Whatever Could Be Next?

Tamoxifen. That's what.

I've been kind of nervous the last few months about Tamoxifen. Way more nervous than I was about radiation--which I wasn't that nervous about, though. Mostly I'm nervous about going into early menopause. I'm not sure why. I don't plan to have children and I am not a terrific fan of The Cycle, so you would think I might kind of be looking forward to this prospective side effect or something.

But I guess I feel like I will be aging my body before its time. While I don't consider 50 to be old, exactly, I do consider myself to be not-50, and I don't want my body to be all acting like it's 50 when it isn't. Also, one time I was on the Pill to treat my acne, and it didn't help that at all, but it did make me very sick. I'm now kind of afraid that anything that messes with my hormones will mess with my entire body.

So I voicemailed the Nurse Practitioner. I haven't seen her in a long time and I like her, and I thought maybe I could chat to her about some of my concerns. I said, "I'm a little nervous about Tamoxifen, and I am planning on taking it, but I wondered if I could maybe ask you a few questions about it."

She emailed me back: "Attached are a couple of handouts I use in my high risk clinic that I developed on Tamoxifen..see if they answer your questions...if not let me know and we'll see what else we can come up with..."

I was okay with this until I read them and learned that I could also develop blood clots and deep vein thrombosis. Who knew? After that I thought, "This was probably not the best approach for dealing with someone who has just admitted they're nervous about the prospect to begin with."

Then, a few weeks later I was in the bank changing tip change into bills for Starbucks and the Bank Ladies asked me how I was doing. "I'm doing okay," I said. "I'm almost done with radiation. But I have to start Tamoxifen soon. I'm actually a little more nervous about that."

"Yeah," said a Bank Lady seriously. "My mother had to take that. And she did get uterine cancer from it, but the great thing is that they monitor you all the time, so they can catch stuff like that right away."

?!

If we didn't have the right to free speech, I would not be able to write this blog, but sometimes I think that people should be prevented from talking without a license.

The Last Day

I feel that I should follow up this post with one that tells how it actually turned out:

I did not get a convenient parking space. BUT . . . I did get my favourite dressing room and some not-too-faded gowns and a warm blanket without asking. I also got a little computer-printed "diploma" to certify that I had completed my prescribed radiation treatment, with the names of all the technicians on it, and tied with a little blue bow. That was better than a bouquet of hazardous toiletries, by a long shot. Also--takes up less space.

Just Like Magic

So, you know when people talk about "kids these days" texting all the time. It is really true.

Ever since I started my job at New Church, I've been trying to figure out the best way to let the youth (and leaders) know about upcoming events, or to get feedback about things or whatever. I tried the "group" thing on facebook (there was already a group set up, so I didn't even have to get it going). And I tried the email thing. But not every kid, evidently, checks their email. What? This does not compute . . .

Then one Sunday I was discussing with some parents how I would communicate something with their daughter and her mother said, "Just get her cell phone number and text her. She'll get right back to you."

She wasn't kidding.

I now have most of the cell numbers of the kids who at least usually come to youth group. This afternoon I found out that the church would like us to help out with some "Lenten suppers" they offer on Wednesday nights during Lent, apparently. I sent everybody an email about it. Then I decided to text them and see what happened. So far (and school isn't even out yet as far as I know), I have received 14 text messages in response to mine. There aren't even 14 kids in the group. I think over the course of the last six months, I've only received a total of 3 emails in response to about 10 of those I've sent.

I'm just happy to have been clued into this phenomenon. But I might have to up my texting capabilities on my cell phone plan . . .

One Day More

Today was supposed to be my last day of radiation, but last Friday the Other Machine (which, for the last seven sessions, has become "my" machine) was broken, so I effectively had to make up a day the way all the school kids in the Northeast are going to have to make up the rest of their lives because of all the school they've missed this winter.

So anyway, tomorrow is my last day of radiation. Did you hear that?! It's my last day of radiation!

Radiation wasn't even that bad. I got tired, but that was because last Saturday we had a lock-in with the teens at New Church, not because of radiation. Still, in spite of its being Not That Bad, I feel that some sort of celebration is in order. I think they should make "Congratulations on your weird sunburn and not having to get it anymore" cards, and maybe bouquets of hazardous aluminum-filled deodorant and bubble baths and ladies' razors and stuff. I think, though, that getting appetizers and beverages on Thursday with 409-Caitlin and various other friends is going to be just the thing in lieu of that nonsense.

However, I also think that for my last day, I should get a parking space right next to the exit door of the parking garage, and I should get to change in my favourite dressing room, and I should get "gowns" that are not faded, and I should get a warm blanket without having to ask for it.

Why do I want to be spoiled when this wasn't even hard?

Ewwww!

So today? The most disGUSTing thing that's ever happened to me at Starbucks . . . happened to me at Starbucks.

The previously most disgusting thing was five whole years ago when the sweaty dude came into the store and handed me some crumpled up bills (no wallet) from his front pocket . . . and they were wet. Bleagh.

But today?

Today a guy came in and ordered an Earl Grey, to be made in one of our ceramic cups instead of a paper "to-go" one. No problem there. Before he left the store, he put the cup back on the counter. I picked it up and took it over to the sink, talking to Mouse as I pointed the faucet over it and turned the water on to soak it.

The water hit the inner curve of the cup at such an angle that it shot straight up the other side, splattering with water and half-drunk tea my face, my neck . . . and the inside of my mouth.

When the sweaty guy handed me his moist moolah, I could (and did) wash my hands very thoroughly after that. But what do you do when someone else's saliva flies unbidden into your mouth? Pray that they don't have a communicable disease, I guess, and hang on tight . . .

The Other Blog

The Other Blog at The Other Journal is up at long last. Look! There are already four posts there!

The blog's real name is "A Wandering Line," suggested by the same KS-Christie who suggested I write for these guys. She came up with it on the basis of a poem I wrote aeons ago in our college Creative Writing class. (That one was called "The Wrong Line," and apparently she still has a copy, though I seem to have lost mine.) I like the name and find it very apt, although in one sense it does make me think of blue flashing lights in the rearview mirror and getting out and walking, as it were. Not, I hasten to add, that that has ever happened to me. (It hasn't. It just sounds like it might have.) Anyway--I don't know that any of the posts are sufficiently inspired, but you can, er, wander on over and have a look.

More Tree Mourning

The neighbourhood around New Church is starting to look sunny, which could be a good thing, except that the reason (besides the fact that there have been surprisingly few clouds for a week in January) is that there are a whole lot fewer trees to block the sun out.

I was driving down one of the side-streets the other day, after I had finished writing the article I was assigned about the Asian Longhorned Beetles (I'll link when it's published) and suddenly remembered one of the facts I had gleaned for the article: the ALB feels at home in at least 11 species of Northeastern tree, but its favourite is the maple.

A couple of times last fall I walked from New Church to the Milk Guy's house for a visit, and on the way I would pick up maple leaves that caught my eye to give to him. It suddenly struck me, that day this week, that if I manage to find myself walking from New Church to the Milk Guy's house this autumn? There will be no maple leaves. Not one. It kind of gives me a lump in my throat.

And then I thought: this is New England. The maples are what we're famous for. And if we don't take these trees down now, the whole New England forest could change for years to come. But in the meantime, isn't it sad that even one New England city has to be deprived of its glory? (In the case of this City, some people might argue its only glory . . . )

On the other hand, it reminds me of a City whose glory doesn't fade, and it reminds me to pray for that glory to come and fill my city, too . . .

Attachments

It's kind of weird what you can get attached to.

Today I got a phone call that the machine that radiates me every day was down, so could I come in earlier so they could radiate me on the Other One?

I agreed without thinking too much of it, but I've been radiated on the same machine for 24 days, and this "Other One" was not mine. The dimness in the room in which I am usually microwaved is kind of bluish; the dimness in this other room was more yellow, and everything in there looked older and the buzzing radiating noise was louder and the movable pins within the machine grated somewhat. I felt like I was in a Dharma station on the island in Lost. (This might have something to do with having just watched the season premier on Wednesday, though. You think?)

