After being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, my outlook on life changed immensely. I’d like to share a few of these things in my next couple entries here. I hope that in some small way, these observations may make a difference in somebody’s life. I hope you will never have to experience what I did (I realize some of you already have and I’d love to hear from you about that. You can email me if you want to share (click my *About* page for my email addy), but I also want you to know that if you do, some good things can actually come out of some pretty bad stuff.
Here’s what happened to me, in a nutshell: I was diagnosed, at age 41, with Hodgkin's lymphoma stage IIa (‘II’ meaning both sides of my body, ‘a’ meaning I had no symptoms) in April of last year ('05), just two weeks after the birth of our ninth baby. My brother was killed in a car accident the same week, and I was, by a series of “God incidences” led to my brother-in-law, a surgeon, who first suspected my cancer. To say my diagnosis was a shock is a complete understatement. Last year was the most challenging year of my life. I wrote my first column for Today’s Catholic on this topic, and. I've been writing steadily ever since. This has snowballed into other projects, and my first lesson about cancer was this: sometimes dealing with a crisis can lead to a great opportunity. Be open!
Anyway, after undergoing 12 treatments (six months) of chemotherapy, including the intense experience of bone marrow biopsies (which I found out you CAN feel even after being anesthetized. Don’t believe anyone if they tell you otherwise.), fully losing my hair, gaining 30 pounds, learning that nine pregnancy nauseas were nothing compared to chemo nausea, and that whoever said that “mild bone pain” accompanied Neulasta, the white-blood-cell-producing medication given after each chemo treatment, had obviously never been injected with it himself or he would know that its severity can keep you up all night crying in pain, I was declared free of cancer and in remission in October of last year. (Praise God!) There are some surprising discoveries I made after this roller coaster ride. I’ll share the first in today’s entry:
We have more courage than we think we do. God provides just enough.
I have never considered myself to be brave in the past, and I would hardly consider myself to be fearless now, but dealing with cancer definitely empowered me to be more courageous. Isn’t that weird? Something that strikes us down physically can actually chisel our spiritual and mental strength. Once I worked through the mental gymnastics of the experience I came to this simple and helpful conclusion: If I can lick a life-threatening disease and walk away pretty much unscathed, I can certainly handle the minor irritations of life such as a rude comment from a relative or a curriculum challenge in our home school environment. With God’s help, I can actually face any obstacle that life decides to plant in my path. I can even face my fears.
Last February I took, for the first time since our honeymoon 20 years ago, a trip alone on a plane with my husband David, across the country, no less. We spent a week in sunny southern California, entrusting the kids to my very experienced mother, who had raised 13 kids after all. I had previously been terrified of doing so, partly because of leaving our kids, partly because of the mode of transportation. IT WAS THE BEST TRIP OF MY LIFE! (Yes, I'm shouting, and more about that in the next entry.) I don't think I ever would have stepped on a plane had I not had the experience of cancer. By the way, having cancer did not eliminate my bent towards worrying, but having faced one of my ultimate fears--death--gave me courage to face other things fearful, in this case, an airplane ride. To my great surprise our plane did not crash, and my children seemed to get along just fine without me. In fact, it appears my children hardly missed me. When I called they dutifully spoke to me but were anxious to get back to Grandma who was serving dessert and reading to them about St. Padre Pio’s stigmata.
It is said that courage is not being unafraid, but rather acting positively in spite of fear. I think that’s about right. The moral of this story and my first discovery was simple: Take trips. Live life. Overcome fears by acting out in courage even if you don’t feel brave. God will help but you have to trust Him. He doesn’t force you to do anything. He waits for you to come to Him. Oh, and one more thing: if your doctor says he has medication that will help during a flight--go ahead and take it. God’s blessings often come in the form of others.
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