hope

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The wait for data

March 5, 2011 in Reflection, Update by admin | Comments

About six weeks ago, I didn’t think I would be able to live out the year. I learned that I have at least two more metastases in my cerebellum, in the balance & coordination area.

Then I suddenly began throwing up and couldn’t stand upright. I drove to the oncologist for rehydration, and they wheeled me right over to the hospital and checked me in.

There is no cancer showing up in my body now, only in my cerebellum. It’s unusual enough that the med team was concerned it was a new kind of cancer. They are reluctant to go through healthy brain tissue to take a biopsy, but a biopsy is the only way they’ll know what kind of cancer it really is. Because of the risks to my motor skills (vroom vroom), they are going on the data they have, which is of course colon cancer.

It seems that a tumor or else some edemic necrotic tissue (from the gamma knife surgery last year) was pressing on my cerebellum, causing the symptoms. After four days in the hospital and a high dose of steroids to reduce the swelling, I was released. Hurray.

I’ll have another brain MRI this Thursday, then meet with a second neurosurgeon the following Tuesday. After that, I will have some kind of brain procedure (probably gamma knife again) to kill the tumors.

I’ll get some time to recover from that, which may involve some PT, and then I’ll be starting some chemo. It won’t be hard and heavy chemo, as I had before (twelve rounds every two weeks for six months). This time I’ll have a couple of rounds, then be allowed to recuperate, then a couple more rounds, etc. — more sporadic. The med team thinks the cancer is lurking in my body on a microscopic (i.e., non-tumor-size) level, and they want to go after it.

All this recent news made my husband, children, and me very somber at first. I wasn’t weepy, but of course none of this is good news.

But we are working through it and treasuring our time together, and now I am feeling remarkably peaceful about it all. I am painting, cooking new recipes, hiking, doing yoga again, enjoying my family and three loving pets, and I’m even doing a little knitting, now that our golden is a year old and not such a terror with yarn.

Regardless of our circumstances, there is always so much to be grateful for. I have wept many tears on our back patio, which is sort of a sanctuary for me. But recently just standing out there and taking some deep breaths of fresh, crisp winter air feels healing to me. It seems to clear my head and give me hope.

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New Year’s Reflection on Colon Cancer

January 1, 2011 in Reflection by admin | Comments

Sometimes people are so sure that if they eat this berry or that concoction daily that they will never get cancer. They forget that the newspaper articles say these things “may help prevent cancer.” They don’t prevent cancer. But they do give us an illusion of control.

Unfortunately, sometimes people get cancer regardless of what they do or don’t do.

I have eaten organic blueberries for breakfast every morning for many, many years. I have eaten well in general — broccoli, cauliflower, very little red meat — and am at a good weight. Got my colonoscopy on time at age 50. Was diagnosed with stage I colon cancer at age 53. Was under an oncologist’s care for three years with regular scans and annual colonoscopies, then was diagnosed with stage IV three years after the first diagnosis. Two major surgeries, brain laser surgery, and twelve rounds of chemo in all.

Sometimes things just happen, no matter how careful you are. People in their late teens and early twenties get colon cancer. Young parents get colon cancer. Runners get colon cancer. Sometimes it happens.

I wonder what causes colon cancer to all different kinds of people. No one in my family has had colon cancer. I hope that medical researchers discover the cure someday for this disease — cancer — that brings so much heartache and loss to families.

I have been blessed to raise my children to adulthood, and I am not afraid of death except that I don’t want to leave my family. But things just happen, accidents happen, illnesses happen, and life can seem very fragile sometimes.

I am an ordained minister — have a seminary master’s degree — and, oddly, I believe there is usually no sense as to who gets cancer and who doesn’t. We are all in vulnerable bodies. We think we have control — eat this, don’t eat that, do this and not that — and a certain amount of that kind of thinking is good. We don’t want to ask for trouble in our bodies by neglecting our health.

But sometimes things just happen to our vulnerable bodies no matter how well we take care of ourselves, and all we can do is manage the best we can and pray for the grace to move through what lies ahead with dignity … and to be immensely grateful for family and friends and the moments that we do have.

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Autumn

November 12, 2010 in Reflection by admin | Comments

I sure had a hard time letting go of summer this year. Summers are short here in Denver anyway, and whenever one ends, I’m never sure I’ll be around to see the next spring. Even with the recent good scans, things can change in an instant. I am learning to live with this uncertainty.

I know that none of us knows how long we have, but it’s very different when you have a serious disease. I try my best to enjoy the time between scans and hope like crazy that the next scans will show that I may have more time.

With all that’s going on in the world that is tragic, it is an odd place to be in. Perhaps I should not be so concerned with my own survival. And yet that is instinctive–to survive. Everything within me wants to live.

Anyhow, the kids’ birthdays are coming up along with Thanksgiving and then Christmas–not to mention painting–so my days are busy. Sometimes I end up dealing with it at night as I try to sleep.

However, I had my PET/CT scan, brain MRI, and seventh (7th!) colonoscopy in October. All results were good. So there is every reason to hope for some healthy time now and ahead.

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Grief (late June 2008)

July 30, 2008 in Reflection, Update by admin | Comments

What do you do when you can’t find hope?  I knew the grim statistics for stage IV colon cancer survival.

I did not want to leave my husband. I didn’t want my children, both in their twenties, to see me die. I did not want to leave this beautiful earth.

I was a former chaplain, and I had helped many others find hope. But I could not find it for myself.

I went into the valley, all the while yearning for some sign of comfort or presence. It was a lonely time. Even with a loving and supportive family, facing my own mortality was a journey I had to make on my own.

I was truly bereft. I had experienced lonely spiritual times before, but this was particularly dreadful because it was going to affect other people – people I loved dearly.

In the dark nights of the soul, we really have no choice but to wait – just to be with ourselves in that place and experience the turmoil and the stillness, and maybe develop some more patience along the way. Dark nights of the soul can last a short time or a lot, lot longer (generally longer for me).

But they don’t last forever.

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