January 21, 2013
Well it has been
a long break taken from this work of reflection related to my acquaintance with
lymphoma over the past year. A few weeks
ago was the anniversary of the accurate diagnosis of THRLBCL. I’m beginning to have difficulty remembering
the exact words and order the initials stand for – whether that’s middle age,
chemo brain remnants or just inattention due to returned health I don’t know.
The anniversary
had a sad overtone for us in that it fell on the day of my brother-in-law’s
funeral. Norm was the best of men who
had fought his battle with cancer for over two years. He passed over confident of his future in
God’s good grace and Norm’s now won that battle in a different way than I but
we feel the cost to his dear family and to us.
Norm, you are missed, you will be remembered and we will meet again.
Today was my six-month
check-up (8 months out from the transplant) with the Freiburg doc. All is good.
He said that I was truly a “cancer survivor”. I told him that I’ve had this strange
experience over the past six months of feeling as if I were growing
younger. This is, I presume, the effect
of returning to the strength I had before ever being attacked by lymphoma – and
we really don’t know when that started – and the recovery of my body from the
assault of high dose chemo and a stem cell transplant.
In a stairwell at
the clinic today, I passed a nurse I recognized as a regular from my long stay
last spring. I greeted her effusively
but there was no recognition there. What
was I thinking – why would she recognize me bouncing down the stairs back in “fighting
trim” and covered in scalp and facial hair.
I wonder if she has more that a few moments like these. I got a good chuckle out of it.
But right now I’m
under the weather with my first cold in over a year – not feeling younger right
now.
We have had a
great fall and early winter. I’m back to
teaching full time. Diane continues to
oversee both existing and expanding opportunities in Language Services for
TeachBeyond (she’ll be attending leadership meetings in Miami in a few days and
is right now with our kids and grandkids back home on her way). Our daughter Hannah is engaged to a godly
young man and has but three semesters left to graduate with her Nursing
degree. I had the privilege of speaking
to a college age group of about 100 in Constance, Germany a few weeks ago
(reflecting on the past year). We
continue to rejoice in what God has called us to as we spend our time walking
and living by faith.
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