Nimimpu

Summer 2002 I worked for a wilderness therapy program called Anasazi.  To this day it's my favorite job I've ever had.  Period.  It was pivotal for me on so many levels.  It liberated me to finally start becoming my true self.  In their literature, there's a book called "The 7 Paths of the Anasazi Way."  One of those 7 paths is that of Nimimpu, or "We."  The general idea is that there is no "I."  We are all connected.  Our decisions and lives impact those around us, whether we like it or not.  It's inevitable.  Look around you, do the choices of the incarcerated affect you?  Yes.  What about those driving down the road- even if you're sitting at your house reading this post?  Yes.  Think about your family, friends, neighbors (like the guy behind me who does absolutely nothing with his yard, lets the weeds get outta control, and therefore I get a plethora of weeds.  I've seen him 2x in 6+ years.  His decisions affect me. Grr).  Okaaay.... Derek has leukemia.  However, this is a whole family affair, to say the least.  Someone has to take him to treatment.  Benjamin and Zachary therefore get babysat more.  Dad and Mom are stressed as they try to figure out logistics, make sure Derek gets his medications, deal with fact that their 6 year old has a terminal illness, etc.  Benjamin has to process the extra attention his older brother gets and sometimes tells me he's too sick to go anywhere even though he's totally fine.  He wants that kind of attention too.  Some of the habits I was able to teach Derek and Ben as a baby I haven't had time for with Zachary- not to mention given them a thought.  Until now.  I now have the pleasure of going backwards a bit.  Derek may be the one with cancer, but we all feel it. I haven't even mentioned extended family, friend, and neighbors.  I could write a novel about that alone.  Let's just say they've been angels.  Literally.

Remember those times when your adrenaline surged- like when you had to avoid a car accident (or perhaps an actual collision occurred)?  Then remember how shaky you were directly afterwards when you realized what just happened?  Oh, the let-down.   Now take that experience and multiply it by, say, 11 months.  We're currently in that shaky aftershock at our house.  When we hit Maintenance with Derek's treatments (chemo visits only ever 4 weeks now) we were stoked!  And for good reason.  Little did we understand that we hadn't fully de-escalated from the whole Leukemia and new baby sha-bang yet.  Let's just say I kinda feel like I've mentally been hit by a truck.  Boom!  The magnitude of all that's happened finally made me crumble.  I thought I'd been knocked down before in the past months, but not like this.  I discovered a new level of weary.

I'm not looking for sympathy.  Quite the contrary.  I HATE getting sympathy, in all honesty. Remember, I'm ornery like that.  I'm just putting that out there so if I'm not quite myself, someone might recall this post and think, "Oh, Mindy's in a funk right now.  She'll get over it."  And get over I will.  When and how?  That's a great question and I wish I had the answer.

Anyone that knows me very well knows I'm an over-achiever.  Before you start thinking that such a thing is wonderful.  It's not.  It's like some weird disease that can make you look amazing to others, but you're eating yourself alive inside.  Slowing down is not something I naturally know how to do.  I too-often measure my success and value on how much I get done.  It's obnoxious and deep down I know it's counterfeit for my true worth and success.  It just might take a few millenia before I overcome this one.  There's that being-human thing again. Sigh.

Why did I just reveal the thing I struggle with the most?  It's what made me realize how long I've been stressed because my kid has cancer.  In the past few weeks I've become so wound up I can't sleep very well because I'm thinking of all the things that "need" to get done.  Everything stresses me out.  Even running (if that's not a serious sign, I don't know what is).   And then I don't take time to smell the roses (in the form of enjoying my family and friends) because I have too much to do.  Really?  Are cleaning my house, paying bills, making dinner, doing laundry, etc. all really that important?  Hmm, probably not.  Should I pay my bills on time?  It's generally recommended.

I began wishing Time would stop.  I stopped wanting to continue putting one foot in front of the other.  I wished I had the strength to do absolutely nothing.  I would've even settle for being able to sit on the couch with a good book and let the dishes pile up the in the sink, the toys engulf the floor, and make grilled cheese for dinner (Mmm, grilled cheese).  I had reached a new limit.

It's like I've been handed the pieces to a 1000 piece puzzle with no picture of what it's supposed to look like.  How do you pick your life back up after so much has re-defined it?  We are all changed.  I'm OK with that.  I've learned more than I can ever put into words over the past year.  The challenge is figuring out the applications (someone please tell me there's an app for this sort of thing).

I've witnessed enough of God's goodness and grace to know that this too shall pass.  I have been strengthened, lifted, and carried before.  If anyone is going to be abandoning anyone else, it sure ain't gonna be God abandoning me.  I've experienced enough to know at least that.  Do I always understand what He's doing with my life?  Nope, not even close! But, as the saying goes, hindsight really is always 20/20.  Sometimes we just have to get pretty far away before that picture clears up.  Like right now, the break-down I'm experiencing makes absolutely no sense to me.  I'm fine.  Life is good.  I shouldn't be melting down like this.  But I am melting down.  Yes, I'm FINE (Freaked out, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional).  It's kind of like going through the mourning process.  You can't heal unless you let every step happen.  I'm not going to be able to effectively move forward if I don't let this take its course.  These days I just pray for rest.  To me that's more than just sleep.  It's coming in pieces.  Peace, contentment, and healing will creep up on me.  It's always like that.  Good things come to those who wait.  Waiting is not my forte, but I will wait for this.

A New Hope (no light saber involved)

When I was engaged to be married I got tired of people always asking me about my upcoming nuptials.  With every pregnancy, I hated the question, "How do you feel?"  Along with any other question pertaining to my growing belly, discomfort, etc.  The reason is well, there's lots of other things going on in my life.  Why don't you ask me about those?  It's the same with Derek's leukemia.  It's the proverbial elephant in the room.  I do have 2 other children.  I have a husband, a job, hobbies, etc.  I'm not here to tell others what to do.  It's futile anyways because they're going to do what they want regardless.  I'm just ornery.  So there's that.  I'm trying to get over it. Deep down I want to honor others' interest in my crazy life.  After all, I'm blessed with friends and family that comprise some of the most amazing people on the planet.  They are therefore sincere in their inquiries.  Sigh.  Perhaps one day I'll learn to calm the fiery-ness inside me.  Til then...

So, on to that elephant.  The current phase of treatment he's in is called Delayed Intensification.  The name says it all.  The good news is after this phase we go to what's called Maintenance- once a month visits til the 3 years are up.  Hang on!!  Moving along.  A few new chemo drugs entered the picture, one of which relieved Derek of haircuts for a while.  I love that kid's perspective!  If you recall he had an anaphylactic reaction to a chemo med back in October.  In stead of getting it again this go-around, the substitute drug is 6 doses in stead of 1.  That means 2 weeks of M W F chemotherapy visits.  We got to do that at the beginning of this phase and will go out with a bang, doing it at the end. That bang begins Wednesday of this week.  I know we all have medical insurance complaints.  I do too.  Don't get me started.  However, this substitute drug is just shy of $10K a shot, so here's a case where insurance is a godsend.

Speaking of insurance.  We won the home health battle!  After finally getting the phone numbers of the right people (after yelling at a poor young woman who couldn't help me) and being directed to write a letter (which contained a fair amount of hell, fire, and damnation- all within the realm of professionalism, of course), Tyler got a call from the medical director of our insurance company.  He would be on the board making the decision whether or not to grant Derek more home health visits.  He informed us he was going to vote for our cause, but that his voice wasn't the only one on the board.  About 10 days later he called again saying the decision had been made in our favor.  Woot woot!  Prayer and fasting proved themselves yet again.  Not sure  how much our letter swayed them, but I'd like to believe it made a difference.  Guess I'll never know.

Onto those other things..... A few weeks ago my nephew got married and Tyler's cousin lost her husband in a tragic accident.  We attended a funeral one day and a wedding the next.  Whoa!  You guys, Jesus is REAL!  God has a perfect plan!  Yes, life seriously sucks sometimes. Believe me, I have my fair share of crap.  But He's there, ever-ready to assist.  Taking our troubles away rarely fulfills His purposes.  In all reality, it doesn't do us any good either.  One of my favorite things about spring is watching my tulip bulbs push their way up through the soil.  They sometimes even put holes in dead leaves left from fall.  They are strong!  It's because of the struggle they overcome.  Yes, overcome.  We can too, through Christ. I need the reminder.  A lot.

When you're dealing with your 6 year old battling leukemia, a new alternator in your car, a bathroom flood, a mother and grandmas with fragile health, a house that always need something fixed, a 4 year old in the middle of everything, a teething baby, a husband's job that leaves him emotionally taxed (he works at a halfway house- some people's kids, seriously), there's a natural desire to want control over something.  So, I'm running another marathon in May.  Yep, I'm nuts.  But like that's a newsflash.  I may look back and shake my head at myself.  I probably will.  Oh well.  It's paid for and I ain't payin for something and not gettin nothin out of it.  So there.

