The Tyranny of the Urgent

Yesterday was a wonderful day.  I got to come home from the hospital nearly two weeks earlier than I was initially told to expect and although I had to work through a little unnecessary drama in getting a new phone number, I had one of my favorite comfort meals of chicken pot pie and smashed taters and then a quiet night *at home*.  I put in a DVD and didn’t get even ten minutes into it before I was sleepy, so I retired about 8:00 and didn’t wake up until my usual 5:30.  I don’t think I’ve had that much uninterrupted sleep in months.  I typically sleep about 5 hours a night and that works for me, but it’s clear I really needed a lot more yesterday…but I feel good (sing it, James Brown!).

Need is the word in that last thought that stands out to me.  We all are battling what Alan Lakein called, The Tyranny of the Urgent, forever giving in to the things that scream at us while ignoring the important. Sometimes, you have to give in to the urgent, but I submit to you that the important is something that trumps the urgent every time and I’ll play my own cancer card here to make the point that you don’t want to wait until you’re in a position where you’re faced with the important to see that the urgent stuff is just chaff and often meaningless bull-pucky. My sister put it rather simply that this time in my life, as disagreeable as it is to me, was meant for me to get off the treadmill for a while. It’s an apt picture, because a treadmill just uses up your energy while getting you nowhere…and that is what the “urgent” does quite literally.

I’d like you to indulge me for two minutes in a quick exercise because it will highlight what’s really important to you and I hope give you an insight into yourself.  More importantly though, I hope it spurs you to action to do something really important without the benefit of toxic chemicals and people in starched white coats smiling at you! There are actually three facets of this exercise, but because I want to cut to the chase, here it is: If you knew that six months from today you would be struck dead, how would you live until then.  Assume all the final arrangements are made and that there are no logistics to be resolved. Take two minutes and brainstorm. Write everything that comes to mind, no matter how frivolous.  At the end of the two minutes, take a look at what you’ve written and you’ll see the things that are the most important to you.  You can clarify things a bit now that you’re not in brainstorm mode, but the essence of what is important shines through. Whether it’s reconciling with friends whom you’ve fallen away from, traveling to a certain spot because it’s always been a dream, completing a project, or whatever, you’ll see the really important things on that list.

So, why wait for a death sentence to do what’s in your heart?

Write out that goal and in the next six months, go DO it. Life is not meant to be existential, it is meant to be lived…and the only thing for certain is the one we have now. Pithy? Cliché? Maybe, but you know it’s true.

I know what’s in my next six months and it still involves a lot of medical stuff, but past that, I can tell you I have a lot of things I want to do and I have a little bucket list of sorts. These things have been on my mind a lot, but even more so now that life has been so defined by blood chemistry.  Here are a few of the things I want to do:

-          In 2014, I want to ride a ‘century’ (100-mile bicycle ride) for the Leukemia-Lymphoma Society; by 2015, I want to be in good enough shape to do another AIDS LifeCycle (545-mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles with my Team OC family.

-          I want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro

-          I want to set food on Antarctica and watch the orcas up close

-          I want to tour through Scandinavia

-          I want to lean Spanish and regain my fluency in French…maybe a third language in there by 2020.

There are a lot of things I want to see in my children, grandchildren, and now that I’m back in Utah, my nieces and nephews as well, but some of those things are, of course, hopes. Those are the things we live for vicariously and have less of an impact on, but we can still be there, right? I have great hopes for them all and my heart swells with pride as I see them come into the people they are meant to be. As my children have come into adulthood, I’ve had the opportunity to spend some really good one-on-one time with one of my daughters, both socially and during my first round of chemo where we got to be adults together and learn more about the person rather than the roles we play in each other’s lives. My oldest son is coming out during the transplant process and will be caring for me. He’ll see the best and worst in me and in the process, we’ll get the opportunity to know each other as adults as well. I told him, tongue in-cheek, that at least we won’t be getting drunk and fighting with each other to do it like they do in so many movies! It’ll be a really difficult time for both of us, but in the end, we’ll have the kind of relationship that few fathers and sons have. I’ve watched my oldest nephew morph from an awkward kid on the soccer field into a brilliant aspiring student who is on the verge of a promising career in microbiology. Who knows? He could be the guy who finds the cure to what I’ve got…and his sister is on his coattails. There’s so much promise in the important. And while it perhaps goes without saying that nothing of any importance is ever easy in attaining – especially when the urgent screams in our faces and clouds our vision – it’s all that really matters.