Then I found out that, because today was my last day of general-area radiation (my last seven days entailing a concentrated "boost" of radiation just to the immediate former location of the tumour), I was going to have been moved to the Other One next time anyway. So yesterday was my last day on "my" machine, and I didn't even know it. I didn't even get to say goodbye . . .

Stupid, isn't it?

The up-side is that I only have seven days left of radiation, and with the more specified focus of treatment, I can now shave again. Over the next month, I will stop looking like a victim of a strange tanning mishap. I can, if I want to, start using normal deodorant again (although if no one finally tells me that I stink more than usual, I might stick with the aluminum-free, breast-cancer-safe stuff I've been introduced to in this process). And . . . well, let's just say I never expected to look forward to certain heretofore taken-for-granted self-care habits.

Divided Loyalties

Nope. This isn't about yesterday's post.

This is about how somehow-and-thanks-to-KS-Christie (the KS stands both for Kansas, where she originates, and "Kindred Spirit," 'cause she is) I am now an official blogger at The Other Journal, an on-line journal for Mars Hill Graduate School on the West Coast. (Only you can't tell, because I haven't posted anything yet.)

This is slightly bizarre for many reasons, including the following:

1. I don't know where on the West Coast Mars Hill Graduate School is. (I should probably not admit this on-line.)

2. I started graduate school once . . . and quit.

3. They already have a ton of really smart, well-writing people blogging for them, about actual Topics. I blog about the morass of mixed-up thoughts in my brain.

Because I don't think that my version of a TOJ blog and my version of a Blogger blog are ultimately going to be all that different, and because I'm currently trying to hold down two jobs and freelance, I'm seriously toying (can you seriously toy?) with the idea of no longer posting here and just posting there. But I feel all sorts of nostalgic, as if you couldn't find me somewhere else on the web and because this is where I blogged and you read and commented for something like a couple of years. And those other people who might stumble across my TOJ blog? Well, I don't know them. They don't have the history you and I do. They don't know that I'm ridiculous about trees and in a complicated relationship with a Milk Guy (they don't even know why he's called the Milk Guy--sheesh) and once lived in London and have a thing for weird conversations with total strangers. You know these things. How am I supposed to catch them up on all that, for goodness' sake?

I don't know what I'm going to do about this just yet. But come visit me at my new digs in either case, okay? Only . . . wait 'til I've actually got something posted over there . . .

Polarity

Everyone must think the economy's going to get instantaneously better as of today, because Starbucks was as busy as a Saturday in December . . . which we barely even saw in December. It's good. We need the business. (This might be a topic for another post, but not yet.)

And let's face it. Today is pretty historic. I think it's cool that this Inauguration Day in particular was the day after Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. (And the day before the season premier of Lost, which is also--but differently--exciting.) I confess, I did vote for Obama. I'm happy for the change.

But on the other hand, this adulation kind of creeps me out. I admit it: any time I hear of anyone--I mean anyone--who generates so much enthusiasm, my anti-christ radar starts going off. I don't always believe the radar, and so far none of the people who have set it off have actually gone out and become The Anti-Christ. But it does go off.

I suspect it has something to do with my being both a natural contrarian and someone who belongs to the evangelical Christian subculture, so the tendencies of both elements merge and . . . I start predicting the end of the world. A lot of us do it, I fear. On the other hand, I don't think I'm wrong to be cautious. Or necessarily contrarian. I will also admit never to having been a big supporter of George W. Bush and some of his decisions, but booing him? Not okay.

Here's the deal guys. They're just dudes. Barack Obama is not Jesus, and George W. Bush is not the devil--nor is it the other way around. Only one Man in the history of the planet gets to be scapegoat or Messiah, and it was the real Jesus, and He was both at once. And He was the only Scapegoat-Messiah we needed. I just don't think it's right or safe or fair to put so much pressure on any other one man.

It's not right to blame everything that's wrong with this country right now on George Bush, although I think he (as did we all to some extent, I would posit) contributed to it. That's way too much pressure. Nor is it right to pin all our hopes for the future on Barack Obama, although I think he (as will we all, I hope) contribute to some improvements. That's way too much pressure, too. Whether these guys asked for the pressure is another issue, I suppose, but it doesn't negate the fact that it's too much.

I think this is the time for grace. Expectations should be high--I mean, the nation overall did elect Obama to this important, powerful, pivotal position, and yes, he had better do his job. Let's just remember that whether we as individuals voted for or against him, he's not going to be perfect. He's still just a dude.

If a Tree Falls . . .

I first decided that growing up might have some compensations when my mother told me that even grown-up books sometimes have talking trees in them. (She was reading Lord of the Rings at the time. I guess that might go without saying.)

I think I'm still waiting for the other compensations, but I actually wasn't really planning to discuss the relative benefits of maturity. I wanted to talk about trees. And Lord of the Rings, I guess. I think it's interesting that in the worlds of both Tolkien and Lewis, you can tell things are really dire when the trees either shut down or are cut down. The worlds of The Two Towers, Prince Caspian and The Last Battle, for example, are highly informed by the state of the trees.

So I've got to say that the ominous feeling surrounding the devastated economy, the renewed violence in Israel and the more personal concerns of cancer and such, is kind of getting highlighted for me over here because of what is happening to our trees.

Last month trees all across our county were ripped to shreds by the wind and ice which ravaged the area. One entire dread-filled night I spent listening to trees shuddering, groaning, cracking like gunshot, falling with loud, earthshaking thuds . . . and I felt as if I could, in all that, hear them screaming. Much as I feared a tree might any minute fall through my roof, I also found myself grieving, grieving the trees.

If that were all, it would be a sadness. Trees which had been perfectly healthy, if they haven't fallen down completely, will have to be taken down because they've suffered too much damage to survive. In addition, however, there is an even more serious menace. The Asian Longhorned Beetle, which the USDA has fought to eradicate in Chicago, New York, and New Jersey, was discovered in our City last summer.

The beetles have been present in this area for over ten years it turns out, and the passionate and hardworking folks at APHIS are a little freaked out, because this is the first occurrence of this tree-destroying pest in an area with such close access to full-fledged forest. In an attempt to keep the beetle from destroying an entire ecosystem up here, they have begun a massive programme to cut down and chip to nothing . . . pretty much all the trees in the City, and many beyond. If the beetle only infested one kind of tree, that would be one thing, but "this one goes to eleven"--there are at least eleven tree species they seem happy to call home. The oaks, apparently, are safe, and I suppose the pines, but the maples' and the chestnuts' and the birches' days are numbered. Trucks have been on New Church's street yesterday and today, and for about half an hour this morning a herd of "tree-care" workers hung out and laughed and talked at Starbucks.

If things go well, replanting will begin in a few years. But no one in the City will see a mature maple tree on their property again. If these trees don't come down, many more will, eventually. But it already feels suspiciously like a losing battle, and we've only just started to fight it. It feels like a harbinger of something, and makes me wonder again, "What is this world coming to?"

On My Own Terms

I want to be a cancer survivor on my own terms, I'm realising. I suspect this is both reasonable and unreasonable (or at least ungrateful), but right now I'm not value-judging it. I'm just telling you what is.

I have friends who I have ongoing conversations with. We talked about stuff before, and we talk about stuff now, and sometimes the stuff is related to cancer, but that isn't all we talk about. I like that.

Here's what I don't like:

I don't like when people I don't really know, with whom I rarely converse, decide that now they know something about me, and they come up to me and get a pained look on their faces and say, "How are you feeling? Are you okay? Really? That's good, 'cause you look great."

Um . . . thanks?

I think a lot of these people are really well-meaning and genuinely concerned, and I feel for them in the awkward scenario of only knowing one thing about me to talk to me about. I mean, I've been in similar situations. (And I probably haven't been any more graceful in them.) But being on the receiving end of this tends to grate after a while. I want to say, at a slightly-louder-than-conversational decibel level, "Hey! Everybody! I am not my cancer! I have other aspects of my life and personality we could explore here! I don't even have cancer anymore, guys! They took it out!"

This, of course, ignores the facts that:

1. There is an upcoming treatment that is making me very, very nervous.

2. If these same people I don't really know started trying to probe into other aspects of my life, I'd probably resent that even more.

3. I am quite happy to talk about having had cancer if it excuses me from doing something I don't want to do.

I can't come up with a conclusion to this post which doesn't imply some sort of value judgment from either myself or you, so instead I will end with an all-purpose quote from the Milk Guy and say,

"There it is, then."

