Please Say a Prayer...

Please, even if you're not a praying person or don't even know what you believe, please say a prayer for Monica Rodriguez. She finished chemo 3 months ago for a very rare form of cancer and her first 3 month scan showed that the cancer had already come back in her liver and lungs. Even if the best you can do is "God, if you exist, please heal Monica" that is still a valuable prayer!! She is 32 years old and has a 2 year old son. It looks like she will be going back into chemo and surgery.

For those interested, Trisha and I are starting a novena to St Peregrine today (June 15) to St Peregrine for Monica and all those we know who have cancer or incurable diseases. (For those unfamiliar with novenas, it is just a prayer you say for 9 days for a specific intention, in this case the healing of Monica from angiosarcoma). If you want to join us, please do. Here is the link to the novena; please cut and paste.
http://www.ewtn.com/Devotionals/novena/peregrine.htm

Thank you!

What Does Love LOOK Like?

"Jesus Loves You". I have heard this phrase many times; haven't we all, religious or not? I may even have said it. And I've certainly thought it, and believe it, though I may find it incomprehensible at times. Not just incomprehensible because I'm feeling unloveable, but because I have no idea what that would look like. What does God's love look like? I start to feel like an agnostic when I think too much on some of these questions. But I think there are plenty of metaphors that give us a good place to start

There is an image that has always been very real to me; in fact it has become such a popular image of Christ's love that it is sometimes put on tabernacles in Catholic churches, the place where the Eucharist is stored. It is the image of a stork- legend has it that, in times of famine a mother stork will actually rip open her own chest and feed her children her heart so that they may live.

"When I'm running, I don't feel disabled." This is what Rick Hoyt said to his father, a pudgy, self- proclaimed couch potato. But love was inspired, and this father got off the couch and began training so that his son could experience the joy of the race. They have competed in the Boston marathon 3 times, as well as numerous triathlons. I love the images in the video of his son, riding in his wheelchair with joy on his face, while dad is running behind, hair plastered to his skin with sweat. Or pulling Rick in an inflatable canoe while dad swims. But enough of the spoilers. I will let the video, and the father, speak for themselves.

Dick Hoyt is just an ordinary man who loves his family. If a mere human being can love his child with this kind of wholehearted passion, intensity and self- sacrifice, what kind of love must God the Father be capable of?

Intravenous Encouragement

Every time I go in for a chemo infusion, my oncologist comes in and checks my heartbeat, takes my pulse, etc. She also checks my lips and mouth to check for excessive dryness (a side effect of chemo). It's not uncommon for her to say "you look a little dry. WHy don't I just order an extra bag of saline in your drip"? THat extra bag of saline really does the trick. Even my skin looks better when I leave from that extra hydration.

SOmetimes I wish someone could come in and check my vitals and say "hmm... you're looking a bit discouraged and tired. Why don't I just hook you up to this extra bag of hope and feed it directly into your veins? You'll feel better in no time!"

Hopeful Dreams

As I write this, it is 5:37 on Tuesday morning. I just had a dream that was so hopeful and brought up so many excited thoughts that now I have to write it down before I will be able to sleep again. I've never been much for journaling, I've realized of late it's because I have to write TO someone. Somehow things don't feel real until I can give it away and have it received.

But first some background on the pictures in the dream-I know that some of the images came from real life. There is a new cookie store that just opened at the local mall, and I really like their cookies. On weekends they sometimes have a girl walking around giving free samples,and my sisters and I had just been there. I ventured off to try to find her (the cookie chick), and when I rejoined my sisters they were eating samples and said I had just missed her. So off I went again on a hunt around the mall for those elusive little nuggets. Also, every day after mass I've been trying to say a quick prayer at the feet of the statue of Mary and Joseph- asking them to be both spouse and parent to me in this time.

Now the dream. In my dream, I was feeling so sorry for myself. Woe is me; I had to bake 5 dozen cookies! Although I liked doing it, the solitude was making it a drudgery. And there was just so much DOUGH everywhere; bowls and bowls of the stuff! To top it all off, my parents (I knew it was my parents, though I never saw their faces) came home from having gone out to dinner with MY friends and were being very evasive about where they'd been. That just made me feel even sorrier for myself- here baking cookies while my parents and friends were out enjoying themselves without me. I asked them where they'd been and saw them giving each other looks, like "don't tell her yet" or "she's not ready to know". Well, that just really sent me over the edge and I started pouting for all I was worth. But I couldn't dampen their good spirits, and the more I groused the more they smiled. Finally they decided to reveal the truth. My friends were having a baby, and they wanted my parents to raise it! They said they had chosen my parents because they knew that a child raised by my parents would be smothered in love by a whole family. I was ashamed at myself for my own childish behavior, but my shame was drowned by my joy- we were going to have a baby! It's all rather strange when I put it out into words like this- I know nothing can convey the excitement I felt.


