How did this guy

 

turn into this guy

so darn fast??

Happy birthday, Bubba-la! As much as I miss my little tow-headed snuggle bug, it sure has been a pleasure to watch you grow up. 

Party with friends

 

Party with family

Bubs, you wear 17 very well. I can't wait to see the good things in your future!

Wahoooo!!

Y'all!

After almost two months of chalky water, struggling to speak, sandpaper tongue, and a glass of milk with literally EVERYTHING I ate, I am thrilled to report that

I

HAVE

SPIT!!

It started in Utah. I found that occasionally I was able to eat a meal without my milk chaser if it was saucy enough. That gradually improved upon itself until today, when I realized I only needed milk for the slice of banana bread I had after breakfast, and that was because the bread is three days old and frankly quite stale. Otherwise, I am eating like a grown-up. Meat, bread, cake, tortilla chips, Hershey's Kisses, Diet Coke, popcorn--all of these go down with little effort and taste exactly like they should!

(although, reviewing the above list of foods, maybe "eating like a grown-up" isn't the right description)

Whatever.

I'm celebrating! And my smile isn't even sticking to my teeth!

The best medicine

When I was a little girl, aged eight to eleven, my family lived in Flagstaff, Arizona, where my dad had his first professor job at Northern Arizona University. My parents were fresh out of years of graduate school and had five, then six, kids, so money was pretty tight at our house. Not that I noticed. I just happily wore the clothes my aunt sent in black garbage bags, slept under the cute quilted bedspread my mom made from sheets, read every Nancy Drew book the library owned, and swooned over the exotic new treat my parents found at the grocery store, something called Smack Ramen.

Flagstaff was about a ten hour drive away from northern Utah, which is where all our grandmas and grandpas and aunts, uncles, and cousins lived. Every summer, Dad would pack up our four-door Pontiac Tempest--affectionately known as Blue Car--and we'd all squeeze onto the two bench seats to make the drive. There were no seat belt laws in those days, which was good since Blue Car didn't have any anyway. We kids just knocked around in the back seat, fighting over who was touching whom and sticking to the vinyl upholstery while hot desert air blew through the open windows. (One year, my dad rigged bunk beds back there so we'd have more room, but that's a whole story in itself.)

Dad typically drove, and Mom sat in the front with a baby or two between them. I don't know where she put her feet, since the floor in front of her was full of a day's worth of food--sandwiches sweating in an old bread sack, apple slices, homemade cookies, and Pringles, the ultimate road trip delicacy. She spent a good part of the drive handing out food and refereeing the back seat, but usually around mid-afternoon, when the bread sack was empty and most of us were lulled by the heat and full tummies, things would quiet down. That's when she pulled out the Reader's Digest.

I don't know if they still have this, but back in the late 1970's, Reader's Digest had a feature called "Laughter: The Best Medicine." It was a collection of one-paragraph stories or jokes, sent in by readers and intended to be funny. I remember Mom turning to this first, holding the magazine high so she wouldn't disturb the baby asleep on her lap, and in a voice just loud enough to be heard over the open windows, she'd read it aloud to my dad.

I hung on the seat between them, listening to every word. Most of the snippets elicited a wry smile from my dad, but occasionally something would strike them both as funny and they'd laugh out loud. I don't remember "getting" the joke, but I'd laugh along with them, or at least grin like a fool. There was just something delightful about watching my parents laugh together.

Eventually the jokes ran out, and Mom would turn to "Drama in Real Life" or one of the other boring, grown-up articles. I'd sit back, brushing the Pringles crumbs from my sliver of back seat, and stare out the window, watching for the road signs telling me how many miles we had until Grandma's house. As the numbers got lower, I grew more excited, knowing it wouldn't be long until I walked into her living room that always smelled like sloppy joes and got tucked into a cozy, red sofa bed. Then summer would begin, complete with cousins, Bear Lake, and the pièce de résistance, a day at Lagoon.

So I grew up thinking Utah was the Ultimate Mecca of All Good Things. We moved there when I was eleven, and the magical "mecca" turned into "home." When Brad and I left Utah for Michigan, we always thought we'd go back, but that hasn't happened yet, and I really can't complain. But it still feels like home to me, and I still get excited at the prospect of a visit.

Last week, I was especially excited because I was traveling to Utah to help Jessica plan her wedding. With everything that happened with my treatments and liver, I'd spent the last two months too sick to do much besides groan and sleep, and I was starting to panic. Plus I was ready to think about something besides cancer, and I couldn't wait to see my kids who live in Utah.  It was a very happy day when I got the okay from my doctors to go.

