Change

I am at our cabin on a gorgeous Indian Summer day. The lake is calm and devoid of even the usual fishing boats. All is well today, in this corner of the world.

But this week has brought about change and I am sad and perhaps grieving. I learned as a mental health worker that this is all right, to be sad, to be angry, and part of grieving and if I ignore it, life won't move on and this sadness and anger won't pass, to borrow from another thread.

I was on medication that was working. I learned to walk, I stopped having major medical difficulties, I got off steroids, got rid of the terrible swelling in my legs, and even got thick gray hair. I was happy. Life was going along good.

Then the medicine stopped working, but it was only option number one and there are others. I had developed a lump on my head and pain in my side. The doctor says they are both cancer in the bones, but the new monthly shots I take should take care of them. My doctor is brutally honest. Both my husband and I heard him say the shots would take care of the two above difficulties, and if they stop working we have several more options.

I received word of a major honor from my college. I clutched the letter to my heart in tears, in fact. I also found out the medicine I was on had completely eliminated the cancer in my liver, and as I talk to others who know those things, they say that is miraculous. That is what I thought would kill me, and I saw the pictures. The mass is gone.

But the changes are overwhelming. The changes have left me with sadness I can't explain, except to grieve what was working, what I'd learned to deal with.

I want to sit here forever in the sunshine with the rippling lake beyond.

These feelings of sadness too shall pass, and I know letting them come to the surface is better than keeping them inside.

In the meantime I know it is the moments we live for. My mind knows that, and now my heart and soul need to catch up after they grieve what was working, what had given my life some semblance of order. Now I have a new order, and I'm slow at changes like this.

Shelagh, reminded us we can chatter here, and I'm doing just that.

Love, Carol

I guess that's why I say, "All I know is in this moment." I feel your moment of peacefulness in the beauty of nature. For me, these moments are vignettes of joy - or serenity - or whatever lovely name fits at the time. I find them at the Gulf, in the mountains, in the Everglades, and sometimes just driving down the highway if I'm lucky.

Yes, change is what we do from the moment we are conceived. No moment in our life is exactly like the last. Yet, change brings challenges. I am sorry for the changes that cause you discomfort and grief. You exhibit such a clear and beautiful spirit - and I'm anxiously awaiting the reveal for your award.

Carol,
thanks for sharing. Enjoying those moments of serenity help to heal.

I understand your sadness, Carol. My husband is going through the same. Forty years ago, he suffered a terrible accident and knew that, one day, he would have to undergo hip replacement surgery. Unlike the wear and tear of Tom's hip joint, the neck of the femur of my husband's left leg had been smashed into millions of tiny splinters, shortening the length of the bone and ramming the head of the femur into the hip socket. For decades, he has worried about undergoing an operation because he could remember all too clearly the pain he felt at the time.

Now, the operation is over and the pain was nothing like that experienced all those years ago. So, why is he so sad? The very thing that caused him all that worry no longer exists to focus upon and now he worries about just about everything else. Hopefully, the sadness will go with time. I certainly hope so; for you and for him.

I understand. We just get used to one thing, fear the worst we can think of, and even take pride in the courage we have. We feel that in some small way we have control, and then all of a sudden uncertainties creep into our being, we have to learn something seemingly as easy as walking, and we're hanging out there in a new world.

I know it is a grieving process, a letting go, even with a bit of guilt filtered in.

And I think the worst thing we can do is isolate ourselves. I think of stoic cancer patients trying to be cheerful, when I know at sometime somehow somewhere they are in depths of sadness.

Memories also have an affect on us, of pain, of loss of control.

I wish the best for your husband. When he gets it all sorted out in his mind, even gets angry at the years of pain, hopefully he will be better. Healing just isn't about our bodies, but our hearts and souls and minds.

I saw x-rays of my husband's hip the other day at his check-up, and those things are amazing. The doctor said that someday my husband won't remember which hip was operated on.

I see others much younger than I who are very, very ill, and who die and I feel so fortunate for the life I have had. But like my mother said when my father died after they'd been married 59 years, "It wasn't long enough."

Carol

Carol,

Hang on to hope and never let go.


God bless and keep you you and comfort you. I pray He will take the sadness and anger from you.

He took the cancer out of your liver--now He is doing the easy part.