A Bet?

The current acceptable term in many evangelical and charismatic Christian communities is "spiritual warfare."

Most of the people I know, however--including myself--have always said, "Oh! That's such a Jenn story!"

I never really considered that those two things might be the same thing, and maybe they're not, but yesterday I was whalloped again by what still more people might term my chronic bad luck. I was supposed to get to Starbucks by 5.00 a.m. to open the store for the day. I have a very long and steep driveway, so most of the winter, every winter, I park at the top of the driveway by the road, so I can get out and on my way with as little fuss as possible.

Yesterday quite a lot of fuss was possible. It took me over half an hour to get my car to move two feet. I threw a fairly extended temper tantrum in my car while moving was not happening. When I finally got to work and we opened the store (late), I tripped over a step-stool which I couldn't see because I was carrying a four-liter container of iced coffee, and went flying, landing on the stool and the cement-block floor such that I now have a bruise on each elbow and one knee. (I didn't spill the iced coffee, though.)

I was trying to imagine how to explain yet more ridiculous occurrences to the Milk Guy--you know, since I'm supposedly in touch with the Lord of the everything--and I imagined saying, "The elemental spirits of the universe don't like me because I love Jesus too much."

But that didn't sound quite right, because it makes it sound like my love for Jesus is all impressive and everything, and I'm pretty sure it's not--particularly as I had just spent a half hour that morning screaming at Him. (Sometimes I wonder how this relationship was worth it to Him.)

Then I started imagining that maybe Satan and God were having all these bets like they did with Job about how I would respond to certain difficulties. But I thought if that were true, it can't be all that gratifying to God in this case, since I go kind of ballistic every time the littlest thing happens to remind me that I'm not in control. I don't need to have big huge dramatic things happen (except cancer, evidently--but I mostly seem to be dealing with that just fine, I guess)--because I make them into huge dramatic things myself. And if these things are supposed to teach me to be more stoical or something, that doesn't seem to be working, either, and then maybe somebody in this dynamic is insane, because isn't the definition of insanity to do the same thing over and over and expect different results?

Anyway, I don't know what it is, but the upshot of this latest spate of excess of annoyance was that it made me start wondering about spiritual warfare, whether that's what has been going on lately or not. We talk about spiritual warfare as if it's personal, and I wonder if it really is? And if it is, then it's kind of incredible--it's almost an amazing praise of God and even a compliment to us, if you think about it. Because if it didn't matter how much Jesus loves us--and I mean us individually as well as corporately--and if it didn't matter how much we love Him . . . if that back-and-forth love wasn't going to make some difference in the world and the universe . . . well, then--I would think life would be a whole lot easier, and no one in any dimension would have to expend a whole lot of effort.

Humanity

Yesterday one of our less-than-favourite Starbucks customers was in the newspaper.

In the obituaries.

I feel kind of guilty about it.

"Why?" asked the Milk Guy. "Do you really think whatever spiritual forces you tap into, killed him just because you didn't like him?"

Not at all.

"Maybe he's in a better place," he suggested. "In that case, you should be happy for him."

Sure. Maybe he is. I don't feel that I am in a position to discuss the likelihood or non-likelihood of this. But that's not really what was bothering me at the moment, either.

It's that . . . sometimes people are really jerks. Or unmitigatedly annoying. Or something else that triggers primarily negative reactions in people surrounding them. This man was, to me and my colleagues, unfortunately one of those people. But the last thing I said about him while he was alive, I said in the backroom of the store and it involved a lot of tisking and eyerolling and "I know"-ing. If, after you do that, you find out you're never going to see that person again because they died, it just does kind of weird things to your head.

I don't suppose, had I known he was going to die this week, I would have found him any less annoying in the interim. I don't know that I feel he was, by his usual actions in our store, necessarily deserving of any excess of respect. But knowing that he's dead now reminds me that we're all going to. Because we're all human. It reminds me that here was a human being for whom Jesus died, and none of us are deserving of any excess of respect in ourselves--but Jesus is, and this whole time I was taking for granted some dude that He loved and suffered for.

It's possible this man wouldn't have noticed had I treated him any differently than I did--particularly because I think most of the time I was at least polite if not cordial to his face. It's possible he wouldn't have cared. But I feel like my integrity's at stake, because I know what my inner attitude toward him was, and I also know what I say I believe about humanity and Jesus and what that means for personal interactions.

And I'm really scared that, even having come to this realisation, it's not going to make much of a difference.

Correction

Yesterday was Epiphany. Not the yesterday that I said it was . . . yesterday.

Apparently I have no idea what day of the week it is . . .

Living Up to the Feast

Do you ever do that thing where you're talking, and you say something you didn't even know you knew, or you learn something as you're saying it?

Last night I was hanging out with CourtneyinAfrica (who is not presently in Africa, though she will be again soon and briefly), having Christmas leftovers and an improvised salad.

We were having deep and meaningful conversation, mostly around trusting God and its implications for real life, and I suddenly thought of the story of Peter asking Jesus to let him walk on water. CourtneyinAfrica and I had been divulging certain Impossible Dreams we have each been dreaming, and hashing through whether or not these were things we were supposed to hope for, and therefore trust God to perform (because we both know He can fulfill them, of course), or if we were "wanting the wrong things" for reasons known only to God, and therefore supposed to do something decisive to sever ourselves from the wantings.

When I thought of Peter, I thought, "What a crazy thing to ask for," and then I thought, "He didn't ask Jesus if it was His will--he just went for it." So I started to point this out, but what I actually ended up saying was, "Peter didn't say, "Lord, if it's Your will tell me to walk to You on the water. He said, 'Lord, if it's You . . . '"

I stopped.

CourtneyinAfrica stopped.

We both stared at each other. Probably we both got the chills. It felt like we had just uncovered something momentous, without actually being able fully to grasp or explain its significance. CourtneyinAfrica said, "It has something to do with relationship." I'm still not sure what I think this means, but it's as if, in the relationship Peter and Jesus had, Peter could ask something ridiculous, but it wasn't actually going to be wrong. And Jesus loved Peter so much, he didn't say, "See, Peter, you don't always get everything you want. This is your day to learn that. It will make you a stronger person." Nor did he stand there with his arms crossed, tapping His foot on the waves, waiting for Peter to say, "Oh--I mean, if it's Your will. If you want to. Yeah . . . that." Peter didn't doubt that Jesus could do it, and he doesn't seem to have doubted that Jesus would want to (at least, not initially). He had simply said, "Lord, if it's You," and it was Him, so He did it.

And then, even though it was an isolated event and only involved two people and a dozen or so eye-witnesses, He even used it to glorify Himself, because it ended up in the Bible. I hardly think it's a fluff human-interest piece. It's got to be there for some reason.

I have been praying for some version of my Impossible Dream for more years than I can count, probably, and for a more specific version of it for a little over a year. And I don't know what the outcome of all this praying is going to be. I don't ever expect anything I pray for to look the way I imagine it when I'm praying for it (because to date, nothing ever has). And I'm a pessimist; I tend to expect the worst, in hopes that I will be wrong but bracing myself in case. So although it's not hard for me to trust that God can do miracles, I have a bear of a time trusting that He wants to do them, for me--that I might actually want something He wants.

Now I'm wondering. Maybe most of this praying-year, I've largely been asking the wrong questions. So the waves loom and I start to lose my balance and I start to sink and I think, "See? I knew I didn't want the right thing." But every time--every time--I've finally stopped trying to stay afloat myself, and said the equivalent of "If it's You," the waves have subsided and I've seen Jesus' face (figuratively, but clearly, and that's still something . . . ) and I've been able to take another step. I still don't know what this means, exactly, but I guess I'm probably not supposed to. Yet, anyway.

After CourtneyinAfrica left, I (wasted a little time on Facebook and) got ready for bed. I sat down and opened up a new devotional book that some person had anonymously left me at Starbucks. I opened it to the reading I was up to. It was about Peter, asking Jesus to invite him to walk on the water.

Today it occurred to me that yesterday was the Feast of Epiphany . . .

