thinking is wonder-full!!!

“think and wonder, wonder and think.”--dr. seuss


thinking is wonder-full! wonder breeds thought.
i wonder if wonder's innate or is taught?
i'm thinking the former and also the latter.
it depends on your teaching; it depends on your matter.
the two are intwined i'm inclined to suppose,
and i think you'll agree if you think on your toes.--tls :-)

in loving memory of jacqueline quinn--july 6th, 1966-august 12th, 2013

"if God sends you down a stony path, He will give you strong shoes."

in our own ways, we are all on a stony path of some sort today. i would like to extend my deepest sympathies to jackie's family and friends. laurence, david, betty, robert, antonella and your children, may the God of strength and peace sustain you. surround yourself with memories of jackie and feel her strength even in the face of deep loss. remember her sparkling eyes, her smile, her laughter, her sense of humor, her spirit.

i met jackie and some of her wonderful family and friends over the course of the last 8 months at the juravinski hospital and cancer centre. that's where our paths crossed. horrible circumstances brought us together, and while the pain of loss is great, i wouldn't have changed my own personal circumstances if that meant not meeting jackie on this journey. would i have changed the outcome? certainly, but i believe our meeting was one of those "meant to be" events on the road of life. our paths were meant to cross. after monday night, i realized that more than ever, as i believe she passed on her courage and spirit to me.

i know jackie in relation to the disease we shared. it was how we identified, but not how we defined ourselves. when few could understand the fears and frustrations of a horrible diagnosis, and even though our similar paths took us on different courses at times, we could relate and draw strength from each other. let me clarify...i drew strength from jackie. at times when i was scared or struggling, jackie was quick to offer support and encouraging words to keep fighting, even when her own path was especially rocky. i can remember how encouraging our couple of breakfast dates were. breakfast at the sunset grill never tasted so good as it did with a friend who could relate. we didn't pretend that the hurdles weren't great or scary, and it was an incredible source of strength for me to talk candidly to one who understood by experience. at the same time, we were both determined to not let our diagnosis get the best of us. while it stood to take a lot, it could not--and did not--take the best of jackie, because cancer is so limited. today we recognize that cancer wasn't beat in the way we prayed, but the irony is that jackie did in fact beat cancer. today she is free, and a diagnosis that took her from us can't shut out memories or silence courage.

 i can say without hesitation that jackie is my hero in the fight against leukemia as well as in terms of what it means to fight with a great spirit and attitude. she represents the ultimate in strength and courage in the face of great obstacles and challenges. to me it seemed like she took each hurdle in great stride and with a steadfastness that perhaps belied her own sense of urgency to just get that leg of the race behind her, but i don't believe for a second she was resigned to the direction her road seemed to be taking her. i believe that jackie tied her strong shoes tight everyday, prepared for any detour.

leukemia brought us together, and although it is what now separates us, it cannot sever the respect and admiration i have for her. jackie embodies a depth of character that i have never seen so graciously portrayed, despite her circumstances. when many would have given up, been bitter, or languished in self pity, jackie never played the martyr. 

when i say she is my hero, it's a supreme understatement because i don't think i could ever adequately convey what she has taught me about what it means to meet a road block head on and take a detour in stride...and with a smile. and, in terms of my own journey with leukemia, jackie was a great support, and her encouragement was a blessing. i remember the day i found out i needed a stem cell transplant. i went up to see jackie and she detected my fear and anxiety about the process. she wasn't feeling well herself that day but she sat up in the bed and said with a smile, "you can do this, teri-lyn. you can do this." so much of my own journey has been positively influenced by jackie's care, compassion, understanding, and strength. she has given me more reasons to journey on.

jackie has a special place in my heart and my own journey takes on a new meaning because i am sure to sense her genuine care and compassion every step of the way. i believe she will be my guardian angel, and i feel her strength. she has shown me what it means to fight with dignity and to bravely and courageously keep putting one foot in front of the other on the path of life, no matter how difficult.

tom jones said this, and i can hear jackie saying it: "let's not complain about why things don't work. let's see if we can come up with something that we can all get behind.” get behind each other in the days ahead. we can't begin to understand the forks in the road of jackie's journey, but we can get behind the person she was and all she represented.

thank you, jackie, for never giving up and for giving it all you had. you have blazed a trail of strength far beyond your days. my own journey has been made better because of you. i am honoured and privileged to know you in the capacity that i did, and while cancer has taken much, it has not taken away the person you were, the courageous battle you fought, and the exemplary way you travelled with unparalleled fortitude on your path. i put on your strong shoes on monday night as your spirit lingered and empowered. i will continue on my own journey with your strength as my inspiration and road map.

you are indeed my hero and now my guardian angel. i have big shoes to fill.

rest in peace, my dear friend and fellow fighter.

detour to cancer centre

sometimes our journey takes us on a path we didn't see coming...a detour on the road of life we never believed we would be faced with...and then there before us stands the detour that challenges every fibre of our being...

but a detour is not a destination; it's simply another way to get where we're going. it's defined as a roundabout or circuitous way or course, especially one used temporarily when the main route is closed. 

my main route has been closed since last october 17th, and while on this detour, i am still on my way...i'm just taking an alternative route once my road diverged in the wood and i set out on the one less travelled by...but i believe my detour is directed and not one step has been unseen. 

a light guides me. 

thankful.

