And the word has just come down: at 1:15 pm the ambulance will be here to transfer me to the Seaside Rehab and Health Care on Baxter Boulevard over on the other side of Back Cove, which gives me just enough time to order a little lunch, pack up my stuff, and write this quick update. Have no idea what my situation will be like there compared to here -- whether I will have easy internet access, for example, or how much freedom I will have to control my own schedule. I imagine that there won't be that much going on over the weekend though, which should give me ample time to work these issues out. One would hope. If not, these could be a very LONG two weeks. And it does concern me that this new facility doesn't even have a website of its own.
My nearly month-long stay here at Maine Medical Center has been an unusual experience to say the least. It was completely unexpected -- a detour which has altered the trajectory of my treatment in every way. But I'm trying to take it in stride and go with the current, roll with the waves, flow with the tide....
The idea that I might actually spend the rest of my brief life in a wheelchair receiving chemotherapy seems incomprehensible to me. I'm still planning to sail and to play more basketball, not to mention walking all over the West End with my little dog, visiting with our neighbors and waving hello. Assuming, of course, that the chemotherapy gives me the outcome we're all hoping for, and I am healthy enough to return to "normal" living in September.
Is it faith and hope, or denial and bargaining?
You tell me.
Does it matter?
You bet your life it matters....
About Me
- The Eclectic Cleric
- Portland, Maine, United States
- Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, sailing summers in the San Juan Islands and warding off the gloominess of the incessant winter rains by reading voraciously and drinking more than my fair share of Seattle's Best espresso. Five (count 'em) college degrees, making me an honest-to-God Crimson Dawg Duck Beaver Viking. Have served Unitarian Universalist congregations in both Midland Texas and on Nantucket Island (which made the 2004 election VERY interesting), as well as numerous other smaller UU fellowships along the I-5 corridor in Washington and Oregon. More recently, I relocated from the affluent faux rural suburbs of "the Neighborhood of Boston" (just beyond the Old North Bridge and through the woods, about five miles from the site of Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond), to the bustling shores of Casco Bay at the southern edge of "Down East." But my ministry at the First Parish in Portland ME was cut short by a diagnosis of Lung Cancer in February, 2008. I currently live outside of Sacramento CA, retired with a permanent and total medical disability, as I battle with my disease and continue to ponder what God has in store for me next.
11 comments:
Hi Tim,
I hope you are happily ensconced in your new digs, that you have cute nurses and unfettered Internet access....oh, and that the food is good. What a lovely location; much better then Brighton Ave. Did they give you a room with a view? I hope so. I also hope that you feel well enough to break out of there and take a roll on the Back Cove walking path. Better yet, I'll come and sneak you out!
Tim, I think it is combination of hope and faith, denial and bargaining depending on the day. And in the long run, it doesn't really matter as long as you live each day as if it is your last. I often remind my children in the morning that "this day is a gift that you will never get to live again. How will you live it?"
See you tomorrow.
Well, I too would like to travel now. I just learned that you and I now are sharing fate. Wish both of us good luck. Yours, Knut.
Why not faith and hope? I'm right there with you, pal. We can get to denial and bargaining later after we see what happens with the chemo.
See you next weekend, and you'd better not think that cancer is an excuse to have whiskers growing out of your ears. Should I come by with a Norelco nose hair trimmer?
Tim, I wish you well with the transfer and getting connected to the internet at the new place.
I'm following your comments and am struck by your lucidity and wit in the midst of the numbingness of hospital time and pain treatment.
I'll be at HDS for Alumni/ae Days in June with flights shoehorned between church events out here, so I won't have time to come visit. Let's talk by phone one of these days when you get settled in.
Diane Miller, Pleasant Hill CA
Hi Tim:
We are back from Florida. We had a great time swimming and relaxing. We went down the Everglades in an airboat and saw no less than 200 alligators. We also toured the Thomas Edison-Henry Ford summer compound. It was truly the promised land for me surrounded by the inventions of two men with such engineering prowess.
Alessandra will be home from college in a couple of weeks. Hard to believe that her first year of college has come and gone.
Love you!!!!
Tim, Good news re Seaside is that it is close to Falmouth where I live.So I will be able to bring Parker to see you often while I have her.
Glad to see your reference to "go with the current, roll with the waves, flow with the tide." I think that is close " ping pong ball in a mt. stream." relax and try to enjoy the view.
Jane
Tim,
I really believe you have the spirit and determination to conquer anything. Your blog is stunning but even if you take a break, we'll stay with you on this journey!
Ever so fondly, Val C. and friends
Your "brief life"? Say it ain't so... or it's a religious phrase...
Hey Tim, you bet your life it matters. And you are dealing with faith and hope. And that is not just your department, but all of ours. You are the conduit for faith and hope to resonate in the rest of us!
I just returned from L.A. with Anna. She is looking hard at Azusa Pacific University, a small (4000) private (read $$) Christian university about 28 miles N.E. of LA. While she was nosing around in the campus bookstore for a shirt, I was nosing around the books. I picked up a copy of Thoreau's 'Walden; or Life in the Woods'. It makes me think of you. Why? I think because we had talked about it much when I was out to see you in Carslaile (sp!)
If I remember you had been to the pond before. He begins by explaining the basic needs in our life; food, clothes and shelter. He should have added faith and hope.
I emailed you a photo from 2004 at Higgins Beach.
Chris
Hi, Tim,
I just got the news.
I am on the northern route of the Longest Walk2 (www.longestwalk.org) and am currently somewhere in Kansas. It is a prayer walk -- every step is a prayer, and I will pray for you as well.
I don't see computers very often, but I will try to check your blog site whenever I can.
Willow from Wy'east
Hey Tim,
If you feel it necessary from me to come out there and shake sh*t up over at Seaside Health and Rehab; just give me the word chief. Gibson got of easy having this displaced New Englander hoot and holler every time the Bruins muscled a Canadian into the boards (remember the time the night nurse said she was scared after Philip Kessel dinged one off the weak side post?) And how about the time Dustin Pedroia roped the ball into the right field gap to sweep the Texans? It was all we could do not to gag on a maw-full Bingos Wingos, but hey, at least we were in the right place should anything go down the wrong pipe!
Nice to hear you are moving ahead with your treatment because...
"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship." [Moby-Dick; Chapter 1, page 1].
You're getting closer to the sea Tim, and 'yer ship awaits you. You and I; nay, all of us participating in this voyage shall...
"go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from the schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time. [MD; Chapter, 1 page 4].
Aye Tim, avast shipmates; our ship sails from here!
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