12/20/16 Christmas thoughts

Dear Family and Friends,

This Christmas season I find myself once again thinking a lot about the juxtaposition of joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure.  And about the things that cause our hearts to overflow with happiness and break in despair. 

The month began with great joy.  Steve and I were able to spend a week on Kauai with my sister, Marti, and her husband, Merle.  It was my pre-chemo week, so I felt great!  I was able to hike a beautiful trail along a bluff overlooking the ocean and swim laps in a giant saltwater lagoon.  I got to eat puka dogs (get one if you go to Hawaii!), mouthwatering fresh fish at an open-air restaurant overlooking a koi pond, and to share an enormous ice cream sundae at Lappert’s with my sweetheart.

Then, the day after my return home, my blood counts were again too low to get my chemo.  That week was filled with five days of stomach injections of the drug that stimulates my bone marrow to make blood cells—and in the process, produces a truckload of bone pain!  Remember those growing pains you had as a child as your bones stretched and lengthened?  Well, multiply that pain by about 100!  It was a tough week, followed by chemo on the 15^th, which brought yet another rough five days, this time with extreme nausea, fatigue, and no appetite.  On the positive side—I have unintentionally lost four pounds in five days!  So much for my usual Christmas weight gain!  J

In the midst of my own modest sufferings, I have encountered people this month whose sufferings are far greater than mine.  People who cause my heart to break.  The day before chemo I was well enough to attend my volunteer day at Children’s Hospital, where I was assigned to a 4-year-old boy with cancer.  We played Legos, and he led me on a “tour” of about 10 bedpans scattered about his room that were filled with water and contained all manner of plastic sea life!  He knew the names of each animal and told me that his Make-A-Wish was that he wanted to ride a dolphin.  Can you think of anything sadder than a child gravely ill with cancer who will be spending Christmas in his hospital room?  Or the heartbreak I saw in his father’s eyes when he returned to the room after my time spent playing with his son?  Having cancer myself, after the blessing of living more than five wonderful decades without it, is so very much better than the thought of my children—or any child—having to face this dreaded disease at a young age. 

And yesterday, Steve and I joined five friends for a volunteer day at Hope Place, a residential program for homeless women and children run by the Union Gospel Mission.  We worked in the kitchen, chopping bags of oranges and onions, wrapping potatoes in foil, making cheese quesadillas, and Steve, master griller that he is, put perfect grill marks on 70 mammoth rib eye steaks that had been donated for their Christmas dinner party later that day.  As I was serving lunch and chatting with the residents, my heart ached for these women who, through poverty, abuse, mental illness, and addictions, had arrived at this place in life with their precious children in tow.  I have so much.  They have so little.  Plenty and want.

I read in my advent reading this week that “A broken heart isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  You can think of it as something broken apart and shattered, like glass, or as something broken open, like a crack in a seed about to sprout.  Opening our hearts to pain increases our capacity for hope.”  I definitely feel that the brokenness our family has experienced throughout my battle with cancer has been an opening through which we have come to experience God’s presence in a deeper way, through which we have developed greater empathy for all those who suffer, and through which we have come to feel an exponentially larger sense of gratitude for each day, and each blessing, large and small. 

May the heartbreaks we experience allow us to see that through the cracks, the light of hope can emerge, and may we be a beacon of light and hope for others. 

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.”  Isaiah 9:2   

Love,

Gabrielle

Steve, Marti, and Merle at Kauai Lighthouse Park

Mini Golf in December...and I won!

Hiking on a rainy day in Kauai.

Poipu Beach.

Lappert's sundae!

11/18/16 A Year of Lukewarm Showers

Dear friends and family,

Well, November is here, and that means I have been in chemo, this third time, for a full year.  I'm not going to sugar-coat it.  This past year, without a remission in sight, has been tough.  It has included:

• 12 days of chemotherapy.
• 12 weeks of post-chemo sickness.
• A few other weeks of colds/flu due to my low immune system.
• About 100 mouth sores (Doxil causes them).
• About 100 bruises (from low platelets--currently at an all-time low of 57, normal is 150-400).
• About ten days a month with low energy (due to low blood count--normal is 35-45, I'm at 26, and my oncologist just called to say they are going to give me a blood transfusion).
• 12 months of lukewarm showers (Doxil causes hand and foot blistering if exposed to too much heat).
• And a partridge in a pear tree!  No, just kidding.  That is for next month's post!

