LXVI.

Have you ever looked out the window on a particularly beautiful morning and wanted to get up and do something? With no cloud in the sky and the air refreshing to your lungs usually filled with stale office air. So, you decide a morning walk would be a pleasurable, if unexpected, little addition to at least this one morning in your life; you get dressed and hit the open road.

Your feet hit the pavement in a rhythm almost exactly in sync with your heart beat pulsing in your neck and temples; your body continues to get warmer and looser as your feet keep compelling you forward, but you like this feeling of pushing yourself; and you know your cheeks are well past pink and more bright red, with beads of sweat clinging to your brow, gathering under your eyes, and making a dark v-shaped mark down your back. While your mind is thoughtful of the time and the energy you’ll need to return to your home, your soul keeps pushing you forward: just…one…more…step.

Finally, though, you do find a reason to stop: maybe a call of nature, a literal call on your cell from a spouse, or a call to your heart from Someone who knows you even better than you hope to know yourself. Regardless, upon stopping, you catch your breath, wipe your face, and finally swing around to see how far you’ve come and you’re stunned. In what you thought was a short little outing with no destination originally planned, you see behind you, instead, a long and winding journey: you spot the place where you had wanted to quit but kept on moving, the hill you had dreaded going up so much (only to find it was hardly difficult at all), and the puddle you had splashed through trusting it was shallow only to find it was more like a deep pot hole filled to the brim (and your wet right foot thanks you for the ‘squish’ it makes when you step on it now).

Cancer is very much like this scenario, which I realized when I met an individual on the day of their diagnosis with not only cancer, but liver cancer (my own health demon). Upon talking, I realized not only was I exactly where he was once, and, like the walker above, I had traveled longer than he/she had ever originally planned. But, I also recognized, on the other side of things, I was not very far at all from where this new cancer warrior stood. Here it is, almost two and a half years later, and I’m still in and out of the hospital, making trips for chemo, and doing things to ‘heal’ I had never originally thought I was capable of doing.

I find strength in knowing I’ve made it this far and this motivates me daily, giving me the unceasing desire to both be available to individuals who find themselves new on the journey of battling cancer and also be prayerfully minded of them constantly.

LXV.

I feel an overwhelming urge to write and offer a simple, but very sincere and genuine apology for not providing the readers of the Clay County Progress with my weekly column. Up until last week, I had never skipped writing a column…NEVER in the 65 weeks writing for the Progress had I missed even one article, even through chemotherapy changes or days of getting particularly bad news. I had always stepped up to the keyboard (figuratively speaking) and did what I felt like I absolutely had to do. So why didn’t I follow through last week? I know, I know—I definitely have “some splainin’ to do!”

Simply put: I was sick. I can see you, friends, reading those three little words and cocking your head in confusion, probably thinking somewhere along the lines of, “Well, aren’t you always sick?” The answer to your question is obviously ‘Yes,’ but this kind of ‘sick’ yielded terrible pain in my esophagus and stomach, rapid weight loss, faintness, and daily bloody noses. These symptoms not only terrified me, but had me bent over in agonizing pain; I even had to skip my baptism (a moment, I assure you, I had prepared myself for spiritually and emotionally), hating every mile closer a local ER and further away from my public acknowledgement as Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

A while back, my oncologist best described my medical problems when she said, “With Jessy, you have to expect the unexpected.” Meaning: the ‘regular’ treatment that was prescribed, after I shared my health history and my current symptoms, was misdiagnosed and I was sent home in as much pain as I had arrived in.

Paging my oncologist at Duke led to me being admitted there less than 24 hours later, with strong pain pills being administered to keep me from writhing right out of the bed, a number of procedures lined up (like an endoscopy of the upper GI and a chest x-ray) to actually see what was causing the issues. Duke’s diagnosis? Thrush and peptic ulcers, both of which were in my middle-to-lower esophagus and on the upper lining of my stomach. I was also extremely anemic, so I had two blood transfusions and more frequent blood draws to check my blood counts. My platelet count was also very low, which helped to explain my daily nosebleeds, and I was exceedingly dehydrated, which explained my faintness when standing up quickly or for long periods of time.

Five days and four nights later, I was discharged with an array of medicines to continue on my own at home, including a handy little IV antibiotic that I was taught to plug into my Power Port, and the explicit order that I was to continue resting and limit my driving and activities as much as possible for the next ten days, which I happily agreed to do. But, limiting myself to the point of skipping another article? Never again.

