Do you always learn something

There is a great American culture myth that you have to make every experience a useful experience.

I am not sure that I want to do that yet with the current illness.

It is interesting to note the "stages" I've gone thru in this illness. I've been overwhelmed by having cancer - there is something about the name cancer that makes one feel incredibly vulnerable.

Then there was a stage of being extremely confident that I would come thru this with no or little pain, discomfort, deformation, or even effort.

There was a weekend of weepy regret. While I loved having what felt like deep feelings, my sinuses didn't love the mucus and swelling the weeping brought on. And I couldn't figure out what triggered that phase. It came stayed three days, and in good Franklin style left before it began to behave like a fish.

Then I had minutes of anxiety. I actually wasn't all that scared when it came to surgery. I don't know why, but I wasn't all that afraid. When I was given the sedative that was supposed to merely relax me, I was gone. I remember getting the sedative in my iv line in the right hand. I was told that I'd see the surgeon in the hall before we went into operating room, but that would be the last thing I saw. Nope. Remember being rolled into the hall, but that's it.

Recovery has been going very swiftly and I'm incredibly optimistic. I'm feeling like the pathology report is going to come back positive - i.e., no spread of the cancer. I've got the feeling that the p.t. is going to go well, even though I had significant weakness when we removed the bandage last night.

I've been supported, prayed for, loved throughout the journey. Did that help? I suspect so, but I would hesitate to say that the cancer and its effects have been ameliorated by the support and love. But I also would hesitate to say that the support hasn't made a physical difference. That, as a religious professional, is a really interesting feeling.

I know that I'm "supposed" to support the idea, intellectually, that prayer does make a difference. Intellectually I am not convinced. Emotionally, I haven't "felt" strength coming from others. Yet, a part of me, an inward and secret part of me is beginning to awaken and say, "Oh, wait, think. All this prayer, all this love, all this support and positive vibes, they have made a difference."

But have I learned something from this?

Or is it enough that I have just experienced all this? Right now I'm opting for the latter. I just experienced all this and I am experiencing all this, and I don't have can't have any generalized knowledge that I've gained from the experience.

Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

Between plays of the Bears/Lions game I switched over to speed channel and watched parts of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Happened to catch the awarding of the trophies.

Next to the three winners were large bottles of champagne. Wait, I thought Muslims were a teetotaling faith.

Hmmm. I guess piety takes a back seat to cultural acceptance and being able to show that you are a player in the post-modern world.

Pietism is Hard to Escape

Kris grew up in a household where Sunday card playing was frowned upon. I grew up in a household where Sunday afternoon was time to visit family (Kris too - and she keeps that by calling home every Sunday).

Not extreme examples, but both examples of the kind of Swedish pietism - and German pietism - that was part of our family's histories. We weren't part of the don't drink, smoke or chew or go with the girls that do pietists - well maybe that go with the girls part applied - but we both grew up in households where the pietist more was strong.

Sunday was a day for Church, for a big family lunch, and for not working. We did not work. Ever. I cannot remember my father ever doing a household chore on Sunday - though he did have to go to work on many Sundays (when you work swing shifts you work some Sundays).

Here I am, ready to go to the hospital for surgery on Wednesday (to KC on Tuesday for MRI and MD appointment). I had to get the front porch painted today. I painted thru the pain and got it done in about an hour's work. I had to remind myself that I was pretty much pulling my ox out of ditch on a Sunday and it was OK.

Kris has been working in the kitchen all afternoon. She's cleaned behind the stove, set the oven on self clean, the four hour cycle, and now she's cleaning the vegetable and meat drawers (and behind) in the fridge. And I have this little voice in the back of my head saying "that's not right!"

I know, I know. All days alike are days to praise God. All days alike are days when our honest labor praises our creator. Pietism was mostly a show and sometimes a fraud for most of us. Sometimes you just have to get your ox out of the ditch on the Sabbath.

But the voices in my head are sneaky, quiet, and insistent. I can't ignore them, I guess I just have to have a little chat with them - where I tell them to pipe down!

The Cowboy Cheerleaders

November 7, 2011

Last Sunday I started watching an episode of "Making the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders." I was flipping through the channels, looking for something to accompany a nap, and came on this show at a moment when the casting mothers were telling the girls how hard they were going to have to work overnight if they were going to keep with the program.

Hmm, I thought, I want to see how these women respond to this demand for hard work and study overnight. I have trouble motivating my students to work hard. Maybe I can learn something.

I stuck with the story. I was impressed by the way these young women responded to the challenge. They worked hard, worked in teams, put in the time to learn a dance routine.

