kindness

We Made It To Easter

~ Bethany ~ 5 Comments

You know what is really hard to do when you have joint pain? Type a blog post. The good news is that this round I did not experience horrific jaw pain. The bad news is that instead of 1 day of joint pain that was managed with 5mg of oxy, I had 3+ days that required 10 and 15 mg of oxy to manage. Still, I will take that over the jaw pain.

I also found out that my white blood cells were super low (like 0.08 when normal white blood cell counts are around 4.50-11). This unfortunately meant that I was advised to skip Easter services. Normally, Jarrod and I try to go to the full Tridium — Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil, and Easter Day (though we skipped Easter Day last year because I wasn’t fully recovered from first chemo). It hurt pretty deep to have to skip something I’d been looking forward to and constantly rechecking with each schedule change to make sure I’d still feel up to attending.

Thankfully our parish came through for us. One of our friends tested out skyping us with his phone set up between two hymn books in the choir loft on Friday, then repeated it on Sunday morning. It was lovely. I cried because it meant so much to me. Then, our friend and pastor, Amanda, came over on Easter after service to bring us Communion. The blood made my poor tongue burn (chemo kills digestive cells, including taste buds, so essentially my tongue is really raw a lot of the time as baby taste buds try to regrow) but it was so fulfilling to have Eucharist on one of the holidays I consider most important.

It hasn’t been an easy round by far, and there’s much more to write soon about kindness and gratitude, plus the perspective gained from being treated on a leukemia ward, but that’ll come another day. For now, I’m improving greatly and I’m not in pain, but I’m still dealing with a lot of chemo fatigue so I get tired and exhausted pretty easily. Walking 2 full laps of our condo building hallway left me shaking and leaning on the wall the other evening, even with multiple pauses to catch my breath.

Also, on a crabby note, having allergies on top of chemo side effects just feels rude, like the universe rubbing salt in my wound. Thankfully those are getting a bit under control. Being exhausted and fatigued, but unable to sleep for coughing (or, my husband’s favorite — me being so exhausted I literally sleep while hacking away like some old school consumption patient), is just not cool of the universe.

However, we’re in Easter. My husband made me a delicious Easter dinner complete with a from-scratch Swiss cake roll. He made me a display of rabbits to call back to a childhood tradition my sister and I shared. I got to see lots of photos of my nephew at my childhood ballpark. And, I got to take part in the Easter worship because the people of my parish are kind and considerate, and went out of their way to include us when it would have been so easy for them to simply say they were busy and unable to help.

I think, even more than stuffed bunnies on a Pope JP-II-blessed Jubilee cloth, that’s the real spirit of Easter.

display of stuffed bunnies

I Think He’d Have Been Proud

bethany and her dad in front of a beach
~ Bethany ~ 8 Comments

Last year on my birthday my dad wrote the following in his birthday email to me:

“Mom and I are very proud of you, and very impressed with how well you and Jarrod have integrated yourself into [your] community….It is said that a person’s wealth can be measured by how many friends they have; if so, you and Jarrod have riches galore.

You also have inherited your Mom’s talent (and perhaps some of mine) with the written word….You have had a lot to write about over the last year; not all of is has involved fun times; but your spirit remains indomitable. And I love that about you.”

bethany and her dad in front of a beach

It’s one of the best compliments my dad ever gave me (up there with “you have a good heart”) and something I try to live into. In that spirit, I think that Dad would have been proud that yesterday, A Practical Wedding (APW) published an essay I wrote about the past year. Last year when I posted a comment on an APW happy hour that I was trying to figure out what to do because I might lose all my hair right before my wedding, people were kind. Not only did other commenters provide advice and tips and well wishes, but Maddie (who works at APW) sent links to posts dealing with cancer and weddings and then did even more.

See, APW does a partnership with Pantene Beautiful Lengths where they encourage women to donate hair or money to Pantene Beautiful Lengths so that women undergoing chemo can receive wonderful free wigs. A lot of women grow their hair out for the weddings then get drastic cuts after the wedding. Through this partnership, those cuts can help women. They can help women like me.

Maddie got me in touch with Pantene Beautiful Lengths and I soon had a beautiful wig in a cute style that was pretty much my exact hair color. It was insanely kind. When Maddie emailed me last week to ask if I could share an update because she was prepping a post about the partnership, I think she got a bit more than she bargained for. I was preparing to head to Cleveland for a baseball game and was in a rush so I typed up a quick summary email and attached an essay I’d been playing with in case she could use it to pull any quotes for her post.

She asked if they could edit the essay for length and post it, which felt like a huge compliment. Dad had often complimented my writing and said that it was a meaningful gift for me to share.

Ernest Hemingway said that writing is easy, “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Well, I tend to use a laptop (sometimes an actual paper notebook) but I try to be honest. I guess if I were following Hemingway’s quote, I’d say that I bleed, but then try to organize and clean up the blood so it makes some sense. I also usually have to pet Toby and convince him it’s okay for me to type.

gray cat behind a laptop

I don’t know if my writing will help anyone other than myself. It could just be a selfish act that helps me make sense of the world. But maybe it’s something that can help others in the APW community, the way that I was helped.

If one reader donates hair or money to Pantene Beautiful Lengths because of my essay, or one reader is moved to find and give kindness, then I think I’ll have done something good.

Regardless, in a month where I’m missing my dad like crazy (October was also his birthday month), it feels right that an essay sharing how love and kindness kept me going despite the worst year of my life is published on APW. APW has a wide readership so I hope it inspires another reader to be kind and indomitable, no matter what life brings.

I hope it does some good.

There’s So Much Light

~ Bethany ~ 3 Comments
A sunburst in a blue sky
The day I took this, everything felt glorious and full of possibility and hope.

It’s been a difficult week, the kind where a beautiful blue sky with a shining sun might not seem appropriate. The biggest reason at the moment actually isn’t my cancer or recovery (apparently my recovery is going well, I’m improving right on schedule), but my cat. He’s got multiple stones in his bladder causing him a lot of discomfort and pain. It should be fixable, but it’s stressful. No one likes seeing someone they love in pain.

Anyway, it’s been a super stressful week even though it’s only Wednesday. I could complain. Admittedly, I have complained to friends. I’ve also cried. I’ll probably cry again and complain again before the end of this week. I’m okay with that. Right now though, I’m not going to complain. Right now, I’m going to look at good things.

See, there’s a lot of darkness in the world. Whether it’s natural disasters, disasters caused by incompetence or worse, people being petty, sickness, death, and just the everyday problems of life, in my eyes it can all combine to make things seem dark and bleak.

However, there’s a lot of good in the world, too. Sometimes it’s a couple with their first child who still sent a really sweet note and a gift certificate to our preferred grocery store. Sometimes it’s people training their dogs to be therapy dogs, then actively going out so other people can benefit from their dogs. Sometimes it’s a friend who is scared of cats coming over so someone can get our cat’s carrier from the car (I’m not allowed currently). Sometimes it’s an aunt taking time away from a busy conference to visit her niece. Sometimes it’s family members driving from out of state for dinner. Sometimes it’s friends making daily visits to make sure my medical needs are addressed, while also providing hugs. Sometimes it’s as simple as friends listening and providing advice and love.

All that good (along with much more than I could ever write if I wrote the world’s longest blog post) combines to form a bright, shining sun that drives back the darkness of the world. I sincerely consider myself blessed and lucky to witness and experience as much goodness as I do. Yes, parts of my life suck and are difficult and full of darkness. But overall? Overall there is so much kindness that every dark sky is brightened.