Thoughts Happen

Camp Kesem sends kids whose parents have cancer to a free week of summer camp

There’s nothing like a little illness to make me focus on what’s important: food on the table, family, a good night’s sleep. It narrows down my vision like the knob on one of those sightseeing binoculars. Even a mild cold, which I’m dealing with this week (hmm... couldn’t have been brought on by all the sleepless nights of last week, could it?) knocks me off my stride and makes me realize how much I take for granted a normal week when I’m feeling well.

 For families dealing with the big ‘C,’ normal weeks are few and far between. I recently found out about an amazing organization called Camp Kesem that brings a week of sleep-away summer camp to kids whose parents have, or have had, cancer. The camps are college-student-run and based at 23 colleges and universities around the country. The primary mission of camp is to give kids a week to just have fun and be kids in an environment where everybody understands what its like to be dealing with life with a sick parent. At a recent fundraising event for the UCSD camp, I heard families, counselors and campers talk about how much camp meant to the kids in this tough situation and how much the parents appreciated the care and passion that the counselors have for giving their kids the most amazing week of their lives. Check out this video for a sampling of what Camp Kesem is all about. 

Did I mention that the entire week of camp is free? All of it is provided at no cost to the families, who may be going through financial difficulties due to treatment or could just use one less thing to worry about. 

You can help send kids to camp simply by clicking your mouse once a day in May. Camp Kesem is applying for a Pepsi Refresh Everything Grant for $250K to send kids to camp this summer. You can vote once every day in May by going to www.clickforkesem.org , so spread the word and get clicking!

I Can Count All My Bones

I can count all my bones. The line jumped at me from the back of the church during the reading of Psalm 22 during a Holy Week service. It pricked my skin and rattled around me. What an amazing thing to say.

 I can count all my bones. I am human, and I can see that I am human. I can count all my bones.

It’s the kind of thing you say when you’ve tried every way you can possibly think of to get out of yourself and ultimately accepted that it’s ineffectual and pointless, and besides, it’s too much damn work.

I can count all my bones when I’ve become transparent. When I’ve given up thinking I’m anything but an improbably arranged collective of sinew, ligaments and squishy innards bandaged together in a wrapping of stretchy skin, when I’ve abandoned all the fancy adornments of opinion and ideas about who I might be, then I can start counting.

Then I see, as if in a n X-ray, the ghastly ever-smiling framework underneath that sometimes peers out from behind the mirror. When it becomes familiar enough, I’m not afraid to start counting.

I can count all my bones when I accept that there is nothing else solid—what I think of as me is just gelatinous form loosely pressed onto this stick-like frame and draped over with thoughts, memories, dreams and desires.

I can count all my bones when I know myself well. When I’ve stopped running away and covering over and I’m fed up with all that, then I can sit down and lightly finger each smooth bone like beads on a mala. I can finally get to know what’s underneath.

Photo courtesy http://www.flickr.com/photos/narisa/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

10 Things I Learned From Having the Swine Flu

There’s something about being in a pandemic that makes you feel so—a part of something. Yes, it’s true; I got the swine flu. Not 12 hours after hitting the Publish button on my last post I was sliding into the clutches of the disease du jour (the CDC would have us call it the 2009 H1N1 flu, but let’s call a spade a spade, shall we?), and have spent the majority of the past 10 days homebound and bedridden, clawing my way out. So much for my recent Medicine Buddha Initiation from the Dalai Lama. Oh well, even he said it wasn’t a panacea.

Here are a few things I’ve learned:

