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| Journal - Feb 2004 | |
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2/29/04 - Sunday There's an Irishman in Heaven today and I'm sure there's a party going on up there. We love you Mr. O'Neill and we'll miss you! But, with tears of loss, we also have tears of Joy over our new niece, Faith Ann. Way to go Deanna! Oh, and Yeah for Nate too. 2/28/04 - Saturday There is a beautiful song that's been getting a lot of radio play down here on local Christian radio station. It started playing just after Joel died and every time it came on at first I would cry so hard that I would have to stop what I was doing and just sob. And it happened a lot in the car on the way to the lab. I would literally have to stop the car because I could not see through the tears. The words so perfectly describe Joel's journey, his spiritual walk. Joel sometimes wrote song lyrics that meant a lot to him in this journal and now I want to do the same. The song is by Chris Rice and it's called the Untitled Hymn or something like that.
Weak and wounded sinner
Now your burden's lifted
And like a newborn baby,
Sometimes the way is lonely
O, and when the love spills over,
And with your final heartbeat, The tears fall even now as I write out those words. It boggles my mind that Joel has been through all those seasons...even his final heartbeat. I hope he did laugh all the way to Heaven. 2/26/04 - Thursday The most profound thing I have to offer today is that it was garbage pick up day...and I did not have any garbage to put out. This is fascinating to me. For my whole adult married life, we filled both big trash cans full for our twice a week trash collection. Sometimes we would fill up the trash cans a day or so before pick up and I'd have to start a third bag. Since Joel has been gone, I hardly produce any trash. I am a low-volume garbage producing unit. I only have a small bag of trash once a week. This is not good or bad...just one of thousands of things about my life that are so different. 2/23/04 - Monday First session of Griefshare tonight. It was fine. The session always starts with a topical video (tonight's was appropriately called "When your dreams are shattered"). That pretty much sums it up. After the video, we break into small groups with people who have the same loss. So I went with all the 'widows' (we all decided we don't like that word). There are about 10 of us and we just took turns introducing ourselves and telling the group about our loss. It was extremely difficult to actually say the words out loud. I don't have any trouble talking about it to people who know Joel, but to say it out loud to this group was very painful for me, as it was for everyone. Some of them were even just crying for the first time. Anyway, I'm extremely busy right now and that's not good for my grieving. If anyone has been trying to call me, I have something every night of the week except Sunday, and by the time I get home, I'm too exhausted to talk on the phone. I'm like a computer with too many windows open at the same time, the whole system runs slowly and ineffectively. 2/22/04 - Sunday Well, a few more anniversaries have passed by. It was this time two years ago that we went up to Mayo clinic for a second opinion. We had such high hopes, but the visit was just a let down. The doctor was very discouraging even though the facility is very impressive. Reliving these dates helps me say goodbye to them. I have no trouble saying goodbye to bad memories. Maybe next year these anniversaries will just go by without much emotion. 2/18/04 - Wednesday Feb 18 is the day that Joel had his liver biopsy two years ago. I remember sitting in the waiting room for a couple hours copying healing scriptures out of the bible for him to read. I was brought down to the hallway outside the room where the procedure was being done and I stayed in prayer the entire time. It was critical that the biopsy be negative, then surgery and a cure would be options. But we all know how that turned out. Even though the biopsy showed the cancer had spread, we never lost hope. I went to church last night and the message was on hope (God knows my needs). Hope is the confident expectation of good. Hopelessness is the worst thing that a person can allow to happen. I know I'll never lose hope because I have the confident expectation, I know, that I know, that I know, that after I close my eyes for the last time here on planet earth, I'll open them on the other side and I'll be looking right into Joel's eyes. All my questions will be answered in that split second. He'll walk me to the throne where we'll spend eternity in paradise. This is the hope of salvation. Any other option is too depressing. I know this is deep stuff, but when someone so close dies, it causes you to face your own mortality in a whole new way. But for now, I obviously have business on earth still to do, or God would not have left me behind. There are sharks to save, cats to feed, family to