Walla Walla, WA September 30, 2010 Light mist on the river, sunny and beautiful. 80+ degrees
One almost never hears anything about contentment. Our consumer culture has a vested interest in keeping us discontented. If we could be content with what we already have, we would put at risk that 70% of our Gross Domestic Product that relies on consumer consumption. George W. Bush is infamous for that tried and yet untrue gimmick of sending almost every citizen a check for several hundred dollars and then announcing to the nation:"Go Shopping!". It seemed as if we could solve our economic malaise with just a dose of unnecessary and/or deficit creating spending. It may be the favorite bailout for government economists, but the American people didn't buy it. Most of them used the money to pay off some of the debt they already had and began to change their financial lives and priorities. The ordinary working people are always far ahead of those who govern. They have figured out that you can't just keeping going deeper and deeper into debt. You have to make significant sacrifices and life alterring changes to escape the tyranny of indebtedness. They used to have paupers prisons for people who couldn't pay their debts. It's scary to think about how many people would qualify for that situation, myself included, if we had paupers prisons today. We have been working diligently for several years to eliminate all indebtedness, including our house and farm mortgages. I can't wait for the day that we can call Dave Ramsey on his TV show and do the "WE'RE DEBT FREE!" scream. Dave's motto is: "Live like no one else, so you can live like no one else!" Contentment has a lot to do with Dave's philosophy. It would appear that millions of Americans are coming to the same conclusion and they are changing their financial lifestyles. One word of caution, however. Contentment and being debt free are not automatically linked to one another. There is a deeper spiritual need that trumps both of them. The French scientist, genius, mathematician, and christian wise man Blaise Pascal, described it as "le vide". An emptiness or vacuum in the soul of everyone that is "God shaped", meaning it can only be fully filled and brought into equilibrium, when God's Spirit enters into our lives. Pascal, like millions of believers before and after him, tried to fill that emptiness with fame, fortune, pleasure and stimulants. One night in the 1650s, Blaise Pascal described his encounter with the living God as if he were describing one of his scientific experiments. He kept track of the hour and minutes. He described his physical, emotional and ultimate spiritual sensations in minute detail. "Fire, consuming fire, the God of Isaac, Jacob and the prophets is present." It wasn't some religious ritual, it was the creation of a passionately personal relationship with God that changed his life and our world. That experience was so life-transforming for Pascal, that the paper he wrote it upon was found in the hem of his one and only outer cloak after his death. It remains in a museum to this day, a living testimony of the only source of true contentment. Like the 1960s Rolling Stones Classic declared: "I can't find, no satisfaction!" We try just about anything and everything to fill that vacuum, but it is instatiable without the presence of the eternal God who created us. The apostle Paul even used religion and self-righteousness to fill that emptiness, but in Romans 7 he despairs over his ongoing ennui: "So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!" On a journey to arrest and probably execute followers of Jesus in the city of Damascus, Saul of Tarsus was knocked on his keester, blinded by the light of the risen Christ, and overwhelmed by the grace and love of God. God said: "I want you to be my apostle to the Gentiles!". How could anyone refuse? He stumbled into the city, blind as a bat and waited for a believer named Ananias to come and give him the next clues to this life changing mystery. He would change his name to Paulus, or Paul, and in his epistle to the church at Phillipi he would write: "I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength." Phil. 4:11-13. That was what I found in the A.C. Davis High School auditorium in May of 1966. A friend named Jesus who loved me enough to die for me. A friend who just also happens to be Kurios, Lord of heaven and earth. As a wonderful songs states: "to look into your judge's face and find your savior there." I felt and knew that the Spirit of the Living God was filling that "vide" in my soul and I felt "shalom", peace and wholeness for the first time in my life.
North to Alberta! Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada Summer of 1966!
No one bothered to forewarn me about the spiritual warfare I would encounter almost immediately upon accepting Christ as my Lord and Savior. Within days, I had a girlfriend. Now that's not to imply that women are temptress' or anything like that. However, it was much more than coincidence that a friend introduced me to this girl who just happened to live down the street from me and she wanted to get to know me as more than a neighbor. Why not? I was feeling pretty lonely at the time. Many of my friends were deeply suspect of my "conversion" experience. They didn't know how to relate to me any more and so they just avoided me. There were only a couple of weeks left before I was to go to work on my brother Noel's cattle ranch in Alberta for the summer. God, I believe, had all that in the works so I would be long gone by the time holding hands turned into Friday night movie kisses. I was falling head over heals into something like love, and the best place for me that summer was 700 miles away from that overwhelming perfume and those delicious lips. But I had to get to Alberta first and that was an adventure in itself.
My mother and I packed what things we thought I would need for working on a real Canadian cattle ranch and we drove to Seattle to say farewell to my father who was working for Boeing Aircraft Company. The next morning, Mom and I boarded the passenger train in Seattle northbound for Vancouver, B.C. It was a spectacular ride along the inland waterways and we got to Vancouver around 11 am. Unfortunately, the only return train left in 30 minutes, so all Mom had time to do was help me get my baggage into the terminal, give me a couple of dollars for food and wish me a good summer in Alberta. She caught the train back to Seattle and I was left alone, 15 years old, in the middle of a strange city in a foreign country. I cring today thinking about the risks that would be present if a parent did that today with their 15 year old. Well, I made the best of it. I went up to the counter and showed the attendant my ticket to Medicine Hat and they told me to take my baggage down to the appropriate place to get it checked in. That was a relief. I was now free from dragging all that stuff around the rest of the day. My train east didn't leave for several hours, so I decided to explore the great city of Vancouver B.C. School was still in session in Canada, so I got a lot of strange looks from people wondering why I wasn't in a classroom somewhere. On second thought, maybe it was the goofy cowboy hat I had dug out of the closet back in Wapato that I was wearing that got the strange looks. After a little while I realized I was hungry, so I went back to the terminal and sat down in the restaurant to eat. I had had one year of French language instruction in 9th grade so I could understand Soupe du Jour and some of the other things on the menu. Officially, everything in Canada was supposed to be printed in both English and French, so I knew that I would learn alot of new vocabulary that summer. As it turned out, that wasn't all I was about to be exposed to. After hanging around all afternoon in the terminal, we boarded the train in the evening and headed east. It took all night and then another whole day to get to Medicine Hat. Spiritual warfare #2 popped up on the train. I met an immigrant who was from some Slavic country. The only language we both could speak the other person understood was French. In my halting French, we got along and tried to visit with each other from time to time. The next afternoon, he invited me to sit next to him because he had something he wanted to show me. He pulled out these really disgusting porno magazines, assuming that any manly red-blooded American 15 year old cowboy would love to take a look. Spiritual temptations come in many forms and when you least expect them. As tired and sleep deprived as I was, I had the common sense to decline his offer and went back to my own seat. We were leaving Calgary at the time and we would get to "The Hat" in a few hours. Pulling into the terminal in Medicine Hat, I was relieved to see my brother Noel standing on the plarform to greet me. What a relief! Time to go to the Ranch and sleep in a real bed and not a train seat or the floor. A totally new culture and life awaited me on the Canadian Prairies.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
"S'IL TE PLAIT....APPRIVOISE-MOI" - TAMING THE HEART!
September 28, 2010, Walla Walla, WA Indian Summer 80+ degrees, nothing but sunshine.
This is the best time of the year to live in the Walla Walla Valley. Beautiful sunny days, cool nights, the smell of ripening grapes and apples. The early fall rains have reduced the dust to almost nothing and late season fall grasses are jumping out of the ground. The Blue Mountains have had over 3 inches of rainfall. They look wonderful as they prepare for freezing temperatures and the changing colors of autumn. Snow will come and go at least three times before winter finally settles in for keeps in the high country. We are back into a routine once again on the farm and at the church. I had my PICC line changed at the Cancer Center on Monday. There is a little suspicious looking pimple - like bump that was under one of the connectors directly attached to my skin. We will have to watch it for infection. It is not close to where the line enters into my vein, so there isn't much of a chance of that getting infected. I went to church on Sunday and only did the Mystery Box and the Prayers of the People. Even that was tiring and I rested all afternoon. They have organized meals to be brought out to the house on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. There is always more than enough left over to get us to the next drop off. It is typical of our congregation to anticipate our needs and more than adequately meet them. As soon as Kriss is off her crutches, we probably will be able to take care of our own needs. My renown as a chef must have gotten out. Our children used to always dread the day when Kriss was gone for some reason. They still talk about the exotic fruit salad I made. I will start preaching again this coming Sunday, October 3, and continue through October and hopefully the first Sunday in November. We plan on returning to Seattle at that time, unless they insist that we come back sooner. I will have another R-CHOP treatment October 7. It will take 2-3 weeks for it to do its job shrinking whatever cancer hot spots I have left and then we will have another PET scan. We will be able to compare this new scan with the latest one in Seattle and see how effective R-CHOP has been. That may have some weight in treatment decisions and timing. Meanwhile the search is underway to find a sibling stem cell donor. Your prayers for both the treatment and the donor search are greatly appreciated.
While I'm here, I need to attend to some things at the church, as well as the farm. God must have known that we needed this time back in Walla Walla to wean calves, process some steers and work with several of our colts. We have had other people start some of our colts, without complete satisfaction. I have been too busy this spring and summer to do the initial groundwork and getting them to the next level of training. Kriss paid the price for that neglect. Her horse, Scarlette, has been ridden by three different trainers and she was still a timebomb waiting to explode. While we were home over Labor Day Weekend, Kriss wanted to keep her rideable and did all the right things to warm her up and she appeared perfectly calm and safe. Unfortunately, we were all deceived by her external demeanor. Before Kriss could even get settled in the saddle and gather up the reins, Scarlette blew up, bucking seriously. Now in her younger days, Kriss could wrangle broncs with the best of them, but at 58 years of age, she ended up on the hard pan dirt with 4 fractures of her pelvis. She walked on it for a week before going to the Emergency Room in Seattle. She left there with crutches and the prospect of not putting weight on that leg for 6 weeks. She plea-bargained credit for the week she walked on it and got her sentence reduced to 5 weeks on crutches, contingent on good behavior. Seeing how Scarlette reacted after all her training, I decided I would go back to square one with her and start her from scratch. I had already begun to work with Seamus, Ella's 3 year old gelding, and so I added Scarlette to my horse whispering schedule. Everything I know about horse training I learned from Robert Phinney who is a disciple of Buck Branaman. I have books and DVD's by Buck that teach you to do something with a horse that changes both of you for the rest of your life. Your goal, before you would ever possibly get on a horse is to have the horse willingly hand over their will and well-being into your care and leadership. Horses are herd animals that need to find an authority figure that will protect and look out for their best interests. In exchange for that security, they will "turn loose", "hook on", or whatever other phrase you run across. There comes a point in the training process that the animal gives their heart, soul and future into your hands. As long as you never betray that trust, the horse will choose to be with you above all other horses or activities. They evolve to a place where their greatest joy is in pleasing you. It is a bond that people have treasured for thousands of years. In the training process there are certain skill sets and transitional stages that clearly communicate when the horse is "turning loose" and blending their will into yours. I decided to find out if Scarlette had ever learned those fundamental skills which would tell me if she was "hooked on" or not. She hadn't. As a result, she was a timebomb waiting to explode. Unfortunately, Kriss was the one on her back when it went off. So, we started working with her as if she didn't know anything. Tie her loosely to the snubbing post; brush and clean her all over; practice picking up all four feet using a soft rope to keep from getting hurt; small corral circle up and change directions; backing up and learning to do longitudinal flexion; changing eyes while driving with invisible reins; desensitizing to rope, blanket, saddle and touch; large round pen work at walk, trot and gallop; drawing off the far side of the fence; changing eyes in larger pen; loading and unloading in horse trailer; learning to stand near a wooden corral fence and get used to someone working above with ropes and start putting weight on back; cool down back at snubbing post, reward with some horse treats and turn loose with proper attitude. It was obvious from Day 1 of her new life, that Scarlette had never been given the basic fundamentals that would make her safe to ride. The goal of most trainers is to push a horse as fast as they can. That means spurs and whip. They get paid for how many "rides" they put on a horse and so there is a real temptation to intimidate a horse through sheer strength, pain and force. The horse seems great when you go to pick them up in a month. You can even ride them there and think this is the real deal. However, when the horse has time to process that experience, you still have a wild animal that is motivated out of fear and survival instincts. When it came to introducing Scarlette to the critical lessons of trust and confidence, she knew nothing. By the end of Day 1, she knew what she needed to learn. By the end of Day 2, she could do 85% of the fundamentals and passed all the basic skills tests. I had her saddled and standing by the fence allowing me to put weight on the saddle. One area that will take a lot of work is that somehow she had been struck or hit on the right side of her head. She is so sensitive to that area, that we will have to spend special effort to get that taken care of. Day 3-5 will be perfecting all the basic skills and slowly getting her used to having someone in the saddle in ever increasingly larger pens. Day 6 is the goal to ride her in the round pen at a walk, trot, and gallop without any problems or anxiety on her part when transitioning from one level to the next. I have been doing the same thing with Seamus. He has successfully completed Day 4 and I have asked my Photo Pro, John Anthony to come out and make a Video of Day 6 of Seamus's Great Adventure. We will try to get a link of that Video on this blog so you can see what a day in the life of a horse looks like who has "turned loose" and is "hooked on". The French phrase of A. de Saint-Exupery from the LITTLE PRINCE as the title of this blog, translates: "Please, tame me!" St.-Exupery's profound story of the taming of the Fox in his classic tale is the essence of christian conversion. That miracle took place in my life the spring of 1966 and life has never been the same since.
A.C. Davis High School Auditorium, Yakima,WA May 1966
The Junior High School Youth Group from the Wapato Community Presbyterian Church planned an outing to see the Billy Graham movie THE RESTLESS ONES on a Sunday afternoon in May of 1966. I was a reluctant though regular attendee at Youth Group due to my mother's absolute insistence. Word had it that after the movie we would get to stop for something to eat on our way home and that sealed the deal, as far as I was concerned. I was familiar with Billy Graham Evangelistic movies. We had seen them before and my mother made me watch Billy Graham Crusades on TV from time to time. I knew the formula and the script. The movie we were going to Yakima to watch would be a story of rebellious, lost teenagers who would find themselves in increasingly difficult, if not dangerous situations. Some pastor or youth worker would befriend them in an attempt to change the direction of their lives. Somewhere nearby, a Billy Graham Crusade would be taking place and some of these youth would agree to attend. At the end of the service, Billy Graham would issue an "alter call", reminding everyone that all those that Jesus called to be his disciples had been called publically as a demonstration of their commitment and courage to follow Him. Sure enough, the script went exactly as I knew it would. A pastor stepped up on the stage and made the "alter call" personal for all of us in that auditorium inviting anyone who wanted to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior right now, today, could come up on the stage and a counselor would be there to pray with them and give them some free literature to take home. The counselors went forward right away to kind of prime the pump for others to follow. I was getting a little uncomfortable knowing that this was going to take some time and other groups would get to the food joints ahead of us and we'd have longer to wait to eat. As the number of seekers began to thin out, the pastor also invited anyone who would like to redidicate their life to Christ to come forward for prayer. Something, probably the Spirit of God, literally lifted me out of that theatre seat and I headed for the aisle. When I got there, I had to make the most significant decision I would ever make in my life. I knew I was the least likely kid in that Youth Group who would go forward publically to make a decision to follow Christ. I looked to the right at the EXIT sign and turned left. I walked up the steps onto the stage thinking to myself: "What are you doing up here?" Having a fairly quick and calculating mind, I figured out pretty quickly that my best chance of getting in and out of the hands of the counselor would be to state that I came forward to "redidcate my life to Christ". That would eliminate at least 25 minutes of hearing the entire plan of salvation and I was fairly certain that at some point in my childhood, I had accepted Jesus as my savior in Sunday School, Vacation Bible School or Good News Club. So, it wasn't a complete whopper of a lie, and knowing God's great sense of humor, I figured God knew my true motives which were to become a follower of Christ and seek to serve Him as his disciple. They assured us that the people who had brought us that afternoon, wouldn't leave without us, but I couldn't wait to get back to the car and go eat. I was the only one from our Youth Group who had gone forward. After all, we were Presbyterians and we weren't used to doing things like "alter calls". Decently and in Order was our modus operandi and all the rest of the group looked at me like I had done something indecent and disorderly. I had. However feeble my level of understanding and commitment that afternoon, God's Spirit came into my heart and I knew that I was one of Jesus' disciples. I may have been more interested in a Miner's hamburger and fries a few hours before, but now there was something amazingly new and wonderful in my soul and I would never be the same. Jesus "tamed" my heart and soul and I "turned loose" the control of my life to Him and "hooked on" for the ride of my life.
