Words From A Wise Woman

Being on interferon (anti-cancer drugs) has given me some level of insomnia, not to mention pain, discomfort, nausea, and a host of other fun side effects.  My appetite has been poor which led me to getting my liver function tested today, and fortunately my liver enzymes weren't too high but flagged as elevated.  They are keeping me on the drug for now, and secretly I really wish they'd take me off of it for a while for the sake of comfort.  The fatigue has worsened, I know, how bad can fatigue be though?  The best way I can describe it is like this:  If you took half a bottle of Nyquil, had 3 hours of sleep the night before, worked out for 2 hours, drank a glass of wine, have the flu, and your extremities feel like they weigh 500 lbs each....that's kind of the fatigue I'm talking about.  All. The. Time.  

I don't want to go on a complaining fest, so I'll bring you up to speed on the other tests:  My biopsy came back benign!!  There was a suspicious spot on the back of my right leg, so the doctor removed a chunk of my right leg (ugh, no fun!) as a biopsy.  Thankfully no further action is needed, but now the spot needs to heal.  It gets kind of uncomfortable from time to time, but hopefully it will heal up soon.  I also had my CT scan last week where I got to drink 2 liters of this gross orange flavored barium chalk before going in to get scanned.  The tech/nurse who gave me the CT wasn't very careful trying to put the IV in my arm, and long story short, it went bad pretty quickly.  She tried shoving it in several times (which hurt!) then left it alone to start a new IV, that one worked long enough to put the contrast in and then I got scanned.  When she slid me out, I looked down and my arm had bled everywhere....all over the floor, the table, and my arm.  I looked like a gun shot victim!  She apologized and wiped my arm down, then let me go.  The CT scan came back clear, so praise the Lord for that!  I get another one in three months....I think I may bring my own nurse this time, ha!

I could fill up this blog with loads of random thoughts, prayers (which feel like the Psalms most days), hospital stories, cancer humor (I could probably do an entire entry on the humor that occurs when living with cancer), and just the challenges of adjustment.  However, in the midst of my insomnia, my roommate lent me a book which I've nearly finished reading called "Passion & Purity" by Elisabeth Elliot.  Elisabeth Elliot is a twice widowed follower of Jesus Christ, losing her first husband as he was martyred by the Acua indian tribe in Ecuador where they served as missionaries - then losing her second husband to cancer.  It's been a wonderful book for me to read in this season of life, and very encouraging.  I'm convinced that if Jim Elliot, Elisabeth's first husband, went to my church, I'm pretty sure the elders would give him a good talking to though!  He was incredibly devoted to Christ, but seemed like such a confused young guy at times when it came to being decisive about his relationship with Elisabeth (and what girl doesn't love to read a good missions love story!).  It's helped me see that we are indeed ALL flawed human beings in desperate need of God for His wisdom and grace.  I can't do the book justice, so here is an excerpt from the last chapter:

By Elisabeth Elliot -

I know a young man - I'll call him Philpott - who over the past five or six years seems to have made a career of falling in and out of love.  He's a very attractive man and seems able to pick and choose from an eager group of attractive and eminently available women.  He wrote to me recently to say that he'd done it again.  Fallen out of love with a girl we'll call Cheryl.  "Darn it all," he said, "here I thought I'd found my dream girl but 'it didn't work out.' Just couldn't maintain the feelings."  Here's my reply:

     About this business of falling out of love.  Everybody does it, you know.  Sometimes before they get married, but always afterwards.  Modern folks simply bug out of the marriage then, if they feel no obligation to keep vows - vows made foolishly, they believe.
     There is something to be said for making an adult choice and sticking with it.  "Being in love," wrote C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, "is a good thing, but it is not the best thing.  There are many things below it, but there are also things above it.  You cannot make it the basis of a whole life.  It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling.  Now now feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all....In fact, the state of being in love usually does not last.....But of course ceasing to be 'in love' need not mean ceasing to love.  Love.....is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit;  reinforced by the grace which both partners ask and receive from God.... They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be 'in love' with someone else.  'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity:  this quieter love enables them to keep their promise.  It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run:  being in love was the explosion that started it."
     So, Philpott, one of these days you need to take a cool, clear look at a good Christian woman.  Assess her potentials as a good Christian wife.  Is she the kind you'd want as a hostess at your table?  Is she what you want for a mother for your children?  Is she womanly?  Godly?  Sensible?  Modest?  Companionable?  Do you think she's "worth" your love?  Are you worth hers?  (If you think you are, you're probably wrong. Each is to esteem the other better than himself.)  Is it God's time for you to get married?  Then make up your mind and ask God's help to love her as she ought to be loved.
     You said, "One never knows which way the Lord will lead," and that's true.  He just might be telling you to "be not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding...." (Psalm 32:9) and get with it.
     Don't get me wrong.  I have no idea that Cheryl is The Woman.  Don't know a thing about her except that you said she's gorgeous.  That isn't enough.  But if you're looking for some kind of feeling that will be consistent day in and day out, forget it.  The kind of love that sustains a marriage is God given, but it is also a daily choice.  For the rest of your life.  Never forget that.
     You have to choose the woman, with all the brains and good sense you've got, plus all the other methods of knowing what God wants of you (you've read my little book, A Slow and Certain Light, about guidance, haven't you?) and then make your move.  You have my prayers.


I don't know about you, but reading this from the pen of an 86 year old woman who has survived being twice widowed and married a third time to her now husband - gives me so much encouragement, and also gives me the courage to trust God not just with my heart, but to trust Him with my life.  I can trust God to know that somehow, ALL of this is for His good.  He wants me to learn and grow, to be more like Christ in this season.  What a wise lady!

Anyhow, I've been back at work this week, which has been great!  I've mostly been working half days in the office, and half the day at home while working from home the days after my injections.  The injections are rough, but it isn't forever.  I really don't want to be defeated by these drugs, which is tough to convince myself of it half the time....but I'm thankful for those around me who have been so very understanding of my condition as I weather this storm.  I heard a quote recently that I loved - "You can't stop the waves but you can learn to surf."  I believe this is so true...and to know that Jesus is the one who calms our waves gives me even more comfort.  I can't understand God, my mind is far too small to understand the Creator of the universe, but I can trust that since He created it, there is something far greater at work than I can see.  Something with a purpose.

For I am the Lord your God, who churns up the sea so that its waves roar - the Lord Almighty is his name. - Isaiah 51:15, NIV

Oh, and PS - Elisabeth Elliot was a blond!  :-)  I just loved that!

I'd Make A Terrible Heroin Addict

I walked into the National Rehabilitation Hospital carrying a styrofoam cooler full of anti-cancer drugs, they really don't weigh much (thank goodness!).  I signed my name down on the notepad of patients to be seen, then picked up my box and sat down in the row of chairs.  People were coming and going to physical therapy.  Many of the people I see in the "gym" at physical therapy are the unsung heroes of the battle.  You look around, and see men of women of all different shapes, sizes, race, age, etc., all learning how to regain use of their physical strength.  You see brave men and/or women learning to walk again after tragic accidents or surgeries.  You see people learning how to use a new wheelchair, pick up pennies after hand injuries, and improve their hand-eye coordination after brain traumas.  I have only a couple more weeks of physical therapy as recuperation from my surgery in November when all the muscles in my left arm were cut (to remove 15 lymph nodes).  

There is this one man who I see in there regularly, an older handsome man, maybe in his 50's.  He looks well kept.  He appears to be a stroke victim as he gets around in a wheelchair and he has severe tremors in his hands.  He cannot form coherent sentences, though he had a sweet spirit about him.  For some reason, watching this man learning to push a towel back and forth on table from his wheelchair captured my attention.  I thought about what his life must have been like, how it must be for him to lose his independence.  Maybe once a man who earned for himself, provided for a family, well developed mind, and now it's all different.  I looked around and saw that each person in the physical therapy "gym" has a story.  

Truth is, life just throws curveballs sometimes.  We can't always understand, but we learn to depend on God.  Sometimes knowing the "why" just prevents us from having faith.  Moreover, I'm learning the "ministry of dependence" myself.  It's not always easy to let people serve you, do things for you, wait on you.  You want your independence, your personal dignity, to be useful, to have the confidence to go and see and do, to be valued, to be desired.  

