Time’s moving at a different pace now that I’ve been home for almost two weeks. I dove right back in to the end-of-school-year hustle, graduation parties, goat wrangling, 4-H preparations, laundry, softball practice, office work and what’s for dinner. I have been feeling fine, with just a little less stamina for it all and a few reminders in my body and mind of the toll the past few months has taken on me. The girls are officially out of school, reminding me how fun it was to be eight and ten under the heat of the summer sun and that’s good medicine.

Below is last week’s column, a little repeat from what you heard from me last week, and a bit of a reflection on my treatment process and what it meant to ring that bell.

Here’s to less cancer talk in the future and more commentary on the wildflowers and cows.

Ring the Bell

I’m sitting at my kitchen counter after braiding hair and reminders to brush teeth and find shoes and get backpacks and hurry up now. The floors aren’t swept and I’ve cleared a space for myself among the crumbs, water bottles and art supplies to tell you I’m no longer counting my life in weeks, because I’m home now.

After 33 proton radiation treatments and 6 chemo treatments over the course of 6 1/2 weeks, I rang the bell in the radiation department at Mayo Clinic on May 13^th. This bell is the bell of hope, not necessarily indicating that one is cancer free, but a declaration that a course of treatment has been completed or endured with every confidence, prayer and medical advancement in the works for that outcome.

Every weekday for those six weeks I lay on the table in the radiation room and they put a mask on me that went over my face and shoulders and strapped my head and upper body down nice and tight so I couldn’t move while I waited for the proton beam to be available to zap me and the tumors in three different places. The mask in radiation treatment is treated as a big thing, for lack of a better way to say it. It’s created as a cast over your face to fit perfectly and the care team worries about claustrophobia and takes comfort level seriously. Every day of the week they put that thing on me, and I lay still for anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, closing my eyes, listening to music and waiting for the “we have the beam,” voice to come over the speakers in that big room. In the three adjacent, identical rooms, there were three other people at the same time doing the same thing—strapped to a table, waiting on a beam. And then dozens of others in the waiting room, or on their way there, or making plans for their first or last visit. There are only 48 active proton radiation therapy centers in the US, so the machine at Mayo Clinic runs from 8 am to 11 pm every weekday, like clockwork.

As I entered the radiation room for the final time a tech asked me if I wanted to take my mask home with me, which some people do, as a reminder of what they conquered or for a Halloween costume or something. I said no, you keep it. Burn it. It’s over. But as I lay there getting my final zaps, I changed my mind, a little because I wanted to explain the process to my curious family and a lot because I wanted to burn it myself.

When I walked into the treatment room for the first time back in late March, I was about as annoyed as a person can get with my circumstances. Which was better than scared and better than angry. But I was sick of talking about how the process was going to make me feel, both physically and mentally. I was sick of the waiting and the explanations and all the tests and pre-appointments and answering the question, “Where are you from?” and “Where are you staying?” and “How are you today?” Me, the Queen of Small Talk and Chatter and Banter, didn’t find myself filling any awkward silence with my voice. I stepped in each elevator and just stood there, quietly, like a normal person. And when someone cracked a joke about sardines in a can or close quarters, I just wished they wouldn’t. I sat to get my blood drawn,or followed a staff member out of the waiting room and I didn’t do the work I typically feel so compelled to do in trying to make people comfortable with conversation. I just didn’t have it in me.

And when I read the long pamphlet laying out the schedule and expectations on how the treatment plan was going to go, complete with annoying side-effects and annoying appointments, finished off with a ringing of a bell, I couldn’t see myself participating in that ceremonious action. I wasn’t going to do it.

I know now I felt that way then because ringing the bell meant that this was happening, and at that time I was trying to hang on to every shred of normal I could hang on to like every strand of hair that has fallen out of my head since then. But as the weeks went on and I trudged down those hallways and stood in those elevators and sat in those waiting rooms and became a seasoned visitor to the radiation room, I softened to the experience.

Was it perspective, seeing those around me who are sick and fighting harder? Was it that I got more comfortable with my circumstance? Was it that I realized staying annoyed wasn’t going to make it easier? Was it the routine of it all bringing me closer and closer to the finish line? I’m not sure, but I became more myself in the process eventually, opening up, picking my favorite front desk lady and radiation therapist and giving people directions and smiling and sometimes even laughing in the elevator. When my husband joined me on my last trip through the parking garage and down the elevator and through the long hallways, I felt like grabbing his hand and skipping all the way.