This is the best time of the year to live in the Walla Walla Valley. Beautiful sunny days, cool nights, the smell of ripening grapes and apples. The early fall rains have reduced the dust to almost nothing and late season fall grasses are jumping out of the ground. The Blue Mountains have had over 3 inches of rainfall. They look wonderful as they prepare for freezing temperatures and the changing colors of autumn. Snow will come and go at least three times before winter finally settles in for keeps in the high country. We are back into a routine once again on the farm and at the church. I had my PICC line changed at the Cancer Center on Monday. There is a little suspicious looking pimple - like bump that was under one of the connectors directly attached to my skin. We will have to watch it for infection. It is not close to where the line enters into my vein, so there isn't much of a chance of that getting infected. I went to church on Sunday and only did the Mystery Box and the Prayers of the People. Even that was tiring and I rested all afternoon. They have organized meals to be brought out to the house on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. There is always more than enough left over to get us to the next drop off. It is typical of our congregation to anticipate our needs and more than adequately meet them. As soon as Kriss is off her crutches, we probably will be able to take care of our own needs. My renown as a chef must have gotten out. Our children used to always dread the day when Kriss was gone for some reason. They still talk about the exotic fruit salad I made. I will start preaching again this coming Sunday, October 3, and continue through October and hopefully the first Sunday in November. We plan on returning to Seattle at that time, unless they insist that we come back sooner. I will have another R-CHOP treatment October 7. It will take 2-3 weeks for it to do its job shrinking whatever cancer hot spots I have left and then we will have another PET scan. We will be able to compare this new scan with the latest one in Seattle and see how effective R-CHOP has been. That may have some weight in treatment decisions and timing. Meanwhile the search is underway to find a sibling stem cell donor. Your prayers for both the treatment and the donor search are greatly appreciated.
While I'm here, I need to attend to some things at the church, as well as the farm. God must have known that we needed this time back in Walla Walla to wean calves, process some steers and work with several of our colts. We have had other people start some of our colts, without complete satisfaction. I have been too busy this spring and summer to do the initial groundwork and getting them to the next level of training. Kriss paid the price for that neglect. Her horse, Scarlette, has been ridden by three different trainers and she was still a timebomb waiting to explode. While we were home over Labor Day Weekend, Kriss wanted to keep her rideable and did all the right things to warm her up and she appeared perfectly calm and safe. Unfortunately, we were all deceived by her external demeanor. Before Kriss could even get settled in the saddle and gather up the reins, Scarlette blew up, bucking seriously. Now in her younger days, Kriss could wrangle broncs with the best of them, but at 58 years of age, she ended up on the hard pan dirt with 4 fractures of her pelvis. She walked on it for a week before going to the Emergency Room in Seattle. She left there with crutches and the prospect of not putting weight on that leg for 6 weeks. She plea-bargained credit for the week she walked on it and got her sentence reduced to 5 weeks on crutches, contingent on good behavior. Seeing how Scarlette reacted after all her training, I decided I would go back to square one with her and start her from scratch. I had already begun to work with Seamus, Ella's 3 year old gelding, and so I added Scarlette to my horse whispering schedule. Everything I know about horse training I learned from Robert Phinney who is a disciple of Buck Branaman. I have books and DVD's by Buck that teach you to do something with a horse that changes both of you for the rest of your life. Your goal, before you would ever possibly get on a horse is to have the horse willingly hand over their will and well-being into your care and leadership. Horses are herd animals that need to find an authority figure that will protect and look out for their best interests. In exchange for that security, they will "turn loose", "hook on", or whatever other phrase you run across. There comes a point in the training process that the animal gives their heart, soul and future into your hands. As long as you never betray that trust, the horse will choose to be with you above all other horses or activities. They evolve to a place where their greatest joy is in pleasing you. It is a bond that people have treasured for thousands of years. In the training process there are certain skill sets and transitional stages that clearly communicate when the horse is "turning loose" and blending their will into yours. I decided to find out if Scarlette had ever learned those fundamental skills which would tell me if she was "hooked on" or not. She hadn't. As a result, she was a timebomb waiting to explode. Unfortunately, Kriss was the one on her back when it went off. So, we started working with her as if she didn't know anything. Tie her loosely to the snubbing post; brush and clean her all over; practice picking up all four feet using a soft rope to keep from getting hurt; small corral circle up and change directions; backing up and learning to do longitudinal flexion; changing eyes while driving with invisible reins; desensitizing to rope, blanket, saddle and touch; large round pen work at walk, trot and gallop; drawing off the far side of the fence; changing eyes in larger pen; loading and unloading in horse trailer; learning to stand near a wooden corral fence and get used to someone working above with ropes and start putting weight on back; cool down back at snubbing post, reward with some horse treats and turn loose with proper attitude. It was obvious from Day 1 of her new life, that Scarlette had never been given the basic fundamentals that would make her safe to ride. The goal of most trainers is to push a horse as fast as they can. That means spurs and whip. They get paid for how many "rides" they put on a horse and so there is a real temptation to intimidate a horse through sheer strength, pain and force. The horse seems great when you go to pick them up in a month. You can even ride them there and think this is the real deal. However, when the horse has time to process that experience, you still have a wild animal that is motivated out of fear and survival instincts. When it came to introducing Scarlette to the critical lessons of trust and confidence, she knew nothing. By the end of Day 1, she knew what she needed to learn. By the end of Day 2, she could do 85% of the fundamentals and passed all the basic skills tests. I had her saddled and standing by the fence allowing me to put weight on the saddle. One area that will take a lot of work is that somehow she had been struck or hit on the right side of her head. She is so sensitive to that area, that we will have to spend special effort to get that taken care of. Day 3-5 will be perfecting all the basic skills and slowly getting her used to having someone in the saddle in ever increasingly larger pens. Day 6 is the goal to ride her in the round pen at a walk, trot, and gallop without any problems or anxiety on her part when transitioning from one level to the next. I have been doing the same thing with Seamus. He has successfully completed Day 4 and I have asked my Photo Pro, John Anthony to come out and make a Video of Day 6 of Seamus's Great Adventure. We will try to get a link of that Video on this blog so you can see what a day in the life of a horse looks like who has "turned loose" and is "hooked on". The French phrase of A. de Saint-Exupery from the LITTLE PRINCE as the title of this blog, translates: "Please, tame me!" St.-Exupery's profound story of the taming of the Fox in his classic tale is the essence of christian conversion. That miracle took place in my life the spring of 1966 and life has never been the same since.
A.C. Davis High School Auditorium, Yakima,WA May 1966
The Junior High School Youth Group from the Wapato Community Presbyterian Church planned an outing to see the Billy Graham movie THE RESTLESS ONES on a Sunday afternoon in May of 1966. I was a reluctant though regular attendee at Youth Group due to my mother's absolute insistence. Word had it that after the movie we would get to stop for something to eat on our way home and that sealed the deal, as far as I was concerned. I was familiar with Billy Graham Evangelistic movies. We had seen them before and my mother made me watch Billy Graham Crusades on TV from time to time. I knew the formula and the script. The movie we were going to Yakima to watch would be a story of rebellious, lost teenagers who would find themselves in increasingly difficult, if not dangerous situations. Some pastor or youth worker would befriend them in an attempt to change the direction of their lives. Somewhere nearby, a Billy Graham Crusade would be taking place and some of these youth would agree to attend. At the end of the service, Billy Graham would issue an "alter call", reminding everyone that all those that Jesus called to be his disciples had been called publically as a demonstration of their commitment and courage to follow Him. Sure enough, the script went exactly as I knew it would. A pastor stepped up on the stage and made the "alter call" personal for all of us in that auditorium inviting anyone who wanted to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior right now, today, could come up on the stage and a counselor would be there to pray with them and give them some free literature to take home. The counselors went forward right away to kind of prime the pump for others to follow. I was getting a little uncomfortable knowing that this was going to take some time and other groups would get to the food joints ahead of us and we'd have longer to wait to eat. As the number of seekers began to thin out, the pastor also invited anyone who would like to redidicate their life to Christ to come forward for prayer. Something, probably the Spirit of God, literally lifted me out of that theatre seat and I headed for the aisle. When I got there, I had to make the most significant decision I would ever make in my life. I knew I was the least likely kid in that Youth Group who would go forward publically to make a decision to follow Christ. I looked to the right at the EXIT sign and turned left. I walked up the steps onto the stage thinking to myself: "What are you doing up here?" Having a fairly quick and calculating mind, I figured out pretty quickly that my best chance of getting in and out of the hands of the counselor would be to state that I came forward to "redidcate my life to Christ". That would eliminate at least 25 minutes of hearing the entire plan of salvation and I was fairly certain that at some point in my childhood, I had accepted Jesus as my savior in Sunday School, Vacation Bible School or Good News Club. So, it wasn't a complete whopper of a lie, and knowing God's great sense of humor, I figured God knew my true motives which were to become a follower of Christ and seek to serve Him as his disciple. They assured us that the people who had brought us that afternoon, wouldn't leave without us, but I couldn't wait to get back to the car and go eat. I was the only one from our Youth Group who had gone forward. After all, we were Presbyterians and we weren't used to doing things like "alter calls". Decently and in Order was our modus operandi and all the rest of the group looked at me like I had done something indecent and disorderly. I had. However feeble my level of understanding and commitment that afternoon, God's Spirit came into my heart and I knew that I was one of Jesus' disciples. I may have been more interested in a Miner's hamburger and fries a few hours before, but now there was something amazingly new and wonderful in my soul and I would never be the same. Jesus "tamed" my heart and soul and I "turned loose" the control of my life to Him and "hooked on" for the ride of my life.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
A NEW NORMAL!
September 23, 2010, Walla Walla, WA Cloudy with rain, 65 degreees.
My oncologist here in Walla Walla warned me that I would be entering the Major Leagues of Chemo when I started R-CHOP therapy. It has been exactly one week since my infusion and I am beginning to understand what he was talking about. I am trying to get back into a routine at the office, but by the afternoon, I am just out of energy. Yesterday, we went to a Dr.'s appoinement for Kriss to check on her healing from the four fractures in her pelvis. She is having more pain the last few days and is concerned that it may not be healing properly. Dr. T. referred her to a specialist and told her to not wait so long to take her pain meds. By the time we ran a few errands and picked up some of our multitude of medications, it was 1:30 pm. Both of us slept most of the rest of the afternoon. I have been having some typical post Chemo side effects, but they are easing today. I went into the office this morning and worked there a couple of hours and then met a parishioner for lunch. Once again, when I got home, I was exhausted and rested a couple of hours. Now I am writing this blog and I feel pretty good. I have heard from almost all of my siblings and they are on board for the testing to see who will be a donor match. I need to telephone a couple of them this evening and just touch base about the process. We have gotten pre-approval from the Insurance Company to pay for the blood tests for nine siblings. At $5,000 per test, it adds up pretty fast. I am one of those very fortunate people who has a very comprehensive medical plan. It should be, considering how much the Church pays into it each year. I can't imagine how one would face all of this if you had to go out and find funding and resources to pay for the cost of the procedure. They told us it would end up costing between $250,000-$300,000 for just the expenses in Seattle. The Seattle Cancer Care Alliance has an entire staff of people who do nothing but assist people in securing funding or helping to navigate the maze of insurance red tape. It is certainly a challenging enterprise, but I don't know if we can come up with anything better. There are people at SCCA who come from all over the world to get the care that they offer. I found the same thing was true when we went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. There is a separate reception hall just for international patients. When you drive by the Rochester Airport, you see row upon row of private jets from around the world that speaks volumes of the kind of medical care we have available to us. The challenge of course, is how to make it available to everyone who needs it, without destroying the building blocks that sustain it. That is probably beyond my pay grade, but I have a lot of personal and professional experience living in the medical and health care world. I have to wait three weeks before my next R-CHOP infusion. It takes that long for your body to recover. Just when you get to feeling human again, you get drug back into the clutches of Chemo-Therapy. It's kind of like the Mafia that just keeps pulling you back in, when you think you have the chance to get out. My hair is supposed to fall out somewhere in this process, but so far, no sign of hair loss. It's funny how I notice naturally or artificially bald people now. I look at them and wonder how I will look without hair. Some people get through R-CHOP with all of their hair intact, so maybe I will, as well. The next big medical crisis will happen when I get back to Seattle and they give me another series of Chemo just before I receive the donor stem-cell transplant. That will lead us into a true medical crisis. We are trying to prepare as much as possible for that time. It's hard to know what to prepare for, however. We have all the legal and medical directives in place. I am trying to make sure that Kriss has the information and people around her to help her deal with any eventuality. One of the goals in my life is to make sure that she is well taken care of for the rest of her life. She has sacrificed so much of her personal interests and desires to serve our family and the church. I won't leave her in poverty or without people to walk with her through any unexpected future. I hope and pray that all those plans will be unnecessary. However, I would urge all of you to make those decisions when you are healthy and think about how you can prepare for whatever future God allows you to share. There are some crisis' you can avert by thinking and planning ahead. When I transitioned from 8th to 9th grade, I came face to face with my last Junior High Crisis.
Wapato Junior High School, Wapato, WA 1965
The summer following 8th grade I embraced the American economic miracle of independent business person. I started my own lawn care and mowing business. I had several older people call to see if I would mow their lawns and I made them an offer for complete yard care at a price they couldn't resist. I went down to the National Bank of Commerce in Wapato and opened a passport savings account with a few dollars I had laying around and made sure that it would take two signatures for anyone to withdraw funds. I had to have an adult on the account, so I put my Mother's name there, but I hadn't forgotten what had happened to money I had earned earlier in my life. From the time we had moved to WA state, we often would go back to North Dakota to help my cousin Rudy with harvest. If I remember correctly, I did that 2-3 times with my Dad and older brothers. Rudy and Dad had dated twins when they were younger, Edna and Evelyn. Rudy and Edna married, but had no offspring. Dad jilted Evelyn and she remained a spinster the rest of her life. We were on surprisingly good terms with all of them, especially Evelyn, and I can remember visiting her home in Beach many times. She worked in the Bank, I believe, and made the best cookies in Golden Valley County. At the end of one harvest, Rudy gave me a check for $25 for all the shovelling and dirty work I had done to help out during harvest. It was the first check I had ever received with only my name on it. He said he would call the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Beach and assure them that it was legit and to authorize them to cash it for me. I proudly strode into the Bank like some financial mogul, endorsed the check, and walked out with the preposterous sum of $25 in my pocket. I got 5 ones and a twenty dollar bill. It was a proud day for a young man to have money in his pocket that he had earned by the sweat of his brow. I bought some goodies for the train ride back to WA state and stashed the twenty away for some special purpose when I got back to Wapato. You can imagine what happened next. My concerned father thought it would best if he kept that $20 bill safe in his wallet, so nothing would happen to it on the trip home. As I handed it over, I had the sinking feeling that as he slid it into his wallet, it would be the last time I ever saw it. It was. I can't tell you how many times I asked and begged him to give me back my $20 bill. He always had an excuse or just ignored me. He had been raised in an era where the labor of a child was the rightful property of the father. He had suffered the indignity and humiliation being treated like a near-serf himself, so it seemed normal that I would follow along in the cultural traditions of immigrant families of all time. I didn't understand any of this, at the time, and it created a bitterness and anger that took a long time to get over. By the time we got back to Wapato, I only had a couple of bucks left for all my hard work for Cousin Rudy. I vowed that that experience would never repeat itself in the future. Ergo, my account at the National Bank of Commerce would be parent proof. I spent the summer moving sprinklers and mowing lawns while most of my friends would sit on their bicycles and watch. If I was feeling flush, I would treat them to an order of French Fries, smothered in catsup, and a large Coca-Cola. There was a Mom and Pop burger joint in Wapato that had the best fries around and they gave us a break on the combo price. On payday, I would treat myself to fresh maplebars from the bakery just around the corner from the National Bank of Commerce on main street. It was sublime to eat those fresh, still hot maplebars, sitting at a booth with my Passbook Savings Register open, looking at how much money I had earned that week and how it was adding up. I wouldn't let either of my parents know how much money I had in the account; no sense in putting more temptation in front of them than they could stand. I remember that I used some of the money to buy school clothes and supplies that Fall and a pair of white hightop Converse All Star Basketball shoes when I made the 9th grade varsity Basketball Team. The crisis of late Middle School or Junior High School is all about relationships. All of us boys had just discovered girls. From 7th grade on, older guys always preyed upon girls our age, and they were more than willing to have a boyfriend in 9th grade versus hanging out with us lowly 7th graders. But by the time we were in 9th grade, it was our turn. I can't say that I actually had a steady girlfriend. My face looked like the surface of the moon due to acne. It was only due to the semi-darkness of the room that any girl would condescend to dancing with me at the afterschool socials. At private home parties, if I was invited at all, I spent most of my time at the food table eating stuff that was never served at home. I remember one party at Glenn Hata's house where I told everyone that I had been diagnosed with an accute case of claustropobia. I couldn't stay in the basement with the rest of them for very long periods of time because of my medical condition. I guess they bought it. Whenever I would go outside to avoid the humiliation of not having anyone to dance with, some "loser" would come out after a while and commiserate with me in my medical crisis. In spite of living in a culture that is obsessed with sex and sexuality, we were all hopelessly ignorant and literally groping in the dark to make sense of that area of life. My friend, Frederick Buechner, in his book WISHFUL THINKING, writes: "Contrary to Mrs. Grundy, sex is not sin. Contrary to Hugh Hefner, it's not salvation either. Like nytroglycerin, it can be used either to blow up bridges or heal hearts." With all the overt sexual content to movies, music and language that surrounds young and old alike, I think we are actually more in the dark today than ever when it comes to sexuality and sexual behavior. Walla Walla County notoriously leads the state of WA in per capita teenage pregnancies. It is an ongoing crisis of epic proportions and we don't seem able to even face the issues honestly, let alone competently. The trendline seems to be descending into a form of hedonism, called recreational sex. Buechner speaks to that disturbing trend when he writes: "At its roots, the hunger for food is the hunger for survival. At its roots the hunger to know a person sexually is the hunger to know and be known by that person humanly. Food without nourishment doesn't fill the bill for long, and neither does sex without humanness." Sex truly is like nytroglycerin, it has the power to heal the broken hearts of a man and a wife who have experienced great alleniation. It also can blow up the bridges of life and opportunity for young and old alike when it occurs outside the boundaries of God's intentions. For many of my friends sexual encounters began to define and sometimes delineate their lives into ever more tightening circles of despair resulting in a dead-end existence. By the end of my 9th grade, I had survived one more crisis without total failure and the Spring of 1966 would be the turning point of my life.
