A one-on-one fight

Last Sunday, I went to church for the first time since the cancer diagnosis. I received hugs and comforting words, as well as tears from some who were caught off guard by the news. The congregation surrounded me and prayed for me, their hands on my shoulders and head while Irvin anointed me with oil. I felt supported by those prayers as by a network of imperceptible threads of lights. I am not alone in this unwanted trip.

Two days ago, I received the results of all the MRI and scanner I went through during the week. The nurse took my blood pressure. She seemed surprised. “Do you have high blood pressure?” she asked. I smiled.  “No. I am scared.” She looked skeptical and started all over again. She probably found the same result as she did not say anything else.

The results were good. No additional tumor anywhere – except, maybe, a small one by the location of the original one. Tomorrow Monday, I will have an outpatient procedure during which the “sentinel node” will be extracted, the port for the chemo will be inserted, and some additional tissue will be taken out to check out this possible second tumor. If it is there, it will be swiped away by the chemo and the radiations anyway.

I felt the effects of relief, cascading sweetly in waves all evening. I am comfortable facing one small tumor, aggressive or not. There will be blood.  

Scrutiny week

This morning, it was PET-scanner time, which required an almost superhuman effort. I was not allowed, in the previous 24 hours, to consume any dairy, sugar, fruits, starch or caffeine. No bread, no cheese, no yogurt… no chocolate… as I told Irvin “the foundation of my pyramid food is taken away from me!” I nostalgically munched on lettuce and roasted chicken… 

The exam requires also being injected with a radioactive substance. It is not painful, but I got mildly concerned when I noticed the syringe had its own lead armor.  The scanner device looks identical to the MRI one, but it is silent.

Making comparison was easy: I had a brain MRI in the afternoon and even with ear plugs, yes it was strident. Since I had time on my hands (the exam last 45 minutes, in 2 parts) I tried to categorize the diverse noises. There was first some techno beats, then a symphony of alarms, then a conversation between pneumatic drills that would even shake the whole engine once in a while. There were also isolated weird noises in between, slamming of doors and the occasional drunk frog croak…

I appreciated the presence of a small mirror which allowed me to see outside while I was still in this big tube. Wherever we are, even for less than an hour, it is good to always be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

Praise to Mammograms

Some critics have addressed mammograms lately. We (I mean, we women) can all agree getting a mammogram is an unpleasant, oppressive, yet required experience. Some contest its necessity though; claiming mammograms would be uncertain, provide too many “false positive” and create unnecessary distress and concerns on healthy women.

The fact is, I prefer dealing with several “false positives” rather than missing one “true positive”. My mother and my best friend Beatrice, in France, both faced “true positive” and their early diagnosis allowed them to avoid chemo for an only-radiations treatment and more generally to be alive and cancer-free today.

I hope for the same luck, particularly in regard to the no-need-for-chemo route. 

I found out this week that I was also a “true positive”. The small nodule of pre-cancerous cells, detected in November at my yearly mammogram, was hiding a 1 centimeter large “invasive ductal carcinoma”. The whole thing was excised on December 31 then biopsied. The tumor was found. 

This morning, the surgeon was telling me, meditatively “This is a weird, unusual cancer”. I know too little about cancer to be informed of the difference between a weird one and, let’s say, a regular cancer. (Is there such a thing as regular cancer?) I am only aware I am stepping into a new territory. I was (still am) a chaplain, listening to patients. I will now occasionally switch to the patient side. And I will do my best to make it a learning experience - for instance, on overcoming fear and dealing with the unexpected.

The surgeon told me, as he referred me to an oncologist that I will meet tonight for the first time, “You are the driver in this process. We, the doctors, work for you. Don’t let anyone switch the roles.” I liked that.

And I like also that I am dealing today with a 1 centimeter tumor (one third of an inch) and not an angry multifaceted monster in, let’s say, 2015. 

Thanks to a mammogram. 

Across the Stream

A dream brought me to pray. I saw a narrow bridge, a foot path over a wide stream, sturdy built but narrow, a place of both beauty and choice. Here an elder kept watch, bidding travelers to lay down their burdens before crossing the bridge.

The vision is simple and clear. Let us leave as much as we can here, on this side of time, before we cross over to tomorrow. Let us come to the end of this year without regrets, worries, fears or anger. Let what needs to be left behind be released that our steps are as light as innocent hope, our hearts as free as first felt love. - Rev. Steven Charleston, Choctaw

9 hours after France, it is our turn to enter into year 2013.

Happy New Year to all!

Death is sweet

“Death is the last station on the road to freedom”. Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said those words to his friends when he was taken away to be executed, two weeks before the end of the war. He was part of the plot to kill Hitler. I just finished his biography. 

In a sermon written several years before, he talked about death, bringing a perspective we rarely get to hear about.

“No one has yet believed in God and the Kingdom of God, no one has yet heard of the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting  and looking forward to be released from bodily existence. Whether we are young or old, makes no difference. What are 20, 30 or 50 years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to the goal?

Life only really begins when it ends on earth. All that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up. That is for young and old to think alike.  What do we are so afraid when we think about death?

Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible. If only we can be still and hold fast to God’s word, Death is not bitter if we have not become bitter ourselves.

Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him. Death is mild. Death is sweet and gentle. It beckons to us with heavenly power if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of our joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace. How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows rather in our human anguish we are shivering at the most glorious heavenly, blessed event in the world! Death is hell and night and cold if it is not transformed by our faith.  But that is just what is so marvelous. - that we can transform death.” 

Christmas Tree 2012

Over the years, Irvin has gathered an impressive collection of Christmas ornaments. A small army of Christmas Trees would be needed to show them all! This year, because we were both so busy, I came back home one night to find a small tree he put up decorated with ornaments he purchased recently at the cultural center in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

And of course, a few additional ones celebrating our family faithful companions. Merry Christmas to all! 

Dear Sugar and the Sister Ship

Sometimes, I consider some choices in my life, and what my days would look like if, for instance, I had not felt led to go to the US for my fourth year when I was a student at the Faculté Protestante de théologie in Paris, or if, a few years before, I had remained a lawyer at the Bar of Pontoise, or at the Council of Medical doctors of the Val d’Oise area…

The lines written by Dear Sugar went straight to my heart. Sugar (writer Cheryl Strayed) writes an advices column in the online magazine Rumpus. A selection was recently published. Those columns are like no others: luminous words, sharing of intimate experiences often described with provocative language, and ultimately pertinent and wise responses.

Answering to a reader wondering if he was ready to be a father, Sugar mentioned a poem written by Swedish Tomas Tranströmer:  “I think of it every time I consider questions about the irrevocable choices we make… Every life, Tranströmer writes, has a sister ship, one that follows quite another route than the one we ended up taking. We want it to be otherwise, but it cannot be: the people we might have been live a different, phantom life than the people we are.”

Sugar mentioned her own choices and concluded “I will never know, and neither will you, of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important, and beautiful, and not ours. It was the ghost ship that did not carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore”.