February 22, 2006
This was my last day of the second round of chemotherapy. All those injection spots are sore and the body is under siege, but not quite as badly as the first round. My psyche is peaceful again – I consider the psalmists and their very colorful descriptions of waiting for deliverance and how their final words are always filled with praise and trust. So it is – hope returns and with it a perspective that can see clearly that my own situation is not nearly as bad as it surely must be for many others.
Statistics from the American Cancer Society state that over 1,300,000 people got cancer in 2005. Like all large numbers, that one is hard to grasp until you consider that this is more than the entire populations of Omaha, Lincoln, Grand Island and Seward with a fair number to spare. Think about it. . . each citizen awakening with an ache, a twinge, an undeniable something wrong inside, and then after the testing and the hopes for lesser ills diminish, the meeting of the reality of the disease. Cancer comes from within, cells running amok and like greedy vines wrapping hapless trees, slowly kills the host. It can appear in any part of the body, be it organ, gland, bone, skin, brain or blood. The great good fortune is living now rather than in times past when the word wasn’t even spoken and the person with the sickness frequently wasn’t told because there was no hope. How much better to have the tools to destroy the destroyers, and in many cases, to regain the molecules that house the spirit!
After the first set of more positive readings of white blood cells, while I was still staying in Lincoln, daughter Heidi and granddaughter Zoie appeared at our friend’s door carrying a bouquet of white tulips. . .”for the cells, may they grow and grow!” they announced gaily, and the tulips were placed in a wonderful art glass vase where their display brought smiles each time one came into the room. It is a good thing that spring is advancing with the incredible optimism evident in the shoots pushing through the hard dry earth that frequently defines Nebraska. “We are coming. . . ” they say, and their bright green color speaks once again of new life returning.