My oncologist here in Walla Walla warned me that I would be entering the Major Leagues of Chemo when I started R-CHOP therapy. It has been exactly one week since my infusion and I am beginning to understand what he was talking about. I am trying to get back into a routine at the office, but by the afternoon, I am just out of energy. Yesterday, we went to a Dr.'s appoinement for Kriss to check on her healing from the four fractures in her pelvis. She is having more pain the last few days and is concerned that it may not be healing properly. Dr. T. referred her to a specialist and told her to not wait so long to take her pain meds. By the time we ran a few errands and picked up some of our multitude of medications, it was 1:30 pm. Both of us slept most of the rest of the afternoon. I have been having some typical post Chemo side effects, but they are easing today. I went into the office this morning and worked there a couple of hours and then met a parishioner for lunch. Once again, when I got home, I was exhausted and rested a couple of hours. Now I am writing this blog and I feel pretty good. I have heard from almost all of my siblings and they are on board for the testing to see who will be a donor match. I need to telephone a couple of them this evening and just touch base about the process. We have gotten pre-approval from the Insurance Company to pay for the blood tests for nine siblings. At $5,000 per test, it adds up pretty fast. I am one of those very fortunate people who has a very comprehensive medical plan. It should be, considering how much the Church pays into it each year. I can't imagine how one would face all of this if you had to go out and find funding and resources to pay for the cost of the procedure. They told us it would end up costing between $250,000-$300,000 for just the expenses in Seattle. The Seattle Cancer Care Alliance has an entire staff of people who do nothing but assist people in securing funding or helping to navigate the maze of insurance red tape. It is certainly a challenging enterprise, but I don't know if we can come up with anything better. There are people at SCCA who come from all over the world to get the care that they offer. I found the same thing was true when we went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. There is a separate reception hall just for international patients. When you drive by the Rochester Airport, you see row upon row of private jets from around the world that speaks volumes of the kind of medical care we have available to us. The challenge of course, is how to make it available to everyone who needs it, without destroying the building blocks that sustain it. That is probably beyond my pay grade, but I have a lot of personal and professional experience living in the medical and health care world. I have to wait three weeks before my next R-CHOP infusion. It takes that long for your body to recover. Just when you get to feeling human again, you get drug back into the clutches of Chemo-Therapy. It's kind of like the Mafia that just keeps pulling you back in, when you think you have the chance to get out. My hair is supposed to fall out somewhere in this process, but so far, no sign of hair loss. It's funny how I notice naturally or artificially bald people now. I look at them and wonder how I will look without hair. Some people get through R-CHOP with all of their hair intact, so maybe I will, as well. The next big medical crisis will happen when I get back to Seattle and they give me another series of Chemo just before I receive the donor stem-cell transplant. That will lead us into a true medical crisis. We are trying to prepare as much as possible for that time. It's hard to know what to prepare for, however. We have all the legal and medical directives in place. I am trying to make sure that Kriss has the information and people around her to help her deal with any eventuality. One of the goals in my life is to make sure that she is well taken care of for the rest of her life. She has sacrificed so much of her personal interests and desires to serve our family and the church. I won't leave her in poverty or without people to walk with her through any unexpected future. I hope and pray that all those plans will be unnecessary. However, I would urge all of you to make those decisions when you are healthy and think about how you can prepare for whatever future God allows you to share. There are some crisis' you can avert by thinking and planning ahead. When I transitioned from 8th to 9th grade, I came face to face with my last Junior High Crisis.
Wapato Junior High School, Wapato, WA 1965
The summer following 8th grade I embraced the American economic miracle of independent business person. I started my own lawn care and mowing business. I had several older people call to see if I would mow their lawns and I made them an offer for complete yard care at a price they couldn't resist. I went down to the National Bank of Commerce in Wapato and opened a passport savings account with a few dollars I had laying around and made sure that it would take two signatures for anyone to withdraw funds. I had to have an adult on the account, so I put my Mother's name there, but I hadn't forgotten what had happened to money I had earned earlier in my life. From the time we had moved to WA state, we often would go back to North Dakota to help my cousin Rudy with harvest. If I remember correctly, I did that 2-3 times with my Dad and older brothers. Rudy and Dad had dated twins when they were younger, Edna and Evelyn. Rudy and Edna married, but had no offspring. Dad jilted Evelyn and she remained a spinster the rest of her life. We were on surprisingly good terms with all of them, especially Evelyn, and I can remember visiting her home in Beach many times. She worked in the Bank, I believe, and made the best cookies in Golden Valley County. At the end of one harvest, Rudy gave me a check for $25 for all the shovelling and dirty work I had done to help out during harvest. It was the first check I had ever received with only my name on it. He said he would call the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Beach and assure them that it was legit and to authorize them to cash it for me. I proudly strode into the Bank like some financial mogul, endorsed the check, and walked out with the preposterous sum of $25 in my pocket. I got 5 ones and a twenty dollar bill. It was a proud day for a young man to have money in his pocket that he had earned by the sweat of his brow. I bought some goodies for the train ride back to WA state and stashed the twenty away for some special purpose when I got back to Wapato. You can imagine what happened next. My concerned father thought it would best if he kept that $20 bill safe in his wallet, so nothing would happen to it on the trip home. As I handed it over, I had the sinking feeling that as he slid it into his wallet, it would be the last time I ever saw it. It was. I can't tell you how many times I asked and begged him to give me back my $20 bill. He always had an excuse or just ignored me. He had been raised in an era where the labor of a child was the rightful property of the father. He had suffered the indignity and humiliation being treated like a near-serf himself, so it seemed normal that I would follow along in the cultural traditions of immigrant families of all time. I didn't understand any of this, at the time, and it created a bitterness and anger that took a long time to get over. By the time we got back to Wapato, I only had a couple of bucks left for all my hard work for Cousin Rudy. I vowed that that experience would never repeat itself in the future. Ergo, my account at the National Bank of Commerce would be parent proof. I spent the summer moving sprinklers and mowing lawns while most of my friends would sit on their bicycles and watch. If I was feeling flush, I would treat them to an order of French Fries, smothered in catsup, and a large Coca-Cola. There was a Mom and Pop burger joint in Wapato that had the best fries around and they gave us a break on the combo price. On payday, I would treat myself to fresh maplebars from the bakery just around the corner from the National Bank of Commerce on main street. It was sublime to eat those fresh, still hot maplebars, sitting at a booth with my Passbook Savings Register open, looking at how much money I had earned that week and how it was adding up. I wouldn't let either of my parents know how much money I had in the account; no sense in putting more temptation in front of them than they could stand. I remember that I used some of the money to buy school clothes and supplies that Fall and a pair of white hightop Converse All Star Basketball shoes when I made the 9th grade varsity Basketball Team. The crisis of late Middle School or Junior High School is all about relationships. All of us boys had just discovered girls. From 7th grade on, older guys always preyed upon girls our age, and they were more than willing to have a boyfriend in 9th grade versus hanging out with us lowly 7th graders. But by the time we were in 9th grade, it was our turn. I can't say that I actually had a steady girlfriend. My face looked like the surface of the moon due to acne. It was only due to the semi-darkness of the room that any girl would condescend to dancing with me at the afterschool socials. At private home parties, if I was invited at all, I spent most of my time at the food table eating stuff that was never served at home. I remember one party at Glenn Hata's house where I told everyone that I had been diagnosed with an accute case of claustropobia. I couldn't stay in the basement with the rest of them for very long periods of time because of my medical condition. I guess they bought it. Whenever I would go outside to avoid the humiliation of not having anyone to dance with, some "loser" would come out after a while and commiserate with me in my medical crisis. In spite of living in a culture that is obsessed with sex and sexuality, we were all hopelessly ignorant and literally groping in the dark to make sense of that area of life. My friend, Frederick Buechner, in his book WISHFUL THINKING, writes: "Contrary to Mrs. Grundy, sex is not sin. Contrary to Hugh Hefner, it's not salvation either. Like nytroglycerin, it can be used either to blow up bridges or heal hearts." With all the overt sexual content to movies, music and language that surrounds young and old alike, I think we are actually more in the dark today than ever when it comes to sexuality and sexual behavior. Walla Walla County notoriously leads the state of WA in per capita teenage pregnancies. It is an ongoing crisis of epic proportions and we don't seem able to even face the issues honestly, let alone competently. The trendline seems to be descending into a form of hedonism, called recreational sex. Buechner speaks to that disturbing trend when he writes: "At its roots, the hunger for food is the hunger for survival. At its roots the hunger to know a person sexually is the hunger to know and be known by that person humanly. Food without nourishment doesn't fill the bill for long, and neither does sex without humanness." Sex truly is like nytroglycerin, it has the power to heal the broken hearts of a man and a wife who have experienced great alleniation. It also can blow up the bridges of life and opportunity for young and old alike when it occurs outside the boundaries of God's intentions. For many of my friends sexual encounters began to define and sometimes delineate their lives into ever more tightening circles of despair resulting in a dead-end existence. By the end of my 9th grade, I had survived one more crisis without total failure and the Spring of 1966 would be the turning point of my life.
Monday, September 20, 2010
ONE DAY AT A TIME!
WALLA WALLA, WA, Sept. 20, 2010, Mostly Sunny, 75 degrees.
We left Seattle Friday afternoon and drove down to Kelso, WA to visit our daugthter, Hanna. Saturday we went to Portland, OR to visit daughter Ella and her husband Chris Brown, as well as Kriss' sister Patty-Jo and her daughter Heidi and her two children. It was a good weekend to see family and watch some football games and just get out of the cancer world. Sunday, we drove back to Walla Walla to get settled back into a routine here for 6-8 weeks until we need to go back to Seattle. We had an appointment this morning at 9 am for blood tests and a visit with Dr. Quackenbush to schedule our next R-CHOP cycle October 7. We received a confidential letter from the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance today summorizing the Patient Care Conference they had about us last week and a detailed explanation of the potential risks and benefits of going ahead with stem cell transplant using donor cells from a sibling. One sentence, in particular, jumps out at you when you read it: "We described the risks of graft-versus-host disease associated with the transplant and the risks of infections, which resulted in accumulative transplant-related mortality of 20-40% depending on the regimen." Depending on how one looks at the world, that means I am facing abouty a one in three chance of death from the treatment or a two in three chance of survival with a possibility of a broad based cure. The risks of not doing the transplant may be even worse. My father developed both prostate cancer and leukemia prior to his death and they took their toll very quickly. Kriss and I both feel that this is one of those times when you have to put your complete trust in God's promises and presence. We both feel a deep peace about going forward, at this time, and we will trust that the best donor can be found which will create the least amount of GVH (Graft-VS-Host) complex and replace my faltering immune system with a stronger one. We also received a letter from one of our beloved parishioners today who lost her husband a year or so ago after going through a very routine procedure that spiraled out of control in a matter of days. She wrote: "Thank God, no matter what the journey, you are surrounded by God's loving arms - holding you tightly with passion and comfort to give you peace, especially when you need it most. You are both loved so much! Keep the faith! Each day is a Gift! Love sustains us all! Love, Susan." These words have a particular significance to me. I remember sitting with all of Susan's family for several days following her husband's downturn. We prayed so hard and hoped so much, but her husband would not recover. I will never forget the evening the family made the decision to remove all artificial life support. We all gathered together in his room and as they began to shut off one machine after another, we began to sing. When we came to the end of that song, Tom took his last breath and was gone. Susan's words carry such impact because they come from a heart that has loved so deeply and lives her faith so authentically. It is that kind of loving support from people who have allowed me to share God's hope in their lives, that will sustain us now. My very favorite French author, Antoine de St. Exupery, wrote that there is only one true luxury worth having in this life. That is the luxury of deep human friendships. Those relationships are forged over the years of shared experiences, life and death, victory and defeat. One waits in vain if one thinks that one can plant an acorn today and sit under the shade of an oak tree tomorrow. Surrounded by a grove of such long term friendships, we take strength from their nearness and protection from their presence. When they are gone, our lives seem defoliated by their absence. The last sentence in this book, WIND, SAND, AND STARS reads: "Seul, L'Esprit, s'il souffle sur la glaise peut creer l'Homme!" My own translation of this sentence goes: "Only if the Spirit of God breathes upon the clay of human life, can authentic humanity exist." That is my deepest prayer; that God will breathe His Spirit of life upon all of us in this journey of faith and we will live the abundant life only Christ can give. As we visited with Dr. Quackenbush today, he asked how I was tolerating the R-CHOP therapy I received last Thursday. I said I felt fine, except for some fatigue. He warned Kriss that tomorrow, Tuesday, after coming off the Prednizone I have been taking for 5 days, that I would have the biggest hangover of my life. Well, I have no way of knowing what that feels like, seeing as how I can honestly say that I have never been intoxicated or high on anything in my life. That leads me to the next chapter in Junior High School, the crisis of experimenting with underage drinking and drugs.
Wapato, WA, eigth grade, Wapato Junior High School, 1964
About 8th grade, I began to notice a subtle push to drink alcohol and experiment with whatever drugs people my age could get their hands on. From as far back as I can remenber, people under the influence of any intoxicant were frightening and repulsive to me. It all began with Great Uncle "Sup", (pronounced soup). Sup was my Grandmother Peterson's younger brother who lived in Omaha, Nebraska as an adult and who was a raging alcoholic. He was definitely on my Mother's short list of persona non grata and she dreaded the day that he might just show up back in North Dakota. One year when she would still allow him to enter the house, he dropped his suitcase on the floor and three Nebraska cockroaches scampered out and she threw Sup, the suitcase and hopefully, the cockroaches out together. The next time I saw him was one winter when my parents were gone and he showed up and made himself at home with Grandpa and Grandma. While he was there, he thought it would be a good idea to introduce his grand-nephews to the mysteries of John Barleycorn, or hard liquor. My older brothers had probably tasted beer before, but this was a night none of us would ever forget. Somehow, we congregated at our Cousin Rudy's house down the road from our place outside of Beach, North Dakota for the initiation. Someone had found some warm beer for an appetizer and by the time Sup arrived with the "hooch", there was beer on the ceiling and floor and a little bit in the gullet. I got really concerned when Sup showed up with the hard stuff and I told them that I was going to call an older brother who I thought would save the day. Sup took me aside and warned me that it wasn't in my best interest to blow the whistle on a good time, so I was to just shut up and put up with it. That isn't in my nature and I somehow snuck the phone into the kitchen and called my rescuer to come out to Rudy's and save us. He actually came,along with a friend, I believe, and they broke up the party, confiscating the goods. I suspect that they put them to their own usage, but I didn't care, as long as I wasn't present. I remember two of my older brothers who had inbibed, throwing up repeatedly, which taught me an early lesson about the ultimate results of intoxication. In seventh grade, I used to walk home for lunch. One day I stumbled upon an end of the school party at the house hosted by a family member. Since I was there to make lunch for myself, they all thought that it would be a great idea if I cooked for all of them, as well. I tried in vain to get out of it, but in the end, I grilled hamburgers for a bunch of people I didn't like at the time, and ended up getting sent to the Principal's office for being late when I got back to school. The next time that I was more likely to start drinking, was when a friend of mine who had moved from California, offered me some alcohol at his house. His father would die within 5 years from that date from alcohol related diseases. There was always some form of alcohol around the house and he said he drank it with his Dad and they wouldn't mind if I wanted to try it. I could see that alcohol was destroying this man's health and his family and, once again, I had the privilege of seeing where that road could lead, and I politely refused. I have never seen anything truly positive come out of intoxication. I guess for young people, like adults, for that matter, it's about alterring your consciousness. Whatever pain, anxiety, fear or meaninglessness you can't cope with, numbing the rational part of the brain with intoxicants seems like a legitimate escape. The problem is that it may introduce you to a pattern of avoidance and behavior that will make your original problems pale in comparison. Junior High School and now Middle School seem to be the time when you have to face the crisis of intoxication. I can only thank God that I got to see the harsh realities of drunkedness at any early enough age that there was absolutely no attraction. By the nineth grade other forms of crisis would appear.
