blink.

Life is a hurricane spinning out of control. You blink and it's eleven months later and you are out laughing with friends. You've forgotten all of the horrible times and you just are. The present sneaks up on you. Time slips by so quickly. And I just can't believe it's been eleven months since I first heard those crazy words "we found a mass"...

I had a little meltdown in Mass tonight. You cannot just spring an "anointing of the sick"-sacremental-free-for-all on me like that. I need at LEAST a week to prepare my emotional state. For all of my non-catholic friends, "anointing of the sick" is basically just a special blessing where a minister anoints your forehead and the palms of your hands and prays over you. It is meant to bring you strength and healing, and underlies some of my most powerful memories. They are like mile markers, corresponding so well with every stage of this whole thing. Beginning, middle, end...

The first time I was anointed: 

I was home for the first time since I was diagnosed and dragged my weak little self to Mass, determined to put on a brave face for all those who knew and who needed reassurance. Cancer really is just a series of comforting words and reassuring smiles to everyone else. I made the rounds and hugged and smiled 'til my face hurt. Then, just as I was leaving, Father Tim grabbed my hand and asked if I had a minute for him to anoint me. 

Now up until this point in my life, I have been healthy, like insanely healthy. Not one broken bone. I still have my tonsils and all my wisdom teeth. I didn't even catch the swine flu when it swept through sorority recruitment in 2009. I had never even given the sacrement a second thought. It was for old people and people with cancer (I literally just laughed out loud writing that). Who ever thinks anything like this will ever happen to them?? It's always someone else. It's always someone else and never you. Until it is you.

I had been talking to an old high school friend and neighbor, Hunter, who I hadn't seen for years, so I grabbed him and his brother and called for my parents and sister. We all held hands in a circle next to the baptismal font. Father Tim said the blessing as I bawled like a baby, squeezing Hunter's hand. I felt so helpless and tired. So sick and needy. It was one of the first moments I remember feeling truly helpless in this whole mess. But, in that moment, helpless was right. In that moment, all I could do was cling to a prayer and try to find that minuscule bit of strength left inside me. And so I did. 

It was just the beginning and I knew it was going to get much worse before it got better. So, I mustered up whatever tiny courage I had left and I put that smile on my face and I did it. I lost my hair and put my body through hell. I studied my butt off, even when I felt like crawling back into bed for a month. Honestly, I don't even remember much of anything else. PTSD or something like that. But there are some moments from that era that still have memories attached, like...

the second time I was anointed:

I was in Memphis and heard that they were going to be doing a special anointing of the sick Mass the weekend both my parents were going to be in town. I think this was around mid-February, right smack in the middle of the it all. I remember it so well. I had just had chemo on the Friday and felt awful, but was happy to see my Dad. And at this point I desperately wanted to be anointed, to find that strength again, because it was fading fast and even though the PET scans showed that I was responding brilliantly to the chemo, well chemo just plain wipes every ounce of happiness and strength right out of you, so I needed to stock back up. Courage on aisle twelve. 

I was wearing my new wig, the dark brown sassy one with bangs. I sat towards the back between my parents. We sat away from any children so they couldn't cough on me. It's funny how I used to cringe with every sneeze I heard. I was fairly new to that church, but I think people knew. I mean, I was the girl in the scarf. The bald girl always has cancer. Plus I was bawling again. 

The preist called us all up and I stood there with the others, probably the only one under fifty years old.  I closed my eyes while the preist said his blessing over me and traced the sign of the cross on my forehead and palms. Even standing at the front of the church, among so many people I didn't know, it was just as intimate as before. I felt relieved for some reason. All the worry left my body and I was vulnerable again, as helpless as ever. I walked back to my parents and just cried. Public crying is kind of just a thing I do now, clearly. 

