Musings: Standing In The Gap, by Becky Green

While at M. D. Anderson, we do lots of walking around from place to place for appointments, mailing letters, exercising by walking 30 minutes a day across the Skybridge, going to the indoor park for lunch, attending classes provided by the Wellness Center, plus lots of ups and downs on stairs and escalators, but mostly on elevators. I have noticed that as one steps into the elevator, a “ring” occurs that continues until entering the elevator. I have also noticed that if one wants to hold the elevator for a husband or another patient or family member, one can stand in that gap between outside the elevator and inside, the “ring” will continue and the elevator will wait. So, I began thinking about “standing in the gap.”

I see a lot of “standing in the gap” around M. D. Anderson - nurses, bus drivers, caregivers and other patients. And it occurred to me that standing in the gap is something that we can do for others, sometimes with only a little effort. All it requires is a need and someone who is able and willing to fill the need. For example, if I see someone approaching an elevator, sometimes I will “stand in the gap” so the person can catch the elevator and not have to wait. Easy! But there are myriads of other ways one can stand in the gap. All we need is eyes to see and a willingness to serve.

Sometimes it only takes one person to stand in the gap and fill a need. Ezekiel 22:30 tells of one of those times: “I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none.” So the Lord said that he would consume them with his fiery anger. So sad. It would have taken only one.

Sometimes standing in the gap requires a lot. I recall a mountain climbing trip when a particular juncture required a “committing step.” The gap was too wide for me to cross, so my son wedged his body in the gap and I was able to step across safely on his back. But of course, the supreme example of standing in the gap requiring a lot, was our Lord Jesus. He gave his life, stood in the gap between man and God and paved the way from our earthly home to our heavenly home. May we follow his example, obey God’s will and stand in the gap for others.

Encounters Along the Cancer Trail

My dear Christian brother, Willard Tate, died last night -- from cancer. He has been in home hospice for a while so his death was not unexpected. But it has put me in a reflective mood. What I am thinking is that I have lost friends, found new friends, become closer to some of my (already) friends, and come to know some friends of friends. All of this while walking the cancer trail. Let me give you some examples from the last few days.

Of course, one of the friends that I have lost is Willard Tate. He went into hospice long after I came to Houston to stay for about 100 days. But I had hoped to see him again. That was a selfish hope - it was for me, not him. He is better off now. I pray that his family will have peace and comfort in this sad time.

This morning as I was leaving the bed area towing my tower to take a 30 minute walk, I saw Nancy. Nancy is the caregiver for her daughter Katie who recently had a stem cell transplant, and Nancy was staying at the same apartment complex as us. We would see her and visit with her at we rode back and forth to the hospital. Then I was surprised to see Katie walk up. She is already out of the hospital and doing well. Katie has a little one-year old daughter, so that is especially difficult, but the baby gives the mother motivation for working hard on her healing. I had given them one of Randy Becton's books when I first met them. They are from Louisiana.

Some friends we have become closer to are the Hughes: Franklin, Jackie, and Samantha. Samantha is the freshman at ACU who has a cancerous tumor spread throughout the middle area of her body. This family is in our care group at UCC, but we are walking the cancer trail together here at M. D. Anderson. They visit me when they can, and we visit them when we can. We pray together, and share our good news and bad news. So we are becoming closer day by day. Please pray that Samantha will know when to stop the chemo and have surgery to remove the tumor. Incidentally, I gave the Hughes a copy of Randy Becton's book.

Finally, just a few days ago when we got on the shuttle, a young girl with an Abilene Christian University shirt got on behind us. I struck up a conversation with her, and before we had exchanged two or three sentences of greeting, an elderly man across the aisle said, "Do you know Jim Bradford?" This man is Ken Stone, and he and Jim became friends when they were both in school at the University of Oklahoma. This was a long time ago because Jim was a graduate student at that time. They have been friends ever since. We had a good visit, and I gave him a copy of Randy Becton's book. Then yesterday we saw him and his wife again on the shuttle and I found out that he has a Gruver connection. He is distantly related to the Holt family who have lived at Gruver for as long as I can remember. He even came to Gruver as a part of a wheat harvest crew one time. Finally I made a connection to the Stone name. I mentioned that I used to go with mother to visit a Mrs. Stone in the Spearman nursing home. He immediately said, "Aunt Ida." His aunt Ida raised his dad for a while after the dad's mother died and before his granddad remarried. I e-mailed Jim, and we now have a three-way conversation by email. Jim was unaware that Ken had cancer and he has now put Ken at the top of his daily prayer list, right below me.

Life along the cancer trail is interesting.

Milestones

I have a lot to tell you. There was much time in the hospital when I did not feel like even opening my computer. There is a significant amount of time that I do not remember. So here is a quick summary of what has happened in the last month.

I tried to keep a journal of what was happening each day. From Monday, Dec. 14, through Thursday, Dec. 24, I did pretty well, except I made no entries on the 22nd and 23rd. A few days after they passed, I wrote for days Dec. 26 through Dec. 29, "Blur." On Wed., Dec. 30 I wrote, "1 unit red blood?"

Thursday, Dec. 31 I wrote, "Started losing hair, platelets, 1 unit red blood." Then on Friday, Jan. 1, I wrote, "Coughing up red gunk. Breathing labored." That day I was moved to the ICU unit, a milestone. I stayed there a week and do not remember much of that week.

Another milestone is that Be came back to Houston on Wednesday, Jan. 6. You cannot imagine how glad I was to see her. The next milestone was the following Friday. I was supposed to move into a part of the hospital for which the care was between the ICU and the 11th floor stem-cell transplant area. But I ended up back on the 11th floor, and in the same room I was in before. Amazing.

Then I needed to start gaining strength by walking and doing other exercises. I could barely walk, and the first time I tried, my male nurse held onto a belt around my waist and Be followed with a chair on wheels in case I needed to sit down quickly. My legs felt like trees. It was difficult to get them to move. I worked hard, and on the following Tuesday, my doctor said, " I think it is time to get you out of the hospital." I could not believe it, and I was actually afraid (lack of faith) that it was too soon. But I left the hospital on Thursday, January 14, and the doctor was correct. I have been making steady progress since then.

In the hospital, I was constantly getting infusions of all kinds of medication. Since I left, much of this medication has to be taken orally. Here are the original 9 different medications and the schedule for my taking them.


On Saturday, January 17, we moved into an apartment that is close to M D Anderson. This apartment is a part of the ministry of the Kingwood Church of Christ, and is a great blessing. Below are pictures of me on the couch and half of the kitchen.




We continue to go to the hospital daily to get infusions of certain medications and to have my blood tested. A big part of what I must do now is gain strength and keep from getting infections. I have developed a runny nose, and that is possibly not good. But a nasal washing (yep, it is as bad as it sounds) came back with negative results, and Be's nose often runs when mine does, so we are just tolerating it.

Since leaving the hospital, I have not had to have any infusion of blood products, nor a shot of the white blood cell stimulator Neupogen. That means that the transplant is making progress in taking over the production of my blood. That is tremendous.

The final milestone I will mention is that I have been given permission to eat fresh fruit if it has thick skin. I am enjoying bananas and watermelon for the first time since the end of April. Yum, yum.


Please keep praying for me. Your prayers are having a great affect. Thank you!

Happy Birthday (day 0)

At M. D. Anderson, the stem cell transplant people call the day that a person receives a stem cell transplant that person's second birthday. One of the nurses congratulated me on my second birthday, and I thanked her but told her it was my third birthday. When she gave me a puzzled look, I told her that my second birthday was when I became a Christian.

At any rate, the day that the stem cells are infused is a big day. So I used my computer to take a couple of pictures to mark the occasion. There were five bags of cells to be infused. The doctor was here for most of the first bag, but he left the rest of the infusion to my nurse. She stayed in the room with me the whole time, monitoring my vital signs frequently.

After the infusions, which took about 1.5 hours, I was pretty much out of it because of the steroids and the benedryl that they gave me. Even today I have been quite drowsy and listless. I hope that tonight I can sleep off the generally bad way I have been feeling. As with the earlier chemo, I have no appetite and have an "on the edge of nausea" feeling. At any rate, here are the promised photos.