take care of, new Nieces to meet, new friendships to nurture, old friendships to cherish, triathlons to run, orchestras to play in, and scrapbooks to make. 2/16/04 - Monday Well, friends and family showed up for me in a big way on Valentine's Day. I got flowers and treats and hand made cards! Someone really knows me well...someone knew I would want to hear from Joel more than anything else on Valentine's Day. So when I got home from the wedding, there was a gorgeous basket of flowers with a beautiful message to me from Joel. Hmm...thank you to whomever sent the message, it was just what he would have said to me! I went to an incredible church service and afterwards visited with our hospital minister and his wife and baby, who now that there is no illness, I am happy to say they are just wonderful friends (Wendy is another scrapbook geek that goes with me on Tuesday nights). We shared a very deep conversation! I had an amazing conversation with Meredith and Lael last night. Thanks you guys, you always know what I need. I think we were on the phone until 1:30 am but I'm not tired today at all. In fact I set a new PR in the 200 this morning in swim practice. Getting emotions out is like getting a gorilla off your back. If you don't get the gorilla off your back, it drags you down in every aspect of life. My thoughtful brother even sent me Valentines flowers and chocolates which I've already plowed into. Joel's sisters and the kids sent me packages of handmade cards and a beautiful framed photo of Joel and one of our nieces on his birthday a few years ago. It turned out to be a sweet weekend for me after all. 2/14/02 - Saturday - Happy Valentine's Day! Everyday was Valentine's Day with Joel in my life. He was the most romantic person I've ever known. Today, I will help another couple celebrate their love as they get married down on South Beach in Miami. I have a job playing with a trio for their wedding ceremony and reception. It's ironic in a way that I'll be participating in a wedding today. Make sure you do something special for your Valentine today...I'm missing my Valentine so much today (as every day!). I have a Sarah Brightman CD playing this morning. It's a collection of classic opera arias, done as no one but Sarah can do them. They are in Italian mostly so I can't understand the words, but you can tell what she's singing about just by the sound of her voice and her musical expressiveness. That's the beautiful thing about opera...you don't have to understand the words. You can just listen and feel the story with your heart. Sometimes they are about love and joy, and some times they are about profound loss. I never appreciated opera until I started playing in the opera orchestra and now I have discovered some of the most beautiful music ever written. And now because I've known such profound loss, I'll forever be one of those people who cries when they listen to the great arias. Go out and get a CD of famous arias and play them for your sweetheart during a romantic dinner. Try not to cry in your filet mignon! This year my romantic dinner is splitting a piece of salmon with my three furry critters! They will not cry over the arias, but they will steal my piece of salmon when I'm not looking. Of course today is another anniversary. We had our first appointment with Dr. Neiderman on Valentine's Day two years ago. I remember him saying to us..."I don't know what you two are doing here on Valentine's Day..." I think he was as shocked as we were that Joel had this awful cancer. Then he continued on to tell us about stomach cancer and why surgery was not an option in most cases. It would depend on whether or not it had spread outside the stomach. He scheduled a liver biopsy to determine the answer to that question. He told us about his experimental protocol, which at that time, he only had two people on it and they were both doing well. Joel would be number three if we decided to go with him. We told him we wanted to investigate second opinions at the big cancer centers and then we'd make our decision. He agreed. Later that day, Joel gave me a gift for Valentine's Day which he had gotten weeks before his diagnosis. He had snuck my wedding dress out of the closet and had it cleaned and placed in a beautiful display box where it would be protected. It was such a sweet thing for him to do. But that was Joel, always doing sweet things for me. 2/12/04 - Thursday This is another one of those dates that I'll always associate with Joel. Two years ago today we got the call from the gastroenterologist who found the tumor telling us that the pathology results showed the tumor to be cancer. He also told us that this news changed his opinion of the spots on Joel's liver and he was setting up a biopsy to determine if the cancer had spread. He told us he was referring us to see Dr Niederman in oncology two days later. We knew we would be getting the results that day and the whole morning we just tried to pray and be together and stay as peaceful as