But as Thanksgiving will be here in just six days, I am trying to focus this week not on the trials of the past year, but on all I have to be thankful for.  Just a few of these things include:

• Experiencing God's presence, love, peace, and strength on good days and bad. 
• Steve, Renee, and Daniel, who love me, serve me, and shore me up, even on my crankiest days.
• Weekly Green Lake walks with my aunt Julianne, equal parts mother and friend.
• My sister, Marti, who has moved heaven and earth this very week to get our other sister, Xan, into the Union Gospel Mission's Hope Place, a residential program for women struggling with homelessness and addiction, and who was a great chemo buddy last month, and caring sister always.
• The smart, deep, loving, and faithful women in my Monday noon Bible study who make sure God hears my name daily.
• My new oncologist, who brings years of training, research, and renown to help me live my longest, fullest, and best life.
• The basics--our home, food, clothes, health insurance, and enough money to pay our bills, give to the charities we love, and have a little leftover for some trips.
• All my other friends, family, and acquaintances who read this blog and think about me and/or pray for me (aka YOU)!
• And lastly, the fact that I will be in Kauai for a blissful pre-chemo vacation in just 12 days, two hours, and 39 minutes.  But who's counting?!

This Thanksgiving, I hope your list of struggles is shorter than your list of blessings.  And as I struggle to come to terms with the post-election turmoil in our country, I hope I can be a person who does this:

"Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.  Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.  Forgive as the Lord forgave you."  Colossians 3:12-13

Love,

Gabrielle

Thankful for a son who is going to be a great dad one day!

Thankful for an Alki Beach walk with Steve, followed by a delicious dinner and fierce game of dominoes with our friends, Lynette and LaVonne.

Thankful to see the play of Carole King's life story with Renee and Riley on our "girls day out."

Thankful for my Sis, Marti, who loves me always and understands how the difficulties in our childhood have impacted our lives today.

Thankful for grandson/godson/great nephew, Jericho, who brightens up all my Saturdays.

And I close with a photo of Jericho and me, jamming and singing with our guitars, "our version," of Jesus Loves Me!

10/16/16 The Bell Lap

Dear friends and family,

Let me give you a quick update since we last spoke, and then I’d like to share with you something I have been thinking about.  As you know, I had to delay my last chemo by one week, due to the fact that my neutrophils (cells that help fight infection) and my platelets (cells that make your blood clot) were too low.  To remedy the situation, the 1.5 doctors I live with gave me daily shots of a drug that helps my bone marrow grow good cells more rapidly.  The shots had to go in my stomach, and despite Steve’s and Daniel’s tremendous medical skill, they hurt like the dickens and made some colorful bruises that look like blobs of modern abdominal art!  Thankfully, the shots worked and I was able to get my last chemo on October 4.  Thanks to all who prayed for those precious neutrophils and platelets!

Because the chemo schedule got thrown off by a week, I had to go straight from chemo to a previously booked annual charity event that I love, called the Feast at the Market.   The event benefits a wonderful nonprofit called Neighborcare Health, which provides free and sliding fee scale medical care to low-income families at many clinics throughout our community.  For this great fundraising event, you arrive at the Pike Place Market and they give you a coupon book good for one appetizer at about 20 of the Market’s best restaurants!  You go from restaurant to restaurant, enjoying amazing food for three hours, in what has to be the world’s best progressive dinner—and then conclude with a dessert buffet!  Have I ever told you I like desserts?  ;-)  Anyway, I knew I should have given my ticket away.  I knew it would be a mistake.  Renee told me it would be a mistake.  But it is such a fun event and Daniel and Steve were so looking forward to it, that I went.  I ate less and less as the evening wore on and I became sicker and sicker.  I didn’t tell Steve and Daniel how badly I felt, as I didn’t want to ruin the event for them.  But oh my...to put it delicately, things became “dire,” and I suffered not only that evening, but for a day or two after.  Mark my words:  Do NOT attend any type of food-related event immediately following chemotherapy.  Don’t do it.  Don’t even think about it.  Ever.

On a happier note, one week after my nausea-filled chemo week, Steve and I went on our Sunset Magazine prize trip to Tofino, BC!  Vancouver Island is beautiful, and Tofino, in the middle of nowhere on the west coast of Vancouver Island, takes your breath away.  Picture driving past farms and lakes to get there, and then hiking through the freshest, greenest rain forests, with trails leading to long, undeveloped kilometers of majestic Pacific Ocean beaches.  The waves are immense and it is a surfer’s paradise.  On the other side of the quaint town of Tofino is the Clayoquot Sound, dotted with tiny islands to kayak around.  Our hotel room at the Wickaninnish Inn was a stunning two-story suite, with gigantic picture windows—and a Jacuzzi tub (!) looking out over Chesterman Beach.  And the restaurant meals that came with the trip included some of the best food we had eaten in a year or more!  Mark my words:  Plan a trip with someone you love to Tofino, BC.  Walk the beaches.  Hike the trails.  Kayak the sound.  Eat marvelous food.  Get away from it all and refresh your soul.  Seriously.  Do it.  Do it right now!

