New Year's Resolutions

I stared at the computer screen wondering what to write.  It stared back.  My mind was blank.  What does one write down for a New Year's Resolution?  You would think I would write something like, "Live!"  "Beat Cancer!"  or some other positive notion of conquering the disease that is ravishing my body.  However, I can't.  I don't even know if I'll live until 2017.  Whether I live or die is completely out of my control.  I find out this week if Keytruda is working.  It worked for President Jimmy Carter, so maybe it will work for me.  I am not giving up or stopped trying to be positive, but how can I set a goal to make my medicine work, to "Conquer Cancer!"  What goals should I set under the circumstances?

I started with, "Get out of bed everyday."  Well, I have a hard time keeping that one.  Some days are good, or even really good, and some days are bad, really bad. No rhyme or reason to it, just is.  I never know what tomorrow brings.  Scratch that one.  Next resolution, well, I had a hard time getting to a next one.  Every idea that I came to was quickly eliminated, but I have to have New Year's Resolutions, things to look forward to, goals to reach.

I realized the reason I struggled to set my New Year's Resolutions is that I was trying to plan for a future that I may or may not have.  Bill has often preached goals need to be SMART.  Specific.  Measurable.  Achievable.  Relevant. Time based.  So for now, I settled on these:

"Find the joy in life and acknowledge the blessings of each day." 
(I have so many blessings, I just need to focus on them. Finding joy is a bit harder while being in pain, but that is why it is a resolution!)
 
"Be the type of person God wants you to be right now."
(This means making my heart and mind right with God.)

"Serve someone every day."
(Enduring is often inward focused, I want to look outward to those around me.  With limited physical resources I am being creative.)

"Emotionally connect with each member of my family every day."
(It is all about the people, I love my peeps.)

I set my resolutions just for a day, for the present. As I try to connect, serve, find joy and express gratitude just for the day, hopefully those days will turn into weeks, then months and then years.  2016 is really just made of days, hours and minutes and that is how I will try to live it.


Spent half the day in bed with these two little rascals... keeping my resolution.




Here are some pictures from the Holidays.  We had a great Christmas at home, which was good because I was sick most of the time.

Christmas Eve (the beautiful tree was a gift from a friend and her dad, which she hauled back from Minnesota on top of her minivan)

I was grateful my mom, Omi, could celebrate with us. The boys are wearing their German clothes, we try to celebrate a traditional German Christmas Eve.


We have a family tradition that we go to church every Christmas Eve,  It is one of my favorite traditions.  This year we choose Our Savior Lutheran Church which had a beautiful service.


We spent New Year's Eve in the emergency room, not for me mind you, but for Sam.  He got a concussion when he slammed into our steel basketball standard while sledding.  He is going to be fine, but it was pretty scary.  I was really sick that night too, so I just snuggled up right by him in his bed.

A Thousand Cranes and Fuzzy Red Socks

  
In Japan the crane is a symbol of longevity and good luck because a crane "lives" for one thousand years.  When a thousand origami paper cranes are folded and strung onto pieces of string it becomes a work of art that brings a long life or recovery from illness or injury.  I had never seen such a creation until I opened a foreign stamped box that was sitting on my front doorstep.  As I opened the box the intricacies of the paper, the folds, and the sheer number of individual cranes were unbelievable.  As I read the kind notes inside, the words were blurred because of my tears, such love, such sacrifice, such handiwork, such beauty sent across the vast ocean to me.   My dear friends that I met in China folded each crane, one thousand of them, strung them together and sent them to me with hopes of healing.

Fuzzy red gripper socks, are just that, fuzzy red gripper socks.  They keep your toes warm on cold nights or chilly mornings.   I have a pair in my dresser drawer, not even sure where I got them.  I wore them, at Sammy's request, in the Mayo Clinic hospital as I prepared for brain radiation.  I didn't think much else about my red socks until I got a text from my sister asking me to check my Facebook account.

Now, I must explain something.  I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, even with two brain tumors, until it comes to Facebook.  I can't figure out how it works!  I try to find something, and a half an hour later, I still can't find what I am looking for but I saw what all of my friends "liked" instead.  I am a Facebook dropout and rarely go on it.  My sister knowing this, prompted me to check my Facebook account.  I found pictures of my family and my friends from around the world wearing red socks with messages of love, hope and encouragement.   Fuzzy red gripper socks had taken on the characteristics of one thousand cranes.

