Can I Keep It?

Lost and Found

Okay.  I found the pictures.  They are saved to the camera, not the camera card.  Ugh.  How in the Sam Hill did that happen?  At least they aren't lost.  I hope to show you my fun weekend after I get a cord to download them. 

Wings Cancer Center had a small meet and greet today for Sean Swarner.  He's a two time cancer survivor who has climbed to the top of the world seven times.  Once he completes going to the North and South Poles, he will have won the climbing Super Bowl.  He'll be the first man to complete all of the great peaks of the Earth.

 

 

When Sean was thirteen, he was given four months to live.  But despite the fears of his doctors, he survived.  His body was sixty pounds overweight.  He was bald.  Sean didn't mind that people stared.  He cared that they didn't understand what he was going through.  His father bought him a green t-shirt emblazoned on the front with the words, "I don't always look like this...".  The back read, "I'm on chemo."  The stares turned to questions of compassion and concern.   That shirt was passed on to another child when he completed his treatments.  It was to be passed forward to the next as a talisman for success.

At last count, the doctors said the shirt had been given to thirty children.  All cancer free.

Several years later, when Sean had turn sixteen, he had a routine cancer screening.  The doctors found a new sarcoma in his lung.  It was an aggressive form.  They gave him fourteen days to live.  Not from the cancer, but from the treatment.  He was put into a medically induced coma.  His entire sixteenth year was spent sleeping.  While his friends were out picking up girls and getting a driver's license, he was perusing dreams. 

And getting better.

After a complete recovery, he put the cancer in his past.  Sean went to college.  Had some fun.  A lot of fun.

Slowly, he realized that he was the person he had become because of his cancer.  He needed a new challenge.  He scaled Everest.  Denali.  Kilamanjaro.  All seven of the highest places in the world. 

Sean quotes, "Humans can survive thirty days without food.  The human condition can exist three days without water, but it cannot exist thirty seconds without hope."

Sean has been cancer free for ninteen years.

He passed out bracelets that read, "Keep climbing".  I'm wearing mine right now.

I remember telling one of friends that I was given the summer off.  I was cancer free for two months.  She said, "See?  You can do anything!  You should climb Everest!"

I told her, "I think I just did."

Funny

...or not.  Yesterday, I received some bad news about a dear friend's mom and skin cancer.  You all know how much I hate those two words used simultaneously.  She's on the mend, but the prognosis is not clear yet.  If you're out there, please send her all the good and happy thoughts you can muster. 

To the woman I grew up with, my beloved friend, the best friend I could ever have hoped for these many years, I wish you strength and peace and love to deal with this struggle. 

Some things are out of our control. 

Stay out of the sun.  Wear sunscreen if you do.  Know your body. 

It will keep you from having to deal with this shit, crap, poop.

Perfectionist

I crawled up the staircase on my hands and knees, scooping up the tufts of Carmen fur nesting in the corners of the steps.  This after sweeping yesterday and vacuuming two days before.  It is a never ending battle with cleanliness.  Schyterbolle, sadly, will not ever find itself in the godliness category.

As I rounded the top, I pondered over perfectionism.  It must be terrible to be greeted by the imperfection of the world every single day.  I wandered past Carmen, sleeping on her bed in front of the fan to toss the fistful of her fur in the trashcan.  She didn't wake when I stroked her fuzzy head. I love that hairy old dog because of all that she is. Her life is perfect.  Picking up a pound of hair a day is worth her company.

I try to view the world as a magical place.  I wonder at the miracles of difference.  I strain to see the quiddity of imperfection.

This tiny bunny is perfection.

It would be a lie to say I am immune to the ways of perfectionism.  This week, I succumbed to my own imperfections.  I have shunned tan skin since the diagnosis of my cancer twenty months ago.  It was my badge of survivorship when someone would poke fun at my pasty white legs.  But every time I gazed at my face in the mirror, I felt ugly.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.  I faux-tanned this week.  I bought some Jergens daily tanning lotion and Tan Towels and I changed the color of my skin.

Immediately, the compliments started rolling in. 

You look terrific!  Did you lose weight?

You look beautiful today.

Your skin is fantastic in that color blue.

It was the same for me when I first turned gray and colored my hair.  Even my own mother, who was horrified by the thought that I had become a red head finally saw me, she said, "You know, I guess God does make the occasional mistake."

I rather liked my graying hair at the tender age of thirty-two.  Other people didn't see it my way. 

Are you okay?  Do you need to sit down?

Wow.  You're thirty-two?

You look tired.  You're not coming down with something are you?

When my favorite clerk in the check out line at the grocery store said she was afraid I was about to fall out, I caved and made an appointment at the salon.  

I have tried valiantly to embrace my imperfections, love all parts of myself, even when others don't.  But this week, I have decided that I am an artist.  My job is to paint.  Now I'm just doing it on my body. 

We'll call it a performance piece on the manipulation of perfection.

*The cute little guy yawning is from zooborns.

Bless-ed

When I was very young, I sat on the back porch at my grandmother's house in Mississippi, sobbing over my recently deceased kitten.  I railed against God.  My great-grandmother asked if I had prayed for it's tiny soul.  "Yeth!" I cried with a lisp, "And God didn't answer my prayers!"  My great-grandmother gathered up my tear soaked face in her calloused palms and sighed, "Yes, He does, Angel...  No is an answer."

 

I've never forgotten that moment.  I was three. 

I have said many prayers over the last year and a half.  Today I got one answered with a "yes".  My breast surgeon gave me a clean bill of health.  My mammogram was unremarkable.  I don't have to go back for another whole year.

One more milestone.  One more release.  One more sigh of relief. 

One more prayer answered.

Summer Vacation

For the past year and a half, Hud and I have been to see a doctor about cancer every. single. month.  It's been long winding path cowering under the dark clouds of pathology.  Eighteen months of questionable reports.  540 days of learning patience and courage.

We went to see Dr. Trautman this morning for yet another cancer screening.  One of the receptionist's joked that we were at the office so often that they should give us a key so we could let ourselves in.  I retorted to her that I would like my paper gowns monogrammed.  

But today, the most wonderful thing happened.  Dr. Trautman couldn't find anything he wanted to keep.  Not a scary colored lump.   A ragged edge to be perturbed about.  Nothing.

He gave us a gift.  I do not have to return to his offices for four whole months.  We get to take the summer off! 

As we left the medical center, storm clouds churned in the airs all around us.  I hugged Hud and stepped into my car.  Feeling good, I defied the clouds and took the top down for the ride home. 

I drove all the way to Schyterbolle in the bright spring sunshine.  All around me, the skies were boiling black, but a single ray sliced its way through the darkness and paved the way home for me.

As the Mustang pulled around the oak tree into the curving drive, the clouds disappeared.  The hydrangeas, lilies and roses shone like gemstones. The kids were all smiles when I broke the news.

Leaving Dr. Trautman's offices usually has me feeling as if my feet are lead and inky tar bubbles angrily in my chest.  My tears feel like gasoline brimming under the surface of my eyelids.

Today, I felt the child in me, remembering that first sweet day of freedom as I tumbled out of the schoolroom into the light of summer.

I felt joyful.