And it was a very, very happy week. I stayed at my parents' house, and they fussed and hovered and made me feel loved like only parents can do. I got to hang out with Jess and McKay, and was finally able to meet McKay's mother, who is utterly lovely (I told Brad we're going to lose the Favorite Grandparents award--we'll have to keep our boat to even compete). I barbequed with the Bitners, Quiddled with my family, and snuck far too many goodies from my mother's Carb Corner. My father-in-law gave Pep and me his Jazz tickets Wednesday night, so I got to spend Valentine's Day with my favorite missionary, which was a highlight of my week. I also ate lots of tacos with my mom, Jess, and my sisters, and got to see a couple of my brothers who drove in from the Uinta basin with their families to say hi.

 

 

Jess and I went wedding dress shopping, and miracle of miracles, she found the perfect dress at the very first store. This allowed us time to lunch at Sizzler, so I got my Malibu Chicken fix. We also finalized details at the reception center, figured out bridesmaid dresses and centerpieces, and got a good start on the announcements. I feel very good about where we stand now, wedding wise. And I loved every minute I got to spend with my girl.

My mom, sisters, and sisters-in-law threw a bridal shower for Jessica on Friday night, and it was perfect. I kept thinking it felt like a party for me, as I was able to see some people I haven't seen in ages and catch up with my college roommate/best cousin. I also got to watch my sweet daughter bask in the love and attention of this most fabulous posse of women. That alone was worth the whole trip.

(a big shout-out to Lois Holt, photographer extraordinaire)

 

  

 

 

 

 

The night before I flew home, the BYU Ballroom Dance Company performed at the conference center in Salt Lake, and I finished out my trip watching the 2018 version of what I did for three years in college. It was amazing, and the cherry on top to my week in Utah.

But of course, great trips must come to an end, and I returned home to an early morning CT scan and appointment with my doctor. I'd had labs done in Utah, which showed improvement in my liver, and yesterday's numbers were even lower--almost to normal. Dr. C said there must be something about the Utah mountain air, as I seem to have turned a corner while I was there. I agreed, choosing not to tell him about the inversion/air pollution people like to complain about. Because inversion or not, there is something magical about Utah.

Maybe it's the mountains and the sense of being protected by those ever-present, surrounding peaks. Maybe it's Lagoon or the canyons and the memories I have of all the places still touched by childhood wonder. Or it could be I-15 and just knowing where everything is instead of having to GPS every time I need to go somewhere. Or maybe it's passing temple after temple and chapel after chapel and feeling like these are my people and this is my place.

Or maybe--probably--it's where I can go and be a little girl in my parents' house again. I had some weird double vision thing going on this week, so my mom and dad dropped everything and drove me pretty much everywhere I needed to go. Every morning I woke up to the table set for breakfast, and at night I fell asleep in a room snug with the space heater my dad turned on so I wouldn't be cold. In the hours between, they watched me with concern in their eyes, encouraging me to nap, then tiptoeing in their own home so I wouldn't wake up. At one point they even bought me an ice cream cone, handing it back to me where I sat in the back seat like I had as a child.

Almost forty years have passed since I leaned over the seat in Blue Car and listened to my parents laugh while all their kids sat with bellies full of a homemade lunch, secure in the knowledge that this was their family and good things were ahead. I still know the feeling. And I'm sorry, Reader's Digest, but you're wrong.

This is the best medicine.

Whac-A-Mole

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned my latest MRI showed four new melanoma spots in my brain. They are all very small, and in fact only two of them are big enough to treat effectively right now, but they can't be ignored. I think it's safe to say on the list of things you should never ignore, lesions invading your brain are right at the top.

This news was something of a blow—I was hoping to learn we'd killed the previous two and could move on, but instead I found out we had a whole new crop to deal with. When I shared this with my cousin (who knows exactly how it feels to scramble to stay ahead of cancer), she gave me the perfect analogy:

Right?!?

Stupid game.

I hate this game. 

The few times I played Whac-A-Mole with my kids, I got all sweaty and stressed out, and still scored way worse than the four year-old who played next. Those wretched little moles just 

kept

popping

UP!

Then faster. And more. Then more and faster. And faster and faster and more and more and more and more and...UGH!!!!

(Yeah. I hate this game.)

So to hear I had four new spots after I'd whacked the last two made me all sweaty and stressed out again.

The timing wasn't great either. When my immunotherapy treatment got halted because of the liver inflammation, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to fly to Utah for a week of wedding planning with Jessica. So I coordinated everything with my oncologist, who thought I'd be past all this liver business by now, and booked a flight for this Friday to go party with my girl and catch up with my missionary son.

But now, with this new MRI, I had some moles to whack.

(Worst game ever.)