LXIV.

Lately, a great deal of importance has been placed on the monetary value of items more than their potential sentimental value. Look at the dating world, for instance: countless young men bemoan the fact it is entirely too expensive for them to court, particularly if they find someone believed to be ‘high-maintenance,’ or otherwise, one who anticipates regular gifts of affection. The standard goes both ways, of course; ladies are just as likely as gents to aim to impress with gifts of grandeur and excess.

I have heard true stories of women refusing a proposal because they found the engagement ring ‘lacking,’ which I find not only appalling, but infuriating. I always joked with my fiancé that he could propose with a ring from a bubble gum machine and it would have been perfectly okay because I loved him, not the prospect of a fancy little bauble (though, I do confess, my ring came from somewhere much finer than a Cracker Jack box and it would take something mighty fierce to try and pry it off my finger now).

It simply worries me: we may be coming to an era in time where people might entirely forget how special personal investments of time, energy or prayer, are and how gifts of that nature are impossible to put a price on…not because they are worthless, but because they are invaluable. Over the past twenty eight months of my life, my days have revolved around the kindness and generosity of others who have invested so much of themselves into keeping my head floating above water—they have exhausted their own mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual surpluses to save me from falling over the edge of obliteration that I already dangled precariously from.

A study released several weeks ago by researchers at the National Cancer Institute placed the value of a caretaker of a lung cancer patient at approximately $72, 702 dollars for the two years after the patient’s diagnosis, based on a pay rate of $16.28 per hour. Presumably, this covers the amount of lost wages a caretaker has to handle when they cannot afford to hire suitable outside help to tend to their loved one.

So, I wonder, is that how much the people in my life are owed due to my condition? Hardly. To me, the days they spent holding my shaking hand as I waited for CT results; the hours spent toting me Gatorades and ginger ales to keep me well hydrated; the tender moments of washing my back and brushing my hair when my own arms were paralyzed from the pain of surgery…all those times and all those sacrifices add up to a price beyond any definition. Trying to place a quantifiable sum on how much they have meant to me is both trivializing and disrespectful to them and I hope they all know, to me, their price is far above any number with a money sign beside it.

LXIII.

On any given week, I generally meet a handful of people who recognize me from writing this very article; either they remember my face from the photo or they may hear my name and it will strike a chord or they may actually be introduced to me as “that girl who writes that sweet article every week in the Progress.” I love these chance encounters with people who can connect to my emotions and feelings, experiences and endeavors, moments of triumph and battles with the many demons living within Cancer-land. More often than not a conversation ensues and even if it is ever so brief, I am usually praised for my “great attitude,” which I respond to by thanking them and agreeing that, yes, it is important to keep a good attitude through the midst of any difficult journey, but particularly one capable of taking your life and beating you to a pulp before it does so.

But it’s after those conversations where I start to think about my supposed “great attitude” and I really wonder if I have been totally open and honest on how I feel about this entire situation and whether or not the truth in all its ugly entirety would really be considered so great. Pondering this has led me to believe I should make sure I am perfectly clear with how I feel about having cancer:

It sucks.

Pardon my elementary-school cursing, but I have never, in the two years and three months since my diagnosis, found a better phrase to really capture the whole sum of my feelings for the situation better than those two little words. It really does stink…I assure you there are many other perceived ‘disasters’ people are forced to handle that I could have coped with much more easily than cancer. Don’t misunderstand: I don’t want any more items on my plate from the buffet of hard knocks, but I could have skipped the main course of cancer, going hungry, and would have been perfectly fine with it.

That said, I happen to be a firm believer in the thought every ordeal we go through in life, whether good or bad, has a purpose to it—an underlying reason, which motivates me to also believe that, technically, there are no bad experiences in life. Some are certainly more negative than others, but if it has a purpose (and personally, as a Christian, I believe that purpose is otherwise known as God’s will, which I pray daily to be done, instead of my own) then how can I blatantly be bitter? Short answer: I can’t.

So, I go to every treatment satisfied in my soul I am there for a reason. I take every pill each morning, fight every bout of exhaustion each day, and cope with a deep, unsettling pain each hour not with a naïve optimism, but instead with an unspeakable, indomitable faith that one day I will look back on all this and see the reason smiling back at me.

LXII.

