The Face of Despair

My Fellow Travelers,

I'm alive.  I made it through the most hellish week of my life, somehow....  It wasn't a dream, but I recall myself in a vast desert with a grey sky above.  There were storm clouds and there was lightning.  I kept calling out "Follow me to the Light.  Follow me to the Light."  Who was I calling to?  I have no recollection.  The lightning was my brain mis-firing due to a mega-dose of chemotherapy into an area of my brain it shouldn't have gone to through a misplaced catheter.  All I remember were the nurses and Peter standing above me in the doctor's office after the injection of the chemo into my brain.  "Did you see that?  She is having some reaction.."   "I'm having a reaction?"  I asked myself.  What are they talking about?  That was Thursday morning around 11:30 a.m.  The next thing I knew it was Saturday morning at 8 a.m. at  the Kaiser hospital.  What had happened in the intervening hours I am only now beginning to piece together.  It was devastating.  My sweet Pete wondered if I'd wake up again and be able to recognize him or have any personality at all.  Friends thought I would die. 

What happened were multiple seizures and a stroke.

This is beginning to sound like either a science fiction novel or a horror movie now, but it happens to be my life.....a life I never thought I'd be living.  I fell into the 2% that this happens to.

So, life showed me a deeper face of despair and complication.   Since Saturday I have not been able to talk to very many people.  I have been able to find my center and even a sense of (slight?) joy in all of this.  Things made sense.....until last week.  Then everything crumbled around me.  I couldn't understand why, with all the prayers, I would fall into that 2%.  But maybe those prayers saved my life.

I do think of people who go through far worse than I.  I am mindful of that.

The Methotrexate into my brain has a HUGE effect on my mood, as do the powerful steriods I've been on (and am now tapering off, thankfully).  Dr. P said they could find no more leukemia cells in my spinal fluid.  So I am in remission again.  But it is a fragile remission according to Western medicine.  Leukemia always comes back, he said, even 90% of the time with a bone marrow transplant which I've decided not to do.  What is ahead, I feel, is more cold energy as a maintenance therapy and a clinic in Ashland, OR called the Mederi Foundation.  They have had some good success with Leukemia.  All I want to do right now is move as far away from the events of last week and into strengthening my immune system and regaining a better quality of life for however long I have.  I have not given up!

I've always been oriented around the question "why" An impossible question. Maybe the better question is "what"?  What am I to learn here?    My spiritual background has been oriented that way:  karma, soul lessons, purpose, meaning.  But in this world of duality, this can be a slippery slope, I'm seeing.  Sometimes we are simply not given to know the whys and wherefores.  There is only acceptance and as much surrender as we can muster.  Someone said recently "99% of life is out of our control."   The 1% is how we face what happens.  I saw a side of myself come out the last few days that I had never seen before.  It was humbling.  I can only feel that this new level is showing me what people feel when they are in complete despair.  I must say, I have not known this level before in my life.  People go through horrendous things.  Perhaps I've needed to feel what the pit of humanity feels.  Who knows?

Right now it feels that I have more impossible decisions ahead:  leave the reservoir in or take the risk of removing it?  That's for starters....and I have to decide very soon.

Your continued loving thoughts and prayers are welcome.

Heidi