The hardest part about these updates it how to get started.  After six and a half years of doing these I still wonder, do you start with the good news, then the bad.  Maybe warm up with how the weather has been with a little family stuff mixed in.  A funny story, a sad one, I don’t know so I just started writing my thoughts.  My thoughts are on Tammy so I will start there.

About three weeks ago Tammy’s oncologist decided that the chemo she was on was not working good enough for her.  We knew this was coming.  Everyone was trying to milk every last bit of goodness out of it before we gave up on it.  It really hasn’t been stopping anything but we had some evidence that it was slowing it down.  Every one agreed that it was time to get serious about looking for a clinical trial.  We found out that MD Anderson had something that Tammy could possibly get in so we scheduled appointments and made flight arrangements to head down there today (Saturday).  In the meantime Tammy would continue with a couple more radiation treatments to her spine to try to help with the pain that is still radiating down her left leg.  This past Monday Tammy was not feeling well and having trouble breathing.  She went in and they did an x-ray of her chest and it was determined that she had pneumonia in there.  She was placed on full-time oxygen along with breathing treatments and antibiotics.  Tuesday she was going to go ahead and try to have her radiation, but her left leg was hurting pretty bad.  The doctor examined the leg and decided that she needed a sonogram done which revealed that she has a nice blood clot in her left leg, and most likely some of it has traveled to her lungs and settled there.

Needless to say on Thursday I went scrambling to try to change Houston appointment, flights and hotels as a trip this week probably wasn’t going to happen.  Tammy stayed in bed Thursday and Friday.  Here pain in her left leg was getting worse.  They say that blood clots are very painful,  after the last two days I tend to agree with them.  This morning Tammy had enough.  She was breaking through all of the pain meds that she is already on.  So instead of an update from Houston that I was hoping to hold out for, we are at the Salina twenty-four hour spa and hospital, trying to find a way to control her pain so that we can get down to Houston next weekend to try to get into a phase 1 trial.  The staff here has been working all day trying different things to make it manageable.  We are trying to stay with things that she can travel with, so that rules out pumps and stuff like that.   It will be a big plus if they can get her off of her oxygen.  Her leg hurts enough that she hasn’t been walking.  So we were trying to figure out how I was going to push her through the airport while dragging her oxygen.  We will get all of the semantics worked out.  Our goal right now is that she is fit to travel next Friday.  If I know Tammy there will probably not be a whole lot that will stop her as long as her pain is under control.

I don’t pretend to be a relationship guru.  I feel that I am just a scribe that the universe has picked.  It has allowed me to feel its energy and find meaning where there seems to be none.  Tammy is the teacher and I am merely a willing student.  I have learned so much from her the last six years.  Life looks and feels different.  If you have ever read, “The Five Love Languages,” you know that touch is one of the languages.  It happens to be mine.  I get up every morning with energy burning at my fingertips.  My purpose for the day is to give all of my energy away.  I do this by touching, my motto is to never let a good hug go to waste, and I have always given most of it to Tammy.  Tammy knows this and has always been a good sport about it.  I could give her a back rub for hours and I love her bald head.  She has given me a hard time about rubbing every last hair off her head because I could rub up there  for hours and not get tired of it.  So for the last year and a half I have been in a quandary.  If I touch her it hurts and so here we are, when it hurts too much to hug. Tammy knows I want and need to touch her, so she lets me hug her anyway.  No matter how much it hurts her, she lets me touch her.  Over time we have both modified how we touch.  She braces for impact and I just hover close.  Letting my heat and energy envelop her while I gently touch her cheek with mine.  Most of the time that is not enough for me, so when I lay down next to her in bed I gently hold her arm or hand until all of my energy is gone and I slowly fall asleep.

I am sure that was a touching story but that was the background for a much larger thought.  Sometimes the most important thing is not the story, it is the metaphor that it opens up to us.  Before a year and a half ago, “when it hurts too much to hug,” would have a totally different meaning.  I am sure it would have included ego, pride, and selfishness.  So what she taught me this time was that no matter how much it’s going to hurt,  we have to let each other in.  We have to let the energy flow.  We have to set our ego aside,  we have to swallow our pride, and most important we have to hug them, not because it is not painful for us, but because it is what they need.   We have to keep loving through the pain.

She keeps loving me everyday, I can’t ask for anymore than that.

I hope you all have a wonderful and love filled Easter.  Fill your baskets with the sweetness of love and give them to everyone you come into contact with.  Love you all!