Patience – Waiting for what we do not see.......

Yesterday, I got home at 3:30pm and climbed into bed, fighting my nausea and trying not to lose the small meal I’d eaten just an hour before.  Multiple infusion therapies since January has left me with all the expected side effects that at times pulls and pushes me into dark corners.  My hair and beard loss has transformed me into someone friends don’t recognize till they see my eyes, or hear my voice.  “Bill is that you?”  Many tell me I look younger without my beard, and I have slowly gotten used to seeing the beardless, white-haired man in the mirror each morning.  My fingernails and toenails have become brittle and sore; they have developed ridges and are an unhealthy brown color.  The nail brittleness combined with my neuropathy makes my toenails hard to keep trimmed because of the pain.  My biggest battle is with fatigue, and I’ve started carrying a walking stick which significantly decreases my energy expenditure and has increased my stability.

As I laid in bed yesterday, my meditation and conscious connected breathing exercises steadied my nausea and calmed my stomach.  Soon I had returned to our Vermont vacation and was sitting on the banks of Lake Champlain watching a glorious sunset paint the sky in shades of gold with streaks of orange and red.  In that moment of reflection, I realized it was my patience that blessed me with a golden sky to be framed in my soul forever.  If we had left the banks of Lake Champlain too quick, we would have missed the layering of colors, silhouetted clouds, fishing boats and gently rolling mountains.  Patience billy, this too shall pass, chemo is only a temporary phase that you are passing through.  It is not your life.  I am reminded of Paul’s words in Romans, “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience”.  Be patient with me. 

Monday MRI Flashback

Monday afternoon, my chemo started late, so by the time I was done I had only 45 minutes to eat and sign-in for my 7:15pm MRI.  The MRI was scheduled for the Radiology Outpatient Center (ROC) that use mobile MRI scanners that reside in huge trucks.  In my multiple MRIs the past nine years, I never had an MRI from the ROC.  The waiting room was beautiful, the staff was very professional and caring, and the best part was I had no wait.  After getting my scrubs on the technician walked me through an outdoor hallway and up six steps into the mobile unit.  Everything looked the same, except the room was just a little smaller, and then the technician told me the test would take 90 minutes, not my usual 45.  When I was comfortable on the MRI bed, he put earplugs in my ears and wrapped my head with a soft material.  The same weird spinning and knocking noises started, but as they got much louder, I was glad for the earplugs. 

Twenty or so minutes into the test, I had my first flashback.  We were riding low in a Huey copter and I could hear the enemy fire at 4 o’clock.  I raised up my M16 and started to yell, “Enemy fire 4 o’clock”, but my arm hit the inside of the MRI tube and the technician ask me if I was okay and I said yes.  Realizing where I was I laid back down and for the next 60+ minutes, I again rode in the Huey, or sometimes I was back in Europe in a huge Chinook helicopter with my feet resting on the biggest nuclear weapons in our arsenal.  Toward the end of the test, I was doing night jumps out of the thin-skinned C-141 where the engine noise was deafening with the jump door open as I watched for the green light and then fell through darkness wondering if I’d ever get time to pray. 

I rode my scooter home with tears streaming down my face; I had gone back to memory moments I had worked hard to push away.  We came back to a country that didn’t want us back.  The first time I wore one of my fatigue shirts, so proud of my Captain Bars and Ranger Tab, someone spit on me.  Forty plus years ago I wrote the poem that follows as I sat on my bed and listened to two friends make a decision that would cost them their lives.  Many of you may never understand the patriotic pride that drove boys like me or like my dad who fought in WWII and Korea to ensure we have the freedom so many take for granted today, but I hope this poem gets you to an edge of understanding. 

Second Tour – Got to Go Back

you what?
“it’s all I know”

you have an electrical engineering degree
“it’s all I can remember”

you worked every summer since you were 15
“it’s all I’m good at”

your crazy
“I can’t leave them alone”

we left too many to count
“I have to go back”

I can’t let you go back
“It’s all WE know”

It’s all we know
“yea, it’s all we know”

shi! – let’s go…….

Chemo Courage and Determination

Maybe it’s the memories of my mother resting her arm on mine as we walked through our backyard garden to enjoy the colors and smells from the camellia, and gardenia bushes fighting to live each day to its fullest as her cancer slowly spread.  Then again, maybe it was my dad’s determination to stay awake in the golf cart we had strapped him and his oxygen bottle into as his prostate cancer took his energy, but not his courage to be with family, giving all of us golf tips as we played on his home course. 

Two Friday’s ago, I was all prepped for chemo and just needed my oncologist approval.  As he entered the treatment room he said, “You look good”, and I felt a pride inside as I thought I was finally getting down the three-week chemo leash.  He looked, listened, and prodded those parts of my body that might be showing signs of chemo distress, and then we moved to my blood work.  I am always concerned about my kidney and liver functions, but those numbers looked good, and then we moved to blood cells and he stopped and shook his head and said, “Your blood is too weak, you can’t have chemo today!”  I was stunned, and asked him “What can I do?”  His answer was rest. 

MaryBeth and I took off the next day for Vermont and cooler weather where we stayed with our good friend Judd Allen, who pampered us with lots of TLC.  For seven days, I didn’t work, open any emails, or write.  Each morning I spent time meditating in a backyard that felt more like a forest, with flowers, and a short walking path to Lake Champlain.  In the afternoons, I napped and at the end of each day, we’d picked a different place around Burlington to watch the sunset.  On Top of Mt. Philo State Park one afternoon looking out at the slowly fading scenic Adirondack and Green Mountain Peaks, an old bare fir tree took center stage.  Feeling the bare trees courage and determination to stand strong as her life force was ending; I felt tears as I drifted back to memory moments with my mom and dad as they passed to me the gift of mindful whole person living and resilience.  What life gifts are you passing on?