The Flip Side

I think I have more than my fair share of amazing, supportive people in my life. Super-Roger and Wonder-Dawna are two of them. It would be tough to delineate all the ways these two have supported me, even before the cancer diagnosis. Mostly this fall, actually, they've loaned me one of their cars at key moments while my car has taken the time to have a series of irritating problems.

On Saturday, I pulled out of my driveway with some difficulty and realised that I was also driving down the road with more than the usual difficulty, so I turned around and went back home and discovered that my back left tyre was flat.

It did not escape me, as I wrestled with the jack, that I had been so proud of myself last year at learning to change a tyre. But, I thought a little bitterly, it's one thing to be able to change a tyre and something else to have to--apparently once a year, and always in the dead of winter. Brrr! Fortunately an out-for-a-walk neighbour stopped and helped me finish the job. (This is a bit remarkable in itself, as I don't live in a particularly friendly neighbourhood--nor, I regret to say, do I do anything to change this.)

I noted, as I drove to work on the doughnut, that I was having a lot more trouble driving with it than usual, and that things were still feeling very bumpy. My suspicions grew and grew until I got to Starbucks, got out of my car, walked around to the other side and discovered that yes! That back tyre was flat, too!

I was not in a very good mood as I began my shift. Nor through most of the rest of it.

On a break, I quickly called Super-Roger to see if I could borrow his car again for the weekend if I could get a ride back to my town. Then I called the Milk Guy to see if he would give me the ride.

In the end, what happened, though, was that both these men decided to try to come bail me out themselves. They arrived within minutes of each other (and about half an hour before I left work), such that the Milk Guy was already removing the back wheels from my car when Super-Roger got there. Together they took the wheels to a local tyre shop, convinced the employees to stay open long enough for them to get me two new tyres, returned to my car and reassembled it, reinflated my front tyres, and I was able to return home safely--and a lot quicker than I had made it to the city that morning . . .

I daresay all three of us could have done without my tyre problems. But . . . I like my friends to meet my friends, and sometimes you can't very well orchestrate these things. I don't know that Super-Roger and the Milk Guy would have met under other, more ordinary circumstances. But I'm glad that they did.

Christmas Recap

It has come to my attention (as I was shoveling snow this evening, if you must know, and not through any other human agent) that I have failed to follow up my irritable Christmas Day post with any report on how the rest of the Christmas week was. Or even the rest of that day, for that matter.

This might be because I seem to have subliminally assigned to this blog the role of Whinge-Keeper. And, see, the rest of that day and the week were pretty much great. So . . . what was there to write about?

I regret to rediscover that . . . I'm not a very grateful person.

Anyway, I'm here to tell you that yes: Christmas Day and Christmas week were just great. There were a few Niece-Hannah sleeping hiccups (read: Niece-Hannah not sleeping), but she's too cute to get mad at.

Here is a photo to prove it. Also one of the World's Cutest Niece with her Designer Auntie.

What's a Miracle, Vincent?

Last night I watched Pulp Fiction for the first time ever.

There are reasons that I would not recommend this to . . . maybe anyone, although that might be hypocritical, since I seem to be glad I watched it. Maybe because the (admittedly obscenity-, profanity-, and potentially violence-laden--like the rest of the movie) scene at the very end is surprisingly redemptive. There's even a Christ-allusion, though the character through which it comes has been anything but Christlike for the better part of the film.

The lead-in to the scene is this rather intriguing dialogue (stolen from Wikiquote and slightly censored by me):

Jules: Man, I just been sitting here thinking.

Vincent: About what?

Jules: About the miracle we just witnessed.

Vincent: The miracle you witnessed. I witnessed a freak occurrence.

Jules: What is a miracle, Vincent?

Vincent: An act of God.

Jules: And what's an act of God?

Vincent: When, um … God makes the impossible possible … but this morning I don't think qualifies.

Jules: Hey, Vincent, don't you see? That s*** don't matter. You're judging this s*** the wrong way. I mean, it could be that God stopped the bullets, or He changed Coke to Pepsi, He found my f****** car keys. You don't judge s*** like this based on merit. Now, whether or not what we experienced was an "according to Hoyle" miracle is insignificant. What is significant is that I felt the touch of God. God got involved.

Vincent: But why?

Jules: Well, that's what's f****** with me. I don't know why, but I can't go back to sleep.

I'm intrigued by the philosophical dimensions of this dialogue. (The fact that it is, believe it or not, one of the less obscene ones in the film is not unsignificant either.) For one thing, the idea that you "don't judge [a purported miracle] based on merit" seems to me to be similar to what we talked about that time we were talking about taking God shopping.

But I'm also curious about defining a miracle by the receptivity of the person experiencing it. In the case of Jules and Vincent, both experienced the exact same event--in which neither of them died though they should have ("should," both according to laws of morality and probability). But Vincent thought they got lucky, and Jules thought God was reaching into his life to redirect him.

So who was right? I know this is just, well, Fiction, and everything, but it could happen in real life, and if it did, is the miracle the event that kept both men from being riddled with bullets, even though Vincent was "spiritually blind" enough not to see it? Or was the real miracle that Jules was able to see God's hand in the situation? It's kind of a postmodernist "the reader is always right" sort of approach to things, but I'm not sure that's entirely faulty here.

It's also kind of like the "If a tree falls in the woods" conundrum. Are there inherently miraculous events which only have merit if someone manages to acknowledge it? Or are there only events, whether specifically God-ordained or ones that happen that He simply works through, such that the real miracle is always when a person responds? We love because He first loved us, and are any of us capable of responding without His nudge?

Spam

Nothing like a little spam to give you a reality check.

Friend and fellow-blogger (and editor--but not mine), the ZimmerMan, sometimes blogs about the spam he gets in his email account, and it's always very funny, but I usually just delete the entire cache of the spam I get, without looking at the titles and only sometimes glancing with amusement at the supposed names of the senders. Today one caught my eye, though. It said:

"A Submariner SS watch is for people who know the true value of life."

Really? What have I been doing all this time?! Shoot.

Well. Now we know. Consider this a public service announcement.

On the Other Hand

It is Christmas. And everyone's safe. And there is something kind of poignant and relief-inducing about having the semblance of control wrested from one . . . at least, once one comes to terms with it. (Again. And again. And again.)

So . . . happy Christmas, everybody!

Christmas Journey

What a long, strange trip . . .

My dad arrived here on Monday. Is it ever great to see him. After weeks of my mother's and my breaking out the self-sufficient New England Amazon role (these are Amazons who know how to keep a fire going in the woodstove and lug the wood in all by themselves), I was really kind of done with that. Dad would have helped us get the tree "vegetage" (well, what do you call it when it isn't meat--it's not carnage?) off the lawn, except that it snowed all over it. A lot.

Yesterday, as you might have noticed, was Christmas Eve, and that was the day Dave and Lu and Hannah (aka brother, sister-in-law and baby niece) were going to arrive. Their flight out of the Midwest was scheduled to leave at 11.30 a.m. That was a nice idea.

At the time they were meant to be landing in Boston, they phoned saying they missed their connecting flight in another part of the Midwest, and now had to switch airlines and fly to still another part of the Midwest, where they would get on a flight that would get them to Boston twelve hours after they were meant to have left in the first place.

At 10 p.m. or so, they phoned again saying their plane was having technical difficulties.

Then we started having techical difficulties: the power went out again.

Are you kidding me?!

At 1.30 a.m., the three of us who were here woke up because the power came back on. Phew. The three who were traveling were still traveling . . . and we couldn't get through to them. It was a little hard to get back to sleep, although I guess I must have--pretty deeply, because I didn't hear the three travelers when they finally arrived--at 3.15 a.m.

At 8.00 a.m., someone from Ireland phoned to wish us a happy Christmas. Um . . . thanks? Hannah woke up. Well, we all woke up. Dave and Lu told us that yes, they were here . . . but their luggage had got delayed in the airline switch and was not here with them.

My godly mother said, "This the Christmas from [someplace we could euphemise as 'Hades']!"

"Wow," I said. "I've never heard you describe anything that way, Mom." Not that I disagreed with her.

My godly father said, "We've never had a Christmas like this, either."

Nope. That is true. We haven't. Thank goodness.

Fashion Slave

This is ridiculous.