We left Seattle Friday afternoon and drove down to Kelso, WA to visit our daugthter, Hanna. Saturday we went to Portland, OR to visit daughter Ella and her husband Chris Brown, as well as Kriss' sister Patty-Jo and her daughter Heidi and her two children. It was a good weekend to see family and watch some football games and just get out of the cancer world. Sunday, we drove back to Walla Walla to get settled back into a routine here for 6-8 weeks until we need to go back to Seattle. We had an appointment this morning at 9 am for blood tests and a visit with Dr. Quackenbush to schedule our next R-CHOP cycle October 7. We received a confidential letter from the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance today summorizing the Patient Care Conference they had about us last week and a detailed explanation of the potential risks and benefits of going ahead with stem cell transplant using donor cells from a sibling. One sentence, in particular, jumps out at you when you read it: "We described the risks of graft-versus-host disease associated with the transplant and the risks of infections, which resulted in accumulative transplant-related mortality of 20-40% depending on the regimen." Depending on how one looks at the world, that means I am facing abouty a one in three chance of death from the treatment or a two in three chance of survival with a possibility of a broad based cure. The risks of not doing the transplant may be even worse. My father developed both prostate cancer and leukemia prior to his death and they took their toll very quickly. Kriss and I both feel that this is one of those times when you have to put your complete trust in God's promises and presence. We both feel a deep peace about going forward, at this time, and we will trust that the best donor can be found which will create the least amount of GVH (Graft-VS-Host) complex and replace my faltering immune system with a stronger one. We also received a letter from one of our beloved parishioners today who lost her husband a year or so ago after going through a very routine procedure that spiraled out of control in a matter of days. She wrote: "Thank God, no matter what the journey, you are surrounded by God's loving arms - holding you tightly with passion and comfort to give you peace, especially when you need it most. You are both loved so much! Keep the faith! Each day is a Gift! Love sustains us all! Love, Susan." These words have a particular significance to me. I remember sitting with all of Susan's family for several days following her husband's downturn. We prayed so hard and hoped so much, but her husband would not recover. I will never forget the evening the family made the decision to remove all artificial life support. We all gathered together in his room and as they began to shut off one machine after another, we began to sing. When we came to the end of that song, Tom took his last breath and was gone. Susan's words carry such impact because they come from a heart that has loved so deeply and lives her faith so authentically. It is that kind of loving support from people who have allowed me to share God's hope in their lives, that will sustain us now. My very favorite French author, Antoine de St. Exupery, wrote that there is only one true luxury worth having in this life. That is the luxury of deep human friendships. Those relationships are forged over the years of shared experiences, life and death, victory and defeat. One waits in vain if one thinks that one can plant an acorn today and sit under the shade of an oak tree tomorrow. Surrounded by a grove of such long term friendships, we take strength from their nearness and protection from their presence. When they are gone, our lives seem defoliated by their absence. The last sentence in this book, WIND, SAND, AND STARS reads: "Seul, L'Esprit, s'il souffle sur la glaise peut creer l'Homme!" My own translation of this sentence goes: "Only if the Spirit of God breathes upon the clay of human life, can authentic humanity exist." That is my deepest prayer; that God will breathe His Spirit of life upon all of us in this journey of faith and we will live the abundant life only Christ can give. As we visited with Dr. Quackenbush today, he asked how I was tolerating the R-CHOP therapy I received last Thursday. I said I felt fine, except for some fatigue. He warned Kriss that tomorrow, Tuesday, after coming off the Prednizone I have been taking for 5 days, that I would have the biggest hangover of my life. Well, I have no way of knowing what that feels like, seeing as how I can honestly say that I have never been intoxicated or high on anything in my life. That leads me to the next chapter in Junior High School, the crisis of experimenting with underage drinking and drugs.
Wapato, WA, eigth grade, Wapato Junior High School, 1964
About 8th grade, I began to notice a subtle push to drink alcohol and experiment with whatever drugs people my age could get their hands on. From as far back as I can remenber, people under the influence of any intoxicant were frightening and repulsive to me. It all began with Great Uncle "Sup", (pronounced soup). Sup was my Grandmother Peterson's younger brother who lived in Omaha, Nebraska as an adult and who was a raging alcoholic. He was definitely on my Mother's short list of persona non grata and she dreaded the day that he might just show up back in North Dakota. One year when she would still allow him to enter the house, he dropped his suitcase on the floor and three Nebraska cockroaches scampered out and she threw Sup, the suitcase and hopefully, the cockroaches out together. The next time I saw him was one winter when my parents were gone and he showed up and made himself at home with Grandpa and Grandma. While he was there, he thought it would be a good idea to introduce his grand-nephews to the mysteries of John Barleycorn, or hard liquor. My older brothers had probably tasted beer before, but this was a night none of us would ever forget. Somehow, we congregated at our Cousin Rudy's house down the road from our place outside of Beach, North Dakota for the initiation. Someone had found some warm beer for an appetizer and by the time Sup arrived with the "hooch", there was beer on the ceiling and floor and a little bit in the gullet. I got really concerned when Sup showed up with the hard stuff and I told them that I was going to call an older brother who I thought would save the day. Sup took me aside and warned me that it wasn't in my best interest to blow the whistle on a good time, so I was to just shut up and put up with it. That isn't in my nature and I somehow snuck the phone into the kitchen and called my rescuer to come out to Rudy's and save us. He actually came,along with a friend, I believe, and they broke up the party, confiscating the goods. I suspect that they put them to their own usage, but I didn't care, as long as I wasn't present. I remember two of my older brothers who had inbibed, throwing up repeatedly, which taught me an early lesson about the ultimate results of intoxication. In seventh grade, I used to walk home for lunch. One day I stumbled upon an end of the school party at the house hosted by a family member. Since I was there to make lunch for myself, they all thought that it would be a great idea if I cooked for all of them, as well. I tried in vain to get out of it, but in the end, I grilled hamburgers for a bunch of people I didn't like at the time, and ended up getting sent to the Principal's office for being late when I got back to school. The next time that I was more likely to start drinking, was when a friend of mine who had moved from California, offered me some alcohol at his house. His father would die within 5 years from that date from alcohol related diseases. There was always some form of alcohol around the house and he said he drank it with his Dad and they wouldn't mind if I wanted to try it. I could see that alcohol was destroying this man's health and his family and, once again, I had the privilege of seeing where that road could lead, and I politely refused. I have never seen anything truly positive come out of intoxication. I guess for young people, like adults, for that matter, it's about alterring your consciousness. Whatever pain, anxiety, fear or meaninglessness you can't cope with, numbing the rational part of the brain with intoxicants seems like a legitimate escape. The problem is that it may introduce you to a pattern of avoidance and behavior that will make your original problems pale in comparison. Junior High School and now Middle School seem to be the time when you have to face the crisis of intoxication. I can only thank God that I got to see the harsh realities of drunkedness at any early enough age that there was absolutely no attraction. By the nineth grade other forms of crisis would appear.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
A DANGEROUS OPPORTUNITY-CRISIS TIME
Seattle, WA, September 16, 2010, Cloudy with intermittant rain 67 degrees.
In our Stephen Ministry training at the church in College Place, one section talked about the nature of crisis. It showed the two Chinese characters for the word crisis, a combination of the words danger and opportunity. Every crisis holds both of those elements in balance and they showed an inverted triangle teetering on its apex which could fall either direction, toward danger or opportunity. That is where we are at in my Medical Crisis. Today I started on that new journey which will inevitably lead us through the valley of the shadow where we will either perish or persist. The first step in that journey was an entire afternoon and early evening of RCHOP chemotherapy. Five different chemos were infused through my new PICC line into a vein near my heart over a six hour process. I am taking anti-nausea medication daily, but it will take a toil on my body in a few days. It takes three weeks for you to recover sufficiently to have a second dose, so they are sending us back to Walla Walla for 6-8 weeks to have the second RCHOP infusion and give us time to find a stem cell donor, hopefully from one of my 9 living siblings. Then we will return to Seattle for another work-up and harvest the stem cells from the donor and put them directly into me. Meanwhile, I will have had another regimen of chemo here in Seattle to suppress my own immune system to its weakest level possible and still be alive. The miracle we are praying for is that the immune system from the donor will eliminate any remaining mutated stem cells in my body, as well as send out T cells that will seek out and destroy any residual small and large cell lymphoma that persists after the RCHOP. As Dr. Oliver Press described it in our consultation with him on Tuesday, the donor stem cells will create an entirely new immune system that can overcome my cancer that is too strong for my own immune system to handle. Dr. Press had just returned from the weekly Patient Care Conference where 50 of the heads of various departments and specialties meet to discuss difficult cases like mine. Dr. Till and Dr. Press presented my history and after an hour of deliberation, they unanimously agreed on the course of treatment that we began today. It's a minor miracle to get 52 people in any line of work to agree on something as complex as this, and we considered that to be a very good affirmation to go forward, despite the danger side of the triangle. The donor immune system might not just seek out and destroy cancer cells, but in one third of the patients, it also creates what is called a Graft vs.Host complex that can start attacking skin, intestines and internal organs. I will have to take medication to counteract and control whatever level of Graft vs.Host activity I develop for the next two years. In one third of patients, there is a complete cure of the cancer. We are praying for God's mercy and that the Great Physician will use this treatment to restore my health. There is, of course, a profound spiritual application in this process. In the face of our sinful nature, we are literally like my immune system. Utterly incapable of overcoming the dis-ease or sin within our souls. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God is how the Apostle Paul describes it and the inevitable result of that condition is death. The miracle of God's love is that Jesus willingly took our sins upon himself, and that gift is eternal life. We receive a new Spirit, the Holy Spirit which functions like an immune system and accomplishes in our souls what we cannot accomplish on our own. God's Spirit systematically seeks out pockets of disobedience, unrighteousness and rebellion in our lives and brings them to our attention for repentence, and then applies the power of the Resurrection to make us alive again. I want to to share with you a passage from Paul's letter to the Philippians that is my epistle to all of you in College Place and beyond who read these words: "For I know that through your prayers and the help given by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is to gain more of Him. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet, what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two; I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that through my being with you again your joy in Christ Jesus will overflow on account of me. Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one person for the faith of the gospel." Phil. 1:19-27. At the end of the Stephen Ministry training on how to minister to people in crisis, it described the roll of God's people in tipping the balance of crisis towards opportunity and away from danger. There was an illustration of a stick figure pushing the inverted triangle so that opportunity won out over danger. That is what your prayers, love, communications and acts of graciousness are doing in my life and in the lives of all those with whom we share in overcoming life crisis'. Robin
Wapato, WA, 1963 Junior High School
My family and I were making progress on the road to MCR (Middle Class Respectability). We had moved from the embarrassing cabins near the School and had rented a house at 705 Tietan in Wapato. In fact we would be able to afford to buy a house at 705 S. Satus within another year or so. The additional income my father earned working at Boeing Aircraft Company in Seattle, coupled with my mother's teachers salary raised us to the heights of home ownership. But in many ways, Junior High School was a series of crisis' that could have derailed my hopes of becoming an upstanding citizen of the State of Washington. The start of this process was a completely innocent event that got blown so far out of proportion, that I couldn't believe it. It all started during a spelling test. This cute girl named Cindy, sat next to me and preferred to talk to her girlfriends at night instead of preparing for boring spelling tests. SO, she started looking at my answers one day during the test and in my righteousness indignation at such blatant cheating, I wanted to confront her after class about this inappropriate behavior. Well, she knew what I was up to, so she walked as fast as she could out of class and I had to almost run to catch up with her. Tragically, she was wearing one of those blouses that you never see anymore that had untold number of buttons all the way from top to bottom. When I got right behind her, she felt me tug on the bottom of her blouse to get her to stop and she sprinted down the hall screaming. I was so startled I stopped dead in my tracks, but forgot to let go of the blouse until I was showered with every single button holding it together. When she felt the cold air engulfing her bare back, she screamed even louder and surrounded by a circle of commiserating girls, she rushed into the first bathroom available and sent scouts out to do two things. First, to find some article of clothing in the lost and found that she could wear the rest of the day and second, to tell the teacher that Robin Peterson had just ripped Cindy's blouse off and it needed to be reported to the Principal's Office ASAP. Justice is blind and I found myself shortly being summoned to the Principal's Office to receive the appropriate disciplinary punishment, hacks. I wasn't even given the opportunity to present my side of the story. It was such an obvious case of stupidity and inappropriate behavior in front of numerous eyewitnesses, that it was an open and shut case. I was guilty and there was NO excuse for any behavior of that sort, so just grab your ankles and thank God that I wasn't expelled on the spot. Corporal punishment was still in vogue in those days in public schools. Every Principal had a favorite Hack Board. They were shaped like a Cricket mallet with a handle and a flat hitting surface that had holes drilled into it so that it had less wind resistence and you could achieve maximum hack speed. I grabbed and he hacked and it must have had its intended results because I have never torn another girls blouse apart since that day.
The real crisis' of Junior High were peer pressures to do what you knew you shouldn't do. The emergence of hormones makes you somewhat crazy. Your body development is way ahead of your emotional and rational development and that inevitably leads to trouble with a capital T. My friend Scott and I decided that we needed a reputation. We weren't known for anything. We were just background noise in the cacaphony of Wapato Junior High School. We weren't great athletes, students or popular people. The only thing we could come up with was to spread false rumors about each other that were complete whoppers, outreagous lies that only 12 to 14 year olds would ever believe. Before long we had a reputation all right, a bad one. But in Junior High School even a bad reputation was better than not having any reputation at all. People started treating us like we were dangerous or something. I was walking down the hall on an errand during classtime one day, and this girl came around the corner and spotted me and ran like a jackrabbit for the nearest door. I guess she still remembered the infamous "Blouse Incident". Once you start down the path of deception, there's no getting the Genie back into the bottle and we were labelled as bad guys you wouldn't let your sister have anything to do with. By the grace of God, I left town the summer after 7th grade to live with my brother Charlie and his family in Fargo, North Dakota. He was the herdsman at the Pig Barn for North Dakota State University and I learned more about swine production and care than I could ever imagine. We lived too far out of town to get into any trouble and they had a couple of boys that I was supposed to help Marge look after, since she was pregnant with their third son, Craig. Those boys just about drove me crazy, I guess it was payback for all the grief I had inflicted on my own big brothers. Boy, was I ever glad that I was the youngest child in my family. Charlie was an ex-Marine and ran the household like a drill sargeant. I was forced to drink milk, brush my teeth, shine my shoes and make my bed. It was like boot camp and I hated it for the first month until fishing season started in earnest. Charlie and a buddy had concocted this floating disaster of a houseboat or rather shack on 55 gallon drums that we would risk life and limb to snag the elusive yet coveted Walleye. Going fishing every weekend made life bearable with the brats back home. They weren't allowed to go fishing since they were too young, thank God. I learned alot from Charlie and Marge that summer and they helped tip the balance of my Junior High Crisis' back toward the positive side, but there were more challenges to come.
