Happy anniversary… or maybe not.

Posted on by

1014092109

Last night I was tidying up Nate’s night stand. Next to the half-glass of Gatorade was a rainbow assortment of Post-it notes, his long-term method of staying organized. Most were ready for the trash and none had any interest to me, but I peeled them up for him anyway. Stuck to the table-top at the bottom there was one that interested me. It said: 11/29/09, 40, carok.

Nate was noting our upcoming anniversary, our fortieth, reminding himself to be prepared. But what about the word on the bottom of his Post-it? I figured it was probably something in Russian. Nate has always studied languages and enjoyed a college minor in Russian. He speaks it fluently and loves practicing his vocabulary words. All of us know a smattering of Russian as a result of his consistent practicing on us.

This morning, on the way to radiation #11, I tucked his anniversary Post-it into my purse. As we waited for treatment, I handed it to him.

“Our anniversary,” he said, smiling.

“Yes, but what’s that last word?”

“It’s ‘forty’ in Russian.”

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Lately, we’re holding hands a great deal. Today I studied his hand as I held it in the radiation waiting room. His wedding band has never been off since I slid it on during our ceremony at Moody Church, in 1969. Since that day, he’s always been fully committed to me, protecting, providing, participating.

Forty years ago, each of us made vows to the other that were meant to be honored “til death do us part,” and it looks like death is about to part us. The official rending began last night when a hospital bed arrived at our house around 8:00 p.m. The flight of stairs to our bedroom had become a mountain Nate could no longer safely climb. A near fall and frequent stumbles, even though others have been “under-arming him” both directions on the steps, had motivated us to request the bed.

But last night as I put my head on the pillow in a room twenty feet from Nate’s new main floor “bedroom”, our physical separation settled hard on me. He was needy but was too far away for me to hold his hand… or hear his breathing or feel his chest move up and down. My bed was lonely, a sad foretaste of the future. Will we be together to commemorate our fortieth? Or will he be far away in another realm entirely, out of sight and out of touch?

As I tucked Nate in tonight after a busy day that wore him out, I asked how he liked his new bed. Too tired to speak, he just nodded approval. After I bent down to kiss him, I said, “I love you.” Too tired to reciprocate, he winked at me instead. In forty years, I can’t ever remember him winking at me. It was youthful, cute and loaded with meaning, and it made me kiss him again. He’ll never miss me like I’m going to miss him.

“Love bears all things. Love endures all things. Love never fails.” (Parts of 1 Corinthians 13:4, 7,8)

1014092107

The excruciating truth

Posted on by

Now that Nate has ten radiation treatments under his belt, we’ve gotten acquainted with the eleven a.m. crowd in the waiting room. Each of us has the same time slot five days a week. Some arrive in wheelchairs and others with canes or walkers. One elderly gentleman has a gleaming cane of clear Lucite with a thick, see-through handle. Gorgeous. Another man brings a white flannel blanket, wrapping himself in its comfort as he awaits his turn on the ice cold table. A young mom, waiting for her husband to finish treatment, brings their four year old daughter with her bag of crayons and coloring books.

Creative head gear abounds, keeping bald heads warm. We see everything from baseball caps to fancy scarves, knit hats and head wraps. The waiting room is freshly decorated in dusty green with cushy seating for 32. Making sure coffee, tea and hot chocolate are available for all of us, a receptionist keeps the pots fresh with new brew. A flat screen TV tuned to CNN talks softly, but no one is watching.

Looking around the room, I wonder about everyone’s story. All are fighting a battle they might not win. The bottom line is that they want to beat the greatest enemy of their lives: death.

Several precious friends of ours are praying for Nate’s complete healing from his metastasized pancreatic cancer. Although I have no doubt about God’s ability to do that, he probably won’t. And if he doesn’t, I trust he has excellent reasons. We’ve already experienced some of them as our family has drawn together and shared unnumbered blessings from each other and countless others.

I’ve polled all the friends I know whose mates have died of cancer. Some of those spouses never accepted their own mortality, even on their death beds. Others believed they would die, based on the probabilities. Which is better?

I believe Nate’s cancer is the beginning of the end. Before we’re done with this whole mess, I may swing around to the opposite point of view, but for today, my reasoning goes like this:

If we expect death and receive healing, what unbounded joy we will have!