Then came the judging. And after: One of the young women was called into the office and questioned about "pictures." The pictures that the casting mother showed the girl were of the young woman in a bikini. While the audience wasn't shown details, the pictures didn't seem any more salacious than the uniforms the girls wear on the field, the hip gyrations or the swimsuit calendar. Look, these are sexy women (at least in a conventional sense of the term) whose sexuality is exploited by the management of the Dallas Cowboys to keep the crowd (and the viewers) viewing and spending money.

So what's the problem if one of the girls does her own salacious posing? It doesn't fit the image we're trying to maintain? Really?

What image is that? Barbie doll sexuality - look but don't touch teasing - women are objects but we own the objects and you don't? What is the image of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleader that would be sullied by one of their cheerleaders appearing naked on the internet?

I don't understand why we Americans have allowed ourselves to be bullied into the basement viz. naked human bodies. The attitude of the cheerleader leader mystifies me.

Secret Remedies: Do I need more?

Yesterday I went to Apotek, our local pharmacy, to renew a pain killer prescription. I also picked up an aid for one of the problems caused by my pain killers, combined with having to sit and lie on my backside.

It's the truck driver and the pregnant mother to be's best friend, the doughnut pillow.

I didn't realize how much help it would be. With two days use my problems have been relieved so much that I can actually forget that I have problems other than the leg. The best twelve dollars I've ever invested to handle indelicate problems.

Now, maybe one or more of you can help with another secret remedy.

I've spent much of this weekend in weepy nostalgia. Yesterday it was focused on my parents and my children. Today is was all about church and spouse. I couldn't think of either without weeping.

I started to snap out of it at lunch - potluck with Martin Marty - the church historian. It was a great surprise to have him at Bethany, and I had enough history of listening to his lectures and reading his books so that I had something to talk to him about. But as soon as that was over I was back into weepy mode. Just about anything was making me sentimental. Like my brown leather jacket.

I wanted to get out, I thought that might make me feel better. I wanted to get out to the zoo, in my leather jacket, in honor of that moment back in 1994 or whenever, when the kids and I were photographed in front of the Landmark Cafe in Chicago. Of course Chicago was out of the question, so I was willing to settle for Rolling Hills, provided I could wear my leather jacket and have my picture taken in said leather jacket.

Mostly it worked. For most of the afternoon I was alternately cheery and in pain. The walking is difficult - we mostly rode the tram from stop to stop but did enough walking that I was well aware of my leg-lump. But there were times I started to tear up, usually over nothing.

So, what the heck is going on?

Is it common that the combination of medications leads to depression? Or is the depression a way of alerting me to facing my mortality? Do I need some talkie therapy - I'm more than willing to go talk to someone - or do I need happy pills?

As always, your thoughts are welcome.

Nostalgia Hurts

It all started this morning when Kris caught up on a Simon and Garfarkle documentary we'd been keeping on the DVR.

It's a few years old, this documentary, so Paul doesn't look "elderly" the way he's been looking of late. The documentary covered all the old tunes, the good tunes. "Song for the asking," "Bridge over troubled waters."

Listening to the boys singing the old tunes I found myself transported, mentally, back to 1967. It was a beautiful fall day, and I stood at the corner of Fullerton and Lincoln, across from what was then McCormick Theological Seminary. The sun was shining bright. The anti-war movement was promising a new day. The hippies were scorned but not yet despised, and I was in my favorite part of my favorite city. It was a moment of life and hope and bright illumination.

Suddenly I felt myself tearing up and thinking about the potential that we had somehow thrown away. What happened to us? We were going to be the bridge over trouble waters, the friends who would be there to lay down our lives for one another. What happened?

I thought I had a photo from Chicago from a fall or a spring just like the one I was remembering, so I went hunting. Instead of finding just what I was looking for - I found the photos I've now posted on Facebook, including the one I've used in this post.

It should be obvious. It wasn't the 60's. It was the 90's.

There's Emily and Jon and me and we're in front of the Landmark Cafe, at the center of the Lincoln Park Zoo. It must be Christmas time, since I have both the children with me. It's obviously cold, but we don't seem to care. It may be kind of damp, but we don't seem to care.

I sort of remember this day. I sort of remember every trip to the zoo with my children, including the first trip Emily took to Lincoln Park Zoo, a trip where she was more interested in the pigeons than in the zoo animals.

I remember these days and I'm getting quite emotional. I miss having kids this size around, having kids discovering and learning and exploring without my having to tell them to look and listen and explore and study. I miss my kids and wish they weren't so far away.

I've thought that before, but I've never found myself so, well, weepy about it. I wonder if the illness and maybe the conditions I've been fighting this week has something to do with my emotional state.

Still, I'm holding tight to the memory of that day when we zipped from lion house to monkey house to ape house to Children's zoo to bird house and shivered at the few outside animals in between. I'm holding tight. Nostalgia hurts.

Why The Third Man?