We only had two weeks until my scheduled trip, but luckily my radiation doctor and his staff understand doing the good things in life is as important as fixing the bad. They had me on a CT scanner within 48 hours, and the second that was complete, they whizzed all the required records and paperwork to my insurance company to get the approval they needed. "It usually takes a week," they told me with a bunch of so-excited-for-you smiles. "We should be able to get this done by February 2nd."

Perfect! This was a full week before I would leave on my trip, giving me plenty of time to recover if I needed it. Plus, Brad was supposed to be in Austin most of that week to hobnob with his company bigwigs, so if we pounded out the radiation on the 2nd, he could still go. Brad and I left the doctor's office feeling pretty swell.

You already know where this is going, don't you?

The insurance approval did NOT come back in a week, and February 2nd came and went with no radiation. 

All that day, I called my insurance company. The nurse called my insurance company. The billing specialist called my insurance company. The scheduler called my insurance company. 

Nothing. 

So on Monday morning, we did it all again. Brad left for Austin giving me strict instructions to text him the minute I had news.

We called the insurance again Monday afternoon. That night I texted Brad and told him to enjoy his hobnobbing. No approval yet.

But then—wonder of wonders—the doctor's office got a call Tuesday morning with the okay. All the radiation staff went into high gear, and they were able to get me in for the radiation surgery the next day.

That was today. Brad drove home from Austin late last night to be here with me, and I am happy to report two more brain moles have been whacked. I am cleared to take my trip by both the radiation doctor and my oncologist (even though my liver is still iffy), and I'm sooooooo looking forward to seeing my two oldest kids and thinking about something other than cancer. 

Thank heaven for oncologists and medical staff who know surviving cancer isn't just about not dying. As I left the radiation suite this afternoon, a couple of the staff wished me well with my daughter, again with the so-excited-for-you smiles. I wanted to run along the nurses' desk and high-five the lot of them.

Maybe I should've. If I have to play this stupid game, it's sure good to have a pro lineup.

Fabulous with a capital 'F'

This week has been uneventful—just a whole lot of lying around. I was on a high dose of steroids to fight the liver inflammation, but as soon as my doctor tapered down the dose, the inflammation flared back up. Apparently this isn’t cool. Dr. C put me back on the highest dose and is slowing the taper way down in hopes my liver will respond and de-inflame like it should.

So, I’m on a raging steroid, but I’m not actually raging. I’m still mostly just tired and feel like I’m dragging a sack of rocks around with me wherever I go. My appetite is returning, which I’m grateful for, and I haven’t been full-on nauseous for a couple of days now. So I’m slowly gaining back some weight, though I’m still more gaunt than “slender” or “trim”. Sadly, none of the fun skinny words apply.

Along with that, my face is in full pimple bloom—with steroids come steroid acne. I’ve taken to dusting off my zit-popping skills and spending several minutes a night attacking any new spots, then giving it all a good scrubbing and dabbing the worst offenders with a stiff astringent (I know, I know—you’re not supposed to do this. But I can’t just leave them there). I haven’t done this since high school, and frankly, I don’t love having to do it again.

Basically, I’m a too-skinny, pizza-faced grouch who wants to slump on the couch all day. It’s like I’m a teenager all over again.

I made a comment to this effect the other day in a chat with my cousin, and it reminded me of one of my favorite pictures:

 Me at age 13. 

I know.

Bless. Her. Heart.

The thing is, I remember so well what was happening behind this picture. I was in 8^th grade, and like all 8^th graders, I wanted to be Fabulous with a capital ‘F’. I had graduated into the Young Women’s group at my church, which was full of older, bubbly, sophisticated girls who wore blue mascara and 80’s perms like pros. Their Levi 501s were perfectly pegged, their IZOD shirts full of actual boobs. They jammed to their Walkmans, could cry on cue to any Air Supply song, and had many an impassioned conversation about Luke and Laura while I listened from a respectful distance, wide-eyed and wishing I was allowed to watch General Hospital.

But I wasn’t, and that was just the cherry on top of all the ways I didn’t measure up. At that point, the only part of my body that had reached puberty was my feet, which sprouted into the size 7s I still wear today. The rest of me was working on it, as evidenced by a constantly shiny t-zone and fresh pimples every morning. I also had these long legs and arms that just seemed to dangle everywhere, so of course I hunched my shoulders and squidged up my back in an effort to contain them. You can see how well that worked.

The worst of it, though, was this: I knew that wasn’t me. Inside that skinny, cowering shell, the inner me felt big and invincible and ready for life. I wanted to try stuff and see stuff and do stuff. I felt smart and full of possibility, and the jokes in my head totally cracked myself up. I remember fairly crackling with everything I wanted to be. I was a star busting to shine, and I wanted to show the world.