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. - 1 Peter 5:10, NIV (emphasis mine)

Our suffering is temporary, Christ is eternal.

I finished up my morning of physical therapy, and dragged my cooler of drugs over to the Cancer Institute across the street to learn how to administer my half-dose injections.  Giving an injection of interferon is a massive production.  You have to super clean everything....the glass bottles, the syringe, your skin.  Then you have to mix and measure the medication, if you do it wrong - you could wind up giving yourself too much or not enough, or contaminating everything.  The nurse had to teach me to do the whole process myself since I will be responsible for giving myself interferon injections three times a week for 40 weeks (every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday).  And yes, I have to GIVE MYSELF A SHOT!!  Ugh!  She had to watch me give myself the shot before I left so she could sign a paper saying I'm capable of giving the injections to myself.  If I couldn't, then I'm majorly stuck when I have to give myself the shot on Saturdays and the Infusion Center is closed.  I mixed the medicine, drew it back in the syringe, made sure the needle was on properly, and pinched a part of my stomach........I couldn't do it.  I just couldn't do it!!!  I half-tried, because it feels completely counter intuitive to stab yourself in the stomach with a sharp needle, and bled a little.  So we had to get a new needle, then on the other side of my stomach the same thing happened.  I was now on needle number three and having to stab my right thigh this time.  I paused and asked the nurse, "Have you ever had any patient that you've taught this procedure to, go through three needles?" (at this point I kept apologizing, and tears welled up in my eyes because I was getting so nervous that I wouldn't be able to do it AT ALL) The nurse replied, "No ma'am, you're the only one."  Oh. Great.  I'm the patient who has had the worst time trying to stab myself with a needle out of all the patients that have come and gone in the Cancer Institute.  No one likes to fail at things, and I can be competitive, but this was a task I was failing at big time!  I'd make a terrible heroin addict, absolutely terrible.

So per usual, the awful side effects resumed - aches, fever, chills, pain, headaches, nausea, skin burn, etc.  It's like setting a bomb off inside your body, a Hiroshima type of bomb that kills cancer.  Your body isn't usually a fan, and it will let you know.  The fatigue is expected to remain level, and my doctor doesn't think I will be capable of exercising while I'm on interferon (yes, for 40 weeks).  I hope I can prove him wrong, but I can tell you the awful fatigue is absolutely debilitating.  Simple tasks become a consumer of all of your energy.  Everything seems to wear you out, and the times when I'd normally say "mind over matter" and just buckle down and push through physically tough tasks.....well, you just can't do that, the strength is simply just not there.  I'd been an athlete for a good chunk of my life, reaching heights of world class competition, I know how to negotiate with my body and push myself even when I don't think I can.  But when it comes to pushing through on these drugs, it is incredibly frustrating for the strength to just not be there.  And pushing on means I'm not letting my body rest.  I read the verse that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13), and I know it's true.  However, in this season, it is clear God is asking me to rest - and rest in Him.  No matter how much I wish it wasn't true, He has humbled me to only go to Him in my dependence.  It is there, I learn this reality of this:

But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. - 2 Corinthians 12:9, NIV

I'm learning, my friends/family are learning, we're all learning - all the time.  And more importantly, I'm learning how to weather this storm.  Thankfully God is working through so many around me, and He speaks to me greatly through His word.  Today, though I feel weak, and I want to get back to my job (I miss my job!), I'm thankful.  My oncologist has said to take another week of rest, and I'm hopeful to get back to work on Monday February 25, so please pray that I can endure and do well.  My employer has been incredibly understanding, and it has been such a huge blessing.  God has been so kind, and I'm praying for His grace one little step at a time.  Only 118 more injections to go until there are NO more....

I Survived!