And now that the life update is complete, let me tell you something I’ve been thinking about…and that something is “the bell lap.”  The bell lap in a harness horse race is the final lap of the race, signaled by the ringing of a bell. The bell rings, and the horses (and drivers) know that the end is near.  Those horses have been running at full speed for many laps, out of breath, dripping sweat, feeling the pull of the bit in their mouths, muscles and joints throbbing.  Then the bell rings, and they know they have just one lap to go before the race is over, and blessed rest awaits them. 

Barring a miracle, my cancer is incurable.  Sure, we can beat it back with surgeries and drugs, and perhaps a little radiation thrown in for good measure.  We can do this for what is currently an unknown period of time, if we ignore statistics that say I should be dead by the five-year mark in January 2018—and we do our best to ignore them, for I am not a statistic to God!

But at some point, I too will be facing my life’s bell lap.  As will you!  I’m not there yet, as far as I know.  I feel as though I have lots of fight left in me, and I want to keep running lap after lap, chemo after chemo, doing my best to endure the suffering that comes with obliterating cancer cells.  But I also talk with God and Steve fairly often, about my hope that I will know and accept when the bell lap is approaching.  That I will hear the bell.  I don’t want to be in denial.  I want to be sure that I’ve said everything that needs saying to all those I love.  That I have lived as fully as one can despite cancer.  And I want to know when it’s finally ok to just give one last push and have the race be over.  All the treatments.  All the nausea.  All the fatigue.  The daily thinking about cancer and what death will be like.  I want so much to be able to recognize the bell lap, and accept it with the assurance from God that I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.  2 Timothy 4:7  And the assurance, which I and my family have, that blessed rest, the end of suffering and tears, and eternal life and joy with God and loved ones who have gone before me awaits me in Heaven.  Thanks be to God!

Thank you for reading, for caring about our family, and for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers.  I have said before that it takes a village to get through cancer, and you are our precious village!

Love,

Gabrielle

P.S.  Here are some photos from our Sunset Magazine Tofino trip! 

Relaxing against a log on a beach after a hike!

Welcomed to our room with gifts of fruit, chocolate, and port from the hotel and Tourism Tofino!

The view of Chesterman Beach from our living room, bedroom...and jacuzzi tub at the Wickaninnish Inn!

Bundled up for a stormy walk on the beach!

The food at The Pointe restaurant at our hotel was beautiful and as delicious as food can ever be!

Steve. Soul mate. One true love. Forever friend.

More delicious food at Sea Monster Noodle Bar.   And be sure to go to the Wolf in the Fog restaurant too!  I mean it.  Go there!

9/26/16 Low blood counts delay chemo

Dear family and friends,

Well, tomorrow was supposed to be chemo day, so this morning I went in for my pre-chemo blood work.  This afternoon I received a call from my oncologist's office saying my neutrophils are too low to get chemo this week.  Neutrophils are a type of white blood cell needed to fight infections.  We meet with the doctor tomorrow to discuss shots I will begin getting daily to help my bone marrow produce more neutrophils.  Hopefully, I can get chemo one week from today.  Please pray for more neutrophils!  And meanwhile, I need to be extra cautious about being around anyone who is sick, or who has been around a sick person.  With low neutrophils, an illness for me could cause an infection that would spread throughout my body, into my organs (sepsis), and that would be a very bad thing!

The other problem in my blood work is very low platelets.  Platelets are not little plates, such as those used for salad, appetizers, or dessert.  Who am I kidding?  I would never use LITTLE plates for dessert!  Seriously though, platelets are the cells that allow your blood to clot.  I have to be very cautious right now to not fall or injure myself in any way, producing both the kind of bleeding where you get a cut and the blood comes out of your body, and the kind of bleeding that makes bruises when you bang into something, like your steering wheel in a fender bender.  For example, I am prohibited from riding my bike now, as a fall off my bike with low platelets could be very dangerous.  So please pray for more platelets too!  And always use big plates for dessert!

Overall, I think I may have been doing too much lately.  I try to cram as much into a day as I can, knowing that my days may not go on forever, but this doesn't allow me sufficient rest.  For example, today I went to the hospital for blood work, dropped something off at a friend's house, went to my Bible study at SPU, walked with a friend, vacuumed, swept, and did dishes, went to the grocery store and pharmacy, had a mom, infant, and two-year-old visit me for 1.5 hours, and 15 minutes later, my childhood best friend showed up to have dinner with me (a real treat, by the way, as she lives way up north). This is too much in one day for any person, and especially for a cancer patients in chemo with low blood counts!  I am just as exhausted writing all that as I was doing it all today!  New resolution: no more than two main things in a day.  For example, a) I'm going to get some exercise today and b) I'm going to have coffee with a friend.  That's it!  Two things!  I need more rest to help my body recover between chemos.