In our Stephen Ministry training at the church in College Place, one section talked about the nature of crisis. It showed the two Chinese characters for the word crisis, a combination of the words danger and opportunity. Every crisis holds both of those elements in balance and they showed an inverted triangle teetering on its apex which could fall either direction, toward danger or opportunity. That is where we are at in my Medical Crisis. Today I started on that new journey which will inevitably lead us through the valley of the shadow where we will either perish or persist. The first step in that journey was an entire afternoon and early evening of RCHOP chemotherapy. Five different chemos were infused through my new PICC line into a vein near my heart over a six hour process. I am taking anti-nausea medication daily, but it will take a toil on my body in a few days. It takes three weeks for you to recover sufficiently to have a second dose, so they are sending us back to Walla Walla for 6-8 weeks to have the second RCHOP infusion and give us time to find a stem cell donor, hopefully from one of my 9 living siblings. Then we will return to Seattle for another work-up and harvest the stem cells from the donor and put them directly into me. Meanwhile, I will have had another regimen of chemo here in Seattle to suppress my own immune system to its weakest level possible and still be alive. The miracle we are praying for is that the immune system from the donor will eliminate any remaining mutated stem cells in my body, as well as send out T cells that will seek out and destroy any residual small and large cell lymphoma that persists after the RCHOP. As Dr. Oliver Press described it in our consultation with him on Tuesday, the donor stem cells will create an entirely new immune system that can overcome my cancer that is too strong for my own immune system to handle. Dr. Press had just returned from the weekly Patient Care Conference where 50 of the heads of various departments and specialties meet to discuss difficult cases like mine. Dr. Till and Dr. Press presented my history and after an hour of deliberation, they unanimously agreed on the course of treatment that we began today. It's a minor miracle to get 52 people in any line of work to agree on something as complex as this, and we considered that to be a very good affirmation to go forward, despite the danger side of the triangle. The donor immune system might not just seek out and destroy cancer cells, but in one third of the patients, it also creates what is called a Graft vs.Host complex that can start attacking skin, intestines and internal organs. I will have to take medication to counteract and control whatever level of Graft vs.Host activity I develop for the next two years. In one third of patients, there is a complete cure of the cancer. We are praying for God's mercy and that the Great Physician will use this treatment to restore my health. There is, of course, a profound spiritual application in this process. In the face of our sinful nature, we are literally like my immune system. Utterly incapable of overcoming the dis-ease or sin within our souls. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God is how the Apostle Paul describes it and the inevitable result of that condition is death. The miracle of God's love is that Jesus willingly took our sins upon himself, and that gift is eternal life. We receive a new Spirit, the Holy Spirit which functions like an immune system and accomplishes in our souls what we cannot accomplish on our own. God's Spirit systematically seeks out pockets of disobedience, unrighteousness and rebellion in our lives and brings them to our attention for repentence, and then applies the power of the Resurrection to make us alive again. I want to to share with you a passage from Paul's letter to the Philippians that is my epistle to all of you in College Place and beyond who read these words: "For I know that through your prayers and the help given by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is to gain more of Him. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet, what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two; I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that through my being with you again your joy in Christ Jesus will overflow on account of me. Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one person for the faith of the gospel." Phil. 1:19-27. At the end of the Stephen Ministry training on how to minister to people in crisis, it described the roll of God's people in tipping the balance of crisis towards opportunity and away from danger. There was an illustration of a stick figure pushing the inverted triangle so that opportunity won out over danger. That is what your prayers, love, communications and acts of graciousness are doing in my life and in the lives of all those with whom we share in overcoming life crisis'. Robin
Wapato, WA, 1963 Junior High School
My family and I were making progress on the road to MCR (Middle Class Respectability). We had moved from the embarrassing cabins near the School and had rented a house at 705 Tietan in Wapato. In fact we would be able to afford to buy a house at 705 S. Satus within another year or so. The additional income my father earned working at Boeing Aircraft Company in Seattle, coupled with my mother's teachers salary raised us to the heights of home ownership. But in many ways, Junior High School was a series of crisis' that could have derailed my hopes of becoming an upstanding citizen of the State of Washington. The start of this process was a completely innocent event that got blown so far out of proportion, that I couldn't believe it. It all started during a spelling test. This cute girl named Cindy, sat next to me and preferred to talk to her girlfriends at night instead of preparing for boring spelling tests. SO, she started looking at my answers one day during the test and in my righteousness indignation at such blatant cheating, I wanted to confront her after class about this inappropriate behavior. Well, she knew what I was up to, so she walked as fast as she could out of class and I had to almost run to catch up with her. Tragically, she was wearing one of those blouses that you never see anymore that had untold number of buttons all the way from top to bottom. When I got right behind her, she felt me tug on the bottom of her blouse to get her to stop and she sprinted down the hall screaming. I was so startled I stopped dead in my tracks, but forgot to let go of the blouse until I was showered with every single button holding it together. When she felt the cold air engulfing her bare back, she screamed even louder and surrounded by a circle of commiserating girls, she rushed into the first bathroom available and sent scouts out to do two things. First, to find some article of clothing in the lost and found that she could wear the rest of the day and second, to tell the teacher that Robin Peterson had just ripped Cindy's blouse off and it needed to be reported to the Principal's Office ASAP. Justice is blind and I found myself shortly being summoned to the Principal's Office to receive the appropriate disciplinary punishment, hacks. I wasn't even given the opportunity to present my side of the story. It was such an obvious case of stupidity and inappropriate behavior in front of numerous eyewitnesses, that it was an open and shut case. I was guilty and there was NO excuse for any behavior of that sort, so just grab your ankles and thank God that I wasn't expelled on the spot. Corporal punishment was still in vogue in those days in public schools. Every Principal had a favorite Hack Board. They were shaped like a Cricket mallet with a handle and a flat hitting surface that had holes drilled into it so that it had less wind resistence and you could achieve maximum hack speed. I grabbed and he hacked and it must have had its intended results because I have never torn another girls blouse apart since that day.
The real crisis' of Junior High were peer pressures to do what you knew you shouldn't do. The emergence of hormones makes you somewhat crazy. Your body development is way ahead of your emotional and rational development and that inevitably leads to trouble with a capital T. My friend Scott and I decided that we needed a reputation. We weren't known for anything. We were just background noise in the cacaphony of Wapato Junior High School. We weren't great athletes, students or popular people. The only thing we could come up with was to spread false rumors about each other that were complete whoppers, outreagous lies that only 12 to 14 year olds would ever believe. Before long we had a reputation all right, a bad one. But in Junior High School even a bad reputation was better than not having any reputation at all. People started treating us like we were dangerous or something. I was walking down the hall on an errand during classtime one day, and this girl came around the corner and spotted me and ran like a jackrabbit for the nearest door. I guess she still remembered the infamous "Blouse Incident". Once you start down the path of deception, there's no getting the Genie back into the bottle and we were labelled as bad guys you wouldn't let your sister have anything to do with. By the grace of God, I left town the summer after 7th grade to live with my brother Charlie and his family in Fargo, North Dakota. He was the herdsman at the Pig Barn for North Dakota State University and I learned more about swine production and care than I could ever imagine. We lived too far out of town to get into any trouble and they had a couple of boys that I was supposed to help Marge look after, since she was pregnant with their third son, Craig. Those boys just about drove me crazy, I guess it was payback for all the grief I had inflicted on my own big brothers. Boy, was I ever glad that I was the youngest child in my family. Charlie was an ex-Marine and ran the household like a drill sargeant. I was forced to drink milk, brush my teeth, shine my shoes and make my bed. It was like boot camp and I hated it for the first month until fishing season started in earnest. Charlie and a buddy had concocted this floating disaster of a houseboat or rather shack on 55 gallon drums that we would risk life and limb to snag the elusive yet coveted Walleye. Going fishing every weekend made life bearable with the brats back home. They weren't allowed to go fishing since they were too young, thank God. I learned alot from Charlie and Marge that summer and they helped tip the balance of my Junior High Crisis' back toward the positive side, but there were more challenges to come.
Monday, September 13, 2010
MIDDLE-AGED MUTANT NINJA PASTOR
The best laid plans of mice and men, oft go astray. I'm not sure who originally wrote those words, probably Shakespeare or someone equally famous, but they certainly apply to our situation today. In reviewing all of the many tests and procedures we have had, Dr. Till was concerned about mutated chromosomes in my stem cells in the bone marrow. Consulting specialists in this field, they concluded that in addition to small cell and large cell lymphoma, I seem to have hit the trifecta by developing therapy-related myelodysplastic syndrome or MDS. They tested 22 stem cells and 16 of them showed signs of mutation. This is probably the result of prior chemo and/or radition treatments. One other source is environmental. People living within a 100 mile radius of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation have shown an above average rate of MDS occurence. Whatever its origins, its there, and we will have to adjust our treatment schedule accordingly. The first step is to install a PICC intervenous line tomorrow, Tuesday, Sept.14. Then on Wednesday, Dr. Till will take my case history to the Patient Care Conference of the various medical department heads to come up with the best plan. I will most likely start RCHOP Chemo therapy ASAP, either here or back in Walla Walla. The biggest change in treatment is that I am no longer a candidate for an auto or self originated stem cell transplant. We will have to test all of my living siblings and find if any of them is a genetic match and ask if they would be my stem cell donor. Having 9 living siblings does have some benefit. There is a 25% chance that any one of them is a perfect match, so multiplying that by 9 gives me a 225% chance of having a donor, provided their own health condition doesn't exclude them. I will be sending out information to them and see if they would at least be willing to submit a blood sample to be tested. If none of them matches or they are unable to participate, we will have to go through the national donor database and look for a donor. A family member is the most effective and safest transplant option, but a total stranger is also an option. After the consultation on Wednesday, we will probably meet with Dr. Till on Thursday and make final plans. We may have the first RCHOP dose here in Seattle this week and then come home for up to 6 weeks for the remaining RCHOP treatments. That would give us time to test all of my siblings and arrange for the donor to meet us here in Seattle for the actual transplant later this Fall. In addition to my health adventures, Kriss got sideways with her filly and ended up breaking her pelvis in four places. They are hairline fractures that are inoperable, as far as we know. She will see an orthopedic specialist tomorrow for confirmation. Coming home will give her time to recover from her problems and then she could fulfill the caregiver role I will need during transplant recovery. In spite of all these challenges, it is amazing how God continues to work all things together for good, for those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. The scariest change in perspective is that there is a 10 times more rate of death with a donor stem cell transplant vs. a self originated procedure. However, the upside is that there is also a greater chance that a donor stem cell transplant would potentially cure all three of my medical problems, small and large cell lymphoma and MDS. It's like going "all-in" in Texas Hold'em, big risk for big rewards. The interesting thing is that God is like the TV audience that already knows what cards you are holding and who wins and who loses. I can only play the hand that is dealt to me and seek to serve the God who knows the number of our days on this earth. Robin
September 13, 2010; Seattle, WA Beautiful Indian Summer Afternoon, 75 degrees mostly sunny.
After the Exodus from North Dakota to the State of Washington, we were ready to start a new life and seek "Middle Class Respectability" as Henry Higgins bemoaned in MY FAIR LADY. My mother sat us all down and basically said that our past life choices were over and moving out West gave us all a chance to start afresh. I don't know about all the others, but I took her seriously and decided to stop smoking cigarettes at the age of 11, thankfully, and do my best to become a model citizen of the State of Washington. My first day in fifth grade started out well enough, most of the kids were cordial, but when I left the building to go home, two boys pulled a stunt where one of them called me over to look at something he had in his hand, the other one knelt on hands and knees behind me so the first one could push me over and knock me down. It worked perfectly, so much so that it knocked the breath out of me, and I struggled to my feet gasping for breath, crying and hearing them laugh as they ran home. I walked over to the High School which was next door to the Elementary School and told my Mother what had happened and she just said to walk home and that it probably wouldn't happen again, it didn't. I never understood senseless cruelty. Bullies preyed on others in every school, but they were mostly cowards trying to prove something to themselves or others to compensate for some great pain in their lives. One of the boys was Hispanic and the other was Anglo. I never formed any kind of prejudice against any race or group of people. I was fortunate to meet people from all cultures that were endearing and a credit to their family. I would ultimately become friends with both of those boys later in Jr. High School and High School.
Old habits were hard to break, however, and I still found myself making friends with kids who were headed in a negative direction. One boy, in particular, lived with his brothers and their Grandmother across the street from us and we brought out the worst in each other. By the time I was in Jr. High School we were doing things like disrupting the Friday Night Local Movie Theatre audience to such an extent that we were not only thrown out, but banished from returning. Friday nights at the movies was just about the only thing Jr. Highers did that was hip at the time and it was a serious topic of conversation around school for days. My mother, of course, got word of it and she sat me down with the following absolutist language: "You will never go to E's house ever again, You will never meet him anywhere else. You cannot play with him at school or anywhere else. I absolutely forbid you from having anything to do with him ever again." I thought she was the cruelest, meanest, most horrible parent on the planet, and I grieved the loss of a good friend. The bottom line, was that she probably saved my life. E... and his brothers were some of the first kids in town who began to experiment with real drugs. One of them would die of a drug overdose in his 20s. At the time, I thought she was an embarrassment as a parent. When I had my own children, I thanked God for her living example of "tough love" that I would only have to apply a few times with my own four offspring.
On the positive side of the ledger, I began to drift into constructive activities that would ultimately change the direction of my life. I joined Boy Scouts. I didn't have the stability or discipline it took to succeed as a Scout, but I got to see what it took to accomplish real goals in life. In those days, if you could breathe, walk, stand straight, learn the Scout oath and make a Scout salute, you rose in rank to Tenderfoot. I never made it to Second Class. I was more interested in socializing with my friends, than in earning merit badges or learning morse code. Scoutmaster Munson had the patience of Job with us. He took us on campouts and even to Bumping Lake Scout Camp in the Summer, but I was a washout. A friend of mine helped me cut down a live tree at Scout Camp that fell the wrong way and just about wiped out our circle of tents. We were banned from the live amunition rifle range after that stunt and were assigned the Scouts version of KP for the rest of the week. Upon returning home, I noticed I never got reminders of Scout Meetings and they cancelled my subscription to BOYS LIFE. It was probably due to failure to pay dues, but I concluded that it was the final step in drumming undesirables like myself from the Scouting ranks. However, it was a step in the right direction, but I had a long way to go to MCR (Middle Class Respectability).
The second step towards rehabilitation was our participation in the Wapato Community Presbyterian Church. We only lived two blocks from the church and Mom laid down the law and informed us that we would attend Sunday School, Sunday worship, and youth activities during the week. That was fine with me because most of the popular and successful kids in school attended that church and it was a safe place where people had to be accepting and fairly kind to you, at least one day a week. I had been a veteran of Sunday School, Church, (whenever we couldn't sneak out after Sunday School) and Vacation Bible School all of my life. We were semi-pros at Vacation Bible School participation. My mother would drive unknown miles to drop as many of us as possible on unsuspecting small country church volunteers in North Dakota. It was an all day event in those days. Snacks, lunch, snacks, games, crafts and Bible Stories were a good time for us and a better time for my mother. Up to this time, I was just going to church because it was the thing to do, but that would all change in a couple of years. However, it was another very significant weight on the scale of my life that was tipping it toward MCR.
The final influence I will mention at this time is the love and care of several families in Wapato. Our family Doctor, Dr. Gregg of Gregg's Bicycle Store fame in Seattle, was a living example of God's love and grace to us and everyone else in Wapato. He was a profoundly humble Christian man, husband, father and friend. He lived in one of the nicest houses in town, but it was always open to any of us. His wife, Ruth, had the spiritual gift of hospitality and prayer. I learned so much about living humbly and sacrificially from the Gregg's. Next were the Cummings, Ray and Sydsal. Syd was from Norway, so I liked her from the start. They had met, I believe, when Ray was in the military, mostly playing tennis. They were married on the day I was born, June 30, 1951. They are still as much in love to this day, 59 years later, as they were then. They were tennis addicts and like all addictions, you want others to share in the fun. Syd would drive their station wagon to Larsen Park inYakima 5 days a week so we could have tennis lessons. My mother thought tennis was more of a lifetime sport than baseball or football, so she encouraged me to go. Ray and Syd would give special attention to all of us throughout our tennis careers and they taught me the joy of sportsmanship and integrity. They are still good friends and one of their sons, Ted and his family attend our church in College Place.
Finally, I have to share the life changing influence of Dr. Pete Dietrich and his family in my life. Pete was the Principal of Wapato High School when we moved there and his son John was to be my first real friend in 5th grade. They lived on the other side of town from us, so I couldn't just go over to his house all the time, but Pete made sure that I was included in special times they spent together. By the time I was in 7th grade, my father had got a job in Seattle, working for Boeing Aircraft Company, and Pete knew I needed an adult male influence in my life. From the 5th grade on, he would spend extra time coaching me on our baseball team. When Pete and John would go to out of town Wapato football or basketball games, they invited me to go along and always stopped for a treat on the way home. On Saturdays, in the winter, Pete would round up 10 boys our age and open up the 4000 seat capacity Wapato High School gym and let us play basketball without over coaching us or interfering in our learning to play as a team. Pete is still one of the most valued friends that I have. He and his wife Pat live in Walla Walla and both turned 90 this year. They taught me how important it is to love people to whom you have no obligation. They opened their hearts and home to me and I have tried to make them proud of me to this day. Robin
September 13, 2010; Seattle, WA Beautiful Indian Summer Afternoon, 75 degrees mostly sunny.