Last night I received an early Christmas gift from some people I haven't received a Christmas gift from before. It was a sweatshirt. This is truly awesome, because I am in need of such types of clothing these days. It was a hoodie, which I also like. It was neon blue with neon green and pink and yellow flowery designs silkscreened on it. That last bit . . . well, it was cute, but my initial gut-reaction was, "Can I wear this in public?" I don't think I've ever worn neon anything. Even in the 80's. I said to my mother, "I'm not sure I would have picked this colour . . . "

About two seconds later, I noticed that the hood on this hoodie was emblazoned with the word (in neon pink), "Diesel."

"Diesel?!" I exclaimed.

Suddenly, I think this sweatshirt is beyond cool, and after my shift at Starbucks today, instead of going down to the church and changing out of my uniform there, I changed in the Starbucks bathroom, just in case when I came out, anybody happened to notice that I was wearing a hoodie that said "Diesel" on it in neon pink.

I'm not sure who decides which clothing companies are "cool" and get to overcharge for their merchandise, nor why I find it thrilling to own one of their products even though I doubt we stand for much of the same thing. I'm approximately 100% sure that this mindset does not line up very well with Jesus' "ideology" (if you want to call it that) about Stuff. But . . . I would be lying if I tried to tell you that I'm not quite pleased to be wearing a designer hoodie. And . . . it's not like I was trying to be designer. It just happened. (That statement right there? Also ridiculous.) I do find it kind of embarrassing that I am so easily convinced, though.

Iron Sharpens Iron

Here's an idea to keep you honest:

Make a really close friend whose worldview is totally opposed to your own and who isn't afraid to say so, and with whom you aren't afraid to disagree either.

I don't know that it's possible to go out and intentionally do this, but I would just say that if you find yourself in this position, you might want to consider thanking God for it and learning from Him in it, instead of running away from it like I tried to do that time (and sometimes keep trying to do). Particularly if you have been intentional about finding people who do share your worldview and can make sure you're not running off the rails somewhere.

The Milk Guy's really good at calling my bluff. I don't get to start sounding all super-spiritual without having to think about what I'm saying, and if I really mean it, and if I even begin to live up to it. And every once in a while he'll come up with a zinger of a theological insight that will set me on my heels.

This week has, as I keep mentioning, been a little rough for me, and actually the weeks leading up to it haven't been exactly stress-free, either, as we at Starbucks scramble to get enough work hours to support ourselves, for example. This kind of scenario makes me grumpy and weepy and I start making up new rude words out of existing rude words and find, to my chagrin, that I am kind of delighted with them because they are clever, even if thoroughly inappropriate for a Christian. (The Milk Guy doesn't help with that so much, because he thinks they're clever, too, and has no such scruples.)

The thing about all that is that though it doesn't make me look--or feel--very good, I don't get to make excuses for myself, like I might if I were going to go to a prayer meeting that night and rehash the day in Evangelese to my friends. The Milk Guy sees my moods and reactions in all their un-glory, and there's no explaining away with him.

It's kind of a lot of pressure. And sometimes I feel like I'm making a complete hash of reflecting Christ to anybody, let alone him. (And . . . I probably am.) But he doesn't let me wallow in "I'm such a horrible Christian" mode either. Recently I said, "I feel like God's trying to communicate with you . . . but He sure could have picked a whole lot better representative . . ."

The Milk Guy paused (understandably, as I think about it), and then said, "Aren't you kind of making yourself out to be more powerful than God when you say that?"

Oh. Right. And so we keep talking. And so he challenges me and I appreciate that, and I remember from time to time that not only am I not the perfect representative of Christ on earth, but that I don't have to be--because, as the Milk Guy himself reminded me whether he meant to or not, God is God and He'll cause whatever transformations He sees fit. Including in me.

Hallelujah!

The title might seem a little sacrilegious, but I think I am not amiss, these days, in praising God for small mercies . . . and maybe they're not so small, really.

Last night, shortly after I wrote the last post, I guess, the lights came back on. I didn't get to experience them until tonight, as I was still staying with Pastor Ron and Mrs. Dona, but ah, is it ever a relief!

Christmas

The balloon ended up deflating in a flood of tears rather than a round of screaming, and the techs who did my first radiation treatment this afternoon (who were women, and not the guys of the initial visit) thought I was crying because I was upset about the treatment.

I suppose there might have been something in that. But mostly it's because I feel that, like the Milk Guy's appliances, my circuits are fried--by a whole lot of little things rather than one big thing. And added to that is guilt. Huge amounts of guilt.

I live in a "developed" country. I am not homeless. I have healthcare. I have friends with electricity and food and . . . heck, I haven't had to cook or go grocery shopping in weeks. The Nurse Practitioner's comment kind of rankles, because I want to be selfless, but apparently only on my own terms. I used to think I would go On The Mission Field for the rest of my life and maybe live somewhere less "developed" than this country and, you know . . . have to boil water or something. I've been in many different countries and managed the hole-in-the-ground toilets and eating mystery foods with my fingers and washing my face in a bowl of water and wearing the same clothes days in a row, and it didn't bother me at all. But I chose to go there and do those things, and those were the things that were "done" in certain locations.

Those things aren't generally done here, and I had no control over the circumstances bringing them about. It's not like a camping trip, which I don't enjoy much either, but which I can choose and modulate a little. And so everything in me revolts (as it does in many people, I've observed). I can listen to myself and think I sound absolutely pathetic, and yet I'm still a bundle of nerves because I can't flick a lightswitch and see the entire room.

I feel that the timing of this "ordeal" (which I feel is an unfair word, because this could have been so much worse--it's no Katrina) is sort of interesting. By which I mean, it's making me think of Christmas a little differently. Usually there's all this talk about "the true meaning of Christmas" and to some extent, I usually squint my brain every year and try to remind myself that the birth of Jesus is so much more important than the Christmas tree and that it wasn't all pretty and cozy and lights. Not . . . that there's anything wrong with that.

This year I'm probably about as distracted from the birth of Christ as I've ever been, but I can't pretend I'm not interacting with it on some level all the same. There's so much going on in my life right now, and there's this kind of deprivation, and there's a very distinct (if presently guilt-inducing) reminder that Christmas is actually about inconvenience and deprivation. Jesus gave up all his glory (light! weightiness! splendour!) and schlepped around in a Roman-occupied "under-developed" country for thirty-some years, talking to a bunch of people who often didn't get what He was talking about. And Mary and Joseph gave up their reputations, and had to pack up their lives and trek down to Bethlehem, and then down to Egypt, and their lives were in upheaval for, oh . . . pretty much the rest of them.

Jesus kind of does that, I think. I suspect Mary and Joseph had to come to terms with that more than once. Unless, of course, they had no controlling tendencies at all . . . I kind of doubt it. But maybe I'm just thinking like that to make myself feel better.

Don't Stress the Cancer-Girl

When I first met the Nurse Practitioner at the Comprehensive Breast Center, she sat me down and said, "You seem like the type of person who's always thinking of others first, so you need to shift gears a little bit. While you're working through this cancer diagnosis and treatment, you need to just work on taking care of yourself and getting better. This time is about you. You need to have as little stress as possible."

Too bad nobody told the New England climate and global warming that.

Right now I feel like somebody put an alarm clock inside my stomach--that old-fashioned kind that jumps around in cartoons when it rings--and that in a second it's going to go off, and I'm going to go flying around the room like an untied balloon and scream my head off like . . . me when I'm stressed and nobody but God is around to hear me. Right now, I'm so on-the-edge that I might do it even though other people besides God are around to hear me. It will not be pretty.

Yesterday some girl came into Starbucks and said glumly that her power was still out, and I said mine was too, and she said she heard that her neighbourhood wouldn't be up and running until after Christmas.

Christmas is next week, folks. The power went out last Thursday.

And my father and my brother and my sister-in-law and my baby niece and my grandmothers and my uncle will converge on my mother and me and our house, and if we don't have lights? Um, excuse me? This is not okay.

