Planning to Live

Last evening I received an out-of-the-blue phone call from a dear woman whom we met many years ago through a Christian seniors' bed-and-breakfast network. We'd lost track of her and her husband when they changed their email address. She's a person who walks in tune with God, and she followed his nudge to call me. You know that my general outlook during this journey with cancer has been "planning to live, prepared to die." Well, as I was bringing her up-to-date (she hadn't heaard of the cancer), I think she discerned that I've unwittingly switched the order of those two options. (Maybe I'm tired of all the chemo, the pills, the uncertainty.) But she was having none of it. "Carol," she said, "I don't think I can accept your saying that you might die." She was gracious, and our conversation moved on, but I've thought more about it, and she's right. I'm straightening my head around and both planning and preparing to live. I need a dream for ten years from now. (Of course, I am still committed to Fully Relying On God, and whatever he chooses is right and good--whenever.)

On Tuesday when the nurse found out that I was still struggling with nausea, she injected a liquid directly into my I-V, and I think I fell asleep before she walked away. Apparently, after the infusion was finished, I “woke up” and she gave instructions about which drugs I should take the next day, yesterday, to prevent a recurrence. I went home and directly to bed, where I stayed until time to return for more chemo at 9:30. Thanks to the Atavan injection, my short-term memory failed me, and I didn’t take anything yesterday morning. I wasn’t nearly as sick as the day before, but the yucky feeling returned. Now I have the instructions written in ink on paper, and I think anyway I’ll remember to do the right thing. I suppose everyone in long-term chemo-therapy reaches this point where there are entirely too many strange drug names to keep track of, and I have to humble myself to the point of admitting to the nurse that I’ve forgotten what she said, and will she please say it again? Those nurses are incredibly affirming and wonderful—never make me feel stupid.

That reminds me of the first “blessed” in Jesus’ sermon on the hillside: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Poor in spirit is usually defined, colloquially, as knowing you can’t cut it by yourself. So a stubborn person like me spends most of a lifetime proving—impossibly—that I can do it. Failure, cancer, and aging turn out to be a threefold grace if they bring me/us to the point of being poor in spirit. Blessed!

I heard yesterday that the temperature in Iraq is reaching 120 F. I know how my mood turns when I'm that miserable. Let's pray for our military friends over there. They can't afford bad moods! May God give them grace.

FROG-ing,
Carol