Making a Way in the Wilderness

I finished 5 rounds of radiation on Friday. My appointment was at 4:15 every day at UPMC Altoona, a 50-minute drive each way. Leland went with me four days, and my friend Kim accompanied me on Friday. Thank you both! The first day was the most challenging: we had to wait an hour, and during the procedure, my arms were in a very uncomfortable position, so much so that my fingers started going numb. I had to lie still on my back with my arms held out behind my head for about 40 minutes, with a very short break in between sessions, when they switched from treating the left lung to the right lung. The next day they made an adjustment that made it a lot more tolerable. Thankfully, I had no fatigue or other side effects. The next step is getting CT scans in 2-3 months. SBRT radiation is highly effective, so I’m anticipating good news. We are also grateful for the 3 families from church who brought us dinners last week. It was a relief not to have to make dinner when arriving home after...

Last week, I listened to a conversation on Kate Bowler's podcast, Everything Happens. Bowler and her guest, Suleika Jaouad (author of Between Two Kingdoms ), who were both diagnosed with different types of cancer in their early 30s and early 20s, respectively. They discuss what it's like to live in a perpetual waiting room, waiting for the next thing (scan, biopsy, treatment, etc.) before you feel like you can make any solid plans. What I took away was the need to make plans to live my life, despite the health uncertainty: plan that trip, pursue that project, dream about something I want to do. Here are some quotations that struck me: Suleika: " I learned right before my book tour that there was a possibility I was going to have a third [bone marrow] transplant over the summer. And when you get news like that, there’s a way in which you just become suspended in a waiting room . And I waited to make any plans for the summer, waited to commit to trips, thinking this may or...