Columbus and the Valley

The Day My Tears Came Back

In an effort to continue to drop digital insight (for my brothers and sisters in the kidney cancer club) about my methodical return from the pits of hell, there is more to report. All of it is good. We spent a nice, long doctor visit yesterday with Dr. Raj Alappan, my nephrologist. Strainer (for those who don’t know, my remaining kidney, which was named in an online contest on my blog) continues to improve. All my numbers relating to GFR, glomerular filtration rate; creatinine; blood pressure; A1C and all other issues with Strainer are either stable, improved or in the case of one important indicator, dramatically improved. Those visits with doctors to receive results from labs, scans or tests are full of tension that just takes a while to slough off.

Yesterday was a good day.

A little over a month ago, I mentioned that I intended to wean myself off the 20mg of Celexa I have been taking daily for almost six years. So it began — I took 10mg for two weeks and 5mg for two weeks and I was free of any daily dose six days ago. I can testify about newly-found clarity, sharpening senses, a greater enjoyment of my work and the ability to feel, without those feelings being filtered through a Celexa scrim.

The returning ability to take a full-frontal emotion head-on was tested today. I continue to get comments every day about my blog post “Sad Display of Bullying at Last Night’s MCSD Board Meeting.” During my conversation with every single one of these folks, I have asked them if they’ve ever been bullied. The ones who have, get a certain look in their eye. The become smaller. They still feel the sting of the encounter, even if it happened a long time ago. Even if it happened in 1958 in the bathroom of East Highlands Elementary School. I grew up on 20th Street, in East Highlands, until my maternal grandparents were both killed in a car crash near Chattsworth, Ga. My family moved into their home on Britt David Road, in front of the Columbus Metropolitan Airport, where my parents still live.

I will never forget the sound of that door being slammed open against the wall and how  my kindergarten five-year-old self felt when I was confronted by a covey of sweaty sixth graders. They pushed me around. They threatened me. They frightened me. My recollection of the incident included somehow having my mom come to school to discuss what I had been through. She’ll likely weigh in on her remembrance, if that story was even worthy of being remembered. Telling the story now makes me sound like a little sniveling wimp but I won’t forget it as long as I have a memory.

An aside: Monday, September 14 at 6 p.m. will be the next regularly scheduled MCSD board meeting. That will be a great opportunity for you to go to a board meeting and show your support for our board, Superintendent Dr. David Lewis, his cabinet and all the educators and employees of our public school system. 

Today at my Wednesday Rotary Club of Columbus meeting, the Muscogee Educational Excellence Foundation (MEEF) Teacher of the Year Sheryl Green was our speaker. Her well-written, emotional, powerfully delivered speech was one of the best Rotary speeches of my 18 years of Rotary. Most of the people at my table wiped up tears, as Sheryl talked about her Jordan High School misfit soccer team. Her stories were tear jerkers, full of the love of a great educator and broken, hard young students, many of whom didn’t hear the words, “I love you.” Ever.

Except when their coach look them in their eyes and told them just that. “I love you.” Some responded and others turned a deaf ear because they weren’t taught how to hear and accept those words.

I didn’t know what to do about myself with tears coming out of all four corners of my eyes. If you get the chance to hear or read Sheryl Green (she has a column every Wednesday in the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer), run toward her. She has a powerful story to tell and she is damn good at telling it.

Back at the office after Rotary, I took a look at my Facebook account and saw a request for prayers for Shannon Burgess, the daughter of a childhood friend of mine, Linda Parks Smith. Shannon is out at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Tex. in the fight of her life. I touched my keyboard and felt the tears flow for the second time today. I wanted Linda and Shannon to know that I was sending my love to them as only a survivor can experience and give. Something about talking to others in a cancer fight makes my memories rise up. I feel so connected to them and so many others who are in all the stages of cancer from recently-diagnosed to tough battle scarred cancer veterans. Sliding back into a conversation that dredged up some of the bad times was a deeply emotional experience for me today. Please remember Shannon and Linda and their families in your prayers. They need them right now.

The tears got next to me. Enough to wonder if I’m emotionally stable enough to do without the medicine. I suspect all cancer survivors are left with their own demons to deal with. Mine were a healthy depth from the surface, in light of the exceedingly tender subjects that I have been a part of seeing, hearing and experiencing today.

Today was a good day.

