Hi Everyone,
As of 2 days ago am in the new Palomar hospital in Escondido -- opened just last August -- a beautiful place with gardens and nature-filled terraces on each floor. The staff is superb, and the food is great. On the 8th floor, I feel like I'm in a penthouse. Only single rooms -- large, spacious, with views of the surrounding mountains. I started a procedure yesterday called Hyper-CVAD treatment (high dose chemotherapy) as a pre-requisite for a bone marrow transplant. Feeling very much at peace about this decision and, of course, a little nervous too. There's a 10-15% mortality rate from the BMT procedure itself, but a well known doctor and world renowned expert in Leukemia at the City of Hope in LA -- Dr. Stephen Forman -- gives me a better than 52% chance of a cure -- so I'm going for it! Appreciate all your prayers!
Another oncologist told me today that I'm one lucky lady that this procedure is still available to me as for many my age it isn't and he added "it's a good thing you're acting quickly since ALL can change like the wind. " I've already had 3 relapses now and feel called to give myself the best chance of life. I have to get in remission again fairly soon -- am just a few points out of range.
The doctors are hopeful this will be achieved in a timely manner. Then I need to stay in a remission while a bone marrow donor is found, which could be 6-12 weeks. Doctors feel positive about a donor being found. There's more in the donor base for Eastern European decent (me) and thus the odds are in my favor. This summer will be quite a ride! I'm generally feeling very good about this decision, and at the same time am realistic about it. Have heard an equal number of stories about people not pulling through the procedure itself as I have people surviving it. However, there seems to be a flow behind the way things are lining up that is quite encouraging, so I just try to get out of the way and remain open.
The doctors are hopeful this will be achieved in a timely manner. Then I need to stay in a remission while a bone marrow donor is found, which could be 6-12 weeks. Doctors feel positive about a donor being found. There's more in the donor base for Eastern European decent (me) and thus the odds are in my favor. This summer will be quite a ride! I'm generally feeling very good about this decision, and at the same time am realistic about it. Have heard an equal number of stories about people not pulling through the procedure itself as I have people surviving it. However, there seems to be a flow behind the way things are lining up that is quite encouraging, so I just try to get out of the way and remain open.
Here's a good article about improvements in bone marrow transplants this last year: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130528180857.htm I decided against the transplant last year as the risk/benefit ratio did not seem good enough at the time.
This decision about the BMT was absolutely the most difficult of all so far. Of course, I consulted with everyone I could think of, all the professionals and experts, but at the end of the day I have to be ok with the possibility of not making it through it. It's impossible to know what the perfect way through this is, so I do my best to tune in, listen to that "still small voice within" and, when everything starts flowing seamlessly, as it has, I go with it.
Through these last few weeks my main focus has been to be cradled in Love. Sometimes I'll wake up in the wee hours of the morning and a surge of "oh my God -- what's going to happen?" will run through me. In the past, I would "go down the rabbit hole"....thought trail after thought trail, each tripping over the next, and taking me into the ditch. There is no answer to the question of "what is going to happen?" We will only know when we get there. But when I can crawl out of the ditch and get back to the present moment, a clearer landscape appears. There I can hang out as if under a shade tree, take a moment and count my many blessings, and there are MANY.
Looking at these past 2 plus years as an experience to dissolve what gets in the way of living with greater love, courage, kindness, I'm humbled by all the opportunities and stumbles -- the sheer rough and tumble of it all! They have taught me more than anything. And when you are a hard nut to crack, like me, it can take some pretty BIG whops on the head to start the process of changing those entrenched, conditioned grooves of fear, self-focus, worry, etc. Little by little, my firm grip (white knuckle grip?) on control, wanting to "know", stubbornness, fear, worry, etc. is dissolving like fog in the early morning sunlight. Rarely anymore do tears stream down my face when I wake up at 3 a.m. and start "thinking". I'm not giving up....in fact, the warrior spirit in me is even stronger...but I sense too that that precious thing we call surrender is also stronger. In the book I'm reading by Kathleen Singh she writes of surrender so beautifully:
"It is only a transpersonal aspect of each of us, flashing into consciousness however momentarily, that allows us to make the commitment to surrender. True surrender and nothing less, is a certain indication that one has recognized, finally, one's own vaster and deeper being, one's own Essential Nature."
And as she has told me several times, it is ONLY when we EXPERIENCE that Essential Nature (not merely read or talk about it) that we can embody a deeper knowing that transcends (and includes) the mind, body, heart and soul -- all the parts of us. We can truly fall into it experientially. There is no greater comfort or solace. How often I've heard "You can't think your way there". God knows I've tried that way. There are myriad experiences in life, not just cancer, which literally prod the soul to a deeper place of surrender -- we have utterly no control, not even any say, except to just "be" and to "accept" and in that field of openness the log jam may begin to break up, or not. But we are somehow finding a way not to resist it...
Through these last few weeks my main focus has been to be cradled in Love. Sometimes I'll wake up in the wee hours of the morning and a surge of "oh my God -- what's going to happen?" will run through me. In the past, I would "go down the rabbit hole"....thought trail after thought trail, each tripping over the next, and taking me into the ditch. There is no answer to the question of "what is going to happen?" We will only know when we get there. But when I can crawl out of the ditch and get back to the present moment, a clearer landscape appears. There I can hang out as if under a shade tree, take a moment and count my many blessings, and there are MANY.
Looking at these past 2 plus years as an experience to dissolve what gets in the way of living with greater love, courage, kindness, I'm humbled by all the opportunities and stumbles -- the sheer rough and tumble of it all! They have taught me more than anything. And when you are a hard nut to crack, like me, it can take some pretty BIG whops on the head to start the process of changing those entrenched, conditioned grooves of fear, self-focus, worry, etc. Little by little, my firm grip (white knuckle grip?) on control, wanting to "know", stubbornness, fear, worry, etc. is dissolving like fog in the early morning sunlight. Rarely anymore do tears stream down my face when I wake up at 3 a.m. and start "thinking". I'm not giving up....in fact, the warrior spirit in me is even stronger...but I sense too that that precious thing we call surrender is also stronger. In the book I'm reading by Kathleen Singh she writes of surrender so beautifully:
"It is only a transpersonal aspect of each of us, flashing into consciousness however momentarily, that allows us to make the commitment to surrender. True surrender and nothing less, is a certain indication that one has recognized, finally, one's own vaster and deeper being, one's own Essential Nature."
And as she has told me several times, it is ONLY when we EXPERIENCE that Essential Nature (not merely read or talk about it) that we can embody a deeper knowing that transcends (and includes) the mind, body, heart and soul -- all the parts of us. We can truly fall into it experientially. There is no greater comfort or solace. How often I've heard "You can't think your way there". God knows I've tried that way. There are myriad experiences in life, not just cancer, which literally prod the soul to a deeper place of surrender -- we have utterly no control, not even any say, except to just "be" and to "accept" and in that field of openness the log jam may begin to break up, or not. But we are somehow finding a way not to resist it...
The soul that rises with us, our life's
star,
hath had its setting,
and cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing
clouds of glory do we come,
From God, Who is our home.
Intimations of immortality, William Wordsworth
LOVE,
HEIDI
P.S. Peter and I had to have a "get out of Dodge" trip this past weekend and before all the treatment got started, so took a short trip to Ventura, Santa Barbara and Ojai and visited some of our favorite places. He's a beer lover from way back (not my "cup of tea," so to speak, so I had other delectable treats). Here's a picture of us it afternoon one day having a jolly good time. My hip is healing very well and very quickly.
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