So yeah, I changed my mind about that bell. There’s a reason it’s there.

Because this time has taken me away from my family for longer than anyone wants to be away, but I get to go home with shrinking tumors and bring with me what this time has given me:

Four new songs

Time to slow down and understand who I am in the quiet

An interest in watercolor painting

The Cher autobiography

Visits with my cousins, aunt and uncle and my far away friends

A little stress fracture in my foot from wandering to all the nearby pretty places and consequently, a better pair of walking shoes

An unreasonable annoyance with parking garages and construction

An appreciation for Kwik Trip Gas stations

More adoration for my husband and all he is

Appreciation for the messy and noisy parts of my life propelled by my daughters
A heart and body full of gratitude for my village

Heartburn and hair loss

Faith in the process

Hope

Thank you for all the love, notes, emails, calls, prayers and gifts along the way. If you need me, I’ll be making the preparations for the ‘burning of the mask’ celebration.

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It takes a village to heal
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It’s been over four weeks since surgeons at Mayo Clinic cut open my sternum, moved my ribs and lungs and heart valves (and whatever else was in the way) so they could remove the cancerous tumor attached to my airway.

And so they cut my airway, reattached it, then put my lungs back where they belonged and pulled and stapled my ribs back together.

They stitched my chin to my neck to make sure I didn’t move my head too far back, and then, day by day, during my stay in the hospital, a new tube or IV came out. And then the chin stitches were removed, and then three X-rays, one bronchoscopy and five days later, I was released back into the world that keeps on turning even while we hold our breath.

They think they got all the cancer. They think, but we’re still waiting to hear for sure.

I’m back at the ranch now with what I hope is the worst part behind me, slowly feeling a bit better and stronger each day.

Time will do that for you if you let it. It will get you to where you need to be. I’ve learned this lesson in my life before, but I’m still humbled by how helpless I feel in my own home, surrounded by the mess and the laundry and the projects we’ve made for ourselves.

All of that has to wait now the same way I have to wait to be able to grab my young daughters, lift them up, hug them tight or push them on the swing. Every morning, little Rosie asks me if my “owie” is better, which is code for, “Can you hold me yet?” And when I tell her I can’t, she sits beside me and we hold hands.

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I wish I could tell you I’ve taken time to read the books I haven’t had a chance to read, or written some profound music or poetry, or had some major revelation, but mostly, when you’re healing from something as traumatic as this, it seems like it takes about all the energy you have to mend. And lots of terrible shows on Netflix.

I can tell you I have never been more physically vulnerable. And when you find yourself so helpless, your family, friends and community, they are illuminated. All of a sudden you see them, and the way their hearts open, because you can no longer afford to say, “Oh no, that’s OK, we got this.”

Because in times like these, without your village, you don’t have it. To survive it you have to be gone, displaced, completely distracted, and it takes all you have in you to get through days of pain and healing, let alone continue under any kind of normal. At least for now.

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First family photo, halfway home after surgery…

And so you can’t do it alone. You need someone you trust to take care of the kids. You need your sister to feed the pets and plants. You need all the prayers and the well wishes and meals sent to your door. And while you don’t need that Juneberry pie, or gift cards and cash for gas and hotel stays and hospital bills, it sure helps ease one part of the burden of worry.

And you need your husband or your partner to get you dressed and open your pills and wash your hair and shave your legs and try his best at a ponytail and give up all his pillows in the hotel bed to make sure that you are comfortable. You need him to sit next to you in the hospital for five days wearing a mask and not complain once.

Taking a walk around Rochester the day before surgery

Hanging and healing in the hospital

And so here I sit, feet up, a little worse for the wear, but on the other side of the scariest thing I’ve done since parachuting out of a plane over the ocean.

I am a lucky woman, so even if they call tomorrow and tell me I need to undergo radiation to become cancer-free, I know I can do it. Because this world we live in, while so genuinely heartbreaking, gives us miracles every day.

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And to me, those miracles look a lot like my children laughing, or the purr of a kitten, the smell of the ranch after a storm or the crunch of a garden pea. To me, those miracles wear scrubs and masks, take my kids for a tea party, come to live with us while I recover, send cards and raise money and call to check in, pick up my medicine and teach me what it means to truly take care of one another.

And now that I know how it feels to be on this side of things, I understand better the ways to take care, too.

But for now, if you need me, I’ll be here, holding my daughters’ hands, eating casserole, walking slowly to the mailbox and healing up…