1. “The suffering of this person will change.” I remembered this quote from Roshi Joan Halifax from the May Shambhala Sun in reference to her work with hospice patients. As I moved through the fever, chills, excruciating sore throat, snotty congestion, bone-throbbing sinus headache, debilitating weariness and hacking, sucking cough, I took comfort in Roshi Joan’s words that at least my suffering would change. Although I never was in danger of dying, there were moments I almost wished I would. (Okay, that is overly dramatic and not really true. But I was pretty effin’ miserable for a good six days.) Roshi Joan’s words apply both in and out of hospice.
2. I have not been nearly as fanatical about hand-washing as I should be. If Daughter thought I was Paranoid Sunscreen Mom before, she hasn’t seen nothin’ until she encounters Paranoid Hand-Washing Mom. (Actually, now I remember her telling me that the proper wash time is long enough to sing two renditions of “Happy Birthday,” so maybe I do not have any room to get high and mighty about it. But still.)
3. Do NOT let yourself get dehydrated. This can be difficult when every swallow feels like someone is sliding a rasp down your esophagus, particularly if you are home alone and have to will yourself off the couch. But do whatever you need to hydrate, as it is a self-perpetuating cycle that will exacerbate other symptoms, particularly fever. My situation improved greatly when my husband stayed home from work and delivered room-temperature watered-down Gatorade to my bedside that I forced myself to sip through a straw until I felt better. But even now I'm still working on it.
4. Cheerios is a Miracle Food. If I can’t eat anything else, I can always eat Cheerios. They have taken me through morning sickness, stomach viruses, and now the swine flu. There is nothing more comforting than a big bowl of Cheerios and milk, and if I can’t stomach the milk, I can peck at the oaty little circles one at a time, letting them dissolve in my mouth until the nutrients seep directly into my bloodstream. Or at least that’s what it feels like.
5. Being bedridden is a perfect time to listen to a story. None of the podcasts or grown-up audiobooks on my iPod were sufficiently comforting, so I browsed the Juvenile audiobooks and downloaded a childhood favorite, My Side of the Mountain.  It was the perfect excuse to regress to my 10-year-old self when Mom took care of everything. Speaking of Mom, I called and asked her in my croaking voice to tell me a story, as I could listen but not talk very much. Mom has never been great on the letter-writing front, but she loves to talk, and told me all about the recent family reunion I missed, catching me up on all the stories. It was great, and something I should take time to do more often.
6. Revel in small pleasures. The waft of a cool breeze on a fevered forehead, an afternoon shower and hint of rainbow, a plate of spaghetti cooked by someone who loves and cares for me that tasted like the best spaghetti I had ever had—these were a few of the unexpected delights I enjoyed while bedridden.
7. Be grateful for small victories. I finished an entire glass of Gatorade - yay! I took a shower today! I took a shower and washed my hair. It’s all in the perspective.
8. Human Beings are fickle creatures. After telling myself I would never take another pain-free swallow for granted again if I could only relieve the aforementioned rasp-like effect, what did I promptly do after that symptom ran its course? Uh-huh, I forgot all about it. (Pause for a moment to appreciate swallowing.)
9. Vaccinating is not all about You. I am Pro-Vaccination on most all fronts. This is something I knew before, but having the swine flu reinforced my position, which is that vaccinating for highly contagious and nasty diseases such as swine flu, chicken pox, mumps, or any of their ilk, is not just about you; it’s about your community. It says, “I am taking a stand that if I get exposed to this disease, it is not going any further.” If you don’t get the vaccine, you run the risk not only of getting sick yourself, but also of passing it on to others who may not have your resistance. The whole reason we don’t have smallpox, whooping cough or measles anymore is that a shitload of people got vaccinated for it. I’ve read some of the Anti-Vaccination arguments, but in my mind they don’t trump the greater good of squelching these diseases before they get a chance to spread. Unfortunately I did not get a chance to get vaccinated before I caught it this time, but I definitely would have.
10. I have awesome family, friends and neighbors. Everyone who has helped out in big and small ways over the past week and a half, whether by shuttling Daughter to and from school and after-school activities, taking me to the doctor, calling or emailing to check up on me, picking up my CSA veggies, sending me funny stories, calling to tell me a story, putting my name on the prayer chain, or just writing a friendly note on my facebook page, gets a great big Thank You from me. It doesn’t take much to realize how interdependent we really all are, and I appreciate every kindness. And of course Daughter and my husband Jim have been taking wonderful care of me, pretty much taking over running the household as well as going to the pharmacy, delivering Gatorade and tissues to my bedside and doing all the shopping, cooking and dishwashing. All in all, I’m a pretty lucky gal.

Photo credits:

Swine Flu photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/artnow/ / CC BY 2.0

Hand-washing photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifeontheedge/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Cheerios photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/culpfiction/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Oh $*%#, I am one of "Those People"

I do not want to be one of Those People. Those People have problems.

I see Those People in the Health section of the paper. People with cancer and Alzheimer’s and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. I think, “That’s really sad. Those poor people.” But what I’m also thinking is that only Those People have those problems. And I am not one of Those People. I am different. Separate. Other. So I don’t have aaanything to worry about. Nope. I am safe in my little world of Otherness.

Lately I am finding more and more of Those People. A woman I met in meditation has a recurrence of ovarian cancer and is undergoing brutal chemo treatments. Another friend suffers side effects of breast cancer treatment including a decreased sense of balance—she’s had several severe falls. Another family’s daughter has been kept home from Junior High since before Christmas with a mysterious ailment that defies diagnosis and leaves her with vertigo, debilitating headaches and stomach pain. And the list goes on from others. Diabetes. Stress fractures. Arthritis.

I have a lot of sympathy for them. Really. But I’m not one of them. Those things are tragic and unfortunate, but they only happen to Those People. And Those People are different from me, right?

Yet a nagging neck injury compounded by disc problems in my back has had me in and out of physical therapy for a year and grasping for help for what I originally thought was a minor annoyance. There are cracks in my Otherness cocoon.

I rail and curse and struggle and thrash to distance myself from Those People. Anything to fend off an identity as one of them. Because I’m not. I can’t be.

I try to think of one thing that they all have in common, that will distinguish them as a group Separate from myself, but the only common thread I can come up with is this: they all have bodies.

I have a body. Damn. Maybe I am one of Those People after all.