Celebration

They Told You, you were dead and so was the evidence.
You are at this moment alive, and so the evidence validates.
Let’s have a Celebration and we’ll all take stock in another day.

Yes, as promised I started to write this after my visits with Drs. Vanbuskirk and consultation with Dr. Hastroph. I did write and unlike any blog I have written in four years I ripped it into shreds, Cox. You’ll never know what I wrote nor will I probably never remember. Oh by the way, I have now had an additional elaborate test for gall bladder (my second) and a third one called a Hilda scheduled for another few weeks. With Hilda, Dr. Cox cautiously enters the field of nuclear medicine keeping his care of me always on the cutting edge. Every one, I have mentioned this test to, have never heard of it.

I will now try again on Mike’s computer, mine crashed. The appointments should have been filmed. Each assigned a special role and insight into one of the most dramatic tough encounters played out. I’ll be all over the place trying to communicate my experience so as usual, please bear with me, as Dr. Cox said, what we are discussing is profound with heavyweight consequences. Not to be taken lightly. A couple of things, co-in-sided with my appointment with Dr. Cox. They were out of the script writing department of Hollywood itself. In one of my past blogs, you’ll find an entry with regards my emergency room visit for a gallstone attack. Well, at 2 am I had the severest pain I have ever experienced in the right section of my entire chest area and around to my back. For my own reasons, I struggled with the pain and personal screams until early morning. After several years of sleeping on the floor at the foot of my bed, we convinced Kris to go to another room where she keeps a speaker system that you monitor a baby with. I have remained in my hospital bed for the over-all good of the activities that have been going on within our home these last few years. We have been extremely blessed with a home that can accommodate all the visitors we have had through the years.

At this moment my in laws, Tim and Karen are repaining our garage after painting our children’s recreation area. My sister in law was here for over a month this summer alone during which time she brought back our deck like new and re worked and guided out landscape people to give us a home that continues to bring me great comfort. I hope that all who have visited and stayed with us have experience some of the welcome afforded by a Benedictine or Franciscan in the name of Jesus. It’s the kind of hospitality that brings more comfort to the giver than the receiver. I ramble, ramble, ramble, but at this moment I ask not for forgiveness. Let me get you lost again in my ramblings. I thank you from the bottom of my heart in allowing me to have someone to share my life with. Without you, my reader, I would be a little less of a person, alone in my own wanderings. Please God, allow me some comfort in talking (writing) with my friends. In an incredibly selfish way, allow me to take immense satisfaction in those who for one moment or one seconded responded to my writings. Pat has never ceased to bring me the comfort that can only come from another who not only listens but also provided feedback of hat listening. At this moment it is so critical to my personal well being. Any kind of isolation that is not chosen for oneself is the greatest hell on earth. This blog provided to me early on by Jason and Bill Bettyas has been an intro-venous valve bringing life giving health to the isolation of my hospital bed. Thank you.

Kris and my brother in law begged me to call an ambulance and go to the hospital. Kris had been there with me before and she was in tremendous fear. I wanted to hold out to reach Dr. Cox. It was a decision that Dr. Cox pretty much equated to being absolutely stupid. I’m sure he felt it had no merit and probably felt it to be counter- productive to a cure. Although he vocalized that we were playing with an awfully big pot, my life. By the time I arrived at the office and the nurse took my vitals prior to my lab work, I was a complete basket case in both body and soul. I was devastated by my lack of emotional control and my breakdown. My heroes don’t allow that to happen. I don’t consider that strange given the short history of pain which required the changing of my body patches and taking 5 Oxycodins. The physical pain was under control, but the emotions were a shambles. Dr. Cox dropped everything and elongated my meeting until after 11 am when I went to the lab for a long series of blood draws. We spent a great deal of time discussing my depression and at one point almost forgetting the gall bladder. I went to the office with my fresh new MRI and Dexa wanting to declare the death-knoll of my enemy cancer against the good judgment of both Dr. Cox and Kris. I wanted a celebration for this moment of time declaring the cancer dead and triumph over it.