This was the middle...the horrible awful middle. The middle is the hardest part of anything. Looking back and looking ahead become equally as hard. My life was all cancer, all the time. We were even learning about it in school. It was all I thought about, talked about, dreamt about. I was bald. I was tired. It was just the middle and I wanted it to be the end. Sometimes if I'm in a really bad place, I just close my eyes and wish for it to be the next day, year, anything. As if time really worked like that. As if I have any control. But, just like that I blinked and it WAS over. And it was...

the third time I was anointed (aka tonight): 

I was just sitting in Mass surrounded by some friends. Corie and I were loudly butchering the unfamiliar music (we went to a different church because we overslept the morning Masses), when out of nowhere the priest announced that anyone who so chose could come up to be anointed. I quickly thought, "Yes, finally, I don't have to do stuff like that anymore! It's just for old people and people with cancer blah blah blah..." But, then a fear gripped my chest and I though maybe I should just in case. While I no longer craved it, I still couldn't say no. Then came the tears again. (See, I had very little time to prepare myself, which was not conducive to my emotional stability.) I held out my hands and took a deep breath as the priest blessed me. I walked back and sat down and smiled at my friends. Then I had the meltdown, right there on Corie's shoulder (It wasn't super bad noise wise though, I've kind of perfected the silent cry at this point, which is necessary when you do so much public crying.) 

But this time I was crying for different reasons. I was so overwhelmed that I had just come out on the other side of that blink. Here I was eleven months later, and healthy again. I was being a normal twenty-four year old medical student and going to concerts and halloween parties and playing on the flag-football team. I was smiling for real and for myself and not for anyone else. I was crying and I was smiling and I was fine. And I am so fine. 

I have reached the end of that chapter of my life. Most of the time I don't even think about any of it at all, but rather there are moments, songs, sights, smells, tastes that bring me back there. And it is in those moments that make me so glad that I have finished that blink. I closed my eyes eleven months ago, praying to come out on the other side. Now they are open. 

I have opened my eyes. 

Liv

if i kiss you where it's sore
will you feel better?
will you feel anything at all?

easy does it.

Life is hard. School is hard. Relationships are hard. Jobs are hard. It's all hard. You push and you push and you try and you triumph and you fall and you fail. It's so hard. It's like you are trying to walk up a mountain frozen over with ice, futile effort after futile effort, you push forward only to find yourself right back were you started. You take a deep breath.

And you try to live with ease.

I've been doing a lot of yoga lately. And while most of my friends who go with me don't subscribe to all the "nonsense spiritual stuff" that goes along with it, I have been listening. Really listening. And the main message: practice with ease. Live with ease. If you move into a pose and you start shaking and it's too hard, then breathe through it, take it back a notch, or just rest. Because if you cannot do it with ease, then it's not going to benefit you. You aren't going to get anything out of it, you aren't going to get any better. The struggle wins. If you get there and you cannot breathe and your mind is spinning, well, then it's like climbing up that icy mountain. And it's not worth it.

And it's not that life isn't worth it, because it totally is. But the pain isn't, the suffering isn't, the self-inflicted bs isn't. Don't let the struggle win. Let the struggle slip through your fingers and float away with the wind. Life is always going to be hard- but when you can learn to live with a little more ease, when you can breathe into the struggles and the pain, or rest when you start to shake: that's when you can finally find peace.

Because life is always going to be hard. There is always going to be suffering. But, you don't have to suffer. Learn to live with ease. You can walk around that mountain and still arrive on the other side, without a scratch or bruise. Rest when necessary and breathe through the pain and suffering. Find peace through the path of least resistance. Better yet, let that peace find you. 

Liv

So carry on, my dear
What is clear up in the daylight
Is we're hung here

enough is enough.

¹Well now, you rich! Lament, weep for the miseries that are coming to you. ² Your wealth is rotting, your clothes are all moth-eaten. ³ All your gold and your silver are corroding away, and the same corrosion will be a witness against you and eat into your body. It is like a fire which you have stored up for the final days. ⁴ Can you hear crying out against you the wages which you kept back from the labourers mowing your fields? The cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord Sabaoth. ⁵ On earth you have had a life of comfort and luxury; in the time of slaughter you went on eating to your heart's content. ⁶ It was you who condemned the upright and killed them; they offered you no resistance. [James 5:1-6]

Enough (adj): adequate for the want or need, sufficient for the purpose or to satisfy desire.