possible. We had spent the previous few days talking about surgery and chemo and the possibility of a false alarm. We went to church the day after the endoscopy and prayed with the elders of the church for Joel's situation. So when the news came, we were already mentally and spiritually prepared for whatever we heard. The doctor read me the name of the type of cancer (now it's a common part of my vocabulary, but at the time I had never heard the words undifferentiated gastric adenocarcinoma.) Up to that point I had not done any research on the web because we really did not know what we were dealing with. I think I stayed up all night that night reading everything I could find on stomach cancer. What I found was pretty discouraging. I knew that everything would hinge upon the results of the liver biopsy. Today, I moved around as if I were walking through oatmeal. It was hard to put one foot in front of the other. I've always had Joel with me to help me through difficult days, so it's especially hard to do this without him. I kept busy and indulged the memories of this day a few times. It was just a very tough day. 2/8/04 - Sunday Today is the two year anniversary of the day Joel had the endoscopy that first found the tumor. It was one of the absolute worst days of my life. We went in thinking it was just a precaution and not expecting anything out of the ordinary. When the doctor said to me "your husband has an ugly mass..." my knees literally buckled and I slid down the wall right to the floor. That was around 9 am. That day was followed by 4 days of agony as we waited for the biopsy report. Today I tried not to indulge the memories of that day. I went to a rehearsal, went for a run, did some work, then went to see Return of the King. I thought I was going to be the only one in the theater because the movie has been out for a while and it was not a peak time. But, of course, I walk in just as the movie starts and the theater is packed and there is one seat open right in the middle so I have to climb over a bunch of people all by myself...how embarrassing. I missed Joel a lot. 2/6/04 - Friday Two years ago today was the start of this whole thing. Joel stopped by the ER on his way to work because he'd had a pain in his side for a few days, and his regular doctor couldn't fit him in the schedule. An ultra sound showed some spots on his liver, which concerned everyone at first, but considering the patient and his perfectly normal blood work, they felt they were benign haemangiomas. After a few more tests, we were sent home with no clue! The GI doctor realized that he still had not found the source of the pain, so he scheduled an endoscopy to look in the stomach. No one was worried. We came home and later went out to dinner. We had no idea that our lives were on the verge of total upheaval. One year ago today, he was already on chemo line 3, and it had wiped out his bone marrow so much that he had to have a transfusion. We were in Dr Niederman's office to discuss the whether to change chemo or stay on the same and reduce the dose. I know that people are not going to be affected by all these anniversaries as profoundly as I am, but it seems strange that the world can just keep going on as if it were a normal day. 2/4/06 -Wednesday Today I visited with Dr. Niederman. I was invited to his going away party (thank Natalie!) at the Cleveland Clinic. He is making the jump to private practice. It is ironic February is the two year anniversary of Joel's diagnosis. Dr Niederman shared with me that due in part to the donations made to the Cleveland Clinic Stomach Cancer Research Fund in Joel's memory (and to Joel himself and the other patients), he was able to conclude his phase II study of FLIP chemotherapy and take the results to the GI section of the ASCO conference (American Society of Clinical Oncology www.asco.org ). The study showed that FLIP produced superior results in terms of overall survival and response rates compared to what's commonly used in stage IV gastric cancer. Dr Niederman told me that there were oncologists from all over the world at this conference and many of them were so impressed with the results that they made a point of telling him that they planned to implement the protocol with their own patients. So, again, Joel continues to affect the lives of others, even though his physical body is gone, his spirit is very much alive. Thank you to everyone that sent donations...if you have not gotten a thank you note from me, you will eventually. I have so many to write and I'm making all the cards by hand so it might take a while. If anyone in the future is interested in making a donation to stomach cancer research, contact me directly and I'll get the information for you. 2/1/04 - Sunday Four months ago...Every first of the month is still an anniversary, as is every Wednesday night at 6 pm. I'm staying home all day today, with Joel, with God. It seems like he's been gone for so long.
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