Speaking of rest, I am now, at last, after this much too busy day, going to put on my PJs and watch a new fall TV show before bed.  Aahhh...sounds heavenly.  May you, too, find more rest in the rhythm of your busy days and weeks.  "Be still and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10

With gratitude for your love and prayers,

Gabrielle

P.S.  Here are some examples of restful things!

Naps with your favorite bear.

Being at Cannon Beach.

Playdough.

Boat rides.

Reading.

8/23/16 Good Scans!

Dear family and friends,

This is just a very quick post to let you know that my PET/CT scans showed that the cancer is shrinking!  The chemo combination I am on is working, and we couldn't be more thankful.  There is still cancer present (though less of it!), so we must continue with chemo every 28 days for the foreseeable future.  We will scan again in about three and a half months.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your love, prayers, and support.  It takes a village to fight cancer and all who read this blog, and many who don't, are part of our village.  

My Psalm this morning, before meeting with the doctor for the scan results, was Psalm 40. "I waited patiently for the Lord; He turned to me and heard my cry.  He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.  He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God."  Psalm 40:1-3

God has heard my, and your, cries for healing, and has lifted my spirits out of the slimy pit today--giving me hope and strength to get through next Tuesday's chemo.  Today I have a firm place to stand, and a song of praise in my mouth.  And soon there will some homemade pizza in my mouth, followed by a Menchie's frozen yogurt to celebrate!  :-)

Love,

Gabrielle

P.S.  Things that make me happy besides good scans:

Walks with Renee, Riley, and Jericho!

Hikes to Talapus Lake with Steve!

Eating dinner at Mediterranean Kitchen in Bellevue!

Holding two-month-olds!

Hearing about Daniel's clerkships--putting in new hips and delivering babies!

8/21/16 Thoughts the day before my August scans

Dear friends and family,

You know how people tell you not to Google your symptoms or your diagnosis if you have been having health troubles?  The worry is that you will become overly fearful after reading about all the terrible illnesses you may have or the worst-case scenarios for a diagnosis you have recently received.  Well I would like to add one more warning for you—do NOT read about your illness in American Family Physician magazine!

Now I know that most of you are not living with 1.5 physicians like I am, and you probably don’t come across medical journals when you flip through your mail.  But as I flipped through my mail, I found the June issue of American Family Physician with it’s full-color cover featuring that month’s in-depth article on, you guessed it, ovarian cancer.  With a gnawing feeling that I should not read the article, I grabbed a cup of tea and a couple of cookies and sat down to read the article, start to finish. 

I’ve heard that most of us only remember one key idea when later reflecting back on a lecture, sermon, or article we’ve read.  Here is the line that is stuck in my head from the ovarian cancer article:  “The five-year survival rate for women with advanced-stage tumors is only 17% to 28%.” 

Well, I was diagnosed with advanced-stage tumors 3-1/2 years ago.  And I probably wonder, about twenty times a day, if I will be in the 72% to 83% who, statistically, will be dead in another year and a half.   What is a person to do with these grim factoids swirling continually in one’s brain?

Here’s what I did, and what I do, on a daily basis.  What I did, is rip the page with that crummy statistic right out of that journal (and no, Steve and Daniel had not read that issue of the journal yet), I folded it into a tiny square, and opened my little container of mustard seeds.  I put that tiny paper square into the mustard seed container, put the lid back on, and set it back on my desk in the kitchen, where I can look at it every day.  And what I do, when the fearful thoughts creep in about 20 times a day, is look at that container, or if I’m not home, remind myself about it, and remember that it takes only faith as small as the tiny mustard seed to overcome huge obstacles.  Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew 17:20, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”

I am not a giant of the faith.  I am no C.S. Lewis or Martin Luther.  But I do have the tiniest mustard seed of faith that I could be in the 17% to 28% of women who survive longer than five years, because I belong to God and He is not bound by earthly medical statistics.  If He wants me around, then around I will be, by a miracle of His Hands.  I remind myself too, that He is the Great Physician and even the wind and the waves, and the cancer cells and the scans, obey Him.  And when the time comes that He calls me to my Heavenly home, my mustard seed of faith knows it will not be one second before or after I am meant to be there.  So I will continue to redirect my negative, fearful thoughts, to the little container of mustard seeds with the folded up piece of paper in it, and rest in the knowledge that I am in the very best of Hands. 

Love,

Gabrielle

P.S.  Tomorrow (Monday, August 22^nd) are my PET and CT scans at UW Hospital.  They take place in the morning and then we meet with the doctor at 2:30 PM for the news.  Thank you for your prayers as we go into that day, that our tiny seeds of faith will feel huge, and that we will have God’s peace which passes all human understanding.  Thank you!

Here are my mustard seeds and there is that article, given to God in faith that I will NOT be a statistic!