What really is enough? A question that has plagued man from the beginning if time. Do I have enough? Do I give enough? Am I enough?

I think about this all the time. I was raised with many, many blessings and have been lucky throughout my life to always have all that I need... enough...and more than enough. But I still WANT. I want new clothes and a new car and someone to take me out to dinner. 

And geez what a conflict in my mind because I want and I want but I don't need anything. That homeless man on the side of the road on my way to the library... he needed something. That patient with no health insurance needs something. That child sent to school without breakfast needs something. 

Where I grew up I wasn't surrounded by poverty. Honestly, it wasn't until high school that I experienced a lot of things in my life for the first time. Traveling to Brazil and visiting that orphanage. Working as a day camp counselor, scrounging food out of the snack closet and sneaking it to that little girl who was crying because she was so hungry and her mother had no food. I moved to bigger cities and traveled to even bigger ones. While I pranced around Paris, I was painfully aware of the begging eyes who yelled after me in broken English... "please please help me..." I moved to Memphis to begin medical school. Here, there is not a day that goes by that I am not faced with poverty and helplessness. 

I saw a man the other day at the West Clinic. He had been dropped off by a bus, and sat down next to me. We had both gotten there early, about 5:45am, fifteen minutes before the doors would be opened. I started taking to him and found he was there to get another round of his daily radiation therapy. He was alone. He was just sitting there all alone in his tattered jacket and his ratty old knit cap. Where was his family? Where was anyone? All I could offer him was my smile and a prayer, which I did. The doors opened. We walked inside and took our seats. I watched as he carefully made himself a cup of coffee, with cream and sugar, and drank it like it was the most delicious thing his lips had ever touched. I watched as he sat there alone until they called his name. 

I was so helpless. 

How many people in a day do I just walk by who are in so much need? How many of my future patients will be just like this man? What can I even possibly do that would be enough?

I go to bed every night in a warm bed and wake up every morning to put on my nice clothes and fill my belly with warm food and a cup of coffee. I take it all for granted. I have more than enough. We all do. Are we thankful? Are we giving back? Would we be willing, as the bible teaches us, to give it all away for the sake of others? 

To be completely honest... I don't think I could....And I think about that all the time. 

What is enough? Is it enough for me to say that I am a Christian, a Catholic? Is it enough for me to, one day, when I have more then enough to give some of it away? More than just a few bucks to a homeless man at a Taco Bell, more than just a prayer? Or will it be too late then? Or is it about something more? Am I just missing the whole point? This whole thing just makes my head spin!

My thoughts are all mixed up now. Especially now in this time of political debate for our country, I find myself surrounded by the questions that I try to push to the far corners of my mind normally. What is enough? Talk of taxes and redistribution and nationalized health care and the rich and the poor. Of millionaires not paying their "fair share" of money that is "theirs." Of people literally dying on the steps of the Emergency Department because they cannot afford a Primary Care Physician. Cancers going years before being diagnosed because there is no money for a routine doctor's visit, no money for the transportation to even get there. Something is definitely wrong with this picture. But how to make it right?

What can we do to even make a dent? What can I do? To make sure another has enough? I am sitting here telling you that I have NO IDEA. I am sitting here typing on my macbook, with my warm cup of coffee, listening to music on my iPhone, warm and full. And all I know is that one day I will probably regret not giving, not helping more than I would regret giving, helping. And I know that one day I will figure it all out (or maybe not)... and I will finally do something... one day I will finally figure out that to be enough I have to give enough. One day. But for now I will pray, for myself and for others in much more need, hoping that can be enough for now...

