The Richard's Bend Journals Slide Show

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Everyday is a fight for peace and comfort

929: I don’t recognize my life sometimes. I go about, seeing things that remind me of things passed. Yesterday, I was in a narrow valley, the walls or ridges that created the valley very close, and high. It reminded me of regular scenes in the Smoky Mountain’s. I thought, I’ll go backpacking soon in the Smokys. I also drove near the Sheltowee Trace. I thought, now is when I would begin to hike the 300 mile trail, bit by bit and finish it sometime this year. I saw bicycle riders, riding along a county road in the glorious warm sunshine. And I thought, oh man, I’ll go along with them the next time. Of course, I can not do any of these things right now, things so regular, my mind assumes I can, plans a trip, then remembers my limitations. It does bring forth swells of sadness. I spend a lot of time walking and getting exercise as much as I can. I do this believing one day I will return to my favorite activities. I am inclined to think, I may not make it all the way back and I try to shush those thoughts. Jesus said (in so many words) as a man thinks, so is he. I read everything I can, meditate, and try to place myself in a new, totally healed body. I believe, based on a persons faith, miracles occur all the time. I believe that I may be totally healed, and I may one day, climb Mount LeCont (in the Smoky’s), or ride my bike 100 miles again. I believe this because one look outside in nature, there are things more miraculous than what I ask. There are things more astonishing in everyday life. How can I not believe in total healing when even more wonderful things fill my everyday world? Yet, there are times I do not believe as much as other times. I am most vulnerable when I am tired. I spent four days in Lexington visiting my Son and Grandson. It was exhausting. When I got home, I feel into a deep sleep, and I was so thankful for the absolute miracle of the weekend. However, when I woke the next day, I was so tired, I didn’t think I had the strength to even open my eyes. It was all so emotional, and physically exhausting. Even though I could hardly move, I got in my jeep and drove out to my old cabin. There is a field near there, where I like to go and rest. Sometimes I throw out a sleeping bag on the ground and rest. Other times, I open up all of the window and doors to my truck and rest in the back – where I have fixed up a bed for myself. I was so tired, I made it easy on myself and laid down in the ready made bed in the back. The warm breeze wafted through the jeep bringing the sound of the nearby creek and it was embedded with wild bird song. I slept so soundly as to dream. Some unknown time later, I woke, and could feel the intense early spring sunshine on my feet and lower legs. I raised up and re-entered consciousness lightly. The birds where singing, the creek falling, the breeze wafting through the opened doors, and I noticed a herd of deer foraging a couple hundred yards away. I as at peace.

Reunion

There are time, in fact we always hope for the best but prepare for the worst. That is, if we’re well adjusted, and are living an emotionally healthy life. Not that I don’t often struggle with “the next right thing to do”, or that I always have the best emotional outlook upon everything. None of us are perfect, but some of us are further along the “path of enlightenment” than others. In this category five storm that has been my life for about the past three years, I’ve certainly been driven “underground” emotionally, and I know that I am shell shocked, suffer form post traumatic stress about every other emotional dysfunction there is. Even though I conduct my life from inside of a bomb shelter, figuratively speaