Day 474
We call baptism a public marking of an inward change. Though I’ve been a Christian for 24 years, I had never been baptized. So when Caroline asked to participate, I decided to do it with her.
God has changed so much inside of me through my journey of leukemia and recovery. It seemed a fitting way to mark the events. And I was able to share such a precious ritual of our faith with one of my daughters.
Here’s our splash from this morning.
Caren
Since we’ve returned from Christmas break, I can’t seem to get my morning timing back. Every day I’m rushing to get myself (and the girls) out of the house. Today the problem dawned on me: I have to “do” my hair.
After 18 months of being bald of having super short locks, I’m returning to the world of womanhood. No more leaving the house guy style, with wet hair. I actually need to spend a few minutes with a blow dryer.
What a great realization for Day 464!
Caren
Day 450
It seems fitting for New Year’s Eve to coinincide with another milestone. I am so thankful that this year has brought one victory after another. Even seeing another year has such significance for me.
May we all have a boring 2009!
Caren
There aren’t many times life offers neat ties, like the ones I write to end my manuscripts. But sometimes life makes us aware of passages.
I spent most of yesterday evening gathering and printing photos for Caroline’s school project. As the Lucky Duck this week, she created a poster that showed her family, friends, travels and favorite activities.
With photo bank on Jon’s computer and Jon away, I used the blog to copy pictures for printing. I hadn’t thought I was ready to relive the last two years — from our first trip to Russia to meet Emma through leukemia and recovery. But I was able to see the pictures and scan the posts with an amazing amount of peace.
A messy story unfolds through those entries. At times it is such a sad, anxiety-producing story. And it is a story we are still struggling to make sense of. But it is our story, with this beautiful subtext of how our God has been with us through everything.
(By the way, I could not find one recent picture of the four of us together. I love Jon’s photographic gift. I just wish I could get him to the other end of a camera once in a while.)
Today I had a checkup at Stanford, my first since hitting the one-year mark in October. I came home after dropping the girls at school, intending to catch up on email and write. Every time I looked at my calendar I caught my breath. I felt like a ten-pound weight had dropped on my chest. Facing these damn blood tests, and the nail-biting wait for results, never gets easier.
If I’ve learned anything through my illness, I’ve learned to be a little better at taking care of myself and a little more tolerant of my own weaknesses. I decided to chuck my morning of work for a change in scencery. I slipped into bike clothes for a long ride.
There’s nothing like a big dose of sweat to gloss over life’s worries. By the end of my ride I was getting my hit of endorphins. As I pushed up the last slope before home, my shuffle rolled to the 2000 Dispatch song “General”. Its reggae beat helped me up the hill and its words stuck with me all afternoon.
I left the cancer center with great blood tests results, news that I’m still in remission and four months until my next appointment.
The tears started to fall as I got to my car. I said a quick prayer of thanks and sent Jon a text with my news. Then the chorus of the song came back to me:
Take a shower, shine your shoes
You’ve got no time to lose
You’re a young man, you must be living
Go now you are forgiven
Caren
Our Bay Area fog usually only visits for a morning. Normally you can bet any greys will burn off by 11:00 AM and leave another sunny, California day.
But yesterday the fog hung around. And as it did, I kept cursing it’s effect on my hair. Curls and mist don’t mix. My ‘fro grew throughout the day.
In the afternoon I ran, then showered. As I was shampooing, I grumbled to myself that even rewashing my hair wouldn’t matter. With the fog, it would just puff again.
Then I caught a glance at myself in the mirror. (In general, it’s a bad idea to have a mirror you can see from the shower, but it’s just the shape of our bathroom.) I had hair! Lots of hair!
At this time last year I had none. And I would specifically avoid the mirror, so that I didn’t have to see my bald head.
I had to laugh at myself. For someone who had just written about being thankful, I had been griping about my hair all day.
I’m really not thankful all the time as I might have hinted yesterday. But I am trying to live with more gratitude. And enjoy the new curls I’ve been given.
Caren
While I was pleased to mark another holiday, Thanksgiving seemed a bit redundant to me this year. It isn’t that I don’t have so many things to be grateful for, it’s that I am reminded to be thankful all the time.
Even after more than a year (420 days tomorrow), I am still glad for the joyously mundane. Walking Caroline to school. Emma’s hide-and-seek games. Waking up next to my husband. The glow of having my life and my freedom given back hasn’t tarnished.