Thank you. Thank you for your messages of love, your notes, your emails, your meals, your pictures, your texts, your gifts and mostly, thank you for your faith and prayers.  I am sorry I do not respond to all of you individually.  However, please know I appreciate it and I am so grateful.  The path I am on is much more difficult than even I thought it would be, the physical pain, the emotional fear, and the spiritual stretching isn't easy; but the path is lined with one thousand cranes all wearing red socks cheering me and my little family on.  I realize all of us have our treacherous hills to climb, some public and some private, and I don't know all your struggles.  Please know, I am wearing my red gripper socks for you too.


This is the 1000 paper cranes hanging in my house.

Detail of the origami cranes.

  

The red gripper sock idea was started by one of my favorite cousins Shari Thornburg.  Thank you Shari, I love you! 

Coal for Christmas

Oncologist called on Friday.  Melanoma in my small intestine.  Bad Melanoma day.

Go back first week of January for a full work up.  PET scan, CAT scan, MRI scan,  - scan this, scan that, scan up, scan down,  I scan, you scan, we all scan.  

Miss Mellie is getting coal this year for Christmas, definitely a large lump of coal.

The Magic School Bus

"Buckle up, we are going down!" cautioned Ms. Frizzle.

As I swallowed the PillCam it reminded me of my childhood and I imagined Ms. Frizzle with a bus load of kids going to explore my insides. After a colonoscopy and upper endoscopy the doctors didn't find anything major, but they were still concerned I was bleeding internally. So, they sent Ms. Frizzle down with a camera that took over 60,000 pictures of my digestive track. (They take the pictures and make it into a video.)

"We are now entering the stomach. Keep your eyes open for bleeding," Ms. Frizzle encouraged. All looked good, no bleeding. 

Ms Frizzle continued, "We are now entering the small intestine, which is over 24 feet long!!! Because of its incredible length and its many twist and turns, it is difficult to really see what is going on inside here." The camera clicked away at lightening speed.  The first part of my small intestine was normal, no issues. 

"Look left!  What are those? Does anyone know what a lymph node is?  Well what you are seeing are lymph nodes, but those don't look normal, no siree. They are huge!  Yikes! Look right, I am not sure what those are, but it looks like over 50% of the intestinal walls are ulcerated, this middle part of the small intestine doesn't look good."  

As Ms. Frizzle finished her journey through my intestinal track, she instructed her students on the rest of my small bowel and then my large bowel, finding nothing else unusual. 

Unfortunately, because of the ulcerations and  lymph nodes, I am having a double ballon assisted antegrade to get a biopsy and to get a closer look.  Stay tuned for the next edition of the Magic School Bus and see what they find in their next exploration. 

Grief and my Gingko

As we turned down our tree lined driveway after coming back from another week at the Mayo Clinic, I was anxious as we got to the bottom of our drive.  I was so excited to see my gingko tree with its brilliant yellow leaves.  When we left earlier in the week its fan shaped leaves were just starting to turn color.  Bill and I planted my ‘gingko biloba' last year so it is still small, just a big stick really, nothing compared to the giant it will become.  As I turned and looked across the lawn searching for my gingko, I couldn’t see it.  Where was it?  I realized that the tree was blending into the background because all of its leaves were gone.  I started to cry.  One of the main reasons you plant a gingko, besides it being a prehistoric tree specimen dating back to the day of the dinosaurs, is for its spectacular fall color.  I had missed it. I had missed my gingko in its glory.

I chided myself, “It is just a tree, why are you crying?”  But I love my trees.  I drive hours to special landscape nurseries so I can buy just the right variety of Japanese maple.  I read, study and attend seminars about trees.  I can give a tree tour around our yard with extensive facts that most normal people find boring.  Give me a diamond or a tree for my birthday?  Tree all the way.

I sat in the car, trying to compose myself before I went into the house.  As I sat there grieving my gingko, I realized the gingko was really a symbol, a symbol for all I had lost.  It wasn’t just the tree I was grieving, I was grieving my old life.  I have lost hours, days, weeks and months with my loved ones.  I crave to be normal: running errands, fixing food, shuttling kids to piano and violin lessons, helping with homework, serving at church, and working in the yard.  My days of endless energy have morphed into considering taking a shower a success.  I ration my actions, completing only the things that are truly necessary…like planting tulip bulbs.

I am not unique in my grief.  Grief, a deep sorrow over loss, is something most of us have felt.  We grieve for loved ones who have died, we grieve over divorce and the loss of a family unit, we grieve for a disabled child and an unrealized future, we grieve our failing health, and we grieve over unfulfilled dreams.

