February 17, 2006
This day began with my second injections of Vidaza in my second round of chemotherapy. Yesterday afternoon’s lengthy visit with the doctor was highly informative and built upon another good reading from the day’s blood draw. There appears to be progress, and so far, my body has been handling the constant stream of medications. After the absymal readings last week, the Neupogen was resumed, and continued until yesterday because it appeared to convince portions of my body to make some white blood cells. I would awaken at 3:00 AM with an ache in my collar bone, for example. “Collar bone, what is your problem? You have never had complaints before,” my night thinking brain would say, “so knock it off already.” The doctor said yesterday that there is cell making bone marrow in the collar bone and the skull as well as in the other more obvious (to me) places.
Before I receive the Vidaza, it is crucial that I ingest a medication called Zofran. This cream colored capsule puts a halt to the nausea which is waiting in the wings, and also costs very nearly $40.00 a pill, an expense mostly covered by Medicare and secondary insurance. For that I am most grateful, though I always consider that someone is paying this cost. I look at it in my hand and think about all those funerals for which I was the organist and for which I received a check of $40.00 from the funeral director, always discreetly placed on the side of the console. I swallow the pill. In the seven days of Vidaza I will consume the equivalent of two to three month’s worth of funerary fees, the sounds of “How Great Thou Art” and “Be Still My Soul” faintly sounding in my memory.
The cards keep coming and all of them include well wishes and assurances of God’s care. 
Always the hand written words in the cards say, “You are in (my)our thoughts and prayers”. I have considered more deeply the nature of prayers than ever in my life before; these are surely the most powerful expression of the church on earth and one of the great gifts therein. Charles and I speak together often of a life time lived in God’s care with blessings heaped up and running over – we say “Why would that be any different now?” Charles includes this prayer in his recitals and we speak it together frequently.
“Lord God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”