By Our, I meant my entire medical team and care givers along with all my friends and the parishioners of St. Leo’s who remember me at every single Mass and bulletin for the last four years. I wanted to thank my Pastor who promised St. Leo’s to be there for Kris, my family and friends to find comfort in each other . We, in addition to the unbelievable approval of the latest anti cancer pill by the FAA merely months prior to my collapse. At that time the evidence was 100% against me. My collapse in the street by my office at Ft. Lewis and my fight to get up and instruct my classes for that morning, became the first sign of being bed ridden for the next few years. The evidence was concrete in my bone marrow test, my MRI and Dr. Cox and his staff’s diagnosis. It was dramatic and imparted to me with a sledge hammer right between the eyes as Dr. Cox with no room for error told me man to man that I would be dead within the week. I took this announcement like a man. Dr. Cox is my man and the most important professional and friend in my life, both then and always. I called all my family together and discussed the finality of my no cure Multi Myeloma Phases II and under the guidance of Dr. Vanbuskirk, my Palliative Care Doctor, I began to cover all the detail one needs to cover in preparation for ceasing to live. Well, with all of the above lurking within my mind, I wanted a cease fire. I wanted a celebration of this one moment in time, when all the evidence pointed to remission (although first declared in ’07) and with my doctors concurring I wanted a celebration and I think that’s what I got the ok for.

Out of the meeting on Monday and Tuesday, came a hard fought blessing on my celebration. After both doctors beat me to a pulp to understand that my cancer, my myelomia will never really go away, it is incurable. It will always be lurking there as every blood cell withdrawl' s performed and that there is no question – Myeloma is incurable. However, we also fought through so many other cancers, Iukemias, HIV’s, polios that although so deathly have become illnesses that people live a normal life with and with the strength of so many other spirits and systems within their bodies live almost completely normal, extended and good lives. So many die not of their primary attacker, but at times from other places that many other health and normal lives, live through. On Tuesday, I had my blood tests withdrawn and I believe they again say I’m in remission. On Wednesday with a prescription for a gallstone screening I went to the lab for that screening and the prelims show gallstones. However, Dr. Cox has prescribed a further more powerful exam called a HIDA which is evidentally from the internet literature the big daddy of all the scans. It is not taken lightly because of the nuclear aspect of it. It will scan the little intestine, the bile flow, the gall bladder and a few other things I can’t recall presently. Could it possibly rain on my parade, honestly – that has just entered my minde as I’ve given thought to this. Thank God for my photography classes and other things that keep me more fruitfully involved. Where, am I, in the need of prayer as yesterday, so today. Kris believes this test to be sort of independent of everything else. I’ll keep you posted. I’m going to have lunch and go outside for a snooze, to read, to look at our newly painted garage door, and above all else to remember and pray for you. I'll leave you along at this point, because I can write future books about the role of my priesthood with Jesus, my marriage with Kris and everything both entail in my life. I said books, but mean volumes and perhaps a library.

The Holy Spirit will finish the work yet to be done as HE HAS ALREADY WRITTEN IN EACH OF OUR Hearts THE WORK ALREADY DONE. God bless us all.

Appointments This Week

Stop, Don’t Move, Don’t read another line until you go back to ground zero. This blog cannot be understood until you recall the date written and you get inside my head for that day. There are few, if any, edits. I wanted to write it as I saw the world that day through my eyes, drugged or not drugged. If I saw the world blue, I wanted to catch a blue world. If my head were full of opium and I neither felt no pain nor the reality in which I lived. I don’t know how many times you’ve heard me scream out from the depths of my soul, My God, who am I. At times I felt a tremendous understanding of those around me no longer tuned in with reason. As I was, so were they in another world. For at least a year plus into this past, you and others have heard me falter as I attempted to speak of a third world which I have been forced to inhabit. The world brought about by my drugs, of dreams and nightmares. Most of you who are close to me live in the world of your realities are validated by yourself, relatives and friends. I have at least two. One I have a great deal of questions about, Who am I?, and the other which is as real as the first. It occurs in my sleep, I can’t tell you when in that sleep, but as I awaken I capture some of it, always saying thank God for getting me off the hook. Now, that world also inhabits my naps, so I live new episodes which have no relationship to any others. Please, as uncomfortable as it may be, listen to us. Give us some one to share our discomfort. What if it’s from my pain medications, with little doubt, do I cut myself back. At first that would seem to be a brave jesture, but false. I buy in 100% to the medical belief today that pain for pains sake is close to idiotic. Controlling pain contributes to healing. It gives the body an opportunity to stop, allow the irritant calm down and the body do its own thing.

