Being Our Best

My oncologist warned me that the cabazitaxel chemo would have a bit of a kick, so I was thinking that the first week would be tougher, but the kick lasted the whole three-week cycle.  My walking stamina significantly decreased and last week we had a chair lift added to the stairs that lead to our second floor.  As I taught this month, I found it was helpful for me to sit or lean on a chair or table for my standing strength is low. 

The past few months I’ve been teaching mindfulness in many departments and last Thursday evening I was a guest speaker at the MD Anderson Children’s Cancer Hospital Family Council.  The meeting started at 5:30pm with dinner and I didn’t start speaking till 7pm, so by the time I stood to address the group, I was pretty tired.  When I started speaking, I remember pulling up a chair to lean on, and after describing my metastatic cancer journey, I told them, “I’m pretty tired, and maybe at 65%, no I’m probably more like 55%, but I am going to give you my best 55%.”  As I finished my short talk one mom sitting at the front table, immediately stood, grabbed my hand and with tear-filled eyes said, “thank you, I so needed that”, another mom came up behind her and said, “you were talking to me – right?”, and I said yes.  As my cancer journey has gotten tougher, I’ve learned I can’t be 100% all the time, but I can give my best  no matter what percent my energy it at, and being my best fills my spirit and reenergizes my life blood.  Be you best today, no matter how low your live energy feels!  Be You!  

Heart Saved Experiences

How do you engage or energize your resilience, your internal strength to remain strong and true to yourself throughout each day?  Start in your head and immediately you start thinking priorities, to-do lists, and pretty soon you are ruminating about all the things that have gone wrong.  Start in your heart and you are driven by what’s important in life: life passion, purpose, joy, your beliefs and values, and life lessons from past experiences.  Life lessons are heart saved experiences that define who we will become. 

In graduate school, I worked the odd shifts in the emergency room at Flow Hospital, Denton, Texas.  I remember one of my first shifts as we waited for ambulances returning from a bad accident with serious injuries.  As the doors swung open, and the gurneys rushed in, for just an instant, I flashed back to my first Army medevac ride, with the screams, chaos, and blood.  After that medevac ride, I swore I’d never ride in a medevac again, but I did, again and again – and then I was back in Denton and I was ready, for the Army taught me I was good under fire, good when chaos ruled.  What have you learned through your heart saved experiences that are defining who you are becoming?

Father's Day 2016 Fun

There was way too much excitement at our house on Father’s Day for my grandkids to eat much of the pizza or even the cupcakes.  We not only celebrated Father’s Day, but also a belated birthday we had missed due to our current health challenges.  A favorite activity at our house was MaryBeth’s drums of all shapes and sizes that not only produced lots of noise, but also plenty of smiles as we watch new songs being created by a very young man exploring his courage around music self-expression.  Dog chase was the game of the day, that turned into dog chasing grandkid and lots of laughs, and shrills from dog and grandkids. 

At some point, MaryBeth tried to slow things down with calming kids music on the radio, but when the song changed and she heard the jungle beat she quickly moved her conga drums out of the corner and became part of the percussion celebration.  Kaleb and I celebrated our fatherhood by giving each other the best gift ever by being together and surrounded by those, we love.  I hope you were also blessed with Father’s Day memory moments.       

UT Benefits HR Conference 2016

He was a little older than I was, and was on his fifth treatment of the chemo that I was starting that morning.  We talked about our chemo experiences and the days that were the hardest, and he said that with this chemo it was day six.  Deep inside I immediately felt of wave of anxiety, day six was the day I had the honor to be the lunch keynote at our annual HR Benefit Conference in Austin to hundreds of employees from all 13 UT institutions.  The title of my talk was Engaged Resilience.   

My son drove me us to Austin that morning, and I slept most of the way.  It was a beautiful ballroom with round tables and four giant screens.  The stage had 3-steps, a podium, and table set for a four-person panel.  I’ve never been a podium speaker, I’m a storyteller, so I ask for a lavalier microphone.  After setting up the microphone volume, I approached the steps and Shelly gave me her hand to steady my walk up the steps.  As I looked over the slides and got comfortable with the stage, deep inside I kept wondering if I should ask for a stool or chair, but I didn’t. 

After two amazing introductions, I don’t remember walking up the steps, what I remember is the energy I felt from the audience mixed with my lifetime of passion for life.  Throughout the talk, I had sprinkled heart led stories that still bring too many tears to my eyes, but remind me how I have become who I am, a major theme of the talk.  Then I was on my last slide, and reminding them “that we all have challenging journeys, but they are our journeys and our futures to energize.”  Finally, asking them what, would they do different tomorrow to engage / energize their resilience?  Thursday, June 9 will remain special for many reasons, but the one I will always hold in my heart is it was the first time my son had heard me give a keynote, and on the way home when I was not sleeping we talked deeply about life.  

