Finish Line

When you are running a race there is always a few spots where you check your time.  These are checkpoints where you can determine your progress.  On a track the count of laps becomes your markers.  Running cross country there are usually mile posts.  Whatever the markers may be, with them you can determine if you are running too slowly and need to increase your speed. Or, are you pushing too hard and need to slow down so you do not burn out.

One may think that when running a 5K the finish line is the ultimate marker.  A runner will tell you that the finish line of a race is nothing more than a marker of how you are doing.  Have you slowed down since your last race? Is your performance getting better or unchanged?  This will help you know how to train for your next race.  It seems like there is always another race to be run.

At the conclusion of the race there is always the awards ceremony.  That is when they announce the winners of all the different categories: there is overall male, overall female, and all the age classes.  It is the age groups that I wait to hear because I like to know how I did compared to those my age.

A couple of years ago I was pleased to have won my age bracket; but pride comes before the fall.  When they announced the winner of the over 70 age group that fellow had beat me by close to twelve minutes.  I was proud that I had run the 5K in just under 33 minutes; he had run it in 21 minutes!

I do not think this past week was a finish line but it certainly was a checkpoint within this race.  The double vision is no longer a problem which means I can drive the car.  My life of being chauffeured is over.  The hopes of the movie “Driving Mr. Randy” have been crushed.   

The visit with the retina specialist was very encouraging.  The fluid behind the nevus has dried.  The fluid was one of the markers of melanoma which had alerted my optometrist. This is the first indication that the radiation treatment is successful.  For this we give thanks.

This is really just the end of a lap not the end of the race.  It will be a few months until I return to Memphis.  At that time I will learn if there are more laps to be run or if the finish line is near.

Best...Worst

It was the best of times: it was the worst of times.

Ah, no one would write anything starting like that.

Let’s see, it was a great week, it was a disappointing week.

Yes!  That is much better.

It was a great week, it was a disappointing week.

The past week has been great.  The double vision has diminished greatly.  As long as I do not roll my eyes and I just look straight forward things are fine.  However, if I roll my eyes instead of turning my head my right eye gets all out of sorts.  I then must close my eyes and open them slowly.  This gives my brain a chance to realign my eyes and reset things correctly.   Some have wondered if my brain was ever aligned correctly but I am talking now about my eyes.

The past week has been disappointing.  Maybe not disappointing but frustrating.  This was the week I was to go to Guatemala with a mission team from church.  It would have been my seventh trip there and as with every other time I was looking forward to it.

Several years ago our church established a partnership with Clubhouse Guatemala, a mission organization ministering to the people of Guatemala.  Each year, sometimes more often, we send a team who participates in a number of different ministries.   The large projects take place within the schools and the feeding centers.  Smaller ones are in individual homes.

Clubhouse has feeding centers in both Guatemala City and in a number of the outlying villages.  Each center caters to school age children who would not have enough to eat if not for the center.  There the children get a meal as well as being tutored with their school work.  Once a quarter each center holds a birthday party for all of the kids who have had a birthday the previous three months.  Each birthday child receives a gift and all the kids go home with a party bag. Pizza, cake and ice cream is truly a special treat for kids everywhere.  But it is especially special when the child lives in a two maybe three room house with as many as six, eight, or more family members and Mom cooks over an open fire on the dirt floor in the middle of the living room.

That prompts other ministries of Clubhouse.  Due to cooking over an open fire many of the homes are full of smoke.  This causes a number of health problems for the family members regardless of their age.  Two things are done to help alleviate this problem.  First is the installation of wood burning stoves: stoves with a flu which exits the smoke from the house.  Second are medical clinics.

The ministry which takes place in the public schools is conducting Bible School.  The principals of the public schools invite Clubhouse to come into the school for a week and have Bible School for the kids.  It is just like Bible School here in the States.  We do music, crafts, recreation, refreshments, and most importantly a Bible story.  You would think that having to work through an interpreter would make it difficult but kids are kids the world over.  They are all eager to make new friends and will try their best to communicate, be it in English, Spanish, or just a big smile.

I had known since January that a team was going to be sent this week and I had been making plans to go.  During my first trip to Memphis I spoke to the oncologist/surgeon about traveling so soon after the surgery.  He told me that he had a good friend who is an ophthalmologist in Guatemala City.  He then added that while his friend is an excellent doctor that he himself would not want to be in Guatemala and have some post-surgery problem arise.  I took that to mean he thought it best I not go: real bummer.

As I sit and write this my phone has started indicating I have text messages.  The team returning has just arrived in Atlanta.  As disappointed as I am about not being able to go I am eager to hear about their trip.  I am sure that God did marvelous things as He always does.