Where am I ad where am I going? I’m asking my family, friends and readers to go back to ’06 or ’04 and realize that’s my world of that day. That’s what I saw, felt or hurt at that time through my eyes at that moment for better or worse. My writing at that moment, correct or incorrect was the world as I attempted to reflect it to others. Please, be patient with me. Within, the next few days, my appointments with my specialist may or may not turn my world completely upside down. Today, the Saturday before those meetings my mind is polarized and its impossible for me to grasp what may or may not come down the pike. Although, others will be as they have been through all these years been deeply affected so will they now. God gave me a few years that at first seemed out of the question, and now here we go again.

As I tried to point out as I started, as you read, remember today is Saturday, and there is so much I will not be privy to until Wednesday. It’s important for me to ask Tara to publish this on Sunday so that you might share a bit of the anxiety I now face and that you yourselves share. Everyday, I learn more about the suffering of others, but it is so intertwined with the glory of who they are and how they live and share their lives with others.

If Wed is a day of beauty and glory, it will be because of you and don’t you believe anything other than that. One of my heroes was a scientist priest of the 1920’s and ‘30s who married science and Faith and provided us with a vision of our last days only matched by the beautiful picture of St. John’s gospel. The gospels all tell us there is work to be done and asked of us that we do it in union with the beauty and wonder of those gospels. I hope I have ot confused you, but if I have it has only been because I am confused. I must rely upon my Faith. Anything more or less is a batter of poppy-cock and is senseless.

God, please bless us all and allow us to be about our Father’s business as you have defined our roles within that mission.

How do I catch this moment?

How do I catch this moment?

I stopped just lying here and said, this must be captured and recorded. I feel like a new man at this moment and it captures what it means by not giving up. This morning and yesterday my morale was as low as it has been since I first started this journey in October of ’05. It left me so defeated because it was accompanied by the inability of the body to respond. My legs appeared not to hold up like they had before and again for the first time I had an element of fear. Fear of what, I’m not sure, but I was so cold I thought to myself I don’t want to die cold, it’s a miserable feeling. I thought trying to come back again was just too costly and I’d be unable to do it.

The above is not what I’m trying to capture. Rather, I’m attempting 1,000% turn about. I don’t know what to tell you but I am so at peace and feel I’ve had one of the best days I years. Kris has just been unceasing with regards a number of things. She refuses to accept me not trying to move and get up and about. She keeps going the extra mile here or there in order to keep my limbs moving and my spirits up. Today, was such a day with a by-product of feeling well and willing to try again tomorrow? Today, she went out real early to get a whole lot of nuisance stuff done, so she could come back in time to register for a photography class I’ve wanted to take. She got me up and put on my hand-sewn stockings, which are impossible to do for myself. Helped me to get dressed and off we went. Soon we were over at the Lakewood Center where they among other things appeal to the older population. We entered a rather smelly building filled with people of warmth, welcome and a tremendous gift of making you feel like, they wanted you. Immediately there were people in your face who made the remembrance of pain no longer exist and a desire to be a part again of something that takes you out of yourself. At this moment instead of feeling like I did last night I’m feeling excited to meet the instructor and other participants. My desire to brag and share with others is alive and aflame with a warmth that refuses to allow that cold to move in and tae over. When we got back home Kris brought my favorite chair to sit in the sun where I was able to sit in the sun and enjoy the remainder of the day. It’s good to be alive and its great to have a certain quality of life for today. The day is almost over and it has been a good day despite the fact that yesterday I thought would no longer be possible. As Jessie keeps shouting at us, keep hope alive.

Today is Tues and Thurs I start my first photography class, so tomorrow I’ll be busy putting all my camera stuff together and electing a few pictures to use as samples of where I’m at. It will be fun just doing that.

Please remember this coming Friday. I’ve pushed very hard for an MRI and had it done last Monday. My General Practioner has it in her hand right now and on Friday we’ll share the results. The techs that did it were short of esthatic about how I cooperated and how well it turned out. I guess that doesn’t happen too often. No matter, if the results prove I’m going down hill, I’ll need to suck it up and fall back upon my Christian tradition where I’ll find strength in Jesus who has been there and done that. Then again, if the result is positive, I’ll be very anxious to begin a program built upon hard data rather than mere “I think” or the equivalent of the same. In no way do I mean to disparage any of my care givers who have been no short of miracle workers, but I know that they and the insurance carriers would want nothing less than that for themselves and their family members. What, I hope may be true is that they save money and can do much more for those in the future. My programs of care may be cheaper because they know what they are doing. Again, no matter please keep me in your thoughts and prayers so that I might be less of a burden on others than I do now. I might even improve my photo work that you’d like me to do a photo for you. I would be so happy if it pleased you. God bless us all as we continue our journey. We are so happy to anticipate and look forward to the entire Munholland visit at the end of this month. It’s going to be the best and the kids won’t recognize me because I’ve also grown so much.

Advice from Laura

Advice from Laura for the coming months:

Since you’re not a snowbird, dress warm and plan each day to include thought of first snow in Brooklyn New York.

If you stay in bed today, you may not have it in you to get out of it tomorrow.

If you only drank your water as your beer you’d be closer to the cure.

Others can be less ill, but more in need. Pray for them.

How have you made your caregivers life easier than it is because of you.

Will you waste any part of today, as you did, yesterday.

There is much goodness in the rain, how do you find it.

Your mind is hard to be depressed when its full of the many joys you’ve been given.

Doesn’t it scare you just a little not to appreciate more fully those who surround you.

Shouldn’t you weep more deeply for those without healthcare insurance.

What does your faith tell you about those who have left you.

The names you have learned to spell and recall are the wonders of your life.

And finally, Laura would remind you that your families wounds were so much deeper than your own, pray for them and remember them.

Deserves an Entry

What a log entry to develop, look at all the 9’s. On second thought, I’ll save it for the track. I should, but I won’t call Tim and beg him and his family join me at the track. Monty loves it there. He actually picks a numbered horse and is able to ride it free until others take it from him. Boy! Don’t he look great in that saddle. I’d bet on him any day. Let’s see, he is 4 now and tells you that’s a turning point when a kid knows a lot about a lot of things. However, those delicate but strong hands and arms just don’t make it. No bet. Another day, another track, but I’ll always be willing to bet on him. Then there is that huge slide which exhausts him as he goes and goes and goes in order to come down and down and down. He loves it so much that the screams are at fever pitch. Those rides and a few others have his attention for all of the day. Our minds are on the fourth and that #8 along with the long shot $9, The bet requires a trip to the teller’s window, but the results save you a trip back. We don’t bet big nor do we win big. We have no need of ever going to the IRA window to fill out forms and spend our mony. Their instructions are so precise, you’d be proud of their public service. They seldom get it wrong. Enough of this track stuff or now, I’ll have to reread it to understand how I got here.

What I thought was maybe I’d take a shot at those pictures. You see them throughout my walls. You just can’t miss them. They jump right off the wall at you in every picture. They’re all mine with very few exceptions. In one way or another I’ve brought them to some kind of completion that has brought me, if only me to a calm and enjoyable venture into the unknown until finished. Don’t laugh, they all have meaning for me. Some deep and some not at all, but they touch me. I wish I could catch your eyes or hear your words as you see or don’t see them at home or somewhere else. Here, in my room and not the other rooms throughout the house. I greet you with hugs, handshakes and a myriad of other warmths that almost moisten the air in my room. It comes to me even now, how many greetings I have had within the restrictions of this room, my prison and place of reflection these past almost four years . Family, friends, strangers, new faces, friends of him and her. Some I’ve never met before and a whole bunch I hope would come back again and again. Oh, for heaven’s sake, lets get back to why we are here. Yes it’s the pictures and other things No it’s not the pictures, its your critique of the pictures or my meaning in the drawings, the water colors, portraits or sea sides. One of the richest for me is the one of Mike by the side of the Gulf in Jamaica. It has taken me so long but maybe not so long to see what I see. Mike has his baseball hat askew on top of his head. Who would believe that’s his arm on his hip as he looks out past the water to the opposite shroe if the bay which we visited just a short while ago. Mike in his water color is transparent as he is transparent. Not in the original picture but in my version of it on the textured board which I enjoy beneath the brush. His armless raged t-shirt yells out at the poverty of the island as he contemplates his place in this place. He doesn’t verbalize it. He contemplates it. He was late getting there that morning. I forget now why we were in two separate places at different parts of the island. He was late and I was angry and be both came via different transportation, I to be thrown off by myself trying to figure out if I were at the right place and with more than a few doubts as to if he would ever come. The thought went on and on. Never making much sense, but by the time showed I was real angry that he wasn’t. Worth mentioning, but unable to catch in film was one