Liv

⁸ The precepts of Yahweh are honest, joy for the heart; the commandment of Yahweh is pure, light for the eyes.¹⁰ more desirable than gold, even than the finest gold; his words are sweeter than honey, that drips from the comb.¹² But who can detect his own failings? Wash away my hidden faults.¹³ And from pride preserve your servant, never let it be my master. So shall I be above reproach, free from grave sin.¹⁴ May the words of my mouth always find favour, and the whispering of my heart, in your presence, Yahweh, my rock, my redeemer. [Psalms 19:8,10,12-14]

Nostalgia.

Feeling a little nostalgic about my favorite Avett Brothers concert today... good thing I am buying tickets to see them for the 6th time when they come to Memphis on Oct 12th :)
(Also, get ready because you can hear me scream/sing in all of these videos... LOL... me and Emmy were literally standing in the very front row, right in the middle... best day of my life. But really)

Just soak it all in. Beautiful...

SSS

Tear down the House

First time they played this song off their new album... ahhhh....  

Go to Sleep

Best jam out session of any concert of any time.... just sayin...

Ok back to studying...

Liv

imPORTant

Hey y'all... see that tube up there. That used to be inside of me. But not anymore. You see, that tube is called a port-a-cath, and it is what they stick inside one of your veins, the inferior vena cava in my case, so that they can "safely" pump you full of drugs. I begged Dr. Johnson to put one in, after the chemo from my fourth treatment burned my right arm so badly. So he did, even though they had to put it in an abnormal spot (due to my superior vena cava, the normally used vein, being squeezed by my tumor.) And so in January, clinging my mother's arm, crying and scared, I braved the radiology suite. (And after a little drugging, I totally forgot about my fears and just ohh'ed and ahh'ed at how cool the procedure and all the fluoroscopy pictures on the monitor were.)

And ever since then it's been with me. Something tangible I could feel. Something other people felt and pretended not to notice when they touched me. It almost became comforting to touch, this lump on my right side. I would reach down to feel it occasionally, as weird as that sounds. It became a part of me.

But today... they took it out. Safety blanket gone. And I feel like I can breathe again.

I cried sitting in the chair waiting to go into the radiology suite, straight up cried. Sitting by myself, next to this precious older couple, wearing that ridiculous hospital gown with the slit in the front and wrapped up in a blanket. And this time not because I was scared or anxious (even though I hadn't gotten any drugs yet), but because I was so damn happy. All this was coming to an end. A chapter in my life was ending and I could finally begin a new one. A page had turned.

The doctor asked me if I wanted to keep it. I so did. Of course I was interested because of the medical part of me, but also because of the nostalgic part of me. I wanted to touch it. I wanted to feel this tube that had delivered horrible drugs to my body. That made me feel just AWFUL and CURED me at the same time. I wanted to feel connected to that little piece of plastic forever. I have decided that it is not just a coincidence that "port" in French means "door". Looking at this port, sitting on the table, I see a door to my future. Not only a door to my future, but a window to my past. Something that holds me together as the future yanks me forward by both hands, while the past keeps a tight grip on my right ankle. Something that connects all of my dots.

I am sure the scar that this leaves is going to be awful because the incision from January was so prominent already. But isn't that so appropriate. Because the scars this has left me with are so much deeper than the surface. And they will remain with me forever. Reminders of my past and my mortality. Of this chapter. Something tangible that I'm sure I will make a habit out of touching, finding comfort in its reminder. The reminder that we are mortal. And that I am lucky.

I will breathe easier tonight knowing that this little piece of plastic rests on my desk across my room and is no longer swimming through my veins. I made it, y'all and its finally starting to sink in.
Liv

in-deed.

Long chats and late nights had become the way of my past. These past few months I had thoroughly enjoyed leaving the night to those who wanted it, sinking into my pillow at a reasonable hour. But there I was very, very early Sunday morning, once again, fighting sleep and staring into the darkness, divulging my most inner, darkest secrets to someone who I barely knew...

And doesn't darkness always seams to bring out things that we don't necessarily want to know? Hidden truths that we keep hidden on purpose. Every once in a while we stumble upon one of these, be it an old friend or lost memento, that we had exiled to this darkness. What follows is my secret.... thrust into the light.