Love ya,

Alice

Dear Carol,
I suppose you can remember when time seemed to go so slowly. In those rememberings, time draaaaaaaged along from one year to the next. I do not know why that was so. Wasted time that I wished away. I did not value time, then. It seemed something to endure to get to a better place in time.

Now, here I am, aware of time.

Ann,
could you post the part of J Alfred Prufrock about revisons of time?

If I remember it right, Carol, it says, There is time for visions and revision before the taking of toast and tea. I hope Ann will put the whole thing here.

Words- all we have to comfort you.

Love,
Betty

Betty,

That sounds fantastic. I hope Ann posts it.

Alice,

I want to know more about the hope conference!!!

Carol

Seven-hundred people gathered at the annual WA Hope Conference to discuss PD.

It struck me--I have little reason to have PD. Too young, female, exercise freak etc.,

A doctor was there with PD. Over and over he stated we had been given a second chance. He has had DBS, as have I.

We are in our second chance.

We must take advantage of our grace.

I was to the doctor the 23rd. He advanced my settiings for the first time in four years. I was able to cut back half a pill per day.

He told me I was amazing. PD has progressed, but very slowly. I am riding a bicycle eveyday. Thanks to God and doctors, life is much better.

Thanks for the info Alice. I know you went and spread hope to everyone you spoke to.

I've had so many second chances. Grace is where it is at. It comes down everyday in love and caring and another day in the world. I don't have to do anything for grace to be there, just remember to take notice. Thanks for the reminder.

I think I need a bicycle. I've got to keep my legs moving.

Love ya, Carol

You missed the Hope Conference in Wisconsin, Carol:

https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=163527925840&ref=mf

The HOPE of Wisconsin website:

http://www.wisconsinhospice.org/index.php

Quote :

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes.
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate.
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea

http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

I knew there was a reason I couldn't sleep. I was so busy yesterday I didn't check in.

Carol,
It seems to me that the focus of your meds had to be about healing your liver, and now that is done, and it is time to change that focus to those other areas. Your body is saying it is time for the next step.

I've heard that change itself is painful, that we experience the changes going on around us in our bodies. And, certainly, we are all going through a time of profound change, including the health care bill that passed the House this afternoon. I went to bed without checking the news, so when I got up about an hour ago, I came here to see what had happened, and something told me to check this board.

I got up in the middle of the night, after a strange dream, to look for a book that was running through my head as I woke in the wee hours with "change" on my mind. The name of the book is Who Moved My Cheese, and it's an allegory about a couple of mice named Sniff and Scurry, and a couple of little mice-sized people named Hem and Haw, who all live in a maze, and how they all react to the loss of their favorite cheese supply. The book is by Spencer Johnson. It is very short, and very entertaining as it shows us the ways people deal with losses and changes in their lives.

http://www.whomovedmycheese.com/

I did find my copy, and am putting it where I will see it as soon as I get back up in a couple of hours. For now, I'm going back to sleep.

Love you guys,

Ann

I ride a stationary bicycle and watch TV at the same time.

So does my dad, Alice! He turns the sound down on the television, listens to the radio and sings along while he cycles. He is eighty-four! Amazing!

I have facilitated many groups, seen beautiful things happen in people's lives through expressing thoughts, feelings and getting loving support from others, nothing I did, just what we all let happen, like being an orchestra leader of talented musicians.

This messageboard is one of the most loving and growing support groups I've ever been a part of. Sometimes challenging, and most of the time just being there with poetry and beautiful healing words. Shelagh is our orchestra director, letting our words flow through cyberspace.

I had a discussion with my daughter yesterday. One topic was about expressing oneself. A few weekends ago she wrote a multi-million dollar grant for the project she works for at the university that is studying the genome. Her boss says, "I hate to ask you to work this weekend, but we can provide jobs for scientists." Then she works from home and takes off the next few days. And she says she tells her boss her dreams, her visions. Right now she wants to be the university biographer, even if there is no such job at this time. I tell this story because I admire her for her outspoken words, as an example of outspoken words shared and people going out of their way because of them.

We write here, we dream, we reach out to each other, we form friendships, we share stories and book titles and poetry. And we keep coming back.

Thanks to everyone.

Carol