feeling a little optimistic

Good morning:
My attitude is significantly better. I don't know if it's because I'm off for a week starting tomorrow, or whether it's I'm feeling a bit better, or I don't give a poop at this point. Regardless, I'm gonna play this next week and have fun.
My wife Kate has been hitting home runs with her cooking lately. Healthy stuff too. It's wild. Last night she made this boneless ribs marinated in her secret concoction with a side of homemade fruit salad. It was great!!!
Well running out to the garage to improve my explosive muscularity.
See you tomorrow

Bill

Scared but going on vacation

I’m scared.

There really is no other way to put it; I know it lacks flourish, panache, etc. But there you have it.

George Costanza once said, “My little voice is an idiot.” I’m hoping mine is too. 

Lately though mine has been saying, “It’s baaaack.”

God I hope I’m wrong.

I won’t bore you with the litany of symptoms that could be something else, suffice it to say I’m feeling things that give my pause. Yesterday, though I told my bride about my feelings and we cried for a bit and went out and bought shoes. To be precise we went out and I bought shoes; Topsiders actually (maybe I’ve gotten too close to my feminine side).

The point is, I could go to the oncologist and get things checked out, but I have an appointment the 20^th and I’ve been planning a mini-vacation starting this Friday thru next week and I’ll be Goddamned if I’m gonna miss that. I spent all last summer in one form of medical care or another and I’m not doing that shit again until I have to.

If the lymphoma comes back it’s not like it is going to kill me (well it could) but most Burkitt’s fighters get a relapse then they are cured. I was kind of hoping to skip the relapse – maybe I will.

Like I said this could all be a nexus of other things piling up a the same time mimicking some things I went through before – squidgy stomach, might be the nexium for acid reflux (don’t ask); a pain in my arm pit may just be a tendon pull from a weekend of gardening; abdominal pain may just be that I’ve gotten fat and the extra weight is pulling on my scar.

At least I have new shoes.

Suppose they held a function for cancer survivors and only one showed up? Well that’s kind of what happened last night at Timothy’s Restaurant on Wilmington’s Riverfront.

Billed as a fundraiser for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, DanceStrong kicked off at about 6 p.m. with a $15 (donation) cover charge, raffle tickets and men and women in costumes set for Dancing With the Stars.

The only thing that seemed to missing was a cancer survivor or two.

There seemed to be about 100 people there from Starliters Dance Studio and Core Fitness both from Wilmington Delaware.  Oh, and Kate and I.

We sat near the exit, expecting an evening of dancing and soon discovered we’d be watching other people dance – actually putting on a demonstration of different dances.

As the event filled, some people would stop by our table and say, “So are here with Bryan (owner of Starliters)?”

“No I’d reply,” I am a cancer survivor.

“Oh, okay,” they’d reply with a befuddled tilt of the head as if the evening had nothing to do with survivorship -- just dance. Which of course is okay, just kind of strange. It was as if having a cancer survivor hanging out at DanceStrong was kind of unexpected.

The dancing was okay and kind of fun to watch and I am thankful these folks raised money for livestrong,org, God knows it’s an important cause

It’s just that the reaction of the people to having a survivor in the room was just kind of funny – It was kind of like they were having a party for people they hoped didn’t actually show up.

Maybe they were just intimidated by my dancing prowess.

visited by an angel

            I wasn’t feeling good. I wasn’t feeling bad. My feet hurt a little, but hat was about it. I was just kind of in the same morning funk that most of the people at Wawa were Thursday morning a bit before 0700. I grabbed my black coffee from the ubiquitous brown thermal containers lining the long counter in the back of the store and waddled to cashier, paid for my java and headed to my red pickup truck.

            I hit the doorway the same time this chubby African-American fella with his own cup of coffee, a three or four day speckled grey beard, and a light blue tee shirt with Ethiopia embossed across the front – oh, and perhaps the biggest smile I had seen that morning. He looked to be about the same age as I am and he said, “Age before beauty” and gestured so I could walk out the door as he held it open.

            I must admit, I laughed pretty hard at that.

            As I walked out the door in front of him – he was always just out of peripheral vision – he said,  “We need to be thankful; not everybody makes it as long as you did.”

            It stopped me dead in my tracks. It really did.

            He passed me on my left between the building and me and was quickly gone. I don’t know where he went or how he left. He was just gone.

            Then it occurred to me that I had just had an encounter with an angel. No kidding.

            His comment to me was too precise and too timely for it to be coincidence. It was really spooky, yet affirming.

            I’m not suggesting he was a supernatural being, but rather I think he was a guy that God put into my life at a precise time, to deliver a precise message and then leave. He may not have even known he was an angel delivering a message on behalf of a supreme being, but I believe he was.

            As I drove to work it all kind of haunted me – not in a bad way, but in a what the hell just happened sort of way and then I had a blinding flash of the obvious (I call them BFOs). Maybe we are all called to be angels to someone else and might never know it.