So when our Young Women leaders announced we were going to have a fashion show activity, I latched right on to the idea. This was my chance to show everyone I was more than the mousy girl diligently checking off requirements in my Personal Progress book. I was going to be poised and gracious, floating across the church stage resplendent in the latest trends. People would sigh at my appearance, and someone watching from the hard metal cultural hall chairs would probably murmur, “Wow, that Jill has really got it together.”

You see, I was thirteen years old. I thought if I LOOKED fabulous, I would BE fabulous.

So I went to work. The fashion show was a few weeks away, so I had time to make myself a new outfit. My friend had a dress I thought was super cute, so my mom and I (mostly my mom) figured out how to tweak one of her well-used patterns and copy it. We bought the pink and grey fabric that was all the rage in 1982, and I found a string of pink plastic beads on sale at the local Kmart. It was near Easter, and since I was making my own dress, my mom offered to buy the shoes. As I recall, I had to get size 6, because my size 7 feet were too narrow to stay in the heel unless they were crammed-in solid.

I used my 8^th grade Home Ec skills to sew the dress, which turned out pretty well except the bodice ended up about three inches too short. No worries—the design had a sash, so I just made it extra wide to cover the fact that the skirt started at my rib cage. My mom gave me a Toni’s home perm that stunk up our kitchen for two full days—and may or may not have actually taken—and I was ready.

I so remember this night. I brought all my beauty essentials to the church restroom, curled my hair just so with my curling iron, pulled on my white nylons (??), and made sure the bow was good and wide to cover the bulky seam around my belly. Then I lined up with the other girls backstage and waited my turn.

The idea was that each girl would walk across the stage, pause at that full-length mirror, and gaze at herself for a moment as if pondering her Divine Nature or Individual Worth or whatever. When the pondering was done, she’d turn, smile serenely at all the proud parents, and some leader would snap her photo from the floor below.

So that’s what I did. Sort of.

Mostly I just trembled and shuffled in my too-small shoes, stopped at the mirror to give the sweaty girl reflected there a cursory glance, then turned and waited an eternity with a frozen smile on my face for the camera’s flash to go off. As soon as it did, I skedaddled off the stage to a charitable smattering of applause. As far as I know, nobody sighed or murmured, except for maybe my sweet, ever-supportive mother—and even if she did, I can’t guarantee her words included the phrase “really got it together.”

But, you know what? I tried. I just didn’t have a lot to work with.

At that stage in my life, I was a big, big spirit inside a body that had not caught up yet. I mistakenly thought that if I could make my outside look like I wanted my inside to be, somehow that would transform me into someone new. The problem was, my inside wasn’t fabulous yet, either. I knew I could be, but I was thirteen years old. All the stuff that would make me cool was barely breaking through the surface.

But my inside self wanted to already be there, so it dressed and permed and shoved shoes onto my poor, little, ill-prepared body. And gamely, my body stepped up, teetering across a small stage in Orem, UT and posing for this photo that has both horrified and delighted me ever since.

The best thing about being thirteen is that it’s temporary, and I moved on from that moment in many ways. In college, I discovered ballroom dance, and this time I strapped my size 7s into Latin sandals when I caught the fire. I had almost no prior dance training, so I took every ballroom class I could squeeze into my schedule and practiced every spare minute I could find. I tried out and didn’t make the beginning team, so I practiced harder and tried out again.

Eventually, I made the top touring team, and with them traveled throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. I won world-class competitions and danced on stages a hundred times bigger than that little stage in Orem, wearing thousand-plus-dollar gowns custom made for me. I had a bagful of sparkly dance shoes that actually fit, and I wore them with pride as I performed alongside great friends and smiled as big as I could at the mass of faces vaguely visible just beyond the footlights. Afterwards, there was always applause—roaring applause—and when I spoke with audience members, their eyes glowed. “I loved every minute of that,” they’d say, pumping my hand, or in the case of some kids, reaching out to touch a feather or rhinestone. “You guys make me want to dance!”

That comment always made me especially happy. I loved to dance—loved, loved, LOVED it—and knowing someone else experienced a piece of that just made it better. My teammates and I spent hours training our bodies to move perfectly together or flick a kick that portrayed just the right exuberance or hold a topline that looked far more relaxed than it actually felt. For every pair of glitzy performance shoes I wore onstage, I had three pair of tattered practice shoes, some of them held together with duct tape. All of us did. And we did it to convey a feeling. We did it because we wanted to share something beautiful, and we wanted to share something excellent. We wanted to share something we loved.

So yeah, I was finally Fabulous. And you know what? I found out it had very little to do with how my body looked or dressed.

