Sunday Times

Enjoying today because I am finally starting to feel better. My sister and brother-in-law Phil came out to Redondo for the weekend. I walked on Friday. Saturday, Corey and I walked down to an old car show and I made the four of us fish, curried rice and coleslaw for dinner. We all watched The Big Bang Theory afterward. They left today. We plan to walk to the library later today.

I head back to Phoenix on Tuesday morning for a full schedule of doctor appointments on Wednesday and Thursday. Ali will be home on Tuesday as well and I can't wait to see her.

A Creed

There is a Destiny that makes us brothers;
None goes his way alone:
All that we send into the lives of others
Comes back into our own.

I care not what his temples or his creeds,
One thing holds firm and fast-
That into his fateful heap of days and deeds
The soul of man is cast.

Edwin Markham

Trivia: I love this poem of Edwin Markham's but he is really famous for another very short poem that my Dad used to recite all the time:

Outwitted

He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!

To read more of his poems see http://www.sjsu.edu/reading/markham.htm

On the Job Training

Dr. Kuske gave me a nice compliment the other day about how calm and peaceful I seemed through everything. Over the last few weeks I have come to realize how much I have learned about how to gracefully live with cancer from my patients. Some of the most inspiring people I know have Cystic Fibrosis.

Adults with Cystic Fibrosis lead dual lives. On the one hand, they live with the constant threat of becoming ill even as they practice a regime of medications and airway clearance that is taxing and tiring. On the other hand, it gets old being sick, it gets boring talking about it and it gets irritating to have other people telling you what you should be doing. The worst part is when other people cry for or about you. I am done crying about having breast cancer and am ready to live with the diagnosis and the treatment.

Yet, despite having CF, many of my patients have a calm, brave spirit that does not give into the disease but accepts the reality and navigates through life with this strange companion. They have learned from the experience of having CF but it does not define them. These incredible people inspire me and provide unknowing mentorship for my life with cancer. That is a blessing that I am sure many others with cancer do not have! On the job training is a benefit of employment in a job that I love.


Kim Peet gave me a poetry book with this interesting poem written by a cancer survivor:

ENLIGHTENMENT

by Sylvia Thompson

I prayed to the Heavens

for a great teacher

dignifying, enlightening and steady.

With desperate pleas,

in silent conveyance,

that I, the student, was ready.

And so the Heavens,

obliged to my need,

sent a great teacher

to answer.

When I asked him his name,

he smiled at me warmly,

bowed down to me

and said,

CANCER.

Fortunate Lives

This morning I am still bruised and have pain to whole right chest. I have to have labs drawn this morning, pick up some copies of the last MRI's for tomorrow's appointment and see the surgeon at 2:15 pm where I will find out if the margins are clear of cancer cells. I am trying to walk a little each day for exercise using my pedometer. Yesterday I was up to 5,000 steps done in 1/2 hour sessions throughout the day. My goal is 6,000 steps today.

I am rereading Dead until Dark and watching the first season of the HBO series based on the Sookie novels, True Blood. So far I like the books better but I am an Eric fan and the HBO Eric is pretty cute.

I found this poem that my daughter, Ali, wrote in high school. I thought I would share.

Fortunate Lives
by Ali Overgaard

Appearances are deceiving
For the windows of the mansion on the hill
Appear to sparkle in the evening sun
Yet inside, no children play
No laughter rings
No lovers dream or whisper
Secret fears.
These jewels are worn
Unseen in the village house
Where the light shines
Not for those outside, but
Warms those who come within.
No one is happy who does not think himself so.

The Winds of Fate

This poem is by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

One ship drives east and another drives west

With the selfsame winds that blow.

'Tis the set of the sails

And not the gales

Which tells us the way to go.

***

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,

As we voyage along through life:

'Tis the set of the soul

That decides its goal,

And not the calm or the strife.

***

When my girls were growing up I would I say to them each morning, "Decide right now what kind of day you are going to have." I've tried to live that credo as well. It is not easy nor did I always achieve it but practicing that conscious decision made it easier to do over the years.

***

Now that I know I have cancer, it is even more important to set my sails and decide my own course as best as I can and not let the calm or the strife be what pushes me along. I hope I can do it. I have to try.

***

TRIVIA: Ella Wheeler Wilcox was an American popular poet at the turn of the last century. (A popular poet is one that critics don't like but other people do.) Her most enduring work was "Solitude", which contains the lines: "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone". She also wrote the lines: "Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes" which was a line popularized by Jack Kerouac.

Imagining the Sphere

A comment from my friend Kathryn Sabadosa brought to mind this favorite poem of mine. Thanks Kathryn!

Happiness is like a crystal,

fair and exquisite and clear ,

broken in a million pieces,

shattered, scattered far and near.

Now and then along life's pathway.

Lo! some shining fragments fall,

but there are so many pieces,

no one ever finds them all.



Yet the wise as on they journey

treasure every fragment clear,

fit them as they may together,

learning to be thankful,

though their share of it is small,

for it has so many pieces,

no one ever finds them all.



Poem by Priscilla Leonard AKA Emily Bissell.

I have always loved this poem thinking it a great accomplishment to find the little bits of happiness in each day. This is my goal for this weekend...to look around for all the things that I might have missed.

TRIVIA: Emily Bissell was not only a poet but has another claim to fame. She made a name for herself at a young age as the founder of Wilmington's (DE) first public kindergarten and for her efforts to introduce child labor laws in the state of Deleware. She also introduced the Christmas Seal Campaign to the U.S. in 1907 as a way to raise money to help people with TB.

"Cancer is not just about one person."

Wise words from my friend Shirley.

On the Sunday before the surgery, Corey and I had a cookout with my family and good friends Michelle and Shirley in the backyard. Our backyard has been the site of many happy times! Sunday was no different.

Shirley, Michelle, my daughter Ali, and I were sitting in the family room by the french doors when Ali looked at Michelle and they both teared up soon to followed by Shirley and myself. Shirley, who qualifies as an expert in this area, observed, "That's the thing about cancer, it doesn't just affect one person."

Cancer means that nothing in your life will ever be the same. When you hear the diagnosis - you know that in some way your vision of the future has shifted and nothing will ever look as it did or as it might have. You may walk the same path and see the same things that you saw yesterday but they just do not look the same. You drive the same places, pay the same bills, read the same magazines and except for the endless procedures and therapies, you are living in the same city and state as you did yesterday, but you know that nothing will ever be quite the same again.

For a while the road not taken has been mostly my choice. To paraphrase Robert Frost, I could peer down one path or another as far as I could see and choose the one that looked most fair. For now, I fear the path will be chosen for me, and "knowing how way leads on to way", I doubt I will be back to this great spot again.

Read Robert Frost's Complete Poem:
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/frost_road.html

Fortune Like the Moon

O Fortuna!
Velut Luna
Statu variablis
Semper Crescis
aut Decresis.

(From a poem I read in Latin Class in High School)

Oh, Fortune!
Like the moon, changing.
Forever waxing and waning.