Well, as chaotic as my life is, my little children are my joy.  How can I be sad and depressed when I have the cutest baby in the world, a 4 year old who says the funniest things all the time, and a 6 year old who is the most robust person I know?  I still am depressed sometimes, but thanks to my 3 little boys it never lasts very long.  God knew being a mom would bring me more joy and happiness than I could've imagined.

Christmas At Home

2016.  Yep folks, it's here.  Another presidential election year with pretty shabby options for candidates (well, okay, Hillary is less than shabby, and Donald Trump, well, is there really one word to describe his awfulness?  Methinks not).  Enough.  I still want to move to the south of Brazil.  My gray hairs seem to keep multiplying.  This year I'll be closer to 40 than 30.  Not cool.  I laugh at all the resolution-makers, yet again (who wants to get up early to exercise and eat rabbit food when it's 15 degrees and dark outside?!- then there's the inversion we get in the winter here in Salt Lake).  People, wait until March, or at least the end of February!  Goals, resolutions, and the like are all noble and wonderful.  I have my fair share too, but let's maximize the opportunity for success here. Okay, enough random-ness.  Sorry for that.  Well, not really.

Derek had a week delay in treatment in December so that meant he was NOT in the hospital for Christmas!!!  For about a milli-second, or less, we were bummed his counts weren't good enough for one of this scheduled weekends of chemo because that meant Christmas at home for us all.  God really does watch out for us and attends to the details.  

So, Christmas morning, we all hung out in our PJs, ate sugarplums (in the form of the best pumpkin cheesecake known to man), ate finnanhaddie for breakfast (smoked haddock), played with toys, shoveled the driveway (thanks Dad Canova for bringing your snow-blower!), and didn't go anywhere.  It was dreamy!  We didn't put away our few new things until the next week sometime.  We acted like we were on vacation for days and it felt OH so good!

For the 1st time since Derek's diagnosis we went swimming as a family.  I had been teaching him to swim frequently up until Baby Zac arrived and we'd been having a lot of fun.  This time, he was pretty nervous about it.  He was healthy enough to go, but it was mandatory that he bathe directly afterwards.  So much had happened in his little life, it's understandable. But, as soon as we entered the pool, he let go and had the time of his life.  It was purely joyful.  He practiced his strokes, went down the slide multiple times, and acted like no major life-events had occurred since the last time he'd been there.

Then Derek's 4th and final weekend in the hospital for treatment was over New Year's.  Who really cares about this holiday?  Bueller?  Bueller? Everything went well.  Given the playroom was close on New Year's Day, we went a bit stir-crazy.  But we finished reading "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe," played Toy Story Yahtzee way too many times, I tried to get Derek to eat (hospital food lacks serious flavor), and we felt quite liberated when discharged.  We now have a 3 week break before the next phase of chemo begins.  It's like Christmas all over again!!!

A quick side note: the day I bought aforementioned smoked haddock, Benjamin insisted on carrying it through the store- frozen, wrapped in meat-department paper.  Ok, no problem.  As we were waiting to check out, he turned to me and asked, "Mom, when we get home can I feed the fish?"  Um...  I responded, "Well," pause, "It's dead."  "Mommy, why is it dead?" he inquired.   I told him it was so we could eat it.  He then asked why they'd killed the fish.  I informed him some people had gone fishing, and then smoked it so we could eat it.  His final conclusion was, "Fish are yucky!"  He eats salmon all the time, but whatever kid.  I just found it so innocently cute and funny that somewhere in his almost-4 year old brain, he thought we'd gone to the supermarket and were going home with a pet!  Then, he and Derek were insistent that the cashier scan said fish first.  Quite the little love affair.  

Life is good.  Really good.  I have the cutest little boys.  Period.  Every day I feel Tyler is my soul-mate more than before.  

Here are some words from a character (Aunt Rose) in a story told by President Uchdorf at the last General Womens Meeting that pretty much say exactly how I feel about all the stuff going on:

“There is enough that doesn’t go right in life, so anyone can work themselves into a puddle of pessimism and a mess of melancholy. But I know people who, even when things don’t work out, focus on the wonders and miracles of life. These folks are the happiest people I know.”

“But,” Eva said, “you can’t just flip a switch and go from sad to happy.”

“No, perhaps not,” Aunt Rose smiled gently, “but God didn’t design us to be sad. He created us to have joy!³ So if we trust Him, He will help us to notice the good, bright, hopeful things of life. And sure enough, the world will become brighter. No, it doesn’t happen instantly, but honestly, how many good things do? Seems to me that the best things, like homemade bread or orange marmalade, take patience and work.”