You see, I had to earn it. Every penny I spent on lessons and shoes and even tuition came from my job at the university library and later as a beginning dance teacher. My degree was actually in English Literature, so I took a full schedule of academic classes at the same time I was doing all this dance. I was tired a lot. A LOT. But happy. Every day was full, full, full of practice and classes and work and homework and friends—all of which lit sparks throughout my inside self. Those sparks, in turn, fueled my outer body to shine with the "got it together" confidence I'd wanted to portray back when I was thirteen.

I was doing something I loved to my core, and my body helped me do it well. Fabulous with a capital 'F'.

In my case, this happened through dance, but I’ve seen Fabulous happen over many other avenues. People who use their voices to sing, or their arms and legs to play sports, or their fingers to coax magic from musical instruments—when folks find ways to convey what makes them special, there is no limit to the Fabulous they can achieve. And I’m not just talking about the performing arts. Without a doubt, some of the best, most Fabulous people I know would be at a loss if forced to participate in a traditional talent show. But their bodies are the perfect representation of who they are inside—lips that can smile in any situation, hands that are quick to help, words that only encourage, and eyes that drink you in like they can’t get enough of what you are saying. I think my favorite physical attribute might be a deep, belly laugh. I wish I had one of those. It’s impossible to hate someone who enjoys a single, given moment that much.

Now obviously, I couldn’t dance forever, but I took my body with me into the next phase of life and found whole new levels of Fabulous. I married Brad, and together we had four children—truly the most significant miracle I’ve ever been a part of. After every birth, I held a perfect, new person and wondered how the heck that just happened. Nine months of minimal effort—eating right and the requisite vitamins—and now I had this baby that made my heart want to explode with love and wonder and gratitude. My body really came through for me on that. My kids are absolutely my greatest gift.

And it came through for me in lots of other ways, too. Over the years, it has built things, written things, and painted an embarrassing number of walls various shades of beige. It has moved all over the world, wearing flip-flops in Arizona, Uggs in Michigan, and cute little clicky heels on cobblestones in Berlin. I’ve even been known to squeeze these size 7s into Texas cowboy boots. It has eaten mountains of Thai food with friends, stayed up way too late talking, and shivered in Bear Lake every summer since I can remember. It is very good at accepting waist-high hugs from Primary children, and its lap is just right for reading bedtime stories. It’s quite different from the body that danced across continents, but I still think it’s pretty great. We’ve been through a lot together. We’re friends.

Now that same body hurts, it’s tired, and it’s being attacked.

But inside, my old inner me is still raring to go. It’s tempting to lose patience and think denigrating thoughts as I stand at my bathroom mirror and try to stay ahead of a complexion I thought I said good-bye to decades ago. I want to be able to stand up straight, throw my shoulders back, and greet the world in an outer shell that matches everything I’ve learned to love about myself. 

But then I stop mid-zit and look into the same brown eyes I’ve been looking into forever. The wrinkles around them crinkle as I smile.

It’s okay if I don’t look perfect or vibrant or feel up to much besides resting and trying to heal. Thirty-five years ago, my body stepped up and did its best to deliver a thirteen year-old’s dream. This sick little shell is still my friend, and now it’s my inner self’s turn to step up and take one for the team.

So I lower my hand and walk away on feet that have worn all kinds of shoes and done everything I’ve ever asked them to do. 

The Fabulous is still there.

A win?

We’ve had a long day at the cancer center, and this is where things stand:

Good news: The two brain lesions we treated with radiation surgery in October are significantly smaller, even the big, ugly one. This is exactly what we were hoping for. They should continue to shrink, which we will watch over the next two or three months.

Not-so-good news: The MRI from last Thursday shows I have four new brain lesions. Two of them are teensy, tiny—in fact, too small to treat with radiation right now (the doctor said if they tried, they’d likely zap more healthy tissue than bad, because they’re too small to aim for accurately).  We will watch these carefully and act as necessary in the future. The other two new lesions are also quite small, but can be treated. I will have the same radiation surgery on these that I had in October, hopefully within the next couple of weeks.

So-so news: The labs on my inflamed liver came back, and the numbers are sky-high again—as high as when I was hospitalized (which is why I’ve been feeling so crummy this last week). Luckily, the doctor feels we can bring it down without IV steroids, but I’m back on a high dose of oral steroid and will be for a while (six-ish weeks) until my liver is back to normal. This sets us back as far as resuming any immunotherapy treatment, which I’m kind of glad about because immunotherapy sucks. But at the same time, we need to do something systemic (immunotherapy) to keep these stupid new lesions from popping up. When we resume immunotherapy, it won’t be the same combination of drugs we’ve already done, because those have proven to be too dangerous for my liver. I will probably just take one drug (either nivolumab or pembrolizumab), which isn’t as hard side-effects-wise, but also isn’t as strong a melanoma-fighting weapon. So, that kind of sucks, too.

