At the Crossroad

Note: Since my first post introduces what this blog is all about and why, please start with that post.

For many of us who have made the hard choice and abandoned all curative medicine, there comes first a hard clarity, a soul bending epiphany: The cancer is getting worse, and the medicine is killing me. What once worked, works no longer. Though radiation, surgery and chemotherapy may once have done some good, these treatments have become useless. No, worse than useless. They are destroying what little life and energy still remain.

The heart bending epiphany? It is past time to change directions, past time to choose and follow a different path. Otherwise . . . in the process of trying to extend the amount of time, the quantity, we have left, we end up damaging any remaining chance for Quality. Through a grinding combination of starvation, fatigue, unexplained symptoms and acute depression, we pull away from and cease to value the beauties that still surround us, and which still possess the magic power to bless us.

Here's how the Crossroad experience can happen: While in Mexico this March, I experienced all but total collapse. After four months on a virulent anti-kidney cancer drug, I couldn't eat, lost fifteen pounds, couldn't manage stairs or walk more than a block or so, and withdrew from social life. By the time we left Mexico, my hemoglobin count had dropped to 7.0. When I got home I needed an immediate transfusion of two plasma units. I also needed a new direction.

A week after returning home, my wife and son and oncologist leaned in close so they could hear my faint but firm voice. "No more medicine. It is killing me. Not one more step in that direction. No more!"

My doctor patted me on the knee and nodded. There were tears in her eyes. "We need to talk about Hospice. Their business is to enhance your End Life, to enhance your quest for quality in your final months.

Hospice does. It already has. I no longer worry much about how long I'm going to be here, though like most of you, I cherish projects that will never bloom. I try to take charge. I give thought and energy to the old value-quality questions: How do I spend my remaining time? Where and how do I find solace, beauty, love and small bursts of joy? It helps me to to paraphrase Ghandi: Be the change you want to see in your Self.

Here, now, in these few but potentially rich months that precede our last breath, we can continue to live. Our strength will wane and our bodies will gradually succumb. No question. In the meantime, however, let us realize the potential fullness of Now. Let us be more present in the moment. And when we want to visit the past for a while, let us be fully present in the fabrics and textures of that journey too.

Many of us suffering from the terminal stage of terminal illness have made the hard choice. We are making this last walk all but naked, though still in possession of a few tools, which I'll discuss in coming blogs. In my next post, for example, I'll focus on Hospice. What precisely is it? What does it have to offer us? What are the rumors, half-truths and taboos that surround Hospice? And why should we investigate such care before we arrive at the crossroad and are forced to make crucial choices? In the meantime, lie back in the grass and enjoy this last summer.

AMBITION

When remorse afflicts my soul for ignoring entropy,
My science laughs and whispers: "Relax old man.
The time the wind took to hone one red stone
is no more than one beat of a raven's wing
Carved on the carousel of a galaxy."
Then I lie back in the grass and smile
at drifting clouds, as they slowly change
from warring giants to meandering dreams.

Leonard Bird