After the Exodus from North Dakota to the State of Washington, we were ready to start a new life and seek "Middle Class Respectability" as Henry Higgins bemoaned in MY FAIR LADY. My mother sat us all down and basically said that our past life choices were over and moving out West gave us all a chance to start afresh. I don't know about all the others, but I took her seriously and decided to stop smoking cigarettes at the age of 11, thankfully, and do my best to become a model citizen of the State of Washington. My first day in fifth grade started out well enough, most of the kids were cordial, but when I left the building to go home, two boys pulled a stunt where one of them called me over to look at something he had in his hand, the other one knelt on hands and knees behind me so the first one could push me over and knock me down. It worked perfectly, so much so that it knocked the breath out of me, and I struggled to my feet gasping for breath, crying and hearing them laugh as they ran home. I walked over to the High School which was next door to the Elementary School and told my Mother what had happened and she just said to walk home and that it probably wouldn't happen again, it didn't. I never understood senseless cruelty. Bullies preyed on others in every school, but they were mostly cowards trying to prove something to themselves or others to compensate for some great pain in their lives. One of the boys was Hispanic and the other was Anglo. I never formed any kind of prejudice against any race or group of people. I was fortunate to meet people from all cultures that were endearing and a credit to their family. I would ultimately become friends with both of those boys later in Jr. High School and High School.
Old habits were hard to break, however, and I still found myself making friends with kids who were headed in a negative direction. One boy, in particular, lived with his brothers and their Grandmother across the street from us and we brought out the worst in each other. By the time I was in Jr. High School we were doing things like disrupting the Friday Night Local Movie Theatre audience to such an extent that we were not only thrown out, but banished from returning. Friday nights at the movies was just about the only thing Jr. Highers did that was hip at the time and it was a serious topic of conversation around school for days. My mother, of course, got word of it and she sat me down with the following absolutist language: "You will never go to E's house ever again, You will never meet him anywhere else. You cannot play with him at school or anywhere else. I absolutely forbid you from having anything to do with him ever again." I thought she was the cruelest, meanest, most horrible parent on the planet, and I grieved the loss of a good friend. The bottom line, was that she probably saved my life. E... and his brothers were some of the first kids in town who began to experiment with real drugs. One of them would die of a drug overdose in his 20s. At the time, I thought she was an embarrassment as a parent. When I had my own children, I thanked God for her living example of "tough love" that I would only have to apply a few times with my own four offspring.
On the positive side of the ledger, I began to drift into constructive activities that would ultimately change the direction of my life. I joined Boy Scouts. I didn't have the stability or discipline it took to succeed as a Scout, but I got to see what it took to accomplish real goals in life. In those days, if you could breathe, walk, stand straight, learn the Scout oath and make a Scout salute, you rose in rank to Tenderfoot. I never made it to Second Class. I was more interested in socializing with my friends, than in earning merit badges or learning morse code. Scoutmaster Munson had the patience of Job with us. He took us on campouts and even to Bumping Lake Scout Camp in the Summer, but I was a washout. A friend of mine helped me cut down a live tree at Scout Camp that fell the wrong way and just about wiped out our circle of tents. We were banned from the live amunition rifle range after that stunt and were assigned the Scouts version of KP for the rest of the week. Upon returning home, I noticed I never got reminders of Scout Meetings and they cancelled my subscription to BOYS LIFE. It was probably due to failure to pay dues, but I concluded that it was the final step in drumming undesirables like myself from the Scouting ranks. However, it was a step in the right direction, but I had a long way to go to MCR (Middle Class Respectability).
The second step towards rehabilitation was our participation in the Wapato Community Presbyterian Church. We only lived two blocks from the church and Mom laid down the law and informed us that we would attend Sunday School, Sunday worship, and youth activities during the week. That was fine with me because most of the popular and successful kids in school attended that church and it was a safe place where people had to be accepting and fairly kind to you, at least one day a week. I had been a veteran of Sunday School, Church, (whenever we couldn't sneak out after Sunday School) and Vacation Bible School all of my life. We were semi-pros at Vacation Bible School participation. My mother would drive unknown miles to drop as many of us as possible on unsuspecting small country church volunteers in North Dakota. It was an all day event in those days. Snacks, lunch, snacks, games, crafts and Bible Stories were a good time for us and a better time for my mother. Up to this time, I was just going to church because it was the thing to do, but that would all change in a couple of years. However, it was another very significant weight on the scale of my life that was tipping it toward MCR.
The final influence I will mention at this time is the love and care of several families in Wapato. Our family Doctor, Dr. Gregg of Gregg's Bicycle Store fame in Seattle, was a living example of God's love and grace to us and everyone else in Wapato. He was a profoundly humble Christian man, husband, father and friend. He lived in one of the nicest houses in town, but it was always open to any of us. His wife, Ruth, had the spiritual gift of hospitality and prayer. I learned so much about living humbly and sacrificially from the Gregg's. Next were the Cummings, Ray and Sydsal. Syd was from Norway, so I liked her from the start. They had met, I believe, when Ray was in the military, mostly playing tennis. They were married on the day I was born, June 30, 1951. They are still as much in love to this day, 59 years later, as they were then. They were tennis addicts and like all addictions, you want others to share in the fun. Syd would drive their station wagon to Larsen Park inYakima 5 days a week so we could have tennis lessons. My mother thought tennis was more of a lifetime sport than baseball or football, so she encouraged me to go. Ray and Syd would give special attention to all of us throughout our tennis careers and they taught me the joy of sportsmanship and integrity. They are still good friends and one of their sons, Ted and his family attend our church in College Place.
Finally, I have to share the life changing influence of Dr. Pete Dietrich and his family in my life. Pete was the Principal of Wapato High School when we moved there and his son John was to be my first real friend in 5th grade. They lived on the other side of town from us, so I couldn't just go over to his house all the time, but Pete made sure that I was included in special times they spent together. By the time I was in 7th grade, my father had got a job in Seattle, working for Boeing Aircraft Company, and Pete knew I needed an adult male influence in my life. From the 5th grade on, he would spend extra time coaching me on our baseball team. When Pete and John would go to out of town Wapato football or basketball games, they invited me to go along and always stopped for a treat on the way home. On Saturdays, in the winter, Pete would round up 10 boys our age and open up the 4000 seat capacity Wapato High School gym and let us play basketball without over coaching us or interfering in our learning to play as a team. Pete is still one of the most valued friends that I have. He and his wife Pat live in Walla Walla and both turned 90 this year. They taught me how important it is to love people to whom you have no obligation. They opened their hearts and home to me and I have tried to make them proud of me to this day. Robin
Friday, September 10, 2010
EXODUS - ON THE WAY TO THE PROMISED LAND
August 10,2010, SeattleWA Cloudy but no rain 69degrees.
Like Abraham and Moses, we have been called to uproot our lives and go to a new place, we just don't know how to get there. We have seen the promised land of cancer remission and possible cure, but now we are at a cross roads concerning what kind of chemo would be best and the timing of the stem cell transplant. I won't bore you with all the technical details, but it is very complex and we have 3-4 Doctors who may not agree on what to do. Modern Medicine is very advanced, but it is still an inexact science. You can have the most sincere opinions in the world, but they might be sincerely wrong. I reminded a young Attending Physician today in a conference to which he was an hour late, that ultimately the decision is up to Kriss and me. That was somewhat of a shock to him, living in the mist of infallability, he had to swallow both his pride and his shock and admit that it is true. We are ultimately responsible for our own health care decisions and we can't blame the wrong choices on anyone else. I think that was a novel concept for him to come face to face with and he will be a better Doctor because of it. We have until next Tuesday to make these life and death decisions. We would covet your prayers for choosing the best path. We will seek God's leading and ultimately, God's sovereign will be accomplished. I just wish there was a verse in the Bible telling us whether RCHP or another chemo cocktail was the best choice to begin taking next Wednesday. That decision will affect not only our lives, but our biological and church family as well. I wonder if Abraham and Moses stayed awake at night wondering where the next day's journey would lead them? I imagine they did. We will pray for God's guidance through the wilderness of modern medicine. Keep us in your prayers, as I know you already do. I did have a chance to personally meet Biff and Leslie Broughterton today. Keep them in your prayers, as well, as he continues to receive treatment
NORTH DAKOTA TO WASHINGTON STATE. AUGUST 1962
My mother did her best to instill a sense of enthusiasm about leaving North Dakota and moving to Wapato, WA. I had moved so many times already, 3 in 4 years, that I wasn't herdbound to any particular group of friends like some of my brothers. Mom's brother, Bob, would occasionally send us a box of Washington grown red delicious apples for Christmas. They were the most beautiful and delicious fruit any of us had ever seen and Mom used that as a pretty powerfull emotional lever to tip the balance of our opinions. I was up for heading west and we were going, whether us kids liked it or not. So I thought I would make the best of it. My friends in Watford City had a going away party for me. They all chipped in and bought me a 50 cent book, which I can't remember anything about. We went to the local movie theater after the party and they paid my way. I think I had to buy my own popcorn. I do remember that the movie was one of the Ma and Pa Kettles classics. Prophetic, actually, considering that was what our Exodus to the Great Northwest would resemble.
Mom, sisters Ophie and Kathy and I boarded the express train in Glendive, Montana so we could get to our destination without stopping at every place that imagined it was a town. We had enough baggage to last until the caravan arrived with Pop, Tommy and brother Noel. Mom wouldn't leave her beloved cat SIR THOMAS behind to fend for himself and so we had him crated up in the baggage car and she fed and watered him daily. Our home packed food ran out the middle of the 2nd day, thank goodness, and so we had to buy food on the train. Mom never stopped complaining about the exorbinant prices, but we were just glad to have something different, even if it was meager. Sitting in the special viewing train car was the highlight of every day. You had to be vigilant, however, and get there early so you could get a seat. Lots of people wanted those seats and it often was full. We got tired of just walking up and down the aisles, and I would bet the other passengers were tired of seeing us so often too. As we were climbing the Rocky Mountains towards Butte, MT, I was so scared, I thought we were all done for. The rocks pile up upon one another like pick up sticks. Some of them were as big as a train car and I swore they swayed in the wind. I didn't dare look over the side of the train barely moving along side a cliff to eternity. It seemed like it took forever to get over that pass and when we got to Butte, I was an emotional wreck. Mom had driven over it several times in the past and she kept saying that she couldn't believe what a scardy-cat I was. Heavens, I had never seen anything higher than Sentinel Butte in Golden Valley County, North Dakota. What did she expect from me? The rest of the trip was uneventful. We arrived in Yakima, WA around the third week of August and someone from the Wapato School District picked us up and took us to Wapato, right in the middle of the Yakama Indian Reservation. We stayed in the cheapest hotel in town, on the second floor just next to the neon sign that kept us awake all night. Pets weren't allowed, so we had to successfully sneak Sir Thomas, the cat in and out of the hotel daily for his personal hygene needs. Mom started orientation for her new job right away and us kids wandered around downtown Wapato or to a city park diagonal from the hotel. I realized right away that we weren't in Kansas anymore, which included North Dakota. The majority of the people on the street were noncaucasian. Native American, Hispanic, Japanese, Filipino and every color in between. It wasn't a frightening place, just so different and intriguing, like moving to a foreign country. Which in fact it is. When you leave Union Gap you enter the Yakama Indian Nation and I would learn how to adapt to a new culture and country which would pay dividends for me later in life.
The real Exodus was following behind us. Brothers Noel, Tom and the old man began their trek with a 2 ton stock truck, including racks, towing a 40 foot trailer house, followed by a 1951 4 door Buick, which Pa said had the most get up and go of any car he had ever driven. They started on Grandpa's farm near Beach, ND. Everything you thought you might possibly use in your lifetime and the lifetime of generations to come, got tossed into that stock truck. My mother made Pa promise that he would include the petrified wood she used to border her flower beds. You never knew if there was any petrified wood west of the Rockies. Pa also included every tool, welding machine, bucket and cans full of nails and nuts and bolts he had time for. I have on my deck to this day, a milking machine stainless steel can that we brought from North Dakota in 1962. We never actually had a milking machine, Pa picked it up somewhere for little or nothing with the idea that we just might, possibly, have a milking machine some day and then who would be Mr Smarty Pants? It was alot like the washing machine we had in the corner of the kitchen that required running water to actually operate. You just never knew when the miracle of running water might descend upon the farm house. The only place my Norwegian Grandfather thought it was worth having running water was in the big barn outside. Livestock needed clean, fresh water year round and besides, he kept his live fishing minnows contentedly living the Life of Reilly 12 months a year in that tank in the barn. Certainly snot-nosed brats like us could live without clean running water. Wat wass gut enuff fer his yungen was gut enuff fer us lertelars, muslerten. I will leave the last two norwegian words untranslated. We all knew where we ranked in importance to the livestock and what didn't kill us, was probably good for us.
Leaving Watford City with trailerhouse in tow, the Exodus was in full swing. Not far into Montana, lugnuts began to fall off and Pa left Noel and Tom in charge of the truck and trailer and he went back for spare parts. Driving along side a railroad track a day or so later, the spare tire tied to the side of the stocktruck came off and carreened down the side of the slope just about hitting the front of the train. The engineer blew his wistle like crazy and Pa tried to force Tom or Noel to risk life and limb and climb down and retrieve the tire. They refused and after a few choice words, the caravan began the ascent of the Great Rocky Mts. At least once an hour, they had to stop and put fresh water in the stocktruck's radiator. Finally they got to the summit and coasted downhill as far as they could to save on gasoline. By this time the rest of us had moved into two very small cabins the Wapato School District provided for teachers. Normally, a single person, or a young couple lived in one house, because they were the only thing they could afford. Ma negotiated a deal where we would all live in two adjoining cabins. One was for cooking, eating and living space and the other was dedicated to sleeping quarters. Shucks, I had lived in a "dormtype" room with my brothers all my life, so I thought nothing of it. We at least had running water and an indoor bathroom. What more could you want? It was also right next to the Wapato Elementary and High School and we could walk to school. It all looked great until the caravan pulled up in front of the two houses; stocktruck, trailerhouse and smoking Buick. I'm sure Superintendent Syrdahl, who had hired Ma to be the High School Librarian, had a lot of explaining to do to the rest of the School Board for bringing to town a 1960s version of the Grapes of Wrath..
Like Abraham and Moses, we have been called to uproot our lives and go to a new place, we just don't know how to get there. We have seen the promised land of cancer remission and possible cure, but now we are at a cross roads concerning what kind of chemo would be best and the timing of the stem cell transplant. I won't bore you with all the technical details, but it is very complex and we have 3-4 Doctors who may not agree on what to do. Modern Medicine is very advanced, but it is still an inexact science. You can have the most sincere opinions in the world, but they might be sincerely wrong. I reminded a young Attending Physician today in a conference to which he was an hour late, that ultimately the decision is up to Kriss and me. That was somewhat of a shock to him, living in the mist of infallability, he had to swallow both his pride and his shock and admit that it is true. We are ultimately responsible for our own health care decisions and we can't blame the wrong choices on anyone else. I think that was a novel concept for him to come face to face with and he will be a better Doctor because of it. We have until next Tuesday to make these life and death decisions. We would covet your prayers for choosing the best path. We will seek God's leading and ultimately, God's sovereign will be accomplished. I just wish there was a verse in the Bible telling us whether RCHP or another chemo cocktail was the best choice to begin taking next Wednesday. That decision will affect not only our lives, but our biological and church family as well. I wonder if Abraham and Moses stayed awake at night wondering where the next day's journey would lead them? I imagine they did. We will pray for God's guidance through the wilderness of modern medicine. Keep us in your prayers, as I know you already do. I did have a chance to personally meet Biff and Leslie Broughterton today. Keep them in your prayers, as well, as he continues to receive treatment
NORTH DAKOTA TO WASHINGTON STATE. AUGUST 1962
My mother did her best to instill a sense of enthusiasm about leaving North Dakota and moving to Wapato, WA. I had moved so many times already, 3 in 4 years, that I wasn't herdbound to any particular group of friends like some of my brothers. Mom's brother, Bob, would occasionally send us a box of Washington grown red delicious apples for Christmas. They were the most beautiful and delicious fruit any of us had ever seen and Mom used that as a pretty powerfull emotional lever to tip the balance of our opinions. I was up for heading west and we were going, whether us kids liked it or not. So I thought I would make the best of it. My friends in Watford City had a going away party for me. They all chipped in and bought me a 50 cent book, which I can't remember anything about. We went to the local movie theater after the party and they paid my way. I think I had to buy my own popcorn. I do remember that the movie was one of the Ma and Pa Kettles classics. Prophetic, actually, considering that was what our Exodus to the Great Northwest would resemble.