So, while the week has been great as far as my eye is concerned and I am sure that it has been great for the mission team, I will just get over the fact that I did not get to go this time.  Plans are already in the works for a later trip.

Explained or Understood

“I can explain it to you but I can’t understand it for you”, that is what the sign said.  It was hanging on a trailer at the Cruise In Car Show held last month on the church grounds.  The exhibit was not a car but one of those small engines.  One that goes “click…click…click…click…POW! …click…click…click…click…Pow!“, the piston firing only every 10 or 15 seconds.  Sometimes it fires even less frequently. I’ve seen engines such as this exhibited before and I confess they do fascinate me. I had a gentleman tell me he once ran his for over 24 hours on less than a gallon of fuel. Sometimes they can be found connected by a belt to a flywheel of a tool enabling them to do some type of work.  My favorite was the one used to crank ice cream.

Many times I have talked with the guys that display these small engines.  They are always more than willing to explain in detail how the engines work.  However, I admit I still do not fully understand. But then again, I do not understand my diesel truck, quantum physics, or labradoodles all of which have been explained to me.  Sometimes the lack of understanding is in the how; sometimes it is in the why; but never is it due to a lack of explanation.  It is just that I do not understand. Or, is it that I do not care to understand?

It has been ten days since the plaque was removed from my eye and the double vision is still creating some problem.  I am happy to say that it is not as bad as I had feared.  In fact, at some distances the double vision has cleared completely, but at others it still exists.  The most problematic is reading which I have learned to do with one eye shut. So as you read this if you think I am winking at you, you are right.

I am still under typical eye surgery restraints: no bending over at the waist, no lifting over 20 pounds, no strenuous exercise and no playing my saxophones.  The no running and no playing my horns are two things to which I truly long to return.  The “no bending over” has worked out nice, Lynette has learned to leave the seat up for me. I am reminded that it takes 30 days to create a habit and since I am under that restriction for only two weeks I do not expect that pleasantry to last much longer.

It is a few weeks until my next doctor’s appointment.  That time will be the first look to see if the treatment has done what is expected.  I will also find out how much damage was done to my eye.  The damage would be from not just the radiation but also muscle damage due to the surgery.

I am still holding strong to my faith that the Lord’s will be done.  With that I come back to the passage in Habakkuk.   For some people that passage may be a strange choice; but I trust that those who know me best are not surprised.  As I have tried to explain my travels of the past several weeks many have understood; others have some inkling of understanding; yet there may be some who have no understanding at all or worse yet just do not care.  My prayer is that all would understand and be able to stand with Habakkuk and say:

Habakkuk 3: 17-19

17 Though the fig tree should not blossom

And there be no fruit on the vines,

Though the yield of the olive should fail

And the fields produce no food,

Though the flock should be cut off from the fold

And there be no cattle in the stalls,

18 Yet I will exult in the Lord,

I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.

19 The Lord God is my strength,

And He has made my feet like hinds’ feet,

And makes me walk in my high places.

Home

Home.  It is always good to be home.  As we arrive home we give thanks for all those who have prayed for and with us over the past two weeks.  I have said it more than once but I must repeat it, thank you.

The next few weeks are going to be slow and tedious.  I am finding that double vision is a greater challenge than I had expected.  Upon opening my eyes my vision is fine for a few seconds then my eye begins to wander.  Sometimes it wanders only a small amount.  At such times my vision is just out of focus.  Other times it roams wildly and there is two of everything.  Working to get that eye to behave is like working out at the gym. It is indeed labor intensive. 

Reading and writing is another hurdle.  It is impossible to do with both eyes open so that is when I get out the eye patch.  I guess I am destined to be a pirate for a while.

At times like this I remind myself what 1 Corinthians 2: 8 quotes from Isaiah 64:4

“Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard,

And which have not entered the heart of man,

All that God has prepared for those who love Him”

Hope

 I'm half way through the week of wearing the eye patch.  So far I've enjoyed being waited on but I've also been warned not to get too use to it.  The folks here at the Lodge have been great.  I am afraid I am putting on weight. It may be a month or more before I can run again so maybe I need to stop eating so much.

"Egregious act of evil", that is the words the local sheriff used to describe yesterday's events here in Memphis. Four siblings, the oldest only four and half years old, have been fatally stabbed to death and their mother is now in custody.  What could cause a mother to be in a state of such despair that she would take the lives of four small children?

This was not in some poor, run down intercity neighborhood.  No! It was within a gated, golf course community.  The photos on the news all give the impression that this was a middle class community: one where families would be happy and children would be safe.  Yet for some unknown reason a mother lost all hope and let evil consume her very being.