Recently, I have felt selfish. Entitled. Impatient. Basically, I TAKE.

I take, but I should give. That's my secret. 

You see, this whole cancer (slash life) thing can make you feel so many things. And one of them for me was that whole "live your life to the fullest" which I think I misunderstood for "do whatever you want." Which is absolutely not right at all. I have been a horrible friend and daughter and sister. I have been an awful person way more often than I should have been, which is...really...well, never.

I kind of had a wake up call (figuratively and literally...) that early, early morning. I just needed someone to knock some sense into me. I really believe that God throws the right people at you at the right times, and this is exactly what I needed to hear. We caught up and I told him how I had a negative (read: good) PET scan and great prognosis for the future (oh yeah have I told y'all that yet??? I AM HEALTY!!!). He told me that once, back when he was a patient, he thought about how much he had "taken" from this life and had yet to give anything back. If he were to die tomorrow what would be his legacy? Would others benefit from his existence??

This is something I had pushed to the very back corners of my mind, hidden in the darkness. Would people benefit from my existence, or did I just simply soak up all that life has given me, leaving nothing but barren soil behind? Or did I make sure to leave it better than I had found it, for at least one person? And well, right now I am not sure. But I know that's why I want to be a doctor. And I know that's why I want to be a better friend and daughter and sister.

I always find it so comforting when the Sunday readings in Mass are a perfect reflection of my recent thoughts... See the second reading, below:

^[14 How does it help, my brothers, when someone who has never done a single good act claims to have faith? Will that faith bring salvation?¹⁵ If one of the brothers or one of the sisters is in need of clothes and has not enough food to live on,¹⁶ and one of you says to them, 'I wish you well; keep yourself warm and eat plenty,' without giving them these bare necessities of life, then what good is that?¹⁷ In the same way faith, if good deeds do not go with it, is quite dead.¹⁸ But someone may say: So you have faith and I have good deeds? Show me this faith of yours without deeds, then! It is by my deeds that I will show you my faith. (James 2:14-18)]

You see, I can write and write in this blog. I can talk a big game about wanting to "help people" as a doctor. But what am I doing right now to better another's life? This passage from James seems so simple, but it is one of the hardest things to really, REALLY, put into practice. It is so hard not to be selfish and impatient. It is even harder for me not to feel entitled, as embarrassing as that is to put into writing.  To not feel like I deserve to be happy and do well and be healthy... because I just went through this awful thing and I deserve it, right??

Wrong.

One of the hardest things for me is to go back to the West Clinic, where I got my treatment, and see the faces, some familiar and many unfamiliar, of the many, many patients who are (still) fighting for their lives. To see the faces of patients who I know will not make it much longer. "Survivor's guilt" or his ugly cousin "helplessness" take their seats, one on each of my shoulders, and wiggle their way into every thought. Why am I the one sitting here with my new crop of hair, antsy to get back to the library, instead of them? It just breaks my heart to see so many good, probably extraordinary, people have to go through so much, with no hope in sight. It breaks my heart and pressures me to do something extraordinary as well. 

But, it doesn't have to be extraordinary. You just have to do something... really it can be the smallest thing you can think of... the point is that there is no faith without deeds. The point is that I cannot believe in this magnificent God who GAVE me the strength to make it through and who GIVES me all that I need and more in this life, without wanting to pay it forward. I must GIVE as a way of trying to put the smallest dent in the debt that I owe in this life. I can barely aspire to break even, for that would be impossible, but I can at least try. 

And the first step is to put all my feelings of entitlement aside. I am alive, no more or less alive than any other on this earth. In the great words of Henry Dodd, a classmate and good friend of mine, "everyone experiences trouble, but in their own way...the trouble of another may be only trivial in your eyes but to them could mean the world..." (sorry I butchered that quote...). But you get the point. What I have gone through is nothing special.Everyone around me has their own "cancer" to overcome. This was just mine. And it is but a catalyst that will propel me into the part of my life which is destined to be more special than any other prior part of my measly 24 years on this Earth. Special because it will not be of my life, but of something bigger. I want to give back. I must give back. Not because of my diagnosis, and not in spite of it either. But because I have faith. 