I'm staying in the city for the mid-part of this week, at Pastor Ron and Mrs. Donna's apartment with them, and it's a huge help, but I never seem to have everything I need with me in the same place at any given time, and for example I realised two hours ago that I did not bring enough changes of clothing for the number of days I'm going to be here, and I don't have internet at church, and I don't have church phone numbers at the apartment, and I have two magazine articles to write, and a confirmation class to organize and two youth group events to cancel and the Milk Guy's power came back and then surged and fried some of his appliances and even though that doesn't directly affect me, it kind of stresses me out, too.

I think National Grid should have consulted me. I'm glad they got Old Church street up and running so that Old Church could provide food for those of us less fortunate and so that the nursing home on the same power line would be able to keep running. Hear hear. But didn't anybody tell them that there's a cancer survivor on my street, who's starting radiation today? And if they didn't, why not?

Dependence

I feel that there are some lessons to be learned here about dependence. Whether or not I learn them remains to be seen. But since the power outage on Thursday I have:

1. Showered at the Clevelands'.
2. Eaten breakfast at my Old Church.
3. Done laundry and watched a movie at Pastor Steve and Pastor Val's. ("Pastor Val" is not really what anyone calls her, but it is essentially what she is, so that's her name for this blog. So there.)
4. Worshipped at my Old Church because my New Church didn't have power either.
5. Had dinner with five other families at the Barrows'.
6. Availed myself of the Clevelands' intervention with my car.
7. Used the Barrows' computer.
8. Used my computer at the Barrows' house.

I also anticipate staying at a friend's or friends' in the City a couple of nights this week.

Besides all that, I have spent the entire autumn depending on rides and hand-outs and cooking and cry-on-able shoulders of various and sundry friends and relations before this weather-related disaster, because of my health-related sort-of-disaster.

This is hard for an American. And a New Englander. And a Jennwith2ns.

I feel very dependent. The cancer diagnosis made me feel dependent on people in new ways. The "Ice Tornado" (as some people have dubbed it) has not only heightened that feeling, but also kind of highlighted how dependent I am on things that are not people. Like electricity. And my telephone. And the internet. And my car. And clear roadways. And showering.

The whole ordeal is very blessed and very irritating (two qualities which may, I suspect, belong together more often than not). Most of all I'm realising how God is the only one I can depend on. But I'm also resonating more fully with Teresa of Avila, when she told God, "If this is the way you treat your friends, it's no wonder you have so few!” (I also resonate with her saying, however, “What a great favor God does to those He places in the company of good people!”)

Fed Up

On Friday I was going to write a post that went a little something like this:

"I have decided that I think that auto insurance and health insurance plans should merge. I do not think I should have to pay more money this year for ailing anything."

I figured by this you would know that I was having car trouble.

It turned out, though, that I wasn't having car trouble. I was just stupid. I don't want to tell you what I did, because then the full extent of my idiocy would be on the internet for all to read, and I need to retain at least some self-respect . . .

But anyway, before I found out all that, and before I could whinge about it, we had an ice storm. As the Milk Guy said, "I used to kind of like ice storms. They made things all shiny."

Yeah. Not anymore. I lay in my bed all night on Thursday (after the power had already gone out), listening to tree after after tree losing life and limb. You might know I kind of like trees. I felt like crying for them. I was also scared out of my brains that one of them was going to fall on my house.

It's kind of surprising one didn't. The yard is a wreck. The road is a wreck. I would like to know why I voted to keep our state tax, when so far nothing has been done (except by neighbours) to take care of the trees leaning on power lines and the branches dangling precariously above the road. I'm immensely grateful my mom has been here during this ordeal, or I might actually have lost my mind, being in the house and dealing with this all by myself. (It hasn't been totally by myself, as it turns out, and as I will likely describe later, but it would have felt a lot more like it without Mom.) Still, I feel mighty close to losing my mind anyway. Fortunately there's a woodstove in the house, and people around who do have power, but meanwhile, we're filling up water bottles at friends's houses, flushing our toilets with water from a creek, washing dishes when we have to, showering elsewhere, and stumbling around in the dark. It doesn't look like things will get better any time soon.

I have a whole lot of processing going on in my head, but suffice it to say that right this second? This ordeal is bugging me a whole lot more than the cancer diagnosis ever did.

Plus, yesterday my exhaust system started dragging on the ground. Maybe I do have car trouble after all.

All Fun and Games

I'm kind of a sore loser. When I was growing up, I didn't like games of strategy because I'm just not that strategic of a thinker. And I didn't like games of chance because I'm not that lucky. Once I got old enough to opt out, when my family would sit down to a game, I'd camp out in the same room with a book and make more or less helpful or snide comments to the players in the background. Now that there are team games like Cranium or Pictionary, I'm more likely to play, maybe because they involve teams so if I lose there is an entire group of people who goes down with me.

That's a nice realisation for a Wednesday night . . .

All the same, when we had group projects in eighth grade social studies class, I liked inventing board games. I'm not sure someone who dislikes games is capable of making good ones, but I am here to tell you that, nevertheless, I have come up with a new game. It is great, because it combines both strategy and chance. Get ready for next Christmas, folks, and start saving now. It's pretty expensive. It is called:

Cancer: The Board Game

The object of the game is to move from cancer diagnosis through treatment to being cancer-free, first, and without dying. The "Start" block is a doctor's office for a routine check-up, and depending on a roll of the dice, you can end up with a clean bill of health, or with a complication which you have to get checked out. If you get a clean bill of health, you're pretty much out of the game. I haven't figured out if that means you won or you lost, since the game is called Cancer: The Board Game, and since you pretty much haven't completed any of the objectives. Anyway, whatever. Go get yourself a book and make snide comments to those of us who get diagnosed with cancer in this game. (Note: that part is not very true-to-life. No one has yet made any snide comments about my real diagnosis. Also not very true-to-life is the idea that cancer patients are out to race each other to a positive outcome. I think this is something that is Not Done. But we're talking retail profit here. No one wants to buy a game where all you do is help each other. Do they?)

Everybody else who rolls a complication is guaranteed to get a cancer diagnosis, because this is Cancer: The Board Game, and not Anurysm: The Card Game or Deep Vein Thrombosis Solitaire or anything like that. Various things happen based on dice rolls, and then finally you get to treatment stage where you encounter "Treatment Cards." This is where actual thinking might happen. If you feel like it.

Say you roll the dice and you land on a space that says, "You have stage 1, grade 2 cancer. You may opt for the traditional treatment [which entails going down a long and circuitous chemotherapy track that has all sorts of pitfalls sending you back five spaces or something] or draw a Treatment Card." You know that if you draw a Treatment Card, you might mis-roll later and end up back in that very chemotherapy trail you were hoping to avoid, but if you don't, you'll be that much closer to the end of the game and beating out your fellow cancer-sufferers.

So you draw a Treatment Card and it says, "You are going to be treated with radiation and hormone therapy. Go to Radiation." You move your playing piece to the Radiation section and it says, "You will be here for six weeks. Every day heterosexual members of the opposite sex who are your age or younger will radiate a part of your body you do not wish them to see. Lose six turns." (I haven't figured what happens when everybody is losing multiple turns at once . . . )

Then after that you move your piece to Hormone Therapy and it says, "You are taking Tamoxifen. Side effects are usually mild and treatable, but may include . . . [yeah, actually, I don't want to write them here. You can click here if you really want to know]. Lose a turn and go back two spaces."

I'll let you know how the game ends up. These are just examples of the hosts of diagnoses, moves, decisions you can encounter in this fabulous game. Don't you want to play?

Pre-positions

There's a church down the street. It is neither my Old Church or my New Church, but I used to work at a living history museum with one of their lay leaders, so I feel a mini-connexion with it anyway.

They have one of those signs out front where you can put out the movable white letters on the black backdrop and either announce church events, or put a thought-for-the-period-of-time-before-you-remember-to-put-the-next-thing-up-there.

Back in September and October the sign said, "Everyone is invited at God's table."

For the entire time it was up, whenever I would drive by, I would do a little grammar-and-theology shuffling with that verse. Something doesn't seem quite right, but I still can't make it say what it seems like it should, to be both grammatically and theologically correct.

To me, "Everyone is invited at God's table," sounds like what we often do in the Church anyway. We sit around and look at everyone already at the table (as we assume, anyway) and yeah, we're all invited. The question is, to what? If we're already there, what's next? Going into the Divine Family Room to watch angel football?