So…yeah. On the drive home from Dallas, Brad and I couldn’t decide if this was a good or a bad day.

But then I came home to a couple of things that tipped the scale into good.

1) A package on my doorstep full of favorite things—including Brian Regan DVDs; how’s that for a great idea?—from my aunt and cousins who know too, too, too well the gauntlet cancer runs a family through. 

2)    An anonymous gift of a luscious blanket and this va-va-voom eye shade.

For some reason, this cracked Brad and I up when I modeled it for him, more because of our taut emotions than because of any real humor, I’m sure. But it was just what we needed.

All-in-all, I’m going to call today a win. We have some progress and some regression, and frankly I’m relieved to know there’s a reason I still feel so lousy and I’m not just being a big baby. I’m armed with my bucket of steroid tablets and hope to start feeling better soon. The radiation surgery doesn’t scare me like it did before, and I feel very blessed we are catching and attacking these new brain lesions so quickly. And for now, I have some time away from immunotherapy to focus on planning my sweet daughter’s wedding, which is what I’d much rather think about anyway.

Thank you for the prayers, gifts, thoughts, and above all, love. They are real, and they’re working miracles in my soul.

Miracles, the mundane, and milk

Ya’ll know I like to write. About four years ago, when I was picking at—and botching—my first attempt at a novel, I joined an online writers’ workshop to get a little help. There, I met a community of writers, and as tends to happen when like-minded people get together, formed some friendships. Some I have met in real life, most I have not, but I bonded with a few, and we developed a relationship in which we exchanged work with each other for feedback, both on the workshop site and via personal emails.

One of these partners was a Christian literature writer from Colorado (I’ll call her C). While Christian lit is not my favorite, we both share a love of historical fiction and enjoyed chatting online about our writing goals and personal values. About a year after we “met”, C told me she was working on a non-fiction piece comparing different core beliefs among Christian religions and asked if I would give her feedback on the Mormon section. 

I, of course, agreed.

So she sent it to me, and I waded through about fifty pages of half-truths and misunderstandings. She’d clearly done a lot of research, but sadly most of her sources weren’t affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (that’s the real name of the Mormons), so the doctrines and interpretations were pretty screwy. I did my best to correct and explain, and suggested more reliable sources, which she seemed appreciative of, and I think it turned out to be a good collaboration. 

But one email exchange stands out in my mind, and I have thought a lot about this topic in the years since.

Miracles.

This was a big deal to C, and as a Christian believer, she felt miracles were a key component to her testimony. She shared some miracles she’d experienced in her life—things like family members’ lives being saved—and asked me if I’d ever seen a miracle.

“Well, yes,” I thought. “I feel like I see the hand of God in my life all the time.” So, I sent her a link to a blog post I wrote at the end of our stay in Germany in which I detailed how I’d felt God promise to look after me and then listed many of the ways I’d seen Him do so. I’m not gonna lie—I’m kind of proud of that post, and I expected her to respond with some glowing praise. 

Instead, I got an email that said something like, “No. A miracle.”

Huh?

So I typed back, “what do you mean?”

She proceeded to explain that a miracle is a BOOM moment in which God swoops in and fixes something terrible, or makes something right, or in some way changes the course of a person’s life BIG TIME. In her view, a miracle needs to be scientifically unexplainable or otherwise impossible so there is no denying God is the one behind it. She then said something interesting.  “You Mormons always do this. Whenever I ask for a miracle, you tell me about something that just happens in daily life. That’s not a miracle.”

Oh. I guess I didn’t know that.

I didn’t respond for a few days. Her statement gave me pause for a couple of reasons: 1) because even though my “miracle” wasn’t big, it felt like a miracle to me, and 2) I didn’t realize this was a phenomenon among Mormons. I suppose it’s fair to say I am a product of my upbringing, and having grown up in the LDS church and listening to testimonies and lessons and talks, I had learned to look at my relationship with God through a Mormon lens. We Mormons believe in prayer and answers and having a connection with deity that allows for personal revelation. You know, miracles. Right?

It’s always interesting to me to discover the world isn’t only what I know, so I thought a lot about what C said and about how my beliefs must look to her. I tried to explain to her how I feel like God is my Heavenly Father first and he is there to provide support and love through anything I may need help with. She countered with her own beliefs, which sounded to me like God’s role was more of a puppet master maneuvering the lives of His people. It was a respectful exchange, though in the end we agreed to disagree on this point and eventually moved on to other topics.

But I think about it still, especially lately when I’ve been so desperate for heavenly help. It’s amazing how REAL and NECESSARY God feels to me as I am forced to consider where this cancer could take me. Right now, I’m certainly not at death’s door, and honestly, I’m filled with a lot of hope that the treatments I’ve done so far will be successful. But I can’t ignore the chance they won’t be, and I can’t ignore how serious my situation is to warrant such drastic actions. This last month on immunotherapy has been HARD, emotionally and physically. Cancer is big and awful. It requires a big, awful fight. 