My music video this morning was something I chanced across on Facebook this morning.  The song comes from a guy named Zach Sobiech, who is battling osteosarcoma – a bone cancer – and unfortunately not doing well. His message is timeless and joyful and I hope it resonates with you as much as it does with me.

Be well, stay strong, and much love to you all!

Too Much Ahead Not To Fight

The sheer trauma of facing the “big C” seems to be less daunting as the reality of what the treatment entails comes out. Treating any cancer isn’t something you can simply prescribe a standard drug regimen or operation. It’s a complicated, messy, painful process that dances the fine line between art, science, and intuition. I’ve spoken with two other AML survivors and their treatment is similar to mine, but because our age, physiology, and details differ, there are different stories.  I’ve had two survivors of other blood cancers visit me thanks to the transplant social worker here at the VA who have shared their experience with me and while their histories were much more severe than mine, they had as well more remarkable survival stories.  It gives me great hope that, given my own situation, that I have both reason to be optimistic and to take this thing very, very seriously.

I was given a bit of a setback this morning as I took my IV pole for a walk.  The fancy yellow bag that all the toxic waste gets disposed in, flagged a nurse in the oncology ward less than 100 feet from my door.  He unceremoniously told me to go back to my room and chewed out my nurse for having the gall to let me walk outside my room. That escalated things in no time flat and I got an immediate apology from my nurse, who has been SO wonderful that there was some protocol that apparently prevents me from going outside my room with anything chemo-oriented. She apologized for the way this other nurse treated me and escalated it to someone else who escalated it further and I was visited by the head of safety, who brought things back into perspective.  She came in and didn’t do anything but introduce herself and make sure I had everything I needed. She listened. She didn’t draw out the instance, but I did bring it up in a way that allowed her to take care of the situation without making a case out of it. I think between the two of us, this unpleasantness won’t happen to another patient. While I absolutely want to observe protocols and the safety of others, I’m an inpatient, not an inmate. I think that drove the point home. Suffice it to say, she did it right.

So, it looks like I will be doing 10 push-ups every time I go to the bathroom instead of walking around the floor. That’s partially due to the Leukemia Weight Loss Diet Plan® not exactly working.  I’m up another pound, so they put me on a drug to make me urinate more frequently.  Lovely, huh? I suppose that wouldn’t be such a big deal except that I have to unplug the drug metering devices that push the medication through the IV into me every time I get up out of bed. It’s pretty inconvenient, all told.

As Friday afternoon descends on the hospital, you hear the typical things you would at any other workplace.  Co-workers wish each other a good weekend and it strikes me that I’m on what I used to call “perpetual Saturdays.”  It really doesn’t matter what day of the week it is for me.  I’m here.  Weekends were not made for Michelob in the hospital.  They are quiet, eerie places where the walking wounded rest. Thankfully, I have a retinue of visitors lined up for fun and games and I even have a junior slinky on my hospital tray I can play with.  I’ll bet you haven’t seen one of those bad boys in years, huh?

So, we’re now moving into the stage of things where it appears to be the classic military, “hurry up and wait” phase.  My nurse brought in a trend of my labs and it’s fascinating to see just how off my numbers are and yet I’m feeling just fine.  It makes me wonder just how good I’d feel if they were where they should be – yet another reason that I am the eternal optimist. 

A rather new acquaintance asked me essentially what I wanted to do when I got through this ordeal.  I started making a bucket list of sorts back when the movie of the same name came out, but nothing firm.  My goals had a lot to do with simply getting back to Utah for so many reasons, the least of which being, it is where I just feel I belong. But, as I pondered that simple question, one of the first things came to mind was to complete a century bicycle ride (100 miles) for Team-in-Training, a charitable organization that supports the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.  I had supported a high school classmate who ran marathons for the organization and I guess now it makes sense for me to give back to an organization that is out there for me as well.  I’d really like to ride another AIDS LifeCycle, but this year, I think it’s safe to say that’s not likely going to happen. I don’t have a formal ‘bucket list’ even though mortality had its sites on me.  So, I told my new friend that I had “too much to live for, too many unspoken desires, too many things yet to do, too many stolen kisses yet to claim, too many mountains yet to climb…just too much ahead not to fight.” And so it seemed that if there were any other motivation, that was it – too much ahead not to fight. As if there were any other option.

Game on!

Thanks again to you all for fighting with me.