Or maybe it's one of those assertions of the obvious: "See all those people at the table there? They were invited." Oh. I guess it's comforting to know there are no gatecrashers? I guess?

I thought maybe it should have said, "Everyone is invited to God's table." That could, I suppose, sound like we can just help ourselves to the table and leave. But when I first thought of it, it was in the context of the invitation through Jesus being open to everyone, and we just have to accept the invite. I suppose it could be further clarified by saying, "Everyone is invited to come to God's table," or to "dine at God's table." Or something.

My dad suggested it could say "Everyone is welcome at God's table," which I think probably says the "invited to" thing a little better, although it might imply, "under any conditions," which, if the conditions were without the received forgiveness of Christ, I think would also be erroneous.

In spite of all the brainwaves being invested in this conundrum, the letters on the board did not move. I still have questions, though. The first one is, do you think we as Christians act as if we're the only invited ones, sometimes? What do you do with the "many are called but few are chosen" verse, and are any of the above sign-posting suggestions valid in light of that? Are we actually supposed to do anything with that verse, or should we just treat everyone as if they were both called and chosen? And if we did that, what would it look like?

Balking

When I saw my Oncologist a week ago, she gave me a choice: chemo or randomisation (wherein I would either get chemo anyway, or I wouldn't, but I'd have no choice in the matter). I was feeling tired and stressed and sort of resigned, so I thought I was going to go for the chemo. I didn't feel like fighting with my very pro-chemo doctor, and I didn't feel like deciding anything. I didn't feel like talking to my Second Opinion Doctor, either. But I did.

"Great!" she said. "You have a low recurrence score! You'll do great in the protocol!"

But I don't like the idea of being randomised. Waiting some more, just to find out I'm being assigned something by chance, doesn't really thrill me. No one was suggesting I could just opt out of chemo altogether. My Oncologist is a treatment-conservative (which, for some reason, translates into very un-conservative treatment). My Second-Opinion Doctor is a researcher. Why would they offer me the "third way," I guess?

Then the People Closest to Me started asking questions, which basically boiled down to "How on earth is pumping extra toxins into your body when you only have a 9% risk of recurrence actually going to help you?" and "Why don't you just refuse the chemo?"

Oh. I can do that?

I understand that my cancer may come back. And maybe it will be worse. And maybe I'll have to have chemo then. But maybe it would even with the poison. And maybe I'd go into menopause before I'm forty. And maybe I wouldn't be able to work at Starbucks because my immune system would be compromised and working there is pretty much like working in a preschool with how everybody gets sick in the winter. And maybe the long-term effects would be such that years from now I'd be regretting the treatment more than the recurrence of the disease.

I kind of feel like Daniel and his friends when they asked the Babylonian steward to let them be vegetarians. Maybe someone should do research on the hormone-therapy/radiation/prayer course of treatment.

Punny

Look! Star-Bucks!Oh yes I did.

(Someone had to lighten things up around here . . . )

Why Do We Do This, Again?

The Milk Guy says that if there's a God, He must be a cosmic Sadist.

I never really know how to respond to this when he brings it up, because frankly, sometimes I think things like that myself, and so I have no idea how to explain how Christians (generally) view trials, without sounding like we have made ourselves into Masochists-for-the-God.

Here are some cases in point:

1. Pretty much all the Old Testament prophecies. God's people are not cooperating with Him. He gets mad. He causes or allows (depending on your theology--but the words in the Bible usually sound like "causes") really horrific things to happen to them. Today I read in Zechariah 14.2 (NRSV) "For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses looted and the women raped . . . " It actually goes on from there, but the rape thing alone causes me to recoil so violently, I kind of lost track of the rest of it. He mercifully allows some people to be spared these monstrosities, and then He restores them, and they're supposed to (and do, at least for a time) return to Him with love in their hearts because He essentially beat the stuffing out of them. Or . . . that's what it reads like.

2. I'm reading an autobiography of an English evangelist, whose prayer as a child was that she could get into the center of God's heart. Or something like that. She had a fairly difficult childhood and then suffered some serious health issues (and miracles) as an adult, and at the end of the second-to-last chapter, she renewed her request to God that she be satisfied with only Him. Three weeks later, her husband of 30 years, who had been involved in ministry with her, left her for another woman. What?!

3. I've prayed similar prayers, and meant them, and I've even asked God to do whatever it takes (even to me) to cause certain people to come to know Him. Now I have cancer? I don't know if that's "what it takes," but I do know there's some way that this is supposed to draw me closer to Him.

Don't get me wrong. I love the Old Testament prophets (although I've decided I don't like Zechariah all that much), and I think the prayer for God and God alone is probably the best one we can pray. (It's also pretty audacious, if you think about it, and so the fact that we can pray it is pretty amazing.) I love that God wants to relate to us enough to open Himself up to our rage--to the point of His own death in Jesus. I know (at least intellectually, although sometimes that's all it feels like) that He doesn't ask us to do anything He didn't live through Himself, or experience along with us. I've sensed His presence with me in this cancer adventure and I've seen Him answer prayers in surprising ways and I know He's been faithful to me through my whole life.

I also understand that if He tried to coax us to Him with blessings all the time, it wouldn't work. We just get distracted. All right, I get distracted, okay? I get all caught up in the blessing and start to treat it, instead of Him, like God.

I'm just saying that causing or allowing the rape of the people He chose when He hates rape, or answering Jennifer Rees Larcombe's prayer through a divorce when He hates divorce, is downright baffling, and I don't really know how to argue with the Milk Guy when he says, "You talk like everything God does is perfect. But He makes bad stuff happen, too. You have to take the good with the bad."

"As for God, His way is perfect," but I do see the Milk Guy's point. For all I said about "It's all good," God's perfect way often feels really bad. And even if I am settled in myself that I have about as complicated a relationship with God as I do with the Milk Guy but that it's good; even when I feel that I can trust in God when I suspect He might hurt me and that I love Him even when He does; even when I know that I am free (thanks to Jesus) to argue with God and that somehow through all this turmoil it will bring me closer to Him, I really don't know how to explain that to anybody without its sounding like I have some kind of psychological malfunction that causes me to seek out pain. I don't. I really don't like pain.

So . . . why do we do this, again?

Choice

I do have a choice, I guess, really. I was thinking about this at the Thanksgiving Eve service at my Old Church. Everyone was talking about things they were thankful for and I thought, "I should be thankful because actually, I have a choice."

I can get all mad that my fertility choices may reduce to nearly nil after I fry my body with chemotherapy, but actually, I don't think that's really what I was angry about. Like I said--I'm still not convinced I ever want kids. I think I was angry that I had to make a choice about the chemo or the protocol. I think I was just being contrary.

I don't think there's anything wrong with my feeling a little upset about this. But I do think I was being inconsistent, and whining over the "wrong" thing. This didn't stop me, however, from feeling very bereft when the Sixes were not around when I got home, or from crying on about six different people's shoulders after the service.

Life's Little Injustices

I'm not really too sure what I think about birth control. I mean I think it's okay with God, but there are some of His people who feel pretty strongly that it isn't, and so sometimes I feel a little insecure in my position that, were I married and were my husband of the same mind-set about this, I would rather adopt children than bear them myself. This has to do with personal inclination as well as some beliefs about over-population and taking care of (widows and) orphans.

One time, however, I was on birth-control pills for another health issue (because my skin is really appallingly flaw-prone, if you must know), and it didn't help anything, and while not helping anything, they also made me dreadfully ill. So I always thought the whole preventing-childbirth thing, should it ever become a live issue in my life, might be kind of a hassle for me as well as being a source of moral confusion.

Given all of these details you never asked for, you would think I might be secretly relieved that chemotherapy is likely to reduce my ability to have children. That way, if I ever do get married, well--maybe I won't have to be as intentional about not having kids.

I'm nothing if not complex and contrary, however. Although my feelings about all these issues have been as delineated above for years, and although I feel exactly the same about them as I write them, I also feel inexplicably disheartened and a little angry that the option is potentially about to be removed from me. I don't want to be "damaged," I guess. I want to be whole, and be able to make these decisions on an equal footing with other people who make them all the time.