And realistically, someday it will probably kill me. I don’t say that to be dramatic, but to be honest. Melanoma likes to lurk and hide, and though we may wipe it away now, there’s an excellent chance it will come back. I will deal with scans and tests and possible treatments for the rest of my life, and one day—hopefully in a LOT of years—it won’t go away again. I’m okay with that.  It’s not like I never thought I’d die. I’m just fighting for more time before that happens. A whole bunch more time.

But last week, that fight felt daunting. Ya’ll already know the story of the non-infusion day and how I ended up in the hospital with an inflamed liver. I was so sick ya’ll—soooooo sick—and I had several people tell me they were fasting and praying specifically that I could eat. I can’t tell you how miserable I was every time I put something in my mouth, and that misery spiraled down and down into a cycle of not eating, then feeling worse because I hadn’t eaten, then feeling even worse when I tried to eat again, then feeling even worse when I didn’t. Things were getting dire, and the twelve pounds l lost in a week was just another reason my doctor sent me to the hospital. I didn’t realize this until later, but the nurses had instructions to record everything I ate as well as every time I threw up.

Which is all very well and good, but nobody could do anything to make it better. With the nausea and dry mouth, I simply couldn’t eat. I was on a constant IV, which helped keep me fueled and hydrated, but every time the nutrition people brought a meal tray, I spent the first five minutes or so staring at it with the same helpless knot in my gut I’d had at home. I’d try, always with the fruits or veggies first as I could swallow them, and then I’d move onto a soup or saucy entrée, chasing down every bite with a sip of ice water from my ever-present hospital mug. It was gross—water in a dry mouth tastes like chalk—so after a bite or two I’d have to stop so I didn’t puke up what I’d gotten down.

The second day I was there, my lunch tray appeared with applesauce, some kind of BBQ pork sandwich, and steamed broccoli. I ate the applesauce, then turned to the broccoli, which proved to be much drier than it looked. As little broccoli goobers adhered to my teeth, I reached for my water, my stomach churning, only to see the nutrition person had moved my mug when he set down my tray. It was on a table out of my reach, and I was trapped in bed under the tray holder with my stomach lurching dangerously.

So I reassessed. Applesauce was gone, BBQ pork seemed like a bad idea, but…there was that stupid carton of milk that comes with every hospital meal. I’m not much of a milk drinker, and frankly, the dairy products I’d tried to eat (yogurt, ice cream, cottage cheese) had left me with a icky, sticky coating in my mouth, so I’d been ignoring the milk. But in this moment, it was the only liquid available, so I tore into the carton and took a swig.

Hold.

The.

Phone.

The milk, still ice-cold from the fridge, slithered over the broccoli goobers and slid them right off my teeth. I took another swig. It didn’t taste like chalk. So I got brave and nibbled a bit of the sandwich bun, immediately following it with a sip of milk. It went right down, and IT WASN’T TERRIBLE. In fact, it was sweet and kind of good.

I felt like a kid on Christmas. This was mind-blowing! I was able to eat the whole top bun from my sandwich and even some of the pork. Meat and milk—not necessarily something I’d ever put together—but it WORKED. And I didn’t throw up.

This was a big turning point. From that point on, I made sure I had plenty of milk with every meal and snack, and I was able to eat more and more. I think something about the fat content mimics saliva, because milk works soooooooo much better than water to wash food down. And if it's icy, it doesn't add much taste to the food or leave a dairy residue. By the time I left the hospital, I felt so much more confident in my ability to take care of myself and eat what I needed. On our way home, Brad and I stopped at PF Changs while we waited to fill a prescription, and I ordered lettuce wraps and milk. Yep. It worked. I was able eat a couple with zero puking. Never mind that I looked like a five year-old with my cute little milk with a straw.

I’ve now been home a week and haven’t thrown up once. My appetite still isn’t back, but I find I can eat anything that sounds good if I pair it with a 2% chaser, and I’m gaining some of my weight back. But more than that, the frantic, spiraling hopelessness is gone. No more food torture! We’ve stopped the infusions, but my doctor told me it could take a month or more for my dry mouth to go away. That seemed like a death sentence at the time. Now, I know I will make it.

So…is this a miracle?

I guess I can’t answer that for everyone. C wouldn’t think so, and probably some of you are thinking it was a simple, happy coincidence—it was just a well-placed carton of milk, for crying out loud. Okay. You’re allowed to call it whatever you want.

But so am I. And I think it was.

