T - minus - 5 Count Down To Transplant

On the news this morning the main focus has been on the 100 plus tornadoes through the Mid West and down to the South East leaving devastation every where. The heart wrenching pain exceeds imagination. Consistently survivors testify to the things that really matter, life and relationships, the buildings were important for what they were as shelter and what they symbolized as homes, but life and relationships mattered most. Some of the scenes are flashing across the TV screen now as I write this. And in a room down the hall a patient is throwing up, struggling with the side effects of chemo as they wade through this stem cell process striving for life and continued relationships.

When I was doing Chaplaincy in the Medical Center here, I recall that we as chaplains had to come to terms with the idea that all of the patients, basically the entire inpatient population was ill and in need of some kind of medical attention. This was our world in which we worked pretty much the whole day, everybody was sick, some more serious than others, and to them while they are patients, it is frequently their only world as well. As Chaplains we had to learn to see a wider world that was much larger and that not every one in the world or at least our world was ill or diseased or needing medical attention. And those that were in the hospital, the majority of them get better and go home. It seems I can see only cancer everywhere I look. Everybody seems to have been affected by it, like a friend or family member when I look out. It is my world right now and it is extremely difficult to not see and feel the devastation of the BIG C. All 52 on this floor have cancer and has had or will have a stem cell transplant and there are 12 more on Floor 17. Most of us will get better. Some of us will not. Cancer has very much been a part of our lives for over 2 years now. Josh did not get better and died from this devastating disease and it threatens me as well. It fills my world right now and it is hard to think of much of anything else. And I keep coming back to the same conclusions of those caught in the devastation of the tornadoes - life and relationships become primary. The tearing apart of those are the most painful, much more so than the loss of anything else.

As the Chaplain was praying with me he cited Ps 137:4 and "How can we sing the Lord's songs in a foreign land held captive by the devastation of  cancer"? That has stuck with me. I'm not a good singer but what I lack in gift I make up with mocking bird exuberance.