But even as I awoke, the message in the dream was clear: in the end when all is revealed, it is only the lack of trust that you will regret.

(Psalm 127:2 In vain are your earlier risings, your going later to bed, eating the bread of anxiety; for he pours out blessings on his beloved while thry sleep...)

This whole dream was even more significant as a few days ago a friend sent me an excited letter; she had a dream that filled her with so much hope that she felt it had to be from God. I won't go into the details of her dream, but she was sure her dream meant that we were entering a beautiful new place in our lives, despite our present doubts and fears. Her own life situation, though differing in plot from mine is still very parallel; we are both worried about what the future holds and struggle with anxiety that we may have somehow been "forgotten".

So now I can click post, and send my hope out into the void...

Super Powers

If watching the TV show "Alias" made me conscious of my lack of abilities, watching "Heroes" makes me feel positively irrelevant. On that show, they have all sorts of super powers; flying, bending time and space, spontaneous healing, predicting the future...

Super powers do run in my family, though. My sister Hope says her super power is her ability to digest rotten food. Charity is a menstrual mimic- she steals other peoples menstrual cycles.

Together they will save the world.

Good news and bad news...

The good news is that I am definitely getting the fuzz of a peach all over my head ( it sounds like I translated that from Italian or something), which is the first stage of re-growth.

The bad news is that I am down to my last six eyelashes. I had seven yesterday when I went to sleep, and then first thing this morning I noticed that Jerome was missing. I should never have named them; you get too attached that way.

Also the lack of eyelashes makes my eyes water even more and contributes to my random acts of spontaneous and inappropriate weeping.

Also, on the recommendation of the Eastern medicine specialist I had a test taken to measure my VItamin D levels. VIt D, as mentioned in previous posts, is now known to be a tumor suppressor, as well as helping your body to absorb calcium. It is extremely rare for someone my age to have a deficiency as my oncologist pointed out, however as statistics have already failed me once I was still inclined to take the test. Optimum level of Vit D is 50, below 30 they will put you on prescription strength supplements. My level was 19, so I guess that means I have a severe deficiency. I know, I know , it's not exactly good news if what you mean by good news is something that makes you happy and makes the future look rosy and bright, but it is at least treatable and may give a hint as to why my body couldn't fight off cancer. Of course, it also indicates a number of other likely problems, such as poor bone density and other mineral deficiencies. But hey, the suns out and I'm feeling lucky to be alive, so it feels like good news to me.

Maybe Too Early To Tell

Well, this might be a preemptive post, but just in case... I MIGHT have a little bit of hair growing on my head! Not sure, though. As I never completely lost all the stubble on my scalp after shaving my head, it is hard to be sure whether the fuzz I thought I saw is new growth, or just fuzz from my sleeping cap. But hair or no hair, the future still looks bright as Monday was chemo #7- ONE MORE TO GO! And not a moment too soon, as I have been having what I think might be minor hot flashes (a side- effect of chemo) and they are making it difficult to sleep well at night.

I wake up, bald and sweaty and kick off all my covers, then wake up again 45 minutes later and have to turn on the electric blanket to warm up. Repeat as necessary. Wake exhausted. I might just have too many blankets on my bed, though. That's another possibility.

There is a breast cancer fundraising dinner coming up in September here in Marin. They want breast cancer patients of every age and in every stage of treatment to model clothes donated by local companies. It might be kind of fun to take part in, and when else would I ever get a chance to model anything? Last year they had their first male breast cancer patient take part (breast cancer in men is very rare, but not unheard of.) I'm sure he was the hit of the party!

An excerpt from an email my dad sent out:
Alice, the world's Greatest Dog was honored with the grand title after accomplishing an unexpected feat. She successfully climbed the apricot tree, no, she wasn't picking fruit, but searching for the bird that had been teasing. Alice ventured out on the limb, but stalled when reaching the outspreading branches. Alice turned around and headed down when the bird took flight.

Her return to ground was uneventful except when in a moment of unbalance she had to spread from limb to limb. The sight was so exciting that a lady passing with her dog cautioned the pooch, a common dog: "Don't you try that at home."

Love Faith