By the time the majority of little girls are old enough to thoroughly cherish and protect a special baby doll, wear entirely too many necklaces, and tote around their mother’s pocketbooks, they have already started to envision and possibly anticipate one of the ‘great’ moments in their life: their wedding. From Disney films to simple societal male and female gender roles, little girls get plenty of help in starting to imagine their union to their Prince Charming early on in life, and with dressing our Ken dolls up in their finest suits and our Barbie’s in the prettiest white gowns, so begins little visions of what our wedding may one day be.

Of course, when we are toddlers we rarely imagine our lives filled with anything but joy—the only grief I ever knew as a two-year-old was not having enough apple juice to make it through the night. And as I grew from a child into an ambitious young woman, the thought of ever envisioning my life steering away from a ‘normal’ course and going on a bit of a topsy-turvy ride along the path of surviving cancer never occurred to me. Well, that is, until I was diagnosed—and then it was ALL I could think about.

With the reality my body had failed at protecting itself, also came the swift realization that I would never be ‘typical’ again. I feared the future—I dreaded being vulnerable enough to allow any sort of relationship. To me, I didn’t have the luxury of daydreaming over a ‘Modern Bride’ magazine anymore—instead I needed to be focused on not even touching a germ magnet like a magazine in public. And even though I had grown well past the stage of believing in ‘fairy-tale’ romances, my heart still broke as I realized some fantasies were just not likely to come to fruition for me.

Well, cancer may be able to thoroughly ruin some things, but it CANNOT take away your dreams and goals, hope and ambition, love and joy. On the evening of August 25th, after earlier getting the first positive results from a CT scan referencing the effectiveness of my chemotherapy, my better half of over two years dropped to his knees and proposed with a smile on his face and a glimmer in those green eyes I adore.

In that moment, there was not room for cancer to exist, or chemotherapy, oncologists, clinics, or CTs. In the tight embrace of his arms, repeating over and over a flurry of, “Oh yes, I will, I will!!” and a thousand I-love-you’s, only a very pure feeling of complete and utter elation could share our world. Now, as I excitedly start to plan for our nuptials and count down the days till I am his wife, I may end up wondering how to manage a veil if I’m bald or worry about covering up my port scar, but I know my future holds the promise of great happiness, regardless of what cancer may try to do.

LXI.

Lately, there has been a WHOLE lot of talk on your televisions, radios, newspapers, and online news sites about health insurance. As our President tries to pass his own ‘Obamacare,’ we’ve heard nonstop about how costly insurance from private providers can be (and usually is)—so much so that some 57 million Americans simply cannot afford to keep it in their budgets already strained by a weak and fumbling economy.

As someone who knows how fortunate I am to have what my provider calls ‘the Cadillac of insurance policies,’ I will acknowledge first—yes, it IS expensive; but, second, every penny spent is well worth it, particularly as a cancer patient. I assure you—no one could offer an insurance policy I’d accept over mine since it’s taken care of me through countless CTs, a dozen or so ‘procedures’ requiring either local or general anesthesia, blood work, and, of course, office visits.

But here is something those blessed with good health may not know—even with insurance, cancer treatment has costs you cannot even comprehend will exist when first diagnosed. Yes, my chemotherapy is covered by my policy, but the work to repair cavities caused by that chemo comes out of pocket. Sure, I got the opportunity to participate in state of the art medical procedures straight from a lab, but to do so, I have to travel the 365 miles or 5 ½ hours to Duke University’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, where such things can actually be found. Not only does the mileage itself cost a fortune, but when you add the time of travel to the time spent sitting in the clinic(s) and add that to the time it takes to actually get my chemo it equals at least two nights stay in a hotel, which costs a hefty amount. Throw in a CT and it automatically bumps our stay up to three nights, though we ARE fortunate to receive a ‘medical rate.’

Regardless, the point remains: cancer, with or without insurance, will inevitably yield a nasty blow to your wallet. In reality, no matter how much you spend at Aetna or Cigna or Blue Cross, you will never really have enough ‘insurance’ or assurance, for that matter.

However, I have noticed that both insurance and assurance can be guaranteed (more than you’ll ever need) from your family (of both blood and church), friends, neighbors, and community—particularly if you’re fortunate enough to live in a place like Clay County. Over the past several weeks I have known of (and had the pleasure of attending some) benefits for local citizens battling cancer who may have needed help with paying the exorbitant bills that unfortunately come with cancer. I am blessed to be in a condition, so far, where we haven’t needed monetary help, but it comforts me to know should I ever NEED it, I can rest in the assurance my friends, family, and community will come to my aid the best they can, just as I would (and will) for them.