Mom, sisters Ophie and Kathy and I boarded the express train in Glendive, Montana so we could get to our destination without stopping at every place that imagined it was a town. We had enough baggage to last until the caravan arrived with Pop, Tommy and brother Noel. Mom wouldn't leave her beloved cat SIR THOMAS behind to fend for himself and so we had him crated up in the baggage car and she fed and watered him daily. Our home packed food ran out the middle of the 2nd day, thank goodness, and so we had to buy food on the train. Mom never stopped complaining about the exorbinant prices, but we were just glad to have something different, even if it was meager. Sitting in the special viewing train car was the highlight of every day. You had to be vigilant, however, and get there early so you could get a seat. Lots of people wanted those seats and it often was full. We got tired of just walking up and down the aisles, and I would bet the other passengers were tired of seeing us so often too. As we were climbing the Rocky Mountains towards Butte, MT, I was so scared, I thought we were all done for. The rocks pile up upon one another like pick up sticks. Some of them were as big as a train car and I swore they swayed in the wind. I didn't dare look over the side of the train barely moving along side a cliff to eternity. It seemed like it took forever to get over that pass and when we got to Butte, I was an emotional wreck. Mom had driven over it several times in the past and she kept saying that she couldn't believe what a scardy-cat I was. Heavens, I had never seen anything higher than Sentinel Butte in Golden Valley County, North Dakota. What did she expect from me? The rest of the trip was uneventful. We arrived in Yakima, WA around the third week of August and someone from the Wapato School District picked us up and took us to Wapato, right in the middle of the Yakama Indian Reservation. We stayed in the cheapest hotel in town, on the second floor just next to the neon sign that kept us awake all night. Pets weren't allowed, so we had to successfully sneak Sir Thomas, the cat in and out of the hotel daily for his personal hygene needs. Mom started orientation for her new job right away and us kids wandered around downtown Wapato or to a city park diagonal from the hotel. I realized right away that we weren't in Kansas anymore, which included North Dakota. The majority of the people on the street were noncaucasian. Native American, Hispanic, Japanese, Filipino and every color in between. It wasn't a frightening place, just so different and intriguing, like moving to a foreign country. Which in fact it is. When you leave Union Gap you enter the Yakama Indian Nation and I would learn how to adapt to a new culture and country which would pay dividends for me later in life.
The real Exodus was following behind us. Brothers Noel, Tom and the old man began their trek with a 2 ton stock truck, including racks, towing a 40 foot trailer house, followed by a 1951 4 door Buick, which Pa said had the most get up and go of any car he had ever driven. They started on Grandpa's farm near Beach, ND. Everything you thought you might possibly use in your lifetime and the lifetime of generations to come, got tossed into that stock truck. My mother made Pa promise that he would include the petrified wood she used to border her flower beds. You never knew if there was any petrified wood west of the Rockies. Pa also included every tool, welding machine, bucket and cans full of nails and nuts and bolts he had time for. I have on my deck to this day, a milking machine stainless steel can that we brought from North Dakota in 1962. We never actually had a milking machine, Pa picked it up somewhere for little or nothing with the idea that we just might, possibly, have a milking machine some day and then who would be Mr Smarty Pants? It was alot like the washing machine we had in the corner of the kitchen that required running water to actually operate. You just never knew when the miracle of running water might descend upon the farm house. The only place my Norwegian Grandfather thought it was worth having running water was in the big barn outside. Livestock needed clean, fresh water year round and besides, he kept his live fishing minnows contentedly living the Life of Reilly 12 months a year in that tank in the barn. Certainly snot-nosed brats like us could live without clean running water. Wat wass gut enuff fer his yungen was gut enuff fer us lertelars, muslerten. I will leave the last two norwegian words untranslated. We all knew where we ranked in importance to the livestock and what didn't kill us, was probably good for us.
Leaving Watford City with trailerhouse in tow, the Exodus was in full swing. Not far into Montana, lugnuts began to fall off and Pa left Noel and Tom in charge of the truck and trailer and he went back for spare parts. Driving along side a railroad track a day or so later, the spare tire tied to the side of the stocktruck came off and carreened down the side of the slope just about hitting the front of the train. The engineer blew his wistle like crazy and Pa tried to force Tom or Noel to risk life and limb and climb down and retrieve the tire. They refused and after a few choice words, the caravan began the ascent of the Great Rocky Mts. At least once an hour, they had to stop and put fresh water in the stocktruck's radiator. Finally they got to the summit and coasted downhill as far as they could to save on gasoline. By this time the rest of us had moved into two very small cabins the Wapato School District provided for teachers. Normally, a single person, or a young couple lived in one house, because they were the only thing they could afford. Ma negotiated a deal where we would all live in two adjoining cabins. One was for cooking, eating and living space and the other was dedicated to sleeping quarters. Shucks, I had lived in a "dormtype" room with my brothers all my life, so I thought nothing of it. We at least had running water and an indoor bathroom. What more could you want? It was also right next to the Wapato Elementary and High School and we could walk to school. It all looked great until the caravan pulled up in front of the two houses; stocktruck, trailerhouse and smoking Buick. I'm sure Superintendent Syrdahl, who had hired Ma to be the High School Librarian, had a lot of explaining to do to the rest of the School Board for bringing to town a 1960s version of the Grapes of Wrath..
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
MANUAL RESET
Tuesday, September 7, 2010, Seattle, WA Beautiful sunny day, Indian Summer Begins.
We had a really good trip back to Walla Walla for the weekend. Both Ella and Cleo and their significant others/spouses were there and we got some things done on the ranch which I had been stressing about. I also got to see the Walla Walla High School Blue Devil football team play on Friday night in Hermiston, OR. Sadly, they lost, but will improve over the season. The SE WA fair and Frontier Days/Rodeo were on over the weekend and I went on Sunday PM for the Rodeo and the Footlong Hotdog at the Eagles Food Stand. The Rodeo was long and somewhat tedious, but I was surrounded by friends from the church and we had a good time. The Hot Dog was equally long, but certainly worth its annual appeal. We were able to tear out some old/dangerous fencing in one pasture and completely replace it on Saturday. Having adult children and their partners is a great bonus. Christopher and Johnny worked like troopers. After all, you can't let your aged cancer ridden father-in-law show you up when it comes to driving steel fence posts into the ground. Neighbor Ruth also was a great help and we celebrated with an authentic ranch dinner with most of the food raised or grown on our place. I preached at CPPC at all three services Sunday morning.It was a big surprise for many of those in attendance and we had a good morning. After loading up early Monday morning, we made the pilgrimage to Seattle, surprisingly in 5 1/2 hours, pretty good for a three day weekend return to the city. After watching Boise State come from behind to beat Virginia Tech, we got some sleep and headed off to the SCCA for a 9am consultation with our Physical Therapist, Shawn Israel. Like so many of the staff we have met here, she is a young, highly talented, exceptionally motivated individual, filled with compassion and hope. She put me through my paces in evaluating my physical strengths and weaknesses. I am in pretty good shape for my age and health problems. It's a good thing she caught me after a summer of building fence, chasing cows, putting up hay and changing sprinklers. I religiously do physical therapy already for my back and I think she appreciated my commitment to staying in shape and the high esteem in which I hold PTs. She grew up in Colorado and I hope we can follow her exercise regimen consistently. The only limitation she placed on my therapy, was to not do much lifting or stretching over my head, which could cause lymphedemia in my neck. We ended the morning with a consultation with our Nutritional Director, Mary. She pretty much reinforced much of what we already do for diet and healthy living. She stressed that this is not a weight loss program, shucks, and that I should do everything I can to maintain my present weight and body strength. Everyone does however, lose some weight, but they want to keep our strength consistent so we can recover from the chemo, in particular. I was delighted to find out that any food that is liquid at room temperature can be counted as fluid. Finally, ice cream is receiving some respect from the medical establishment. Maple Nut, here we come, in moderation, of course.
MANUAL RESET
On my irrigation pump there is a button you push when it doesn't want to run. It's called a reset button and I don't actually know what it does, technically, but, it often gets the pump working again and that's all that matters. I feel like that is what this time in my life is all about. I'm in the process of having a complete life reset. Being forced to live away from home, living a life without constant daily responsibilities, only hearing the phone ring occasionally, instead of constantly, having time to rest, think, pray, read and write; it will inevitable change our lives. I think God knows what he is doing in all of this. There is that amazing promise in the Old Testament, "For I know the plans that I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11. That divine promise was given to the people of Israel when they were in exile, at one of the lowest points of their national existence. Maybe that's what Seattle is for me, my own personal Babylon, my place of exile.All of us are aware of attitudes, habits, behaviours and practices in our lives which are unhealthy or destructive. We rationallize their existence, we ignore their consequences, we justify our indolence and we pretend that we will get around to correcting and changing the direction of our lives SOMEDAY! The only problem is that I have never been able to find SOMEDAY on the calendar. We usually only get around to making significant changes in our lives when we don't have any other choices. God paints us into a corner with only One Way out, God's Way. There have always been warning signs. God's Word, advice from wiser souls, a sickening feeling in your gut that tells you "life isn't meant to be lived like this"; we are so busy and overstimulated with gadgets and whistles that we can't even hear that still small divine voice that says:"Draw near, all you who are just barely coping and feel like you are about to come apart at the seams, and I will give you everything you need for life and salvation. Take my life into yours and systematically learn from me; for I am your soulmate and my heart is gentle. Only then will you find shalom; wholeness and peace for your soul. For my life will make your life complete. The great pain and burdens you now bear will seem insignificant when we carry them together." Mt 11:28-30. This is my own translation from the Greek New Testament. Maybe this blog will find some others, like myself in exile; having someone else dictate your daily schedule, what you do, where you go. Facing and making life and death choices you cannot ignore or postpone any longer. Draw near to the God of hope and you will find rest. Robin
We had a really good trip back to Walla Walla for the weekend. Both Ella and Cleo and their significant others/spouses were there and we got some things done on the ranch which I had been stressing about. I also got to see the Walla Walla High School Blue Devil football team play on Friday night in Hermiston, OR. Sadly, they lost, but will improve over the season. The SE WA fair and Frontier Days/Rodeo were on over the weekend and I went on Sunday PM for the Rodeo and the Footlong Hotdog at the Eagles Food Stand. The Rodeo was long and somewhat tedious, but I was surrounded by friends from the church and we had a good time. The Hot Dog was equally long, but certainly worth its annual appeal. We were able to tear out some old/dangerous fencing in one pasture and completely replace it on Saturday. Having adult children and their partners is a great bonus. Christopher and Johnny worked like troopers. After all, you can't let your aged cancer ridden father-in-law show you up when it comes to driving steel fence posts into the ground. Neighbor Ruth also was a great help and we celebrated with an authentic ranch dinner with most of the food raised or grown on our place. I preached at CPPC at all three services Sunday morning.It was a big surprise for many of those in attendance and we had a good morning. After loading up early Monday morning, we made the pilgrimage to Seattle, surprisingly in 5 1/2 hours, pretty good for a three day weekend return to the city. After watching Boise State come from behind to beat Virginia Tech, we got some sleep and headed off to the SCCA for a 9am consultation with our Physical Therapist, Shawn Israel. Like so many of the staff we have met here, she is a young, highly talented, exceptionally motivated individual, filled with compassion and hope. She put me through my paces in evaluating my physical strengths and weaknesses. I am in pretty good shape for my age and health problems. It's a good thing she caught me after a summer of building fence, chasing cows, putting up hay and changing sprinklers. I religiously do physical therapy already for my back and I think she appreciated my commitment to staying in shape and the high esteem in which I hold PTs. She grew up in Colorado and I hope we can follow her exercise regimen consistently. The only limitation she placed on my therapy, was to not do much lifting or stretching over my head, which could cause lymphedemia in my neck. We ended the morning with a consultation with our Nutritional Director, Mary. She pretty much reinforced much of what we already do for diet and healthy living. She stressed that this is not a weight loss program, shucks, and that I should do everything I can to maintain my present weight and body strength. Everyone does however, lose some weight, but they want to keep our strength consistent so we can recover from the chemo, in particular. I was delighted to find out that any food that is liquid at room temperature can be counted as fluid. Finally, ice cream is receiving some respect from the medical establishment. Maple Nut, here we come, in moderation, of course.
MANUAL RESET
On my irrigation pump there is a button you push when it doesn't want to run. It's called a reset button and I don't actually know what it does, technically, but, it often gets the pump working again and that's all that matters. I feel like that is what this time in my life is all about. I'm in the process of having a complete life reset. Being forced to live away from home, living a life without constant daily responsibilities, only hearing the phone ring occasionally, instead of constantly, having time to rest, think, pray, read and write; it will inevitable change our lives. I think God knows what he is doing in all of this. There is that amazing promise in the Old Testament, "For I know the plans that I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11. That divine promise was given to the people of Israel when they were in exile, at one of the lowest points of their national existence. Maybe that's what Seattle is for me, my own personal Babylon, my place of exile.All of us are aware of attitudes, habits, behaviours and practices in our lives which are unhealthy or destructive. We rationallize their existence, we ignore their consequences, we justify our indolence and we pretend that we will get around to correcting and changing the direction of our lives SOMEDAY! The only problem is that I have never been able to find SOMEDAY on the calendar. We usually only get around to making significant changes in our lives when we don't have any other choices. God paints us into a corner with only One Way out, God's Way. There have always been warning signs. God's Word, advice from wiser souls, a sickening feeling in your gut that tells you "life isn't meant to be lived like this"; we are so busy and overstimulated with gadgets and whistles that we can't even hear that still small divine voice that says:"Draw near, all you who are just barely coping and feel like you are about to come apart at the seams, and I will give you everything you need for life and salvation. Take my life into yours and systematically learn from me; for I am your soulmate and my heart is gentle. Only then will you find shalom; wholeness and peace for your soul. For my life will make your life complete. The great pain and burdens you now bear will seem insignificant when we carry them together." Mt 11:28-30. This is my own translation from the Greek New Testament. Maybe this blog will find some others, like myself in exile; having someone else dictate your daily schedule, what you do, where you go. Facing and making life and death choices you cannot ignore or postpone any longer. Draw near to the God of hope and you will find rest. Robin
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
LOST AND FOUND
Seattle WA, September 1, 2010, Beautiful weather this afternoon, 74degrees.
We are finishing up all the preliiminary pre-transplant procedures. We had blood work, a PET and CT scan all morning and then a clinical evaluation with Attending Physician, Physician's Assistant,and Rose Team nurse Dot. Got very good results from the heart procedure and even better news that there is no sign of cancer in my bone marrow. The best of all worlds would be no obvious tumor sights when we get the PET/CT results. If you want something specific to pray about, that would be it. We have been cleared to be gone from SCCA until next Tuesday, so we are heading to Walla Walla tomorrow, Thursday, and will be preaching at CPPC on Sunday. It will be the 32nd anniversary of our first Sunday preaching at CPPC. We began Labor Day Weekend 1978. I guess I will be able to get that foot-long hot dog at the Southeastern WA Fair after all. It's a 32 year old tradition and I believe that the heartburn is still included in the cost of the meal. This will probably be the last free weekend that we will have for some time. We need to bring back some things that we realized we could benefit from while we're here and take home some things we don't need. It will be good to see everyone again and then return on Monday. Tuesday, we will have a new Attending Physician, due to normal rotation schedule. With the results from all the tests available, it will be decision time. We will start shots to produce extra stem cells. If there is no obvious cancer hot spots, we can have that without chemo. After getting a central line Hickman Port installed, we will begin harvesting 5 million plus,stem cells that my bone marrow will produce and they will remove from my blood stream through the miracle of modern medicine. They will freeze them in a DMSO solution, well known to all you horse people, and liquid nitrogen. Then starts the 7-8 days of major league chemo, changing chemo every 2-3 days. At that point, they will give me back my thawed out stem cells and I will have a literal renaissance. I will have the immune system of a newborn infant, except that I won't have the miraculous gift of colostrum from breastmilk to jumpstart my immune response. It's like having an Army of soldiers going into battle without any weapons. Over the next two years, those stem cells and other immune resources will have to learn how to protect me from any and every invasive agent. I will tell you in subsequent communiques what that process will look like, including getting to have all childhood and adult innoculations repeated I think we have some bovine colostrum frozen back home in the freezer, I should check and see if that might be of any value to me. Just kidding of course.
Watford City, Mckenzie County North Dakota 1960-1961.
These are the lost years of my life. I can't even remember the name of my 4th grade teacher. Life in town is beginning to take its toll on us. The "old man" bounced from job to job. Selling crop insurance, wheat seed and finally going back to work on the ancestral homestead for Grandpa Peterson until he injured his hand. My mother had decided that she didn't really want to be a classroom teacher, but a Librarian,so she has been taking classes every summer at Dickenson State to become a Librarian. Grandmother Woodard, "Ma'am" moved to Watford City after her retirement and actually bought a trailer house just down the street from ours and worked in the school cafeteria during the school year to supplement her retirement income. By some crazy alignment of stars or planets, both our parents were away from home for most of a summer. We were placed on Public Assistance and the County authorities considered placing us in foster homes, but my parents argued that with "Ma'am" living just down the street, that we could be left alone without any "adult supervision", NOT! Brother Danny had already checked out of the family by getting a job with a local rancher as soon as he got his drivers license and a $50 junker that he kept nursing back to life. Ophie, Tom, Kathy and I were on our own, with $15 per week to feed the four of us in credit at a local grocery store, paid for by Public Assistance and the generosity of the citizens of North Dakota.