I reflect on all this sitting here in the living room of the American Cancer Society's Hope Lodge.  Because of my extended stay, awaiting the removal of the radiation platelet, I have witnessed numerous patients come and go.  Most of them here for only two or three days; but all with a common trait -- hope.

Hope. It's one of those words we so often use without thinking about what it means.  Ask the average person and they will tell you that hope equates to wish.  However, look it up in the dictionary.  There you will discover that the primary usage and definition is not a verb but a noun.  Hope is not some fanciful wish but it is the object of a desired expectation.  The object not the act!  This is not the Wishing Lodge but the Hope Lodge. Individuals come here not wishing but instead come with expectations.

The local sheriff has stated that the investigation of yesterday's events will focus on the why. So far they have found no one who can say any of this mother's actions were foreseeable.  I can not help but wonder if sometimes we are so self absorbed that we do not truly see others.  Are there people all around us, hurting, truly with no hope?  I was certainly no English scholar but one poem I remember studying in school is Not Waving But Drowning by Stevie Smith.  The first stanza goes:

Nobody heard him, the dead man.
But, Still he lay moaning:
I was much farther out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

It's out!

It's out!  Taking the plaque out was much simpler then putting it in.  The surgery last week was close to an hour under general anesthesia. Today's was about fifteen minutes in length. The first minute or so I was all the way out followed by what they called twilight.  It was strange in that I felt nothing, could not open my good eye, but could hear them talking.

Once awake enough to talk I asked to see the plaque. It ended up the radiologist had already left with it.  Because it is radioactive they are required to maintain strict records regarding its location.  The past week I have worn a warning bracelet identifying the pellets and giving phone numbers to be called if I am found by first responders.  That's just real comforting seeing this thing on your wrist that says "Warning! Warning!"  At least it did not say "Run! Run! Run for your life!"

The doctor has promised me double vision for a few weeks.  I asked what exercises he would suggest to alleviate the problem.  He told me to do nothing; the brain knows what it needs to do and will work on making the appropriate adjustments.  It is just a matter of time.  If there is something I need to do where the double vision causes a real problem I can wear the eye patch but it is best to let the brain do its job.

As he talked about the working of the brain my thoughts could not help but go to the Designer and Isaiah 44:24.

Isaiah 44
24 Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer,
and the one who formed you from the womb,
"I, the Lord am the maker of all things,
Stretching out the heavens by Myself
And spreading out the earth all alone..."

Paradox

By this time tomorrow I should be out of surgery having the platelet removed from my eye.  I must admit that I am looking forward to that.  Not that the pain has been bad at all.  In fact, after the first 24 hours there has been very little pain.  Immediately following the surgery I told the doctor it felt like an eye lash had fallen in my eye after taking a left hook from Mike Tyson.  He said that what felt like an eye lash was the platelet but he would take credit for the left hook.

The inconvenience this past week has been the lead shield which I had to keep under the eye patch.  Anytime I left our room I was to place it under the patch.  The reason for the shield was to protect anyone that may come within close proximity of me: especially small children and ladies who are or may be pregnant.  That is the real paradox of radiation treatment.  We are all warned about the risk of cancer from radiation exposure; yet what is one of the primary treatments for cancer? Radiation!  Oh the wisdom of man; we think we have everything figured out.

This being the 4th of July it has been relatively quiet here at the Lodge.  All but four patients have gone home for the long weekend.  Those of us which remain are either receiving treatments or like myself just quarantined to Memphis.  At least there is no want for good BBQ.

I still stand amazed at how God has been working through all of this.  How quickly the doctors in Knoxville picked up on my condition to how quickly I was admitted here in Memphis.  My retina specialist in Knoxville told me it would take four to six weeks to get an appointment in Memphis; he was shocked when it was only 16 days. The staff here at the Lodge keep talking about Dr. Wilson and how he has patients from around the world coming for this procedure.  I know that I was one of five surgeries, three implants and two removals, which he performed last week.

As I prepare for the surgery tomorrow I also prepare for the next chapter of this adventure.  There will be some double vision that I know.  It could last anywhere from a few weeks to being permanent.  So, I return to my verses in Habakkuk.

 
Habakkuk 3: 17-19

17 Though the fig tree should not blossom

And there be no fruit on the vines,

Though the yield of the olive should fail

And the fields produce no food,

Though the flock should be cut off from the fold

And there be no cattle in the stalls,

18 Yet I will exult in the Lord,

I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.

19 The Lord God is my strength,

And He has made my feet like hinds’ feet,

And makes me walk in my high places.