Ripples

The blog address came from an earlier title I tried for this blog. Didn’t work. The new title is a better reflection of me – and if you’re here, I hope it’s a reflection of you… http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/search/label/Introductions

While my daughter doesn’t often blog on her 20: A Journey of Hope, she does on her other site (http://think.o-my-soul.net/). Currently on the right hand side is her twitterfeed regarding a car accident she and I witnessed.

An elderly woman was driving her very nice car south on Washington Ave, parallel to Interstate 94 at about 4:30 PM. I’d picked my daughter up from Augsburg College where she’d just spent eight hours of attending classes in biopsychology and research methods. Traffic was light. We were chatting.

Many people use Washington to skip the heavy traffic feeding on to the interstate directly from the downtown Minneapolis area. They take it for a short jaunt through the fascinating businesses in the old Warehouse District, then enter the ramp at 22^nd by crossing a usually light southbound lane of traffic.

I think the elderly woman missed the ramp, got on to the next stretch that runs between 26^th and Lowry and then, thinking the ramp was there, simply veered into oncoming traffic, looking for the ramp. She said to another bystander that she thought it was the turn on to Lowry she was making (and the Washington was a one way?). At any rate, what we saw was the woman’s car swerve deliberately into two oncoming cars.

My daughter says we experienced vicarious dissonance, “a type of vicarious discomfort resulting from imagining oneself in the speaker’s position, leading to efforts to restore consonance”. In other words, we couldn’t believe that the woman was driving that way because we KNEW that that kind of driving couldn’t happen. We KNEW she should be in the northbound lane.

The resulting head-on collisions destroyed both her car and badly damaged the other two. I was “first on the scene” and called 911, gave the address to dispatch then waited for the police to arrive -- moments later. Eventually, I reported what I saw to police officer in charge after the arrival of two squad cars and a fire truck. Then my daughter and I moved on to home, deeply shaken.

As I drove, I thought about the accident and the effects it would have. Aside from burning itself into my daughter’s mind – she just got her license a bit over a week ago – and my own, the lives of the people in those cars will be irrevocably affected as well. The young Asian man whose older model car doubtless carries only collision insurance is now car-less and likely will get piddly cash from the insurance company after endless wrangling over whether he caused the accident or not. The woman in the Volkswagen Beetle will experience the same thing, though by the newness of the car, it likely has more insurance.

And the elderly woman? Will she ever drive again? Will lawsuits (most likely formed by lawyerly vultures wishing to sue everyone in sight and retained by the elderly woman’s wealthy friends, cause the blame to fall on everyone but the woman) be brought, fought and bought? Who's going to come and pick up all of the victims and bring them home? Did any of them go to the hospital or just go home because their insurance doesn’t pay for something as minor as a non-lethal car accident?

Ripples.

What does a car accident on a Thursday afternoon have to do with breast cancer? Those of you who are THERE can easily guess. Those of you who are not, might consider this: the girlfriend of a good college friend of my daughter; has a mother who was just diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. Who next? How will the girlfriend's life change? And that of her father? Aunts? Uncles? Siblings?

Ripples, ripples, ripples…

image: http://priyaneelam.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/arnie-rosner-water-drop-and-ripples.jpg

When the Calm Descends

The blog address came from an earlier title I tried for this blog. Didn’t work. The new title is a better reflection of me – and if you’re here, I hope it’s a reflection of you…http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/search/label/Introductions

Everyone knows that hurricanes have eyes: “The eye is a region of mostly calm weather found at the center of strong tropical cyclones. The eye of a storm is a roughly circular area and typically 20–40 miles in diameter. It is surrounded by the eyewall, a ring of towering thunderstorms where the most severe weather of a cyclone occurs. The cyclone's lowest barometric pressure occurs in the eye, and can be as much as 15% lower than the atmospheric pressure outside the storm.” (wiki reference).

It’s easy to say that the past six months have left the impression on our lives of hurricane-like disaster. Panic, pain, disruption, breakdown, and exhaustion left us wrung out and completely out of our normal world.

Medical help surrounded us.

Sympathy was everywhere.

Then the chemo ended and my wife has rarely felt better – she certainly feels better than she has for the past year!

My secret worry though is wondering if we are in the eye or at the trailing edge of the hurricane. The calm that we feel may be the relief of seeing the hurricane move on past us – and the queasy feeling that it is wreaking havoc, destruction and despair on the cities farther north. The hurricane that devastated our normal life has moved on but new victims lie in its path. (My wife wrote about just this experience in her Caringbridge blog – click on the link to your right and scroll down to the June 15 entry)

But that calm may also be the one at the center of the storm.

