"QUI AUDET ADIPISCITUR" - "ONLY THE DARING CAN SUCCEED"

December 6th, 2010; Walla Walla, WA 35 degrees, partly sunny, snow almost gone.

When I was accepted into the Ph. D. program in Historical Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in 1978, I had to pass 5 language examinations. In order to do research in the original languages, one had to show competency in French, German, New Testament Greek, Old Testament Hebrew and Latin. I passed all of the first four in the Spring of 1978 and was planning to study Latin while I was back in Washington State the Fall of 1978. God had other plans for our ministry and family and I accepted the position of interim pastor here at College Place Presbyterian beginning Labor Day Weekend, 1978. We accepted the call of the congregation in April of 1979 to be the ordained pastor and my Latin studies were put on hold. Since I am going to be in semi-seclusion in Seattle for the next 4 months, I decided it would be a good time to dust off my Latin textbooks and use this time productively. A friend of mine grew up going to the Roman Catholic Church when they still used the Latin Mass, so he is journeying with me on the via escolara, path of learning. The title of this blog, QUI AUDET ADIPISCITUR, is not only a good methodology when playing pinochle, but is relevant to my health adventure as well.

Our new Physician's Assistant, Lisa, called from Seattle this afternoon with a lot of questions and some detailed information about the upcoming stem-cell transplant. It appears that I am going to have to repeat all of the pre-transplant testing that I did in September. I was really hoping that they could just use the results of the earlier tests, but she said that they had to be within 30 days of the transplant. Maybe I can have them put me under general anesthesia for the bone marrow extraction. I still have bruises on my hips from the last procedure. Knowing exactly what to expect isn't a positive benefit in this case. I'll need to have my teeth cleaned this week before we go and then have all the dental exams all over again in Seattle. It seems like overkill, but they want to make sure that I haven't developed some new condition that would put the transplant at risk. Better cautious than sorry, I guess. We will arrive back in Seattle on the 14th of December and start appointments and procedures the 15th. I will have to go to the U of W Medical Center and have a Hickman Port installed the first few days that we are there. They have blood tests almost daily and it took 4 different technicians 11 stabs in both arms to get enough blood one day. I came walking out with wraps all over my arms and Kriss was shocked at the sight. I guess the saying is true: AB ASINO LANAM, you can't get wool from an ass, or blood from a Peterson, it seems. Dr. Hickman who pioneered this particular port, received a Nobel Prize in Medicine for this and many other advances he helped create while working at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. We are feeling God's peace as we prepare to leave home and undertake this risky, but potentially life restoring transplant. It appears that our oldest daughter, Hanna, will be the donor. She is an ordained Presbyterian minister and serves a parish in Kelso, WA, around 125 miles south of Seattle. She has the most flexible schedule and lives the closest, as well. She will have to arrive the same time as we do on the 15th and be there for three days straight. Then she will have to return on the 30th of December and start injections to manufacture surplus stem-cells. They will harvest them on the 4th and 5th of January and I am scheduled for the transplant on the 5th of January. I would appreciate it if you would mark your calendars for those dates and keep us in your prayers during this time. I will have to be within 15 minutes of the SCCA for the next 100 days, at a minimum. They might give me a longer leash after day 80, but Lisa said not to count on it. If I develop any fever or other signs of infection, they will put me into the U of W Medical Center in isolation until things stabilize. Some patients never have to be hospitalized and they get through the whole process as an out-patient. It appears that I will have plenty of time to keep us with this blog and learn Latin to boot. We'll see if my good intentions will translate into reality. Wednesday we have our first Latin exam. Paying for lunch is the practical result of failure on this exam. I am studying conscientiously to make sure I don't fall short. It's good to have deadlines to make sure things just don't get put on the back burner. I'll let you know how things turn out and who gets stuck with the tab for lunch.

We are getting serious about finishing all the tasks we need to do here on the farm. We have some work to do with the cattle and some hay we bought to get hauled to our home place. We have enough time to get it all done if the weather holds and we don't have another cold snap with lots of snow. We delivered some hay to a customer today, so they will be in good shape until February. Cleo will be here on the farm when we leave, but she will need help feeding the animals and calving the mother cows. Kriss may have to come home sometime in January to oversee the calving. It isn't usually that difficult, but it can be the difference between life and death if things go badly. We have four first-calf heifers to calve, so they need some extra looking after. We don't keep any breeding stock that has a history of calving problems. It just isn't worth it in the long run. Calving ease is a trait that we value a great deal and we select both sires and dams that will give us the least amount of problems at this time of year. We have a new bull for this breeding cycle and so we will see whether his offspring are the appropriate size and have the vigor we expect at birth. Genetics are critical in a cattle operation. We bought a bull from a breeder that looked great, but about 1/2 of his offspring had deformed feet and ankles at birth. We had to fabricate splints and it took them several months to get their feet straightened out. Needless to say, that bull didn't last over one year on our place. Fortunately, McDonald's is always in need of quality hamburger.