If we expect healing and get death, priceless opportunities will have been lost.

When a dying person finally gives in to the excruciating reality that earthly life is ending, not one moment is squandered on anything without eternal benefit. The rest of us might bop along through our days, filing “eternity” in a special category labeled “some day.” In reality, all of us are up against eternity, but the terminally ill are the only ones thinking seriously about it.

Nate’s alert moments are fewer each day. He has excellent plans to have one-on-one time with each of his children and with me, to get some significant things said. He’s thinking, planning, jotting down words on Post-it notes. I pray he’ll have time to say and do all he’s hoping he can. His words will be cleansing for him and life-altering for us.

Before he gets to that, however, he’s trying to put other categories of his life in order. He’s given me the phone numbers to call when he’s gone. He’s put my name on his bank account. He’s drawn up a power of attorney for me. He’s straining hard to think straight while taking narcotics to deaden pain.

His priceless plans are being acted upon only because he believes he is soon going to die. If he was focusing on a miraculous healing, these important tasks would remain undone, just like our friends who died saying, “I can still beat this.” In those cases, there were no life challenges, no thank yous, no handing off of responsibilities, no goodbyes.

Recently, Nate was sitting quietly, his hands fingertips-to-fingertips on his chest when he said, “If I was healed of this cancer, I know I’d be a changed man. But at some point down the road I’d just have to go through it all over again.”

It was a telling statement and, I believe, an acknowledgment that the number of his days is soon to finish.

“You (God) saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.” (Psalm 139:16)

Today was an 8.

Posted on by

If a good day is 0 and a bad day is 10, today was an 8. En route to the hospital in Chicago, Nate called the doctor, wanting to set up a meeting after today’s radiation treatment (#10). In the last two days, new negative symptoms have popped up: dry heaving, dizziness and feelings of panic as breathing tightens.

Two doctors and a nurse kindly accommodated and gave us a full hour, despite our not being scheduled. When they asked Nate to rate his pain from 1 to 10, 10 being the most severe, he thought and frowned but couldn’t pick a number. The description beneath face #8 said it well: “Hurts a whole lot.” The medical team designed a new treatment plan to ease his symptoms and suggested we meet with the hospital counselor specializing in cancer cases.

The doctor described what he saw as the cause of Nate’s panic attacks, the conflict of being forced to choose between two bad choices. With the end of our radiation treatments in sight, chemotherapy was coming into view. “Chemo might help you, but it also will drain your energy,” the doctor was saying. Basically the question in front of us was, “Would you like to undergo chemo treatments that may not help you, or would you like to forego chemo and risk losing the help it may have given you?”

We’d already decided against the research study to see how using a new combination of chemo drugs in pancreatic cancer patients might help. But traditional chemo was still on the table for us. What would our choice be?

During the discussion, Nate was battling extreme emotional pain, maybe even a 10. It was written in the agony on his face. His dry mouth was causing his lips to stick to his teeth, and he was complaining of a severe stomach ache. Dr. Abrams prescribed something to relax him, agreeing that he needed relief and calming. He wisely suggested we opt out of our scheduled radiation treatment today after observing Nate’s overall stress and exhaustion, so we skipped it.

After our appointment, my brother Tom met us in the radiation waiting room to talk about their legal clients as he and Nate had done before. But today Nate couldn’t concentrate and was agitated in both body and mind. Tom called a halt to the meeting, having a sensitive barometer for his brother-in-law’s well being, and we headed home by way of two pharmacies. Arguments over insurance permission, pill prices and inadequate supplies left us both longing to end the day.

Finally, armed with a small supply of a new drug to ease Nate’s anxiety, we looked forward to a calm, symptom-free evening. But the pill overdid its task and knocked him out completely. He went to sleep in his clothes, a sleep so solid I wondered if he’d wake up in the morning. Tears, tears and more tears came as I watched him sleep next to me, his mouth open and his eyes only half closed.

When Jesus walked the earth, one of his statements summed up the way we would have to have to look at life from here on: “Do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

People often say, “Tomorrow will be a better day.” I have a hunch that won’t be true for us. Although we never lose hope, probabilities are powerful influencers.