Kris said, "Let's watch a movie tonight." We fiddled around until nearly 9:30 pm. I wanted to see Wisconsin win. (They didn't). Or Notre Dame (They didn't).

Finally watched Ebert at the Movies. The show begins and ends with the Third Man theme, that mystical musical zither sound that entranced my mother. It's one of the gifts she passed on to me, loving both the music from this movie and the movie itself.

I had recorded The Third Man the last time it played on Turner and hadn't watched it. So we watched it.

It really is a brilliant film. You can see all the technique Wells developed for Citizen Kane. You can feel the tension build. You're amazed that Harry Lime is the central character of the film, though he appears in less than ten minutes of the whole.

What draws me back to the film is the setting. Post-war Vienna, barely recovering from the bombs and destruction, is as important a character as Lime. Wells managed to take that devastation and make it not just interesting, but compelling.

Why do ruins draw our interest? Why does devastation draw our attention. Perhaps it is because we see these people struggling and refusing to give in to but not quite believing that there is a future. There is a combination of pathos and an intellectual argument - what is allowed for people who must compromise to survive? Are moral values only for those who are comfortable and well fed?

Or is our interest in ruins a hold over from the romantics?

I'm not sure, but after another Saturday of overdoing, I'm feeling like a bit of a ruin myself. Maybe that's why the film appealed to me. I could identify with post-war Vienna. Perhaps that means I see myself finally looking like the Vienna Rick Steves loves to visit.

Why do Baptists Hate the Constitution?

Pastor Robert Jefferies of some gigantic Southern Baptist church in Texas, started me thinking about Evangelicals and the U.S. Constitution.

Yesterday he announced that Mitt Romney was not a Christian, and that his religion would be considered a "cult" by orthodox Evangelicals. The media reports are saying that Jefferies said he's "no true Christian" - whatever that animal is. Regardless, either "no Christian" or "no true Christian" as a designation of Romney is being portrayed as scandalously harsh.

I think that Romney ought to embrace the "not a Christian" designation and do some educating of the media and the public.

Mormonism is not a "denomination" - a division of Christianity that accepts orthodox doctrines with a particular interpretation of those doctrines. Mormonism is a separate religion that gives a nod to Jesus, but has a raft of beliefs that deviate radically from Christianity. Mormonism wasn't founded, as was the Baptist tradition, on a different understanding of the meaning of a particular Christian practice - namely baptism. Mormonism was founded on a new revelation to Joseph Smith.

It's not Christianity, it's Mormonism. It's a different religion, not merely a denomination.

I don't care for Mitt Romney, but it isn't because of his religion. I believe that the constitution already assured all of us that Romney's religion doesn't matter - all that really matters is our judgment of his potential as a leader of the democracy and his proposed policies. His religion doesn't matter.

The constitution specifically says,

but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States (Article VI, section 3)

My only question is why the Evangelical Christians hate our constitution?

What's Next?

It is interesting how, having come through the fears of being a person with cancer, of becoming old, of being dead – and receiving assurances that the cancer can be cured, the aging is inevitable and the dying isn’t going to happen just yet – I’m now focused on the process of being ill and getting well.

I didn’t plan this out. I didn’t consciously move from one stage to the next: it just happened.
This weekend I’ve spent a good deal of time pondering why I’m sleeping all day (and not all night), how serious the doctor was in her orders about my digestive tract, and why the pains have changed location, shape and sensitivity? And why my diet has changed.
I don’t need to bore or disgust, but one of the biggest challenges during an illness in which one consumes a strong narcotic for pain is keeping the digestive tract “regular.” “Once a day,” the doctor said, quite adamantly. I have to go see her Monday! What if I can’t – Wait! Stronger drugs!

The knee has hurt pretty much from the beginning of this process. Now, it’s like there’s a metal ring on the left knee, and it hurts like hell if I touch it. What if it – Wait! Stronger drugs!
The principle lump has enlarged and gotten harder. There is some sensitivity to the touch, but no redness (yet). There is no radiation of pain from the lump to further down the leg – though I’m sure the pains are all related and I’m counting on all of them disappearing when the lump does. There is some pain on the backside of the thigh – which I’d not felt before. What if it can’t – Wait! Stronger Drugs!

Dr. Perez-Tamayo has prescribed stronger drugs for me, and told me what over the counter meds I should take and generally assured me that we can get this pain under control. She’s mostly right – though one of the prescriptions she’s given me isn’t doing much good. I wonder if the pains are going to get worse and the drugs are going to have to get yet stronger?

If they do, that’s OK. I’ve become accustomed to weird dreams and half-awake hallucinations. One of my current favorite pastimes is to distinguish between hallucinations and reality. (The hallucinations aren’t so bizarre that they’re easy to distinguish.) Trying to remember what I’ve done and what I haven’t done is a second favorite pastime.