It will be very different not to be home for Christmas. We will have most of our famly with us either in Seattle or Kelso, but we will only have a couple of days free from tests and procedures. I have a feeling that we will appreciate the Christmas story even more this year. Mary and Joseph probably didn't want to go to Bethlehem, to essentially sign up with the Roman version of the IRS, either. They were faced with the medical crisis of childbirth while they were in a strange town. God was faithful to them and that birth was the beginning of new life for all of us. It is an inspiring and spiritual reality to think that our eldest daughter will give back the opportunity for life that we gave to her over 30 years ago. On the day of my rebirth, January 5th, 2011, I pray that God will give us all a spiritual renaissance that will create a deeper and stronger passion for serving the Prince of Peace. May God bless all of you for your love and concern that overwhelms our hearts and gives us courage and hope. In the summer of 1970 I began a season of spiritual challenges that would disrupt my previous life, just as this medical challenge is disrupting my present life.

Wapato, WA Summer of 1970!

I went back to Windy  Point Farms for my second summer of employment. I wasn't a rookie anymore and so they expected more from me. I did all the things I had done the summer before, plus new responsibilities in the packing shed and warehouse. In the winter and spring prior to that summer, I had worked on Saturdays and school breaks in order to make a few extra dollars for college and transportation. One job that was memorable, was blossum thinning Early Red Haven Peaches. This variety of Peach produces such a plethora of blossums that if they were left on the tree, you would have a million  walnut sized peaches on every tree. I'm sure that they now have chemicals that they just spray on the trees to eliminate excess blossums, but in the olden days, we had to manually strip probably 75% of the blossums, one twig at a time. It was tedium to the max. To approach a fully grown peach tree 12 feet tall and 15 feet across and realize that you had to thin every single branch and twig was almost unbearable. The miracle of that effort was twofold. First, in order to keep one's sanity, the human mind simply goes into a state of robot-like repetition. You don't think about each blossum, you develop a technique that just does the same thing over and over. It releases the creative side of your brain and I can remember having the most amazingly profound and wonderful insights I had ever had in my life. I had nothing to compare it with, but I would have to guess it was something like what people claimed drugs might do. I remember coming to deeper insights about God, life and self that were thrilling. The only problem was that I was stuck up in a peach tree on a ladder and by the time I got home so I could write down these profound truths, I couldn't remember them so well. It may be why Ghandi and wise women of all ages have done repetitive work with their hands while listening to and advising others. If you get stuck intellectually or rationally, do something boringly repetitive and you might be surprised what fresh insights pop into your consciousness. The second miracle of our efforts, was the tantalizing wonder of a tree ripened Early Red Haven Peach hanging from a branch at 6 am, still cool and fresh from the summer night. Delt Clark Sr. used to say that Early Red Havens were just 90 days, ditch water and peach fuzz, but I have never tasted anything so delicious before or since.

I continued to take fruit to Yakima for distribution to the poor. I took one family under my arm that I had met while doing some tutoring for the Yakima Public Schools. They lived near the Fairgrounds in Yakima and there were 3-4 kids in elementary school. I would drive from Wapato early Sunday morning to pick them up so they could go to Sunday School and Church with me. I always took them out for lunch on our way back home. That might have been their biggest motivation in coming, but I felt it was worth the effort. Other people took notice of the effort and they began to slip me a few dollars once in a while to help with the cost of lunch. I had known poverty as a child, but this was a poverty of the spirit, as well as the pocketbook. We made sure they had newer clothing and healthy food to eat,  but I couldn't do anything about the cockroaches, except make sure they didn't relocate back to my own home in Wapato. I don't know what eventually happened to that family. I pray that the time we spent together planted a seed of faith and a reminder that God loves them and people care, however imperfectly their efforts.

The biggest challenge occurring in my life at this time was relational. I simply had had no healthy models of interpersonal relationships to follow in my formative years. I wandered through the maze of friendships and courtship creating heartache and emotional bruises for myself and others that went deep and were tragically lasting. It is the greatest source of regret and sense of failure that I feel to this day. One byproduct of this wandering in the dating wilderness was the exposure of deeper emotional flaws within my being that I had to painfully face and work through. I had absorbed and internalized all the words and curses that I had ever heard from family members, especially those from my father. Deep down I felt that I was "worthless as a tit on a boar", "stupid", "incapable of doing anything", and unworthy of the love of others. I could accept the concept of God's love for me since God was perfect and showed a perfect love for us. However, people weren't perfect and since I fundamentally thought I was "ugly and unlovable", I interpreted their affection for me as pity and ungenuine. I will never forget a scream therapy session in the front seat of my 1961 Chevrolet pickup truck on a street in Yakima with a friend screaming at me that "You are not ugly!", and me screaming back over and over, "I'm ugly, I'm ugly"! Eventually, out of sheer exhaustion, I had heard enough repetitions of the words; "You are not ugly!", to begin to accept the possibility that I was worthy of another human beings love and care without cynical doubts. It was God's way of beginning to create some sense of appropriate self worth and dignity that is a life long process for all of us. I guess one of the nicknames I was saddled with by older siblings; "flea" had stuck with me. I felt like I was essentially a bloodsucking parasite that you would just as soon squish with your shoe and be rid of, than a person of value and worth. In the coming months, my scream therapy partner would approach my mother and ask for some money to buy me some new clothes, so I didn't walk around looking like a minature Ronald McDonald. I had no sense of clothing or personal appearance. We went shopping and for the first time in my life, I could look in the mirror and think I was acceptable, even halfway pleasant to look at. I began to attack my acne with a vengeance and God's love slowly began to work its way outward from my heart to my hands. The summer passed quickly and I approached my second year of College with a more complex life, that now included the challenge of deepening friendships and all the baggage that would entail.