            Maybe it is the word of kindness, opening the door, or helping someone we’ve only met once that makes us angels. Now if that’s true – I kind of think that it is – what the hell does it really mean?

            I think it means we always have to be ready to meet other people out of the blue and be open to delivering a message. If we are agents of the Supreme Being, then doesn’t that mean we have an obligation to deliver whatever message for which we’re the conduits?

            It’s a tricky idea and I’m not exactly sure how it all works, but I thought I’d share it with you.

Thoughts?

Bill

work part 2

Work Part Deux

Hey Guys:

Going back to work while recovering from cancer is a shock partly because people take work so seriously, like their lives depend on it – not their livelihoods. Where the hell is everybody going in such hurry?

I’m not suggesting that showing up late for meetings is okay, or doing slipshod work is okay, or not taking your job seriously is okay either. What I’m suggesting is the recovery person is more like a lamb jumping into a tornado and – if may I mix my allusions – a house might land on you.

Chemo brain is a real thing. For me it’s names. I can’t remember anyone’s name. Shit I can barely remember my own. It’s really embarrassing because everyone has been so nice to me and they deserve me to remember their names. It freaks me out. Thanks God people nowadays where ID badges. Although I can’t go around saying, “Hello employee 57,” for too long or they’ll catch on.

If that’s not challenge enough where I work there are lots of laws, rules and regulations to know – a lot of fine points I need at my finger tips. Shoot, like I said earlier chemo brain is alive and well -- I can barely find my way to the office. What the Workforce Investment Act says about any particular topic is a mystery to me; I have to look that stuff up now. I used to know it pretty well.

I am in the middle of preparing the big state plan. It’s quite an undertaking, with multiple parts, different sections, and lots of technical gobbledygook. It has taken about two weeks for me to hit an immersion point where the ideas are starting to flow.  If you go into my office the walls are covered in chart paper and green marker scrawls that highlight what I think I’m supposed to be working on. Thank God other people are going to check this thing; for all I know I might be typing my recipe for cabbage rolls over and over again.

Fatigue is still an issue and likely will be for another few months. At about 3 p.m. I get bone weary. If I could sneak a Lazy Boy in my office and a shade over the window in my door I’d be on a “do not disturb conference call” every day at 3 pm ‘till 4 p.m. But I gotta keep driving on. The fatigue is one of two issues that pop up at work – other is pain/neuropathy.

Sometimes pain shoots down my calf and around the top of my foot that is so intense I want to cry like a baby. My sill feet getting numb and/or tingly to the point of having to actually plod through my day. I look like the Mel Brooks Frankenstein Monster lumbering through the office – I’m waiting for someone to dump soup in my lap.

I have discovered that recovery and work are compatible if I take the time to do what I can, as best I can within my limitations and to let someone know if I am overwhelmed. I have discovered I need to take more notes and make better use of a planning calendar so I can at least get to the right building on the right day. I also need to be on guard about making sure I am always keeping my eye on the short-term urgent things in my life while making plans for the long term important things in my life.

Although it sounds like a lot of complaining I am thankful to be at the Delaware DOL and DWIB and tomorrow or Saturday I’ll tell you why.

Work part 1

Work, man oh man, now there is a place where my perspective has change dramatically. It’s funny too, because this time last year all I wanted was life to reset so I could go back to work.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a psychologist appointment to try and make heads or tails over how my perspective had changed and he read me his notes from our first visit.  They said – and I’m paraphrasing here – that I was handling the cancer diagnosis very well, but might have trouble with recovery because all I wanted was to go back to work and life to reset to normal.

That’s nuts! There isn’t anything in there about smelling roses, giggling, stroking my wife’s cheek, or taking a bike ride. Wow.

I remember a time in July when I was freaked out about being separated from my position so I could go on long-term disability. I can’t believe the amount of psychic energy I wasted on that.  If there is any huge change in me I can define this way – I no longer live to work, rather I now work to live.

Part of the reason I came back to work at all was a sense of loyalty to all the people who supported me during the cancer fight. And all that counts for something in my book. I am a deeply loyal guy.

“Do you think people supported you so you’d get back to work, or did they support you because they love you?” the psychologist asked.

“It’s because they care about me,” I said.

“If that’s true, would they still love you if you decided to do something else?” he asked.

“Sure. I guess so. I hope so.”

Then you probably have more options then you’ve considered, he said.

There are a lot of reasons people work. For many it is about money, for some it is about camaraderie, and for others it is something else. Don’t get me wrong I think I should make gazillion dollars more a year – I really do, but money is not a big motivator to me – at this point I’m not quite sure what is. I’ll have to think on that one. Hmmm

It’s funny, sometimes when I write stuff, I get to a sentence or two that I thought I knew what I was going to write and then I have to stop, delete, and rethink my personal feelings – hmmm?

Well that’s it for today. I have to ride my bike, shower and go to work. I’ll pick this up at the same place tomorrow. It’s very hard to put all my contradicting feelings in writing.