Then there’s appetite. I don’t feel nauseous, but I don’t much feel like eating. That’s probably OK for right now, since I’m not doing much in the way of physical activity. I have a recipe from M. D. Anderson Cancer Center for a protein drink. I should learn to make it and consume it to make sure I’m getting good nutrition.

One of the strangest parts of this is coffee.

It seems that it affects me more now than it ever did. Coffee at 5 pm didn’t used to keep me awake. I had to drink some after 9 pm in order to be awake after midnight. Now, a cuppa after 5 pm means at least several extra hours of tossing and turning at night.

Yesterday I had only one cup of coffee. Day before two, but didn’t finish the second cup. Today I’ll probably have two. It doesn’t taste as good as it used to. That makes me sad. I mean, we’re going to talk “Svenskhet” in two weekends, and what is a Swede without coffee – strong, black coffee?

The family tells a story about Farfar and coffee. After he retired and sold the farm to my uncle Teodor, he and his wife stayed in the house. Farfar was going blind. But he got up first every morning and started the coffee boiling. From “morgonen till kvällen” he sat in the kitchen, smoked his pipe and drank that boiled coffee.

I may be shaming my whole family by giving up on coffee. Then again, once we get past this treatment I’ll return to my regular coffee habits.

I guess we can’t predict, so I’ll just have to include that on my list of things to watch while journeying toward health. No stronger drugs needed!

The Truth about Me and Cancer

I didn’t tell everything I knew when I knew it.

I knew on Monday that the lump was cancerous. Dr. Rosenthal’s office reached me Monday morning and the person on the phone told me. I couldn’t tell anyone else right then. I delayed until Wednesday when I had an appointment with the oncologist in Salina. Because I’d told everyone I was going to the oncologist on Wednesday, I knew I couldn’t postpone beyond that date, but I needed to postpone to that date.

I just couldn’t bring myself of see me as a person with cancer. Cancer was something that only happened to other people. It couldn’t happen to me. No one else in the family had cancer. I was the first, the only one. Not a distinction I cared to have.

Not only that, I had come home from church Sunday after trying to sing the first hymn. I’ve found I can’t stand still long enough to sing the hymns. Thus, I’ve decided to sit during worship, which I also can’t do very well – both the seats in the chapel at college and the pews a Bethany Church are very uncomfortable to my leg.

But when I try to sit during the singing of the hymn I find myself unable to sing. I pretty much get on the verge of weeping. Last Sunday I came home and did my share of weeping.

I was weeping because church has been the center of my life since I was a young teenager. My earliest joy was to be an acolyte at Luther Memorial. My cousin once said to me, as I wandered through the basement in the black cassock, “That looks good on you, you thinking about becoming a Pastor?”

Church was central to my life even when I was an undergraduate and didn’t get to chapel or Sunday worship on Zion very often. The two most influential people in my young life were Roald Tweet of Augie’s English Department and Dick Swanson, the campus pastor. Church remained central to me during those periods when I was on leave from call, the late 80s and the late 90s, early 21st century. Church remains central to my life, even though the Institutional Church has decided that they neither want to nor wish to have me on the role of clergy.

Now I can’t go. I can’t sit in the pews. I can’t stand for the hymns. I can’t sit for the hymns, I just can’t go. I end up crying.

That’s a major shift in my identity. Major.

When I got the news Monday I couldn’t bring myself to admit that I had been told that
the lump is a sarcoma. I could not face the idea of me as a sick person who has cancer and may lose a leg to cancer, who certainly has difficulty moving because of cancer, who could lose a life to cancer. I was not ready to deal with that. I’m still not ready to deal with the could lose a life to cancer, but I suppose I’ll work my way there.

Here’s the thing.

I don’t feel brave. I don’t feel like a fighter. I don’t feel like I can do this.

When I was in junior high (though we didn’t call it that) I actually tried out for the Lane Tech Cross Country Team. All I had to do was complete the course in the top ten of the runners. I had friends on the team. They stood along the course and cheered me on. About three quarters of the way my will gave out. “I can’t do it,” I said, and dropped out.

My heroes in life have faced this far better than I. At least their public faces have been far better than mine. Cardinal Archbishop Bernardin of Chicago faced his demise with grace and dignity. Walter Wangerin faced his cancer with new insight and depth of feeling. Me, I’m afraid that I’ll have neither dignity nor insight because of this illness. I’m afraid I’ll repeat my daring don’t of so many years ago – get within sight of the goal and quit.

I start radiation therapy tomorrow. The CT scan of the chest and abdomen was ambiguous. The PET scan had no evidence of spread of the cancer. I’ll stick with the more optimistic until I hear otherwise.