Break time – I need a snooze.

I’m back many days later – let me pick up with crucifix you see either or the table next to my bed. A crucifix is the wooden cross with the body affixed to it. The body is dramatic in showing the wounds, lashes and piercing with spear, It can allude if you meditate upon it to all it bore witness to. You can remember the Mary’s kneling before it. Recalling the soldiers rolling dice for his garments is’t hard to do, The shoulders are bruised and crushed from the long final journey with upon his shoulders, Others picked it up as it brought him to the ground. There is nothing of beauty in it. It is merely dramatic. And early in live may have been used to scare and dramatize. Now, it is a remembering. You stop in your busyness and take an appraisal of prices paid, enemies identified and friends who went the distance. It is critical in identifying those who didn’t go the distance. Most especially Peter and the others he cherished and whom you would have found proud to have withstood the pressure right up to the end.

It Is very significant to me because it was gift from Sr. Dorothea prior to my departure for the seminary. My fist 8 years of grammar school were spent under the tutelege of the Sisters of Mercy. Dorothea, was one of those Sisters at Sacre Heart, which was that school. In those days they wore a long black habit that reached out to the ground. They wore a white coif around their head and extended below their bosom. A picture may help depict it better. I think the habit in its totality had some hurt connected with it. They wore a black belt, about 2-3 inches high with the crucifix tied to a string was inserted within the belt. It has been with me and upon my walls and before my face since 1957 and my first trip to the seminary. That is almost 50 years. I have not always been aware of its presence nor have I allowed it to lead me to prayer as frewuently as one would hope.
It’s there on my wall now, and I would hope it would be there until the end.

Jerry Seinfeld

Directly above my head my favorite clown. Jerry Seinsfeld. Perhaps it was Time Magazine that provided the original for me. I entered the printing with zeal and just ot all that saddened by the outcome. As you might guess, I love the red. It jumps off the art paper and depticts for me an individual just alive with some deep thinking, colorful laughter and a real grasp on the issues of our time. How many times have I seen ALL episodes? It's hard to tell but I bet more than one was a good answer. I never got through one without laughter. I always wished I was still preaching because I would have stolen most of them and intertwined them into every homily I delivered. I always that it such a shame because I thought I would have done a great job in rewriting and delivery.

My son in law, Jim Munholland was kind enough once to buy tickets upfront at the Paramount. It was his standup at its very best. I didn’t want anyone to cough because I couldn’t stand to miss a word or a line. He was at his best and it was terribly bad for me to keep my pants dry. The tears flowed without ceasing and it turned out to be wonderful evening. Those moments I’ll never forget and I am able to have done many times, relive the night. I still go bck to the reruns and never see the same thing Each times it’s a level or two below the last. Incredible. He of course, reminds me of the others. All of them came together each week into the one Seinfeld. The other cast have not risen to the same level. Together, they were one and their feeding off each other allowed to identify taboos or problems and bring meaning for me. I think that’s why I think I did a fair enough job that it always relives for me, the greatness of the man. It’s my most immediate prayer that he’ll continue in life some levl of achievement reached in the show. I really just don’t want to hear of a marriage broken up, a child gone astray, a wife who can’t take it any longer. I just want to hear he’s happy or that he’s making a contribution or perhaps even, their coming together again and that coming together is nothing like the ones before.

Some pictures:
On My Wall
Each Containing a Piece of Me

Sister Mary with me after my orination in Richmond, Virginia
One of the most important person in my life.