One of my all-time favorite books ever is Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns, largely because of a scene that happens in chapter 48. In this particular passage, twelve year-old Will Tweedy is eavesdropping on his grandfather’s conversation with his wife, Miss Love. Grandpa is sick in bed and he and Miss Love are talking about God and what it means when Jesus said “Ast, and it shall be given,” when it’s clear not everyone gets what they pray for, and lots of people get blessings they never ask for.

Miss Love responds by saying sometimes God just says no, but Grandpa shuts her down with, “You sound like ever preacher I ever heard. But Jesus didn’t say God might say no when we say gimme. He said God’s go’n say yes. Anythang we ast for, we go’n git it. Well, hungry folks pray for food, but they shore don’t all git fed. And sick folks beg him for healin’, but lots of’m die, or maybe live on in bed. Jesus had to mean something diff’rent from what folks think He meant, else to my mind He was a dang fool to go round promisin’ what God wouldn’t do. But Jesus warn’t no fool, Love, so what did He mean?”

They then go back and forth for several paragraphs about the possible sacrilege of his questions. Grandpa finally responds with one of the most profound thoughts I’ve ever read, and even though Cold Sassy Tree is not scripture, the words ring with truth for me:

“Well’m, faith ain’t no magic wand or money-back gar’ntee, either one. Hit’s jest a way a-livin’. Hit means you don’t worry th’ew the days. Hit means you go’n be holdin’ on to God in good or bad times, and accept whatever happens, Hit means you respect life like it is—like God made it—even when it ain’t what you’d order from the wholesale house. Faith don’t mean the Lord is go’n make lions lay down with lambs jest cause you ast him to, or make fire not burn. Some folks, when they pray to git well and don’t even git better, they say God let’m down. But I say thet warn’t even what Jesus was a-talkin’ about. When Jesus said ast and you’ll git it, He was givin’ a gar’ntee a-spiritual healin’, not body healin’. He was sayin’ thet if’n you git beat down—scairt to death you cain’t do what you got to, or scairt you go’n die, or scairt folks won’t like you—why all you got to do is put yore hand in God’s and He’ll lift you up. I know it for a fact, Love. I can pray, ‘Lord hep me not be scairt,’ and I don’t know how, but it’s like a eraser wipes the fears away…

“Jesus meant us to ast God to hep us stand the pain, not beg Him to take the pain away.”

During my weeks of illness, I've had lots of people praying for spit. Heck, I was praying for spit, harder than I’ve prayed in a long time. Then in the spirit of Grandpa Rucker Blakeslee, I also started praying for a way to eat, whether I had spit or not.

It didn’t work.

So I’ll admit it—I stopped praying. I just felt sorry for myself. 

But ya’ll didn’t quit, and more importantly, God didn’t forget. While I agree wholeheartedly with Grandpa Blakeslee that faith is a partnership with God in which He helps me to change to meet the challenges I face, I also agree with C that sometimes a loving Heavenly Father inserts Himself into my life to remind me He’s here and He loves me. And sometimes that means fixing a seemingly impossible situation.

Hence, the miracle of the well-placed milk.

While I was thinking about this post, a dear friend from Michigan stopped by with this gift she made. It’s a super soft crocheted sheep, and as she put it, “I wanted to give you something to remind you that you have a shepherd.”

Yes, I do.

And He works all kinds of miracles.

*********

Since many are asking, here are some “How you doin’?” updates:

Brain lesions: I will find out this Wednesday (Jan. 24) if the radiation I had in October shrunk the two lesions in my brain. One lesion was smallish and the doctors were fairly confident radiation would destroy it. Another, deeper and near the center, was about an inch in diameter and more concerning. I’m not sure what the next step will be if the first radiation didn’t work, so we’re all hoping it did. I will post once I have the news—probably right away if it’s good, and maybe a little slower if it’s not. Wednesday will either be a really good or really bad day.

Liver lesions: Immunotherapy is on hold for the foreseeable future while my inflamed liver heals. I am on a high dose of oral steroids to speed up the process, but unlike when I took them before, I am not at all revved up with ‘roid rage. That tells me my body is soaking up and using all the steroid-y mojo. As I eat and get my strength back, the nausea is improving and I find I only need anti-nausea meds in the morning. I am uncommonly tired, most of the time feeling like I’ve got a sack of bricks on my back, and nap several times a day. Yesterday, I went to an hour and a half of church, and despite the fact I didn't do much besides sit on a padded pew discreetly sucking sacrament bread out of my teeth, I still collapsed on the couch as soon as I got home and didn’t move for four hours. But then I ate a cupcake—with milk!—and counted my blessings. I will have a detailed CT scan sometime mid-February to determine what treatment, if any, the liver lesions will still need. The doctor says it’s possible we’ve already done enough (fingers crossed).