Camping Thoughts

As we prepare for our annual Memorial Day camping trip, I’ve been trying to think of good things about camping as a cancer patient. There are not-so-good things to think about, like my wig being flammable (now that would make a memorable Memorial Day campfire experience) and mastectomy swimwear (definitely not cute). And, with hot weather expected, I’m wondering what one (one being bald) wears on one’s head when one is swimming. Maybe I’ll get an awesome swimming cap with big plastic flowers on it:  

(Yes! You really can own one of these! Just $14.99 at http://www.headcovers.com/1063/multi-colored-petal-swim-cap-in-brights/. Buy them for your friends and start your own synchronized swimming club!)

(Retro swim caps! My fave is the one that looks as if it were covered with dryer lint.)

Anyway, here are some good things I thought of (not including awesome swim caps):

Top 5 Good Things about Camping As a Cancer Patient

5. Far, far away from the infusion room

4. License to claim the comfiest camp chair (if there is such a thing)

3. Campground shower costs 25 cents per 5 minutes hot water. Without hair to shampoo and condition or shave off my legs, it will be the first time I can complete a shower in one quarter’s worth of hot water

2. No hair = no places for ticks to hide

1. Cancer survivors can eat as many s’mores as they want

Sew LOVED!

I hardly know where to start with this post, except to say that I am blessed with overwhelmingly wonderful friends and family! Genna, a dear friend and talented quilter, held a quilting bee for me last Saturday. She had been working for months selecting the fabrics and design, organizing the sewing of the quilt squares by different people (including my mom, sisters, and grandmother in different states), and piecing together the final product as the squares were returned to her.

This weekend, my sister Liesl and friends from church and school and the neighborhood came together to stitch on the nearly completed quilt. It was a joyful time, with good food (cookies! cupcakes! chocolate cake! chocolate peanut butter cups!!), good conversation, good laughs, and good sewing (and some not-so-good sewing I contributed to keep my hands off the rest of the cupcakes). Here's a photo of the bee participants holding the almost-final product:

Such wonderful people! Such a wonderful quilt!

The quilting bee and the quilt itself are beautiful visual reminders of the good that has been manifested in this whole cancer experience. Yes, you heard me right: good can come from cancer. (But don't ask me to explain this again a few days after my next chemo infusion when I'm feeling awful and will tell you there's nothing good about anything. Ever.)

The vibrant and beautiful fabrics and unique squares remind me of the many different people in my life -- whether or not they participated in this project -- who love me and have demonstrated their care. These vibrant and beautiful people are as unique as the fabrics and squares on the quilt. They differ in personality, in how they know me, in how they show their love (hugs, childcare, letters, phone calls, meals, rides, emails, errands, book and movie loans, support, encouragement, prayers). Each person is special to me on their own, just as each fabric or square on the quilt is wonderful on its own.

But then you see the quilt in its entirety, the result of stitching together all those fabrics and squares. And it's breathtaking! All those people and all those ways of showing love form a great, new representation: a blanket of comfort and peace. All those beautiful colors and patterns positioned beside one another become something even more vibrant: a palette of pure joyfulness.

And that, dear friends, is the good that has come from this experience. Never before have I been the recipient of such an outpouring of love. Never before have I experienced the comfort of having so many people rally around me to form a seamless blanketing of support and encouragement. It's humbling and awe-inspiring and an experience I will never forget. That's how God works. Our arms give His hugs, our mouths speak His words, our hands give His care; all together we and our actions form something greater than any one of us on our own, something closer to the wholeness of God we will know in heaven. I begin to see why the Bible calls the global church "the body of Christ" -- the whole is a closer representation of God's all-encompassing love than any one person can be to another. I am reminded that our small individual roles are beautiful on their own but are also part of something great and even more beautiful.

Genna knew exactly what this quilt represented from the project's inception. (And she, a literature major and wise Christian thinker, could certainly explain it more beautifully and clearly than I have tried to do here!) You can see below that her objective all along was to remind me that I am loved. On the back of the quilt, she quilted the word "LOVED" to remind me that I am loved by friends and family and loved by God. And, as with God's love, I humbly accept in grace, knowing that I did nothing to deserve this amazing gift. I am loved!

Slogged Through Again

I'm through the worst of Round #3. I wish I could say it gets easier, but it doesn't. I still felt sick and disheartened for the full five days, possibly worse than the last round as my body has fewer reserves.

I also wish I could say I was a trooper this time. But plenty of complaining and groaning was heard in our house this weekend. Some of it was the usual sibling bickerings and complaints about boredom or having to clean up after themselves, but most of it was mine.

I am very thankful for a non-complaining, non-groaning husband who spent his weekend doing double-duty on the kid care plus meal preparation plus yardwork plus everything else that happens around here on a typical weekend. He's the trooper!

And now I hope to enjoy the rest of the month of May without dwelling on June 1. Please pray that I have the physical and emotional strength to do this again in 16 days.

Halfway done!

As of today, my 12 weeks of chemotherapy are halfway done. WHEW! In fact, today and tomorrow are "bonus days" since the next infusion was moved from today to this coming Wednesday. Just think, right now I should be sitting in that chair hooked up to an i.v., as nurses hover nearby checking my progress and commenting on my choice of reading material (seriously!). Instead, I am home and normal* this morning. The day's plan includes a 3-mile jog, a sushi lunch rendezvous with my husband, and an afternoon prayer with my dear prayer buddies. What a gift compared to what should have been!

Sadly, my relief over the halfway point is still overshadowed by the dread of the next round. The symptoms may be temporary -- the extreme exhaustion and flu-like aches last about 5 days and then I'm back to normal* (I love normal*!) -- but it's still hard to feel side-lined from life and nearly useless in my home and family and world.

Last week I helped chaperone my daughter's kindergarten field trip to a nursing home where the children sang and presented handmade gifts to the residents. My post-chemo days of fatigue and feeling useless made the visit more poignant than it has in past years. While interacting with the residents -- all living in a nursing home, many confined to wheelchairs, some unable to speak or engage in a conversation, one curled up with a baby doll and seemingly unable to engage with anything else in her environment -- I considered what lies ahead for many of us who (God willing) will live our full life expectancy. We will reach a point in which we are sidelined from our brand of normal. We reach a point in which we no longer contribute in a way the world, and perhaps we ourselves, consider valuable. This could be a disturbing thought, but it's a reminder that our sense of value should not come from our performance on the world's stage, not from a sense of contributing or accomplishing or succeeding. Our value must come from our identity as children of God. That's the one lasting thing, when your body and mind give out, when you cannot do what you want to do: you are still loved, so loved, by God.

 *Well, normal except that I'm bald. That will never feel normal. Every time I look in my closet, there's this moment of shock when I see my wig sitting there. It's not a nice kind of shock, the oh-how-sweet-someone-got-me-a-lhasa-apso-puppy kind of shock. It's the yikes-someone's-been-scalped-in-my-closet kind. Shocking.
Incidentally, I learned yesterday that first grade boys find wigs and baldness very interesting. The boys in the Sunday school class I team-teach had so many questions when I showed up after many weeks' absence: "Are you really bald?" "Is that really a wig?" "Does it feel like real hair?" Of course, I obliged by letting them pet the lhasa apso on the head and by peeling a corner of it off my head to prove I'm really, honestly bald underneath it. It's nice to be appreciated by first grade boys. One of the most mischievous (and most curious about wigs) then spent the lesson cuddled up next to me, as if the whole wig thing made me very endearing.