 

Motivation

Ex-NFL football player Dave Hubbard was the guest speaker at our Rotary Club of Columbus several months ago. His new gig is a gym in a bag idea that allows a motivated person to use the contents of the bag (pictured above) and any closable door to create a workout space that utilizes a quick, well-balanced routine that is supposed to work miracles. It is said to be the right mix of cardio and strength exercises and it only takes 10 minutes per day.
Dave’s presentation was compelling and though I had long grown tired of being fat, maybe this was the thing that finally motivate me. What I liked about Dave’s presentation is that he never tried to sell us anything. He never mentioned a price for Fit10 or a way to purchase it.
So I went back to the office after Rotary that day and started Googling to figure out just what the hell Dave was selling. I found the website and what it would cost to buy my latest worthless piece of fitness paraphernalia.
Here’s a list of other fitness investments:
• $600 Olympic Health Spa fitness membership (went only once)
• $800 Nordic Trak machine (we have clothes hanging on it in the barn)
• $600 Exercise bike (we also have clothes hanging on it in the barn)
• $700 Treadmill (Jill uses it sometimes)
• $50 Tae Bo workout DVDs (The shipping box stayed in my car trunk unopened for 3 years)
They were eventually taken from the trunk and sold at a yard sale…..unopened.
• $110 Fit10 workout system

Good news! I’m using the Fit10 system. Dave Hubbard would be so proud of me for using the system he designed for some good use.
Take a look at the picture above. You see the black bag on the upper left of the picture? That’s what I’m using of the Fit10 system. I use the bag to conceal my abdominal drain tube when I have to go out in public.
In addition to the bag, I have a twisted coat hanger (that is beginning to rust) that my Emory nurse, Smitha, constructed so that I could hang the bag from a belt loop. Smitha’s hook and Dave’s bag create a nice, stealthy way to haul up to 500 cubic centimeters of surgical gut juice so it won’t make people sick in a restaurant.
By the way, none of this almost $3,000 worth of fitness gear could motivate me to lose weight. Try on a case of cancer and see how that works for you. I’m eating a completely fat-free diet for at least 3 weeks while the docs are trying to dry up this chyle (lymph) leakage due to the surgery. I was on a fat-reduced diet while in the hospital and completely fat-free since I was discharged.
I’ve lost 9 pounds as of this morning and will probably have lost 25-30 by the time I allowed to go back to a reduced-fat diet in a couple of weeks from now.
Wouldn’t want to do it to you, but cancer is the best motivation to lose weight and get into shape.

Silent Story Passed at Rotary Table

This blog entry (slightly modified) was my column in the May 2009 issue of Valley Parent magazine. It is one of the most anticipated issues of Valley Parent because it contains the winners of the 2009/2010 class of our Fresh Faces Cover Contest. Hundreds and hundreds of families have entered their freshest face and thousands of grandparents and parents have been waiting on the information they got on page five.
Even though people see a page in one of our magazines that they really like, they won’t deface the magazine by cutting it out. That is one of the things that makes magazines so neat. You won’t cut out a coupon from a magazine. No, you just won’t do it. It looks too nice to cut up. But you will haul it to the dance school, or the beach for spring break or to the waiting room at the doctor’s office. And, if you like it, you’ll give it a place on the table or the shelf until it is covered with dust. I like dusty magazines. I also like them when they’re dog-eared. They’re treasures to me, but I’m kind of partial.
I like to talk. Those of you who know me know this. I especially like the people who sit around my Wednesday Rotary table, because they like to talk, too. These folks are not just talkers. They’re storytellers, and there’s a big distance between the two. Talk is just talk, but a story can send you back in time and can tug on the fabric of what makes you who you are. Stories incite passion. Stories are ageless and timeless and depending on the kind of story, they might even grow more powerful as they age.
One of the best things about life to me is being able to make an emotional connection with someone over a good story. I had one of those serendipitous moments yesterday at my Rotary table. I told my story first: We had a new couple to visit our church this past Sunday. They’re moving in down the road from us! He’s the Command Sergeant Major of the entire 3rd Army. He likes to fish, hunt and play golf and it was just like when I was child and a cool new kid moved onto the block. I’ve been excited about this since Sunday and they’ll arrive here after his retirement sometime later this year! (This is an extremely shortened version of my story, by the way.)
Geoff Love was sitting next to me and for the record, he is not usually at our table, so I don’t know him well. Geoff is a securities broker, a former banker and seems to be someone I’d like to get to know better. With a story, he let me in. He told of when his family moved into a new home in Mobile, Ala. He was standing in their new front yard with his small son and they were watching a group of neighbor kids playing in a front yard across the street. “God, please let them ask my son to play,” Geoff prayed. They did.
He looked at me, suddenly too emotionally moved to talk as he remembered that powerful memory, still raw after so many years, still producing tears. I will never forget Geoff Love. I am grateful for the gift he gave me yesterday at a Rotary table surrounded by six other people who never saw what transpired between Geoff and me.
Go today, and make a story with your children. It’ll be with you for the rest of your life. Isn’t life wonderful?