I have felt guilty about grieving, I have so many blessings despite having cancer, yet I still feel sorrow.  I have realized it is o.k. to grieve, I can grieve and still be grateful.  It is o.k for me to go into the darkness, as long as I choose not to live there.  In the darkness I process my pain, I grieve.  I also find hope, peace and the light of Christ in the darkness.  Christ resides in both.  As Isaiah said concerning the Savior, ‘Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows;…And with his stripes we are healed.’  Christ carries my grief and sorrow in the darkness and the light.

The past few weeks I have both grieved and felt gratitude.  I have incredible family and friends.  My sister driving me to Rochester and my brother driving me home, staying with me during treatments and taking care of me while I am sick.  My brothers, my sisters-in-law, my niece and nephew, all flying out, taking turns to care for me and family.  The blessings of life and access to heath care.

I have been given a gift.  Through grieving, I am coming to appreciate all that I have and experience.  I see the beauty of everyday moments: the hum of the dishwasher, the joy of celebrating William's 9th birthday, the dialogue between Sam and Andrew on the virtues of Star Wars, and the beauty of the not yet fallen leaves from the other trees in my yard.

Gingko leafMy gingko tree

Family working in the yard

Happy Birthday William!

Heidi with me at Mayo getting treatment

Alex my niece taking care of the boys

I didn't get pictures of the many other people who came..Arianne, Dave, John and Christy.  

Send me your pictures!

Modeling with Melanoma

I sat on a small bench in the dressing room.  I unwrapped the small square plastic package, it was about the size of a tissue.  As I slowly pulled out its contents, it finally hit me what I was about to do.  I started laughing out loud.  Really?  They wanted me to do this?

When Bill was in graduate school and after, we were poor. The debt was piling up and I started to question if a degree from the University of Chicago would really be worth what we were paying.  I started to concoct ideas of how we could make money, to make a small dent in the costs of student housing, health insurance, and food.  Two of  my "assets" at the time were two beautiful little girls.  I started researching child modeling.  I could sell their faces, get free products and earn a little cash.  Embarrassing to admit now, I entered them in photo contests trying to get them noticed so I could make money.  I saw modeling studios and what they looked like, large white backdrop, huge filtered lights on metal stands with black wings and photographers with cameras trying to capture the spirit of the child, while marketing the clothes they were wearing.  Despite my efforts, my children never got noticed and I never made the few extra dollars I wanted to pay off student loans.  

The image of a photo studio setting was stored in the back of my brain from those aspiring model days and it was triggered when they called me, "Ms. Allyson Davidson" to the Mayo Clinic Dermatology photo lab.   I walked through a small office with a desk, red and white stripped mints sitting in a candy bowl and two smiling women in their twenties welcoming me, trying to make me feel at ease.  One of the friendly   women and I walked into the next room which looked like a professional photo studio, with a white backdrop and huge lights.  She showed me into a small changing room at the back, handed me the tissue sized package, and gave me instructions on what would happen.  I completely undressed and put on the small, black disposable thong that I had just unwrapped.  I walked out, completely naked except for the thong, leaving my pride in the dressing room.  

The smiling woman instructed me where and how to stand in front of the white backdrop, "Hands out to your side and right leg forward, please."  I wondered if she could see the silvery faint stretch marks on my hips caused by my body expanding five times trying to make room for five babies, in addition to all the other flaws of my forty one year-old body.  The lights flashed a faint, "boom" and the large camera clicked away and she captured all of me, nooks and crannies included, through her lens.  "Arms above your head...turn around...hold up your hair..."  She got out a cane for me to hold onto as I lifted one leg than the other so she could photograph the soles of my feet, I snickered under my breath.  I wondered how many women had stood practically nude with a geriatric cane on a studio set.  In photographing my body, the doctors are trying to map and examine every spot and mole, tracking any changes or growths in the future.  It is really an act of faith by the doctors, that I will beat Miss Mellie on the inside and that they might have to worry about her appearing on the outside in the future.  

As I was getting dressed after my "photo shoot" I surprised myself by thinking, "You know, that actually wasn't that bad, all things considering."  While I have some things I would like to change about my body, I was grateful for my body and that I was well enough to walk into the studio to be photographed that day.   Although deadly cancer rages inside me, the outside looks relatively healthy and my body told the story of my life's experiences, scars, wrinkles, sags and stretch marks  The good and the bad and I was grateful for it all.   I walked out, with the black thong tucked in my purse so I had evidence of what I wore, grabbed a few mints and popped one into my smiling mouth.

(Don't worry, I won't post any pictures from my photo shoot!)

Ruth and Grace whose modeling careers never took off....