I pray it is the first, but deep down inside, I worry if it’s the second. A good friend of mine who is going through the storm with his wife finished the initial chemo to find a month later that they are now in a battle against bone cancer lesions all over her skeleton that require radiation treatment. I wept for them when we first heard – and I now in utter selfishness, pray that this will not happen to us. I pray that we are waving goodbye to the hurricane and while I do not for one instant WISH this monster on anyone; I am breathing deeply and giving thanks that it is moving away from us.

I continue to cultivate confidence.

image: http://chemistry.csudh.edu/faculty/jim/cozmay06best/wilma.jpg

Days That Changed Life As We Know It...

The blog address came from an earlier title I tried for this blog. Didn’t work. The new title is a better reflection of me – and if you’re here, I hope it’s a reflection of you…http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/search/label/Introductions

Ten years old, we were ten years younger.

Breast cancer was ten years in our future.

My wife was home schooling that day. I was in my science classroom. Melissa Kyle had a social studies room in the science circle and was across the hall and kitty corner to my right.

The sun was shining.

The birds were singing.

It was a stunning September day. More stunning than we expected.

The first hint that anything was wrong was when my wife called to say that Josh had come running up from the basement to say that a jet had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.

What a naïve statement. That was all anyone knew. “A jet had crashed into the World Trade Center.” Those were the last innocent words of September 11, 2001. Everything changed after that and not one of us has remained untouched; not even my 14 month old grandson. He was born into a world that cringed every time an airplane went off course. He was born into a world where identities are checked, double-checked then checked again. He was born into a world where the nursery was locked, double-locked and then IDs of mother, child, parents, grandparents and everyone else was checked…because you never know.

I KNOW the world has changed again and again and again. “The day that will live in infamy…” changed everything. The assassination of JFK changed everything. The explosion of the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima changed everything. The first heart transplant changed everything. The harnessing of fire changed everything.

We live in a world where something is changing everything all the time.

One hundred and seventy days ago – March 26, 2011 – was the day that changed the life of my wife and the rest of our family. The confirmation of breast cancer forced us to confront something we had heard all about but rarely mattered to us in a deeply personal way.

Nine years and three-hundred and sixty-four days ago, was the day that changed the life of every American (and the families and friends of 372 foreign nationals from 56 different countries). Terrorism was part of the life of every Israeli, every inhabitant of India, every Spaniard, every Iraqui. We knew that, but it rarely mattered to us in a deeply personal way.

On this Patriot Day, I think about the things I know about that don’t matter to me and I will try to care; and I will definitely pray for those whose lives have collided with breast cancer and family loss – and Lupus, skin cancer, CP and autism. Those are the things I can think of.

What can you think of?

Image: http://www.nycinsiderguide.com/image-files/ground-zero-9-11-memorial.jpg

An End to Chemotherapy

The blog address came from an earlier title I tried for this blog. Didn’t work. The new title is a better reflection of me – and if you’re here, I hope it’s a reflection of you…http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/search/label/Introductions

My wife went in for her last chemotherapy on Tuesday.

You might think it would be cause for massive celebrations, phone calls to everyone and cheering in the streets.

You might be wrong.

This “last time” WAS a milestone! Don’t get me wrong – we DO celebrate. We are thankful in our hearts. We brought donut holes. They gave my wife a Graduation From Chemotherapy Diploma – as I said to friend of mine, “It was wonderful – though I wouldn’t wish the circumstances on ANYONE. But it was wonderful!” The staff at the infusion center are wonderful. The facility is stunning. The professionalism is epitomy.

But it wasn’t what I thought it would be. I’d tell you what really happened, but then I’d give away my little secret, so I’ll save that for some later day. The fact is that it’s over.

And then there are those two words: for now.

After this, there are tests, doctor visits and the irritation of the port doesn’t get removed until they decide on the treatment she needs and when she decides she wants it out. The hair doesn’t start growing back for another four months or so. She’ll be on estrogen-suppresing pills for the next five years. She’ll stop taking some of the drugs, but no one has given her the go ahead to DUMP whatever is left over.

She just said to me, “I hurt so badly.”

Why? The neulasta, a drug that dramatically increases the production of white blood cells so that her immune system isn’t compromised and she pick up some opportunistic infection – has a protein component that is the same as the one is found in rheumatoid arthritis…and so she has symptoms for a few days that mimic rheumatoid arthritis.

While she won’t have to deal with THAT for the foreseeable future, there are, of course other things she’ll have to deal with. The thing is that we don’t know WHAT those things are.

Where was the dancing in the streets? Where were the cheers? Where was the champagne? There was none because this is all just “the next step”. When will she be declared cancer free? What about the friend of hers who went through virtually the same treatment – and then discovered she had bone cancer? What is in the “unforeseeable future”?

We don’t know.

For now, we consider a REAL celebration in December, around her birthday when she has “fuzz” on her head and we are farther from the March Hell.

Until then, we move forward and continue to live in the New Normal.

Image: http://blog.nj.com/giants_scene/2008/02/paradeparade.JPG