Nature hates a vacuum and so without adult supervision, we gravitated into chaos and anarchy. We formed what we called a "gang", which resembled the Little Rascals Gang more than it does to modern youth gangs. We stayed out as late as we wanted every night playing kick the can or some other form of neighborhood activity. This was pre-television, pre-everything life and you had to amuse yourselves. When all the kids who actually had parents living in their homes had to go home, we were just starting our nocturnal routine. All of us smoked, using my blue dump truck for an ashtray which conveniently rolled under the couch. We played pinocle alot and when vegetable gardens began to produce peas, carrots and various other items, we would go out with the "gang" and raid gardens. It was fairly bizarre to think about stealing peas, carrots and other vegetables, but we were probably driven by sub-conscious nutritional instincts more than just juvenile delinquency. Peas were the overwhelming favorite, carrots came second and anything we gleaned that no one wanted to eat, was thrown into the bathtub at home. It was nearly overflowing by the end of the summer and we had to dispose of it before our parents came home in late August. You remember Mom was studying at Dickenson State and the "old man", was in Bismark recovering from a surgery on his hand that required him to stay there for a couple of months for physical therapy and reconstruction. To take care of bathing, since the bathtub was occupied, we went religiously to the public swimming pool when it opened at 1 pm, after waking up about 11am. Baseball took up the rest of the afternoon and early evening and then it all started over again with kick the can on the street or behind the trailer houses. We did have one major scare one night. A man who lived down the street and who didn't appreciate our sharing in his vegetable production decided to stay up late one night and put an end to the disappearance of his peas and carrots. He hid out in the back porch without any lights on and spotted us in the moonlight harvesting the goodies. We heard the screen door screach open and some words you didn't hear in Sunday School, and Tom yelled to get out of there and run in different directions, so we did. Being the youngest and smallest, he decided that I was the one most likely to be apprehended, so he took out after me. I was running as fast as I possibly could, but he was gaining on me by the second. I headed down toward this junkyard, thinking I could hide under some old car or piece of farm equipment. I guess he was just about to grab me by the scruff of the neck when he blew out whatever footwear he was wearing and hearing various oaths and threats, I managed to escape. We all snuck back to the house in the dark and were glad to be alive and not locked up in junenile hall. The next day it was the talk of the neighborhood and our friends told us all about the close call this guy had in apprehending the notorious garden gangsters. We let on like this was the first we had heard of it, with all the false dramatic exclamations and acting we could drum up. We all decided that the word was out about us and we closed down the midnight raids permanently. School was about to start in a few weeks and the folks would be home, so we all agreed. The next problem was how and where to dispose of all the evidence against us piled up in the bathtub. I think we finally talked Danny into borrowing his boss' pickup truck and hauling it out in the cover of darkness to someplace in the country where cows or other critters would appreciate some late summer supplemental nutrition. I would guess this was about the lowest point in my life. We were essentially "lost souls", looking for direction and meaning. The ultimate symbol of our condition was when the cops drove up one night and hauled off brother Tom without even letting him take off the football kleats he was wearing. We were out playing catch with the football because he had planned to turn out for freshman football that fall and he was wearing Danny's kleats, without permission, of course. He had been accused, falsely as it turned out, of vandalizing a vacant house with some older members of our "gang" and they took put him in the squadcar and we wondered what would happen next. Well, Tom's girlfriend, Marcia's father was both the town Undertaker and County Judge and when Tom appeared in Court a few days later, Marcia's Father, the Judge, said he would supervise Tom"s probation and so he had to meet with him every week for 3 months. Our parents were never notified, or else we made sure any letter from the McKenzie County Juvenile Court never saw the light of day. They moved back home, we all went to school and the "gang" disbanded due to neglect and the excitement of a new school year. It was during that school year that I got a glimpse of the "Light" that helped me to change direction and begin looking for a new way of living. It was the first step in leaving the wilderness of lost and being found by Love incarnate.
It all started with a couple of weddings. My brother Charlie got married in December of 1958 and my oldest sister Joanne "Patsy" got married in New York City in February of 1959. I was the ringbearer for Charlie's wedding and in the pictures, you can see me in a borrowed white blazer and my lace-up work boots that seemed to play such a significant role in much of my childhood. Charlie married Marjorie Bosserman, daughter of a very Godly christian family that I thought was very different from what I was living. "Ma'am" or Patsy must have paid for the train tickets to New York for her wedding. Out of the blue, one day, the folks told us they were going to New York with "Ma'am" for Patsy's wedding and that we would be farmed out with families for a couple of weeks until they returned. Kathy and I were placed with one of the secretaries at the elementary school and those two weeks began to change my life. You see, this family was a practicing christian family that were so full of the Spirit of God's love that I saw what life could be like in capital letters. They prayed every meal with a zeal and compassion for others that I felt like I was church all the time. They were so hospitable to Kathy and me, treating us like we were their own children, that I secretly wished we could live there forever. I was the only boy in that house, being as though they only had two girls, and I was sure that they would buy me new shoes whenever I needed them and my days of hand-me-downs would be over. The highlight of those two weeks came that first Sunday in their home. They volunteered to lead worship music for a small country church south of Watford City. It was a good 30 minute drive to church, and they sang all the songs they would use in worship that day in the car on our way. I had never heard such beautiful harmony and sincerity in any worship service in my life, and I had been to alot of church services. What touched my life the most was their profound joy in loving and serving God and others. It was the essence of who they were, not just something you did on Sunday, because you lived in the Northern part of the Midwestern Biblebelt. God was so real in their home and lives that I yearned to have what they had. All the fruits of God's Spirit; love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, longsuffering and hope saturated their lives and I saw what family life could be like at its best. I know that they continued to pray for me and my family and if I could remember their name and somehow get in touch with them, I would thank them from the bottom of my heart. Of course, they would only deflect any praise to Christ and so I will leave it up to the Spirit to bless them and theirs for their faithful witness to Jesus. I had mixed feelings when the folks got back from New York, I was really glad to get the presents Patsy sent from the big city, a painting set with over one hundred watercolor paints and candy covered almonds in these little containers shaped like a Greek Temple, being that Patsy married a true son of Greece, Paulus Pagiotas of The Bronx, New York, New York. I wasn't so delighted to have to move back into our trailer house with the rest of the brood. But I never forgot the seeds of truth and faith that were planted in my heart those two weeks. Some seed takes longer than others to germinate and produce fruit. I saw a glimpse of God's Light and in the coming years, other authentic followers of Jesus would inspire me to one day make that decision for myself. But there was more adventure to follow before that would happen. Mom accepted the position as High School Librarian in Wapato, Washington the Spring of 1961, so we began the process of packing up everything you could possibly get in a two ton stock truck and 40 foot trailer house and move west. It was a combination of Ma and Pa Kettle and the Clampetts, or Beverly Hillbillies on TV, only minus the fortune.
We are finishing up all the preliiminary pre-transplant procedures. We had blood work, a PET and CT scan all morning and then a clinical evaluation with Attending Physician, Physician's Assistant,and Rose Team nurse Dot. Got very good results from the heart procedure and even better news that there is no sign of cancer in my bone marrow. The best of all worlds would be no obvious tumor sights when we get the PET/CT results. If you want something specific to pray about, that would be it. We have been cleared to be gone from SCCA until next Tuesday, so we are heading to Walla Walla tomorrow, Thursday, and will be preaching at CPPC on Sunday. It will be the 32nd anniversary of our first Sunday preaching at CPPC. We began Labor Day Weekend 1978. I guess I will be able to get that foot-long hot dog at the Southeastern WA Fair after all. It's a 32 year old tradition and I believe that the heartburn is still included in the cost of the meal. This will probably be the last free weekend that we will have for some time. We need to bring back some things that we realized we could benefit from while we're here and take home some things we don't need. It will be good to see everyone again and then return on Monday. Tuesday, we will have a new Attending Physician, due to normal rotation schedule. With the results from all the tests available, it will be decision time. We will start shots to produce extra stem cells. If there is no obvious cancer hot spots, we can have that without chemo. After getting a central line Hickman Port installed, we will begin harvesting 5 million plus,stem cells that my bone marrow will produce and they will remove from my blood stream through the miracle of modern medicine. They will freeze them in a DMSO solution, well known to all you horse people, and liquid nitrogen. Then starts the 7-8 days of major league chemo, changing chemo every 2-3 days. At that point, they will give me back my thawed out stem cells and I will have a literal renaissance. I will have the immune system of a newborn infant, except that I won't have the miraculous gift of colostrum from breastmilk to jumpstart my immune response. It's like having an Army of soldiers going into battle without any weapons. Over the next two years, those stem cells and other immune resources will have to learn how to protect me from any and every invasive agent. I will tell you in subsequent communiques what that process will look like, including getting to have all childhood and adult innoculations repeated I think we have some bovine colostrum frozen back home in the freezer, I should check and see if that might be of any value to me. Just kidding of course.
Watford City, Mckenzie County North Dakota 1960-1961.
These are the lost years of my life. I can't even remember the name of my 4th grade teacher. Life in town is beginning to take its toll on us. The "old man" bounced from job to job. Selling crop insurance, wheat seed and finally going back to work on the ancestral homestead for Grandpa Peterson until he injured his hand. My mother had decided that she didn't really want to be a classroom teacher, but a Librarian,so she has been taking classes every summer at Dickenson State to become a Librarian. Grandmother Woodard, "Ma'am" moved to Watford City after her retirement and actually bought a trailer house just down the street from ours and worked in the school cafeteria during the school year to supplement her retirement income. By some crazy alignment of stars or planets, both our parents were away from home for most of a summer. We were placed on Public Assistance and the County authorities considered placing us in foster homes, but my parents argued that with "Ma'am" living just down the street, that we could be left alone without any "adult supervision", NOT! Brother Danny had already checked out of the family by getting a job with a local rancher as soon as he got his drivers license and a $50 junker that he kept nursing back to life. Ophie, Tom, Kathy and I were on our own, with $15 per week to feed the four of us in credit at a local grocery store, paid for by Public Assistance and the generosity of the citizens of North Dakota.
Nature hates a vacuum and so without adult supervision, we gravitated into chaos and anarchy. We formed what we called a "gang", which resembled the Little Rascals Gang more than it does to modern youth gangs. We stayed out as late as we wanted every night playing kick the can or some other form of neighborhood activity. This was pre-television, pre-everything life and you had to amuse yourselves. When all the kids who actually had parents living in their homes had to go home, we were just starting our nocturnal routine. All of us smoked, using my blue dump truck for an ashtray which conveniently rolled under the couch. We played pinocle alot and when vegetable gardens began to produce peas, carrots and various other items, we would go out with the "gang" and raid gardens. It was fairly bizarre to think about stealing peas, carrots and other vegetables, but we were probably driven by sub-conscious nutritional instincts more than just juvenile delinquency. Peas were the overwhelming favorite, carrots came second and anything we gleaned that no one wanted to eat, was thrown into the bathtub at home. It was nearly overflowing by the end of the summer and we had to dispose of it before our parents came home in late August. You remember Mom was studying at Dickenson State and the "old man", was in Bismark recovering from a surgery on his hand that required him to stay there for a couple of months for physical therapy and reconstruction. To take care of bathing, since the bathtub was occupied, we went religiously to the public swimming pool when it opened at 1 pm, after waking up about 11am. Baseball took up the rest of the afternoon and early evening and then it all started over again with kick the can on the street or behind the trailer houses. We did have one major scare one night. A man who lived down the street and who didn't appreciate our sharing in his vegetable production decided to stay up late one night and put an end to the disappearance of his peas and carrots. He hid out in the back porch without any lights on and spotted us in the moonlight harvesting the goodies. We heard the screen door screach open and some words you didn't hear in Sunday School, and Tom yelled to get out of there and run in different directions, so we did. Being the youngest and smallest, he decided that I was the one most likely to be apprehended, so he took out after me. I was running as fast as I possibly could, but he was gaining on me by the second. I headed down toward this junkyard, thinking I could hide under some old car or piece of farm equipment. I guess he was just about to grab me by the scruff of the neck when he blew out whatever footwear he was wearing and hearing various oaths and threats, I managed to escape. We all snuck back to the house in the dark and were glad to be alive and not locked up in junenile hall. The next day it was the talk of the neighborhood and our friends told us all about the close call this guy had in apprehending the notorious garden gangsters. We let on like this was the first we had heard of it, with all the false dramatic exclamations and acting we could drum up. We all decided that the word was out about us and we closed down the midnight raids permanently. School was about to start in a few weeks and the folks would be home, so we all agreed. The next problem was how and where to dispose of all the evidence against us piled up in the bathtub. I think we finally talked Danny into borrowing his boss' pickup truck and hauling it out in the cover of darkness to someplace in the country where cows or other critters would appreciate some late summer supplemental nutrition. I would guess this was about the lowest point in my life. We were essentially "lost souls", looking for direction and meaning. The ultimate symbol of our condition was when the cops drove up one night and hauled off brother Tom without even letting him take off the football kleats he was wearing. We were out playing catch with the football because he had planned to turn out for freshman football that fall and he was wearing Danny's kleats, without permission, of course. He had been accused, falsely as it turned out, of vandalizing a vacant house with some older members of our "gang" and they took put him in the squadcar and we wondered what would happen next. Well, Tom's girlfriend, Marcia's father was both the town Undertaker and County Judge and when Tom appeared in Court a few days later, Marcia's Father, the Judge, said he would supervise Tom"s probation and so he had to meet with him every week for 3 months. Our parents were never notified, or else we made sure any letter from the McKenzie County Juvenile Court never saw the light of day. They moved back home, we all went to school and the "gang" disbanded due to neglect and the excitement of a new school year. It was during that school year that I got a glimpse of the "Light" that helped me to change direction and begin looking for a new way of living. It was the first step in leaving the wilderness of lost and being found by Love incarnate.
It all started with a couple of weddings. My brother Charlie got married in December of 1958 and my oldest sister Joanne "Patsy" got married in New York City in February of 1959. I was the ringbearer for Charlie's wedding and in the pictures, you can see me in a borrowed white blazer and my lace-up work boots that seemed to play such a significant role in much of my childhood. Charlie married Marjorie Bosserman, daughter of a very Godly christian family that I thought was very different from what I was living. "Ma'am" or Patsy must have paid for the train tickets to New York for her wedding. Out of the blue, one day, the folks told us they were going to New York with "Ma'am" for Patsy's wedding and that we would be farmed out with families for a couple of weeks until they returned. Kathy and I were placed with one of the secretaries at the elementary school and those two weeks began to change my life. You see, this family was a practicing christian family that were so full of the Spirit of God's love that I saw what life could be like in capital letters. They prayed every meal with a zeal and compassion for others that I felt like I was church all the time. They were so hospitable to Kathy and me, treating us like we were their own children, that I secretly wished we could live there forever. I was the only boy in that house, being as though they only had two girls, and I was sure that they would buy me new shoes whenever I needed them and my days of hand-me-downs would be over. The highlight of those two weeks came that first Sunday in their home. They volunteered to lead worship music for a small country church south of Watford City. It was a good 30 minute drive to church, and they sang all the songs they would use in worship that day in the car on our way. I had never heard such beautiful harmony and sincerity in any worship service in my life, and I had been to alot of church services. What touched my life the most was their profound joy in loving and serving God and others. It was the essence of who they were, not just something you did on Sunday, because you lived in the Northern part of the Midwestern Biblebelt. God was so real in their home and lives that I yearned to have what they had. All the fruits of God's Spirit; love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, longsuffering and hope saturated their lives and I saw what family life could be like at its best. I know that they continued to pray for me and my family and if I could remember their name and somehow get in touch with them, I would thank them from the bottom of my heart. Of course, they would only deflect any praise to Christ and so I will leave it up to the Spirit to bless them and theirs for their faithful witness to Jesus. I had mixed feelings when the folks got back from New York, I was really glad to get the presents Patsy sent from the big city, a painting set with over one hundred watercolor paints and candy covered almonds in these little containers shaped like a Greek Temple, being that Patsy married a true son of Greece, Paulus Pagiotas of The Bronx, New York, New York. I wasn't so delighted to have to move back into our trailer house with the rest of the brood. But I never forgot the seeds of truth and faith that were planted in my heart those two weeks. Some seed takes longer than others to germinate and produce fruit. I saw a glimpse of God's Light and in the coming years, other authentic followers of Jesus would inspire me to one day make that decision for myself. But there was more adventure to follow before that would happen. Mom accepted the position as High School Librarian in Wapato, Washington the Spring of 1961, so we began the process of packing up everything you could possibly get in a two ton stock truck and 40 foot trailer house and move west. It was a combination of Ma and Pa Kettle and the Clampetts, or Beverly Hillbillies on TV, only minus the fortune.
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