There are some days of my life I will never forget, and Friday February 1, 2013 can be added to that list.  I'm not entirely sure what it's like for a soldier to come home from battle, but I can tell you I've "come home" after a different type of battle.  For the last two days, I've slept and slept and slept.  I've felt so exhausted.  For the last couple of weeks, the fatigue has been pretty bad, but the last two days my body has been on strike!  If I've been slow to respond or not answering emails, please consider this my apology.  Sometimes the simplest tasks have taken such great energy.  Today, I tried to exercise and was only able to complete 5 minutes on the elliptical after feeling completely exhausted.  But I'm quick to remind myself, the battle I've endured is one God has prepared me for:

Praise be to the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.  He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me. O Lord, what is man that you care for him, the son of man that you think of him?  Man is like a breath; his days are like a fleeting shadow. - Psalm 144:1-4, NIV

In this season of exhaustion and fatigue, God is using it to remind me of being more of a Mary than a Martha.  Always a huge lesson for me to learn, God isn't One to be appeased with my performance.  He is to be pleased with my heart, just me being me.

Ironically, my oncologist wanted my blood tested on Friday - my last day of treatment.  My appetite has been poor, so he ordered the test.  My liver enzymes were sky high again (at 190 and 121), so they couldn't give me the anti-cancer drugs on Friday.  I was actually so relieved, I had felt pretty sick to my stomach and was so ready to be done with IV drugs.  For the last month, I've endured countless IVs, needles, injections, blood tests, side effects, and drugs.  My right arm looks and feels bruised and mangled from so many IVs and blood draws.  I'll even spare you from hearing about all of the side effects I've been weathering, but let's just say they don't make you feel all that pretty! Ha!

The nurses in the Infusion Center really do make all the difference in the world.  My two nurses, Christina and Nina, were absolutely awesome.  I can't say it enough, nurses are really used by God to spur you on in the ugly moments when you want to throw in the towel.  I liked to joke with them a lot, to keep it lighthearted.  I would always kid with Kathleen, the lady who took my vitals each day, when she'd finish taking my vitals, I'd say, "I'm not dying am I, Kathleen?" And she'd always say, "No Miss Baum!  You are NOT dying, stop that!"  Haha! They all got together and signed the back of a certificate for me, which I'll have for a long time:

After a quick IV of Zofran, they all gave me a hug, and I was out of there!!!!!  My friend Sarah drove me home, and when I got home, my Mom had cooked an awesome meal.  She also cleaned everything as a surprise for my birthday.  I can't even begin to describe what an awesome feeling it was to walk out of the Infusion Center for the last time, I couldn't believe it.  I had made it.  The most traumatizing, challenging, and grueling month of my life, I survived.  It was done.  I finished high dose, the worst month of treatment for anyone with stage 3 malignant melanoma.

So, now what?  Well, my body has to recover from the high dose IVs of Interferon drugs.  So this week, we are hoping my blood platelets return to normal as well as my white blood cell count and my liver enzyme levels.  Then I hope to try to return to work, and on February 12 I start half-dose injections of Interferon.  The half-dose injections should be much less intense, although the oncologist said the fatigue would probably continue and hair loss can often occur in the 3rd and 4th months.  The clinic will teach me to do them myself, and they will be administered three times a week for 40 weeks.  If the fatigue gets to be too much, they will have to take me off of the drug all together.  So we'll see.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to putting ALL of this behind me someday.  I've already saved up money to go on a vacation when treatment is completely done (and thanks to US Airways for writing me a $650 check at Christmas time when they bumped me off of my flight!).  God provided, and I can't wait!  Not sure where I'll go....maybe back to Hawaii, or maybe Costa Rica, who knows.  I'm still figuring out how all of this fits in with my life, and what it means for everyone around me.  One thing I still know for sure is that God has never abandoned me, and He is incredibly kind and patient with me.

I also just wanted to say thank you to you.  Thank you for every person that has prayed for me and/or my family.  Thank you for each person who has sent a card(s), bible verses, text messages, emails, FB posts, Instagram comments, and tweets.  Thank you for the countless flowers which kept the house looking joyful and beautiful.  Thank you for those who came to visit me and cheer me up.  Thank you for each person who came to treatment with me, taking a day out of your life to cheer me on and let God use you to lift me up.  Thank you to those who came to stay with me through the night as I tossed and turn from high fevers and pain.  Thank you for the gifts of thoughtfulness and generosity.  And just thank you for believing I could get through this.