Swinging on a Swing and Flying High

Several Fridays ago, I received my fifth different chemo since I started my cancer journey.  My last two chemo’s have been infusion therapy, and easy as I relax for several hours as the drugs intravenously enter my body.  During the chemo, I listened to one of my Pandora stations on my IPhone and when I walked out, I still had my ear buds plugged in.  Walking back to my office I stopped on top of the bayou bridge and listened to Neil Diamond sing You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore.  Three lines soaked into my heart, and I remember grabbing the bridge railing as a flood of tears poured down my face.  Three simple lines, “I’ve learned how to laugh / And I’ve learned how to cry….. / You’d think I could learn how’d to tell you goodbye.”

The tears wouldn’t stop.  There are times the reality of the journey is too much, I walked into my building and found an empty space on the second floor to cry.  Through my coaching, I know that all cancer survivors and caregiver feel it; sometimes more on some days, but the fear is there and real.  Slowly the tears stopped, I remember feeling lighter as my faith in life, love, and myself returned.  It was like swinging on a swing.  One moment you feel the weight of life and then as your toes touch the sky, everything drops away as you fly.  That night as I told MaryBeth about my experience, and realized how my low moments ensure I swing out really high, touch the sky with my toes, and fly.  Have you been swinging on a swing enough lately to touch the sky with your toes and fly?

Thank You!

Hope, Emily Dickinson wrote, “Is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops.”

Positivity psychologist Barbara Fredrickson suggests that hope arises when circumstances are dire.  Tonight I remind myself that my hope is real, and with hope, I focus my energy on healing, which energizes my belief in life.  Driven by the possibilities that today has brought through inspirational notes from so many friends I find deep within me the core belief that what is today can change. 

In a few hours, I will head to a CT scan, but I won’t be alone, for I carry all of you with me in that intangible space we share called hope.  Tonight, if I show up in your dreams don’t be alarmed, it’s just me whispering, “Thank you for you being you and sharing a bit of your hope in life with me”.  

Bad News and Hope

        

The results of last week’s blood test came in late Friday, MaryBeth and I were tired so I waited until Saturday morning to tell her the good news that my cancer markers were down and it looked like the new chemo was working.  We were both thrilled since the last few months my markers had quadrupled.  Tuesday morning started with an early blood test and an appointment 2 hours later to meet with my cancer care team and oncologist. 

My cancer care nurse and I talked about my fatigue, pain, any new symptoms, and then she and I looked at the blood test results.  Everything looked better except my cancer marker (PSA) it had gone from a 31 to a 74 in just a few days.  I remember saying, “How could that be, last week they were down 10 points?” and she replied, “It makes no sense, maybe it’s a false positive, when your oncologist comes in, he’ll explain it to you.”  She left and I closed my eyes, could feel my heart beating in my throat, so I did a few deep breathes.  A few minutes later I heard my oncologist knock on the door, he entered with his smile, and the confident eyes and solid handshake I look forward to seeing and feeling at each visit.  He sat down and for a moment didn’t say anything, just stared at the graph showing my increased PSA, and then he looked at me and said, “It makes no sense, do we repeat your blood test, or do body and bone scans?”.  We talked about any new pain, and I told him I was having some upper chest pain that was new, so he immediately ordered a chest x-ray, maybe it had moved into my lungs.  He told me he wanted to wait for one more blood test result, and after the x-ray was read, he’d call me and we’d make a plan. 

We shook hands and I so needed to feel his eyes, and then I realized I had 20 minutes to get to a mindfulness class I was teaching in another building.  After exiting the elevator, I realized I had held my breath the whole ride down, so instead of heading to my scooter I took a few steps and stood in front of the massive Tree of Life sculpture with its whimsical shapes and colors.  A few minutes of mindful meditation and prayer got me out of my head and into my heart, reenergizing my hope.  Several hours later as I took a deep breath, I realized I had touched almost 100 employees with my stories and mindfulness techniques.  As MaryBeth and I lay in bed last night, I took her hand and placed it on my heart, and again I practiced a few minutes of mindful meditation and prayer that sent me to sleep with hope.  This morning, the first song I heard on my Pandora station was Allison Krauss’s When You Say Nothing at All.  The words, “It's amazing how you can speak right to my heart / Without saying a word you can light up the dark / Try as I may I could never explain / What I hear when you don't say a thing”, but it lights up my resilience spirit and hope.  What are your daily practices to manage your resilience spirit and hope?