was hired on as part of the Cancer Services staff at St. Charles Medical Center a little over a year ago.

One of the highlights of this year’s camp was the Candlelighter families. Candlelighters is an arm of the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society that reaches out to families that have children with cancer. They advertised our camp in their state-wide newsletter and 5-6 Candlelighter families attended as a result.

If you walked through camp and saw the children getting their faces painted; moms getting manicures; dads helping their kids build birdhouses; people riding horses, canoeing, kayaking, swimming, making S’mores around the evening campfire – you wouldn’t know this was a cancer camp. You’d be hard-pressed to pick out the people with cancer.

I loved making new friends – putting a face with a name I had spoken to over the phone or via email. I loved seeing groups of people connecting with each other around the dining room tables long after the meal was over.

As closure to camp, we planted a memorial pine tree this morning, and we were reminded by our guest chaplain that life is short and ought to be lived well. Funny, but that’s exactly what we saw two years ago when we attended Soaring Spirits for the first time and got involved in the DEFEAT Cancer program. We said, "Wow, these people are going about the business of living, and not dying.” I can’t think of a better compliment for our cancer community friends.

Comment

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Checking in with the good doctor

Yesterday was Gary’s appointment at the Oregon Urology Institute for his hormone therapy injection - a once-every-four-months trek over the mountains. Gary got the results of his PSA count last week – it’s gone up, which is the wrong direction, but it’s still low. Gary was bummed because his mind naturally follows the progression ... from this point to the next to the next, all headed in the wrong direction.

But after meeting with our good doctor, we were both encouraged. Dr. E seemed matter of fact that we should expect the count to fluctuate from time to time. Gary will have another PSA test in one month. If the number is still moving upward, he will be taken off the oral hormone drug. And we won't think past that point until we get to that point.

I don’t necessarily like living from PSA count to PSA count to know what direction our journey will take next, but there aren’t any guarantees for anyone – cancer patient or otherwise. And so cancer serves as a good reminder to continue enjoying life, not taking anything for granted.

Side note: At our last appointment in April, Dr. E asked if Gary had any complaints … and since he didn’t, I spoke up because I wanted to get our money’s worth. My complaint was that there weren’t enough women’s magazines in the waiting room.

I’m happy to report that I noticed several women’s magazines at the urology institute yesterday. I pointed this out to Dr. E and he said, “Someone must have complained.” (That would be me.)

Comment

Friday, August 08, 2008

9:30am rock band

Gary and I recently attended a Cancer Summit in the big city. We stopped at a Starbucks near the Convention Center for a Chai tea (we over-anticipated the traffic and were wayyy too early).

After reading the Portland Oregonian, we headed north on the one-way street leading away from Starbucks, turned west on a one-way street following our MapQuest instructions, and went a few blocks before realizing we were leaving the Convention Center behind. But – because some brilliant city planner put one-way streets all around the Convention Center just to irritate out-of-towners – we couldn’t turn around.

We eventually found our way back and parked. “Hey, isn’t that the Starbucks we were just at?!” The coffee shop's back parking lot was directly across the street from the entrance to the Convention Center.

Like at every conference, there were some really great speakers … and then there were the presenters who read their PowerPoint messages off the overhead screen, as if we can’t read.

We made some good contacts and new friends. A young woman on staff at a cancer center near Seattle, herself a breast cancer survivor, asked if she could sit with us. We chatted as if we had known each other for some time. Cancer does that to you.

Wideawake, a band from Austin, Texas, performed at 9:30 in the morning. (I bet you don’t go to too many conferences where the 9:30am guests are an award-winning rock band!) They actually have a really cool song written by Scott Leger, their lead singer:

Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow,

We'll win this fight and bury this sorrow.
We're so alive, still holding on,

Not ready to die, so we LIVESTRONG.

Sitting in the large conference room, we felt like we belonged on the “cancer circuit” … as if someday we will be the presenters and not the presentees. And when that happens, we promise not to read our message off overhead PowerPoint slides!

Comment

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Lingering

With a heavy heart I said good-by to Summer and the grandkidlets yesterday morning and then trudged off to work. The two weeks with them was perfect. I am a doer by nature—checking projects off my to-do list gives a certain amount of pleasure—but I am learning to be present in the moment and value that which is most valuable (people). I checked very little off my to-do list in the past two weeks, but had the most delightful time with family.

Gary and I lingered over deli sandwiches last night, enjoying the warm sun at our favorite café along the river. Lingering is good. Gary’s usually in a male mode – here’s something we need to do (eat dinner); OK, that’s done … what’s next. But part of the fun of going out on a date is to hang out and talk – tell me about your day, brainstorm with me about how we’re going to see our children and grands more often.

Today we hiked up above Todd Lake and ate our picnic lunch in a sloping meadow with 360 views that included South Sister, Broken Top and Mt. Bachelor (that's Mt. Bachelor in the distance in photo at right). And we lingered again. This time brainstorming over a good name for the book we’re getting ready to send to press.

Being present in the moment. Enjoying