I still face the possibility that I will have to fight leukemia once again. Next Wednesday I have my bi-monthly blood test and checkup. So at least until October 2009, I will have regular reminders to give thanks.
One of my favorite authors, Henri Nouwen, writes often about gratitude as a discipline, about choosing to live with an attitude of thanks. In Life of the Beloved, he writes, ”What fascinates me so much is that every time we decide to be grateful it will be easier to see new things to be grateful for. Gratitude begets gratitude, just as love begets love.”
May your thanksgivings continue.
Caren
Day 400
My small definition of gratitude hit me yesterday in the form of a dingy hand towel. We all have those things lying around — the ones with bleach spots or faded to a dull gray. Mine is the same; nothing special.
A year ago, that dingy hand towel stayed under my bed, along with a cracked plastic mixing bowl. I need them both to fight the crippling nausea I faced every morning before getting out of bed. I had this ritual of sipping water and eating saltines for fifteen minutes. If I didn’t, and got up too quickly, I could be guaranteed to be heaving all morning.
Now the towel hangs on my treadmill. It serves the far better purpose of handling sweat. Yesterday’s count — 5.5 miles and 500 calories.
That’s gratitude.
Caren
After spending so long in crisis mode ourselves, it has been a relief to our attention to the needs of others.
When I began a simple email chain last week, I had no idea I was unleashing a storm. My friend Monique, who battling ALL, another form of leukemia, is in desperate need of a bone marrow donor to save her life. Her Native American (1/16 Cherokee) and German heritage is making it hard to find a match. So we decided to go viral to get the word out to anyone of Native American and German ancestry.
A tsunami of 200-300 emails have poured in from around the country. It’s taken every spare minute to sort through them. The good news is that the more people we test, the better chance she has. And the National Marrow Donor Program (www.marrow.org) is offering free testing this month. Many people have agreed to swab a cheek for her.
If you’ve ever thought about registering, now is the time. Wouldn’t it be amazing if you were the one meant to save a life?
My other better cause is working on behalf of my dear friends in Kenya. Through The Kilgoris Project we’re buying a few milking cows to feed and provide income for some large families. We’ve hired our first full-time management employee.
The wonderful David Lemiso will start next week. On his very full plate, he’ll tackle hiring a tea farm manager and working staff, completing our government registrations, managing our seven teachers, running our parent committees and Kenyan board and overseeing planning a fourth school. The new school at Ntimigom will be our first primary school.
So hallelujah that I haven’t had time to post. I’m so glad for my own fear of relapse to be swallowed up by better causes.
Caren
Today I finally tracked down the results of my one-year bone marrow biopsy and just had to call my brother. My marrow showed normal, male donor cells with no blasts (cancer cells). Hooray! Hooray! Hoo…wait a minute. Male donor cells? Man blood? I look like a guy on the inside?
Clearly no one informed me of this, along with the myriad of other surprises you get from letting them wipe out your own blood and replace it with someone else’s. It doesn’t help me feel too girly to know I have man blood pumping through my veins. Someone tell me if you see the beginnings of an Adam’s apple and sideburns.
My brother, the gang detective, pointed out that I could commit crimes and have investigators looking for some dude with my bloody fingerprints. Leave it to a cop to come up with that one.
Really, I need no other benefit than that I’m still here. What a great gift man blood turns out to be.
Caren
Second only to regrowing hair, there’s nothing like a few highlights to lift a girl’s spirits. My trip to the salon yesterday brought my first coloring in ages. (I’ve had to hold off for fear that a skin reaction to the hair dye would kick off GVHD.)
But the color that has me most elated isn’t at my roots, it’s on the trees. Do you realize how great fall is?
Last year, I eeked out October in isolation. Through my only window to the world, I watched a single tree go through the annual ritual. At transplant time, its leaves began to deepen. When I awoke from napping on my sickest days, the tree glowed crimson in the afternoon light. By the time of discharge, leaves were browning and flying off in strong winds.
I continued to catch myself this week just amazed at how beautiful autumn is en masse. Our Northern California seasons don’t hold a candle to some East Coast sights. But they are pretty in their own right. And they are especially stunning when enjoyed in the open air.
How thankful I am to be four seasons healthier!
Caren