"don't move that limbo bar. you'll be a limbo star."--chubby checker

i find myself in an interesting, aggravating, and heart telling place place these days. limbo, if you will. limbo in the sense of being in an intermediate, transitional, or midway state or place, as defined by dictionary.com, or as the oxford dictionary defines, an uncertain period of awaiting a decision or resolution; an intermediate state or condition. 

the space i metamorphically occupy envelops me, framing my every thought and action, and yet i am not defined by the space that i occupy. rather, i choose to be developed by it...not be stringently or radically defined by it. i am a dynamic participant in a state of change. i am in a liminal space, where i am ever in a state of becoming, occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold...ever on the cusp and in the middle. 

it's the space between.

let me break it down.

today i don't look like i have cancer, but i am sick enough that i need a transplant. i'm not well, but i am not sick. i am a cancer patient who doesn't define herself by just a disease; i am a cancer patient who defines herself as a person who has leukemia, but my being isn't defined by a diagnosis or a treatment protocol because it could change. again. 

but how do i identify? when i walk into the juravinski i don't look like other cancer patients. most days i have to remind myself i have cancer. having cancer has evolved into having a blood cancer, which evolved into needing chemo, which has evolved into needing a transplant, but for the most part i don't fit into any of the molds...i don't look like, i don't feel like, and yet...

i am...

...and i have...

...and i need...

i am not just a cancer patient. i have acute myeloid leukemia. a blood cancer that starts in my marrow and enters my blood stream.

cancer created a common fear and divide between having cancer and not having cancer, but leukemia made me unique and gave me the courage to fight. acute myeloid leukemia suddenly made me unique, setting me apart from a normal, healthy body, putting me in a new category of being. my cells are different than those of a healthy person and because of that i require treatment. my body has taken on a new definition of what it means to be well. what's normal for me has a new definition, and it has changed several times since i was diagnosed with leukemia because normal is relative...normalcy depends on everything else...but my new normal doesn't define me because again, the space is liminal and always changing. normal a little more than a year ago meant shortness of breath, bruising, difficulty doing anything physical, debilitating fatigue. normal after my diagnosis meant blood and platelet transfusions, antibiotics, chemo, hair loss, drug reactions, picc lines and showers with bags on my arm. normal after chemo meant a compromised immune system, fevers, infection, patchy hair growth, bottles of antibacterial wash, masks in public. normal after finding out i need a transplant means a new state of limbo because i am literally in an uncertain period of waiting...

i am...

...and i have...

...and i need...

when i got my diagnosis i accepted it. and yet acceptance--in the sense of understanding "why me?"--still evades me. but i accepted in the sense that i could accept that my body decided to stop cooperating with rules of how the body is supposed to operate...i had to accept that my being "fearfully and wonderfully made" by God now includes unhealthy white cells, setting me apart from what medicine and science and society recognize as being healthy.

the psalmist explains it this way, a passage i have referred to before, and a passage i sometimes struggle with: "You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. thank You for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous--how well i know it. You watched me as i was being formed in utter seclusion, as i was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before i was born. every day of my life was recorded in Your book. every moment was laid out before a single day had passed." the struggle is one of not understanding God's workmanship, which for me now includes leukemia cells, and yet is marvelous if i accept how i have been designed. my wonderful complexity has taken on divergent complexity...a challenging one to accept.

my visceral reaction was never to blame God because i chose to accept that my wonderful complexity includes leukemia cells--not "why me?" but "now what?" He made me. He must have a reason for designing me the way He did. He must have a reason for bringing me to this place...a space no one would ever request to be in.

i chose to accept that my leukemia came from somewhere, or i was born with it. i accept that my health care team can detect leukemia cells in my body, except i don't accept that it came from nowhere. "it didn't come from anywhere" they told me. they told me i didn't do anything to get leukemia and i couldn't have done anything to prevent it, but the nagging question remains...

where did it come from? it had to come from somewhere. God must have allowed it to happen. or i was born with it, which means God knew. and if i was born with it, how can it be corrected? should it be corrected? what's normal now? well, it can't be defined in the way we define normalcy, or i wouldn't have cancer. i wouldn't be a leukemia patient. i don't accept that cancer is normal, but in so doing, i imply that God's workmanship in me is somehow flawed because cancer wasn't His original design, especially if i was made in His image. but i haven't blamed God for allowing this to happen or making me this way. instead, i have chosen to accept the various states  to which i have been brought.

my diagnosis carried with it several months of scheduled chemotherapy treatments which, while helpful to kill most of the leukemia cells, didn't bring me to a state of remission, but to this pre-transplant state.

the leukemia patient becomes the transplant patient because her otherwise very healthy body and organs can't survive on unhealthy blood. and for the second time i stand before the limbo stick, only this time the words aren't "you have acute myeloid leukemia," but "you need a bone marrow transplant." in between. again. not defined by the state and place and space i am...but being developed by it.

and so i bend backward from the knees and move shuffling forward under the horizontal bar that is before me, hoping as it is lowered that i can successfully pass from one state to the other, morphing from the space on this side of the bar, to the space on the other side of the bar, but not before being squarely in the middle of transition, as i evolve from this state to the next, never defined by the state, but being ever developed by it while occupying a position at, or on both sides of the threshold.

one philosopher put it this way: "the bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant's existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. the ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and constitutes thereby the life of the whole."

the stages i find myself are not what define me, because the stages change, but the stages are necessary and constitutional for the development of who i am. the stages are spaces between. just like being on this or that side of the limbo stick, or in the process of passing from stage to stage, as the bud disappears, and the blossom gives way to the fruit.

and as i pause under the limbo stick, aware of where i have come from, and knowing my goal is to make it to the other side, i observe what seems to be outside of my passage, realizing that it is the limbo stick that is moving me from one state to the other, not only instrumental but fundamental to my becoming.

the space between...hardly limiting. merely liminal. as i stand on this side, from here to there. and as i look back, from there to here...