And here's the other thing that's ticking me off about the cancer I don't even have anymore: I'm pretty much going to be paying rent on my life for the rest of it. Here's what I mean: For the next year I will be undergoing various significant treatments to reduce my risk of cancer. For the next five years I will be on a hormone suppressant to further reduce my risk of recurrence of specifically hormone-related cancers like the one I just had. But from now until I die or Jesus comes back, I'll have to have check-ups on this area of my body at least twice a year. These aren't simple physicals, and they aren't cheap. I get to pay someone bi-annually to make sure I'm not going to die. I kind of resent this.

Huh. Happy Thanksgiving, eh?

Let's see what I can come up with tomorrow.

Niece

On Monday I went to see my counselor, as I do, and I told her my brother and sister-in-law and my niece-I-hadn't-met-yet were coming out this week. "Interesting," she said. "I wonder how that will affect you." She said this in the aftermath of my revelation that chemotherapy is now almost a certainty for me, and in consideration of the fact that such treatment is often damaging to the reproductive system. "I know you said you've never been that interested in having kids," she said. "I wonder if that will change when you meet your niece, though, and how you'll feel about it in light of the impending chemo."

The next day I hied myself to Boston to spend some time with Dave and Lu and Hannah there before we all went back to my place. They were staying in a hotel because of a conference Lu had just been at. As my brother let me in the door of their room, Hannah was bawling her head off. I thought about what my counselor had thought. Second thoughts about having kids? Hmmm . . . let me check . . . nope!

My assessment remained constant even after Hannah proceeded to revert to her unbelievably adorable self for the rest of the next two days. I love kids. They generally like me, too--this niece of mine warmed right up, in any event. But I'm quite content not to bear my own. On the other hand, it has been a lot of fun getting to know Hannah, even if briefly. I've been reinforcing good habits.
And teaching her new ones.
Oh yeah. Being an aunt is pretty good.

Chapters

Life has been so . . . strange . . . lately, and so all-at-once, that it's been a little tricky to find precise markers. It's not that there haven't been any. It's that there have been so many, they're hard to unravel. Sometime, say, ten years from now, someone will say, "Do you remember the fall of 2008?"

And I'll say, "Oh, you mean that time when the cat showed up in the car that the Family-of-Six was driving when they came to stay in my house and I had just gotten a new job and had just about had it with my old one and the Milk Guy and I were complicated and I started seeing a counselor and I got diagnosed with cancer? That fall?"

It's like one of those letters that people used to write in the "Olden Days" when they didn't have much paper so they wrote about four sheets' worth on one page, all on top of each other, going all in different directions. If I knew how to search such a thing on the internet, I would, so you could see what I'm talking about.

I don't know how people could read those kinds of letters, but I guess they could, and when they did, they would know when they had gotten to the "bottom" of the page in one direction and which way to turn it to read the next bit, but I don't suppose it was easy. In another sort of messy, confusing way, there have been definite beginnings to all of the different things that have happened this fall, and some of the chapters are ending now, too.

For example, the cat moved away down the street a few months ago. Now the Sixes are going, too, although they're moving around the world instead. I still find something almost surreal about how it happened that I had a place for them all to stay and they had the time to stay here during this first and scariest part of my illness and how we became better friends than we had known we were to begin with .

I'm going to miss them . . .

Coin Toss

After all that, this is not an allegory post. (Just consider yourself warned, for when I spring one on you.)

Today I went to see the medical oncologist. I have a belated infection at the surgery site. Oh yes I do. Better late than never, I guess. (?) Also, possibly even less delightful, was the copay for the prescription I had to buy to get rid of said infection. But yeah, I'd like to get rid of it. That wasn't why I went to see the doctor, though. I went to see her because she scheduled me to, so she could tell me the results of the Oncotype-DX.

Wouldn't you just know it. I'm in the middle category. This means I can a) bite the bullet and decide to have chemo and Tamoxifen or I can b) become a lab rat and let them put me in a random process which, at the equivalent of the flip of a coin, will allocate me to a group that is treated as above, or a group that is only given Tamoxifen. (Radiation therapy is a given in either case.) Then they will use the data from my ensuing life--what treatment I had and whether I ever get any kind of cancer again or not--to decide how to treat other patients, years from now.

There isn't a lot of data on this stuff for women my age. It would be very heroic of me to decide to become a lab rat. But it turns out I don't think I'm that heroic. I am a little perplexed about the numbers the doctor showed me, as compared to the ones I was quoted as needing to fall below. So I'm going to go ahead and phone my Second Opinion Doctor tomorrow, just to confirm. But, all Opinions being equal, I think I'm going to go for the chemo. I already pretty much have a wig picked out. (Did you think I said, "I already pretty much wigged out"? 'Cause I did that, too.)

But boy. Will those Starbucks customers be confused.

Allegory

I have a confession to make.

A couple, actually. The first one is that I am strongly considering changing the name of this blog to "I have a confession to make." That seems to be what it's about, most of the time. Thank you, Confessors. Sorry about that.

The one I started being about to make is this:

I like allegories.

Shhh! I know! That is sooo not cool of me!

Allegories are stories-non-grata in the literary world (and most other worlds, too). They're usually not very good literature. The whole point-by-point symbolism tends to grate on most people, and nobody likes moralising. I totally get it. It's just that . . . sometimes it's kind of a relief or something not to have to do the work of figuring things out. Sometimes it's kind of nice to have a prepackaged spiritual truth, pretty much spelled out, but with different pictures, as it were. When I encounter one, if I like the "pictures," I feel kind of validated. Or, if the beliefs being spelled out aren't the same as mine, I feel like at least I know what they are so I can consider them without being force-fed philosophy (which, for some reason, I always have a harder time processing).

Since I secretly like it, I also (sometimes less secretly) look for it everywhere. In books I read. In every day life. In my defense, though, unless I'm feeling even lazier than usual, looking for allegories can kind of be heady work in itself. And it turns out that the allegories I prefer are more often the ones that aren't intentional, or that don't translate exactly point-by-point after all. Maybe kind of like . . . a parable. Hey! Jesus used parables . . . !

I bring this up because I've been allegorising and analogising lately, and some of that is probably going to spill over into the Confessional pretty soon.

Back to Work

I had no idea punching orders into a cash register or swiping credit cards was so physically draining. All I had was a five-hour shift, and I only "rang" for half of it, but my arm feels like it wants to fall off. Good thing I didn't have to lift anything. ('Cause I can't. And am forbidden to.)

Also--why did only three customers ask me where I had been? Is it the haircut? Do they really think I was away for two-point-five weeks because I got my haircut?

Illumination

Have you seen this yet?It jumped out at my eyeballs the other day while I was waiting for a friend to turn up for coffee at Barnes and Noble. I managed to scan through the Gospels before she arrived. I guess I don't agree with every single visual interpretation, but I found a lot of them unbelievably powerful, and some of them made me cry.

Today I was at another Barnes and Noble with my mother on her way to the airport. She wanted to see this book, and I couldn't find it anywhere in the shelves, so I approached a clerk behind one of the counters.

"Excuse me," I said, "Do you know if you have--I don't know exactly what it's called--it's a version of the New Testament that looks like a magazine?"

He looked slightly perplexed but dutifully turned to his computer and began searching. "You don't know who published it at all?" he asked hopefully. "The author?"

I paused a moment before saying, with a bit of a grin, "Umm . . . God?"

Strangely, he didn't grin back.

"It didn't look like this, did it?" he asked after a moment, turning the screen toward me.

"Yes," I said. "That's it."

So . . . I didn't get the grin. But there was a look of surprise and interest. That might be good enough.

Mail

Having cancer does weird things to my postal "habits." By which I mean, the type of mail I habitually receive. (I'm still not sure I'm using "habitually" properly here.)

First it was this amazing influx of cards and notes and letters. Very cool. It was like extra Christmas, with way more personal notes.

Now it's this amazing influx of business envelopes that I don't automatically get to chuck into recycling. Rather less cool. They have return addresses on them for the hospital, or for my insurance company, or for those people doing the Oncotype-DX. Today I got my insurance print-out of everything I've been billed for so far. Although I had already heard the amount I had raked up, seeing it on paper, and seeing how many pieces of paper it too to tell me, was kind of awe-inspiring.

Note: This is not me complaining. I am simply observing trends here.