A Wall

Rain pours down outside, pounding the street, the roof. The predicted storm has come.. It is almost comforting to hear that rain. It came, it will endure and it will pass away. There will be beautiful clearing. The Bay Area is so beautiful after a rain. The air is crystal clear, fresh, invigorating. Everything has an exquisite sharpness to it, an aliveness.

I need these thoughts this night. Yesterday I hit The Wall. Hmmm. I’d rather call it “a wall”. "The Wall" sounds too permanent. It gives it too much power. Yesterday started at 2:30 A.M. with nervous energy, prednisone energy. I’m on high dose of prednisone now. In the past when I’ve been on high dose prednisone I didn’t sleep well, had this nervous, sometimes hyper energy. I’ve been looking for that since I started the high dose last Thursday, trying to be aware of the prednisone’s affect in my body without inducing the placebo effect.

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were relatively good days for me, with recovering energy. I started thinking, “Gee, if this is all there is to this Chemo, I’ll be fine.” I felt some trepidation though at what the coming nadir of the chemo therapy would be like. Nadir means lowest point and in terms of Chemo Therapy, the point of greatest impact on the bone marrow. From the bone marrow's point of view, it’s point of lowest production of blood cells. Bone marrow is a marvelous organ that makes our red and white blood cells. That’s where they come from baby.

The Oncology Nurse told me the nadir would be in seven days. So I will have decreasing cell counts until Thursday afternoon or so. That will make me more prone to infection and increasing fatigue. How much depends on my body’s response to the medication.

Yesterday I could feel increase weakness, fatigue coming on. By afternoon my legs were telling me they just could not walk much anymore, too tired. I knew I would need to miss Evening Prayer in the Chapel. That was a bummer. I enjoy worshiping with my fellow seminarians. I enjoy hearing the Word of God proclaimed. I enjoy the prayers and times we sing. But that takes energy. The walk up those stairs takes energy. Sometime I can manage it and sometimes not. Wednesday afternoon those stairs loomed in mind like a great barrier and I knew it was not in my body to surmount them. I was so bummed.

Rested as I could last evening. Went to bed early. Had an awful dream. A bee was attacking me. I was trying to get someplace in Boise and the thing I was on – sometimes a car, sometimes a motorcycle, sometimes a bicycle – had a flat tire. The darn bee was keeping me from fixing the tire. It kept attacking me and I would whack back at it and it would sting me. It had the most exquisite deep, bright blue wings or some part of its body though. Its color intrigued me.

Ok, you guys who do dream work. What do you think?

I’m too tired to think now. I’m winding down and will head back to bed. I did read some of Alicia Parlette’s last journal entry. I have her link on the side bar -- Alicia's Story - Cancer, Despair, Hope and Faith. In this entry she talks about her fatigue. I could really relate to her experience of planning an outing and then not having the energy to do all the plans. It was a comfort to me to read her story. I’m not the only one dealing with fatigue and frustrated plans. Alicia keeps going though, doing what she can, finding the real beauty in life that really, really is there, whatever our state of life. She is honest about her frustration, pain and courage. Such is the path that I too try to walk.