My Left Arm is a Ninja

“You are lucky! Your compressive sleeve has been delivered!” Bridget, my therapist, had a bright smile on Monday, when she made that statement. I would have not minded some delay. It is hot this week. 

I did not even know there were such things as compressive sleeves before Bridget mentioned them. Their purpose is to avoid fluid buildup when lymphatic nods don’t work as they should. Half of those nods were taken away last year to check if cancer had reach them (it did not). The other ones were damaged by radiotherapy.

Bridget showed me some sleeves, which were thick and beige. I figured I would look as if I had an artificial limb. I browsed the internet and saw sleek compressive sleeves in bold colors, some with fancy patterns.

I start seeing the sleeve in a perspective a la Gilda, as a sexy accessory. I picked a black one rather than beige.

Annoyingly, since I researched those on internet, I cannot go on Facebook now without having ads for thick stockings on every pages…

So the fact is, the sleeve does compress. I must also wear a gauntlet which prevents my hand to swell while the sleeve is on. Putting the whole thing on is quite a process. 

When I take if off at the end of the day, I experience relief… and there are little elastic noises.  It does not look like Gilda taking off her silky gloves AT ALL. The truth is, my arm looks like a Ninja all by itself.

Once up on the arm, I can forget I wear it. Unless it gets really hot… if it does, then sorry Ninja sleeve, you will stay in my drawer!  

Alison and the Assessment Test

I met Alison during my Clinical Pastoral Education. We have stayed in touch now and again, like you do when you live in different neighborhoods and run busy lives - yet have been through life transforming experiences together.

Recently, Alison let me know about postings for a chaplaincy position in a nearby hospital. She was going to apply – was I interested too? I appreciated her generous spirit; after all if I applied, we would become competitors. But I declined – God led me to another path and I now work in this awesome church, UPPC.

Alison contacted me again after she applied. She was troubled.

“They sent me this link and that led me to a test, she said. There were at least 50 questions and they were all the kind of problems we had to solve at school. You know, Jane lives in A, and Bob lives in B, and John lives near Jane, what is the distance between Bob and John… Rhetorical questions of logic. I was bewildered. None of the questions were related to chaplaincy or even human relations!”

Alison was concerned. She was so taken aback by the test (which took her about an hour to take) that she was pretty sure she had not done very well. She wondered how it would impact her application.

I tried to reassure her. Her application was strong, with very positive evaluations and her previous supervisor, a noted senior chaplain, as a reference.

A few days ago, late in the evening, I heard from Alison again. I could tell she had been crying. “I just received an email from Human Relations, she said. My application has been rejected. And they asked me not to apply again for any chaplain position for a year.”

I could not believe it. I was so stunned that I thought she had misunderstood. I had her read me the email she received. An unsuccessful application is always a possibility, but a one-year ban? What was that? Did a chaplain even look at her application? Who decided that her resume and experience were so unworthy that she was vetoed out for a year?

Alison told me she felt humiliated when she read this email. She did not say anything to her husband, who was in the same room and looking at his own lap top. She went upstairs and cried. “Worthless”. “That’s the word that kept flashing through my mind, she said. That I was worthless. That they had to get rid of me for a year because I was so bad.” 

She breathed in silence for a while. “Then I called you.” I was feeling bad for her. My guess is that I would have received the same email if I had applied myself.  “You must feel awful, I said. I feel awful too actually – and mad ! Where does this come from? I never heard of such a reply to an application.”

“I guess I need to know, said Alison with a sigh. Of course, I know in my mind that I am not worthless. I am not going to let anyone define me – especially anyone who does not even know me. I just don’t understand. Why would you want to humiliate applicants? I wonder if this comes from this test…"

Well, it came from this test, Alison found out. Human Resources had created this “assessment tool” a month before. About half of the chaplains who applied for the position failed the test – probably due to the same state of disbelief she was in. Their applications were then simply discarded and never sent to the manager of the hiring department. A one-year prohibition to apply was emailed to them.

“I heard there are talks in process to review ‘this assessment tool’ for the Pastoral care department, she said. Because it does not assess anything chaplains need… But that will be too late for me.”

Fortunately, this was not the end of the story. Another position opened up, and Alison was offered the possibility to appeal the ban. The appeal was received, and Alison has applied for the new position. Her new application is being processed. She allowed me to share her story – as long as I did not use her real name.

I thought I had seen lots of bizarre situations through my chaplaincy education. This one is definitely off the chart. 

A strawberry in peril

Fruits are growing in short number in the yard. However, a few strawberries have been showing up, with the support of abundant sunshine and patient streaming of water. 

But a predator is roaming, fast and experienced. She will not hesitate to snatch away an unripe fruit – even if it is still a flower. 

I am watching but the animal is sneaky. Who will have the last word – and the strawberry? Suspense is on… 

Leaving the Kingdom

 "We each are the citizens of two kingdoms, the kingdom of the well and that of the sick” wrote Susan Sontag. Arthur Franck, who quoted her in his book “The Wounded Storyteller”[1] mentioned another kingdom, a grey area, between those two, where people in remission belong, a place where “the foreground and background of sickness and health constantly shade into each other.”

Remission is my kingdom. I cannot state that I am ‘healed’ although the last PT scan showed that cancer left my body. Now, it is like bad cells have the key to get in, and they could do so anytime. “From now on, wherever you go, you will need an oncologist”, my doctor told me. “For the rest of your life”.

And I am still taking medication. As my cancer was hormone sensitive, I am taking pills that lower my estrogen level as much as possible. Months after the end of chemo and radiations, small side-effects have shown up. My hair has been growing back but my eyebrows almost vanished. This led me to ponder, in front of a mirror, on the appearance of aliens in SF movies. Have you noticed they have no eyebrows?

My hands have neuropathy – a tingling sensation in my fingers that comes and go. My left arm has swollen because of the missing lymphatic nods. “You will need to wear a compressive sleeve now”, told me the lymph-expert rehab therapist last week. I was a bit alarmed. “All the time?” Her answer was not that comforting.  “No, only when you are awake.”

Being in remission does not mean you are healthy. However, this ambivalent territory looks like it. I am aware I am now where I was hoping I would be a year ago: globally ok and back in an appeased life.

Belonging to the kingdom of the sick makes you grateful once and for all that you don’t live there anymore.

---

[1] Arthur W. Frank, the Wounded Storyteller, Body Illness and Ethics, the University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 1995, 

Growing back: an adventure in the making

About that time last year, I was done with chemo. I remember the day I first saw it in the mirror: the start of the beginning of a shadow on my nude crane. My hair was growing back. As it often happens post-chemo, this new hair is very curly. I have mixed feelings.

On one hand, I am happy to have hair back. On the other, my hair never looked that way. It used to frame my face in what I considered a somewhat flattering way, hiding me from the world.

This new hair is dramatically different plus it grows upward instead of going down toward my shoulders. I am living a new capillary experience. I only hope gravity will do its thing before I look like this…