And I am going to start very close to home. You'll see.

Liv

^[34 He called the people and his disciples to him and said, 'If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me.³⁵ Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. (Mark 8:34-35)]

Ignorance, not bliss.

Whoever said ignorance is bliss was sadly mistaken. To explain let me take you back a year in my life. Just one measly year. My 23rd birthday, August 30th 2011.

It was a Tuesday. One week before my first medical school test. I woke up and got ready for school. Sat in class, probably in the back because I was five minutes late. Went to anatomy lab. Did I go to lunch with friends? (I can't even remember?) Maybe I talked to my parents on the phone? Studied. Cooked dinner with my boyfriend. The same dinner we had made millions of times. Opened a couple of presents. Probably watched some TV and I went to bed.

I was stagnant. I was superficial. I was peaceful.

But I was ignorant.

I was cozy under the blankets of my comfortable and predictable life. I was satisfied, by the same meal I had eaten a million times, and by the same conversation I had participated in over and over again. I was warmed by the smiles of people I barely knew, and by the arms of someone I had fallen out of love with. I wasn't sad, but I wasn't happy either. I was stagnant and had no motivation to pull myself out of the quicksand I had fallen into. Quicksand that was slowly taking me under, pulling me deeper and deeper into a life of complacency and empty, but smiling, eyes.

And just as I was about to be sucked completely under...I woke up. Gasping for air and clawing at the surface to save my own life. Kicking and screaming. Awake for the very first time. Alive for the very first time. Staring into the face of a diagnosis which could have, if the circumstances aligned and if I was just a little bit too late, stolen my life. A life I had yet to see and understand and live.

And so I did something that many people never get a chance to do. I changed. I got to know people, like really took to time to know people. I fell in love, like really in love. I worked harder than I had ever worked. I learned not just for the sake of passing a test, but for the sake of really learning. I cried harder than I had ever cried. I lost more than I had ever lost and fought harder than I had ever fought. I found God again. I danced and laughed when I wanted to because I wanted to. I called the people closest to me and told them that I loved them. I was happier and more sad than I had ever been. Ignorant no more, I was alive. 

Fast forward to my 24th birthday. I woke up smiling and danced around my room. I smiled harder when my entire medical school class sang to me and Dr. Muthiah gave me an air high five. I was warmed by the smiles and hearts of people who I truly knew and loved. I hugged my best friends when they surprised me with a cake and told me they loved me, knowing that it was true. I cried later, overwhelmed by how loved I felt. Overwhelmed by how happy I was. How lucky I was to finally be awake. To be living a life so full it is bursting at the seams. I am not even mad that I cry more now, because that is the price I pay to truly smile. I never knew what that felt like before December, to really smile. To really be happy. Ignorance was not bliss. It was emptiness. But I am not empty any more.

Don't wait to change your life. Open your eyes and shake off your ignorance. Bust out of the quicksand. Just... change.

Before it is too late.


Liv

Perfect Games- The Broken West
We sit around looking for flaws in the diamonds
We sit around spillin our ice cubes on the lawn
We sit around finding our way through the darkness
Well we waste our time when we could be righting every wrong.

I get along kicking myself in the lightning
I get along knowing you won't be here
I get along finding myself in the darkness
Well we waste our time when we could be righting every wrong.
And we chase heartbreak where we can see heartbreak don't belong.

We kick around placing our bets on the evening
We kick around hanging our secrets out for sale
We kick around sticking it out in the darkness
We waste our time when we could be righting every wrong
We waste our time when we could be righting ever
We chase heartbreak where we can see heartbreak don't belong
We chase heartbreak and I was right here all along
We waste our time
We waste our time