{"id":30836,"date":"2016-08-18T12:48:17","date_gmt":"2016-08-18T18:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/publiccatholic\/?p=30836"},"modified":"2016-08-18T12:48:17","modified_gmt":"2016-08-18T18:48:17","slug":"cancer-has-taught-me-the-cure-we-have-to-follow-christ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/publiccatholic\/2016\/08\/cancer-has-taught-me-the-cure-we-have-to-follow-christ\/","title":{"rendered":"Cancer has Taught Me the Cure: We Have to Follow Christ."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Photo<\/a>
Photo Source: Flickr Creative Commons by Waiting for the Word https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/waitingfortheword\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

I wrote this last week for the National Catholic Register<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been trying to find my way back into writing for quite a while. It isn\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n

Every time I think I\u2019m moving forward, I fall down. I get sick again; not cancer sick, but too sick to do anything. I get colds, kidney infections, gastrointestinal thingies, then I get another cold, and so on and so forth.<\/p>\n

Each little illness \u2014 and these things come at me like they were being fired from a repeating rifle \u2014 takes the little bit of pizazz that I\u2019ve mustered and smashes it flat. I have to rebuild my stamina, and yes, my interest in the world outside the confines of my personal life, all over again. Then, just as I\u2019m peeking over the rim, I get hit with another illness.<\/p>\n

These things take me down in a way that colds and such have not in times past. I don\u2019t remember ever missing a day\u2019s work over a cold or a kidney infection. No matter what happened, my verve for doing kept right on keeping on. It has fueled me all my life. But cancer extinguished that verve in a deep, deep way. My focus switched to an all-out fight for my life.<\/p>\n

In addition to wearing me down, cancer shifted the things I care about. What mattered to me, in fact all that mattered, was Jesus, my family and a few friends. Whatever verve I had left went to cuddling my granddaughter and taking my Mama out for drives.<\/p>\n

There was a time \u2014 quite a long time \u2014 when I could do neither. In fact, there was a period of at least a couple of weeks where my memory was so drug-laden that it\u2019s just a spotty series of scenes that I sort of remember.<\/p>\n

I had one tough instance of runaway high blood pressure. I had daily visits from nurses for a few weeks. They were wonderful and probably saved my life when the blood pressure went wacko. The nurse caught it and went to bats with the docs that they had to do something about it. I don\u2019t remember a lot of things, but I do remember her telling a doc \u201cYou have to act. I will not leave this patient in this condition. I don\u2019t want a mastectomy to stroke out on me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The odd part of that memory is that a friend of mine was Rebecca-sitting during this whole event. She came to my house each morning as my husband was leaving for work and stayed with me all day. I remember we watched movies and that she helped me strip drains and such.<\/p>\n

Later, when I was trying to remember the big mess with the blood pressure, I asked her, \u201cWere you there when that happened?\u201d She smiled and said, \u201cYes, I was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another time, I was telling her about how heavy my Kirby vacuum cleaner is and bragging that I had been able, for the first time in a long time, to vacuum my living room floor. She smiled and said, \u201cI used that vacuum to clean your house when I was taking care of you.\u201d I have no memory of that.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot I don\u2019t remember, and a lot I do (Read the rest here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote this last week for the National Catholic Register. \u00a0 I\u2019ve been trying to find my way back into writing for quite a while. It isn\u2019t easy. Every time I think I\u2019m moving forward, I fall down. I get sick again; not cancer sick, but too sick to do anything. I get colds, kidney […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1155,"featured_media":30770,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6232,7839,726,793,538,241,1265,1,7340],"tags":[3998,7882,7881,2162],"class_list":["post-30836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-breast-cancer-2","category-following-christ","category-health","category-health-care","category-jesus","category-prayer-2","category-uncategorized","category-writing-2","tag-breast-cancer","tag-cancer-and-jesus","tag-cancer-survivor","tag-following-christ-2"],"yoast_head":"\nCancer has Taught Me the Cure: We Have to Follow Christ.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I wrote this last week for the National Catholic Register.   I\u2019ve been trying to find my way back into writing for quite a while. 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