Day 21 – Keep the blessing of hope
21 Sep
Since my last post several days ago, I’ve been regaining strength after fasting prior to tests, and waiting for doctors to get consensus on test results. On Monday I had a 4-inch stent placed in my esophagus so I can swallow solid food again, after about 5 weeks of BYOB (bring your own blender). I’m regaining weight already.
Tomorrow, I’ll have a PortaCath (portable catheter) inserted under my skin (below my clavicle) and will start chemotherapy shortly thereafter.
On the one hand, I look forward to getting on with the treatment, but on the other hand I don’t look forward to the burden of chemotherapy, nor its side-effects. It seems like opening Pandora’s Box at this point.
And that brings me back to the book, “The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness,” which I referred to earlier, and which I now have an ebook copy of (Barnes and Noble, Nook version). Groopman briefly describes the essence of his book with this opening epigraph:
Pandora. the first mortal woman, received from Zeus a box that she was forbidden to open. The box contained all human blessings and all human curses. Temptation overcame restraint, and Pandora opened it. In a moment, all the curses were released into the world, and all the blessings escaped and were lost—except one: hope. Without hope. mortals could not endure.
My vision, through what I will do and learn in the next while, is to have a brightness of hope that will allow me to endure well, as many other blessings may appear to escape me. And I realize that it’s a spiritual energy I can’t treat with an easy slogan of “set it and forget it.”
(Graphic from “Mary Art” blog)