An Agonizing Episode

I cannot explain many of my character flaws, and I especially cannot explain this one. But it is formost in my mind now -- I really dislike having to get ready for a shower. I have even been known to work in my shop all day, getting covered with sweat and sawdust, and then at bedtime finding some excuse to delay my shower until in the morning, at which time I find that I do not need a shower. So you can imagine my consternation when I was informed that I have to take a shower every day while in the hospital.

Another thing that I really dislike is turning off the water when I am taking a shower. I love soaking in the nice warm water and just relaxing. Okay, today I finally forced myself to get in the shower for my daily cleansing. (Incidentally, I am glad that during this hospital confinement I actually get to shower and not just take a sponge bath like the last time I was in here for a month!) But today before I finished showering, my tower starts beeping!!! I must call a nurse to take care of this. You see, I have to be connected to the tower even when showering. So I must quickly rinse off and forgo the pleasure of soaking, or else have her come hang a new bag on my tower while I am pleasantly soaking in the shower.

Life gets tedious, don't it! By the way, I did not call the nurse until I quickly rinsed, dried, and clothed myself. No soaking today.

PS If anyone can explain my "shower disorder" I would love to hear the explanation.

Caprock Canyon State Park

On Friday afternoon, October 2, Jason Holland picked me up in his pickup truck and we drove to Caprock Canyon State Park, arriving at about 5:15 pm. This state park is just outside of Quitique (pronounced "Kitty Kway"), Texas. We were too late to check in at the park headquarters, so we drove to our campsite and set up our tents.


The campsite had a pit grill for burning wood, and a grill-on-a-pole for burning charcoal, a picnic table under a roof, and some toilets. There was no running water. The campsite was by a fairly deep and steep-sided creek bed. There was no water running in the creek. Jason cooked turkey brauts on his gas grill, and we had those and beans for supper. As it got dark, the moon came up and it was so bright we could not see very many stars, though it was a cloudless night. But we had a great view of Jupiter, and we saw three satellites cross the sky. We went to bed at 9 pm, and we heard a pack of coyotes howling throughout the night.

The next morning after breakfast, we hiked a very nice trail from 9 am to 1 pm. That was a round trip distance of 7 miles. There was not much elevation change on the trails he chose. When we came to a place where we would have to go up a steep incline, we turned around and returned to the trailhead. Jason was very nice to choose trails that I could handle.

Saturday was a beautiful day for hiking. There was a cloud cover all day, and the temperature ranged from 45 degrees in the morning to 72 degrees at the end of our hike. I was especially impressed with the variety of Fall wildflowers in the park. Also, there were only 4 tents in the camping area, and we met only one other group on the trails. Just wonderful.

After we had been on the road home about 15 minutes, it started raining and rained for 2 hours. But there was no rain on us in the park. I was amazed that I was able to walk 7 miles. Of course, I walked slowly, but I walked. It was great!

GENIUS OR INSANITY?

I am a little slow on the uptake, but eventually I usually catch the clues. While down in Houston, it finally dawned on me that Be and I own a CLUNKER. When we bought a second car, we kept the CLUNKER because we could get almost nothing for a 1990 GMC van with 240,000 miles and no air conditioning. Besides, we needed a utility vehicle. But I decided to check out the Cash-for-Clunkers offer when we got back to Abilene.

There started to be more and more alerts that the Obama money was running out. I figured that we had missed our opportunity, but decided to call Toyota anyway because there is a salesman there that we trust. Then I ended up in the hospital! Did that deter us? Us, two of the most financially conservative people in the world? Of course not.

Today we put a down payment on a new Toyota truck without even going to the Toyota dealership. We called Rick and asked him to see what he could work out trading in our van on a small (cheap) pickup. He came back with $4500 for our van, $500 from Toyota, and $100 they get paid to dispose of the old car which they pass on to us. That is, a $5100 discount. Over the phone we put down a deposit, and they started looking for such a truck since they did not have one in stock. We are getting a new Toyota truck for a little more than $14,000. Genius or insanity? We will see, but the deed is done. Can you believe it? We do not even know the brand of the pickup or the color (but the color will probably be white or silver), but it is a four cylinder engine and has air conditioning.

Let the kudos or catcalls begin!