May the Force Be With You

We have been infected.  The Star Wars bug has overtaken the Davidson Family's immune system and is firmly in control.  Andrew, who just turned three, wanted a Star Wars birthday party.  Some small children are comforted by cuddly stuffed animals, not Andrew, he is lulled to sleep by his "double red" lightsaber.  Our upcoming Halloween will also be infected by Star Wars, so I see no cure in sight.

My week in Rochester, where I went through more testing and lung radiation, felt like I Ieft earth and went to a different Galaxy.   The radiation machine's goal was to "blow up" the large tumor in my left lung, hopefully clearing a pathway for my infection, and stopping Miss Mellie's handiwork from getting bigger.  I usually started early in the morning, approaching the radiation mothership already exhausted, nausea overtaking my stomach, and vertigo making me feel like I was walking in a moving space ship. 

After getting called into the treatment room, I crawled in a custom made body cast of sorts, my hands were above my head and then the techs wrapped me in an industrial plastic wrap, after which they literally hooked up a large vacuum and vacuum packed me to a table, all with the goal of keeping me perfectly still.  I truly looked like a character from Star Wars.  They didn't want me to move one little inch, one little centimeter, they didn't want me to move at all; the machines were calibrated to the nearest millimeter by lasers that looked like glowing tattoos projected on my body.  It wasn't just during the radiation I couldn't move, it was also during the CAT scans and all the time in between.  I learned this the hard way, when on the first day I moved between the scans (I could tell when they were scanning because of the bright red light) and the techs patiently came in and explained to me that I absolutely must be still from the moment they left the room, until they reentered, which usually lasted about 45 minutes.  I tried to explain that I was having a shoulder spasm and didn't they know how hard it was to hold perfectly still while a horse named Charlie was rearing in your shoulder? They patiently and firmly countered that didn't I, Ms. Davidson, know how close the tumor was to my heart and if I couldn't hold still they would have to put me under general anesthesia?  So, I learned to endure and hold still.

Tears fell from the corners of my eyes, rolled past my temples and landed in my ears, as the pain in my shoulder intensified day by day, but I held my vacuum packed pose.  I prayed to God pleading for strength, I pretended I was a Jedi Knight focusing on the Force to hold still, and I also played the Gratitude Game, trying to take my mind off the pain and focus on my many blessings.   By day three, as a result of inflammation from radiation, my left shoulder decided to torture me as well.

Absent the intense pain in my shoulders, the cancer killing radiation entered my body painlessly and silently; personally I was in a time warp, for me the seconds felt like minutes and the minutes slowed to weeks while I was alone in the treatment room, I felt like I aged a year after each treatment.   I will get another scan in a few weeks to see if the radiation destroyed enough of Miss Mellie in my lung so the ever present pneumonia and my collapsed lung can be healed.

I came back each day to the waiting room after finishing radiation to my brother Mike and my mom greeting me, loving me and helping me, sacrificing their time so they could be with me in Rochester.  Besides radiation, doctor visits, and more testing, we three musketeers were able to go for a drive looking at the turn of the century architecture and we went for a walk on a beautiful fall morning, when the air was crisp and clear and the leaves crunched beneath our feet.  The juxtaposition of my confinement in modern machines and the freeing feeling of nature made me appreciate both more.  The man made machines were helping my body and God's creations fed my spirit.

Friday was the best day of the week, not only was I finished with radiation, but my family came to Rochester to see me.  Grace, who wants to be a doctor, begged and pleaded to come and see what it was like to be radiated.  The doctor said she could see me be prepped for my radiation journey, but then she would obviously have to leave before the radiation beams assaulted my body. (Ruth, William, Bill and my mother-in-law also joined her.)  As a surprise, the staff made Grace a doctor's badge and gave her a tour, explaining every gadget and gizmo, answering all her questions.  The Mayo staff were so kind and I am grateful for their service to me and my family.

On the wall in the radiation waiting room is a plaque with a bell.  The plaque explains that after you finish your treatment, you ring the bell, celebrating your journey.  My kids helped me ring the bell and the typically somber waiting room erupted into applause, bringing tears to my eyes.  I finished my course and I hope I never have to take that path again, but if I do, I know I can.  I continue to learn to "Be still, and know that [He is] God."


Andrew's birthday party

Me getting prepped for radiation treatment. 

Grace learning about machine.

 Ringing bell after treatment

Family at Mayo Clinic

We went to Minneapolis for the weekend after I finished treatment. I felt pretty beat up, so I spent most of the time just being lazy. The kids went to a NBA Timberwolves game, swimming, and to Mall of America. I did go out, with my new mechanical friend. It felt so good being a normal family. We had a great time and we were able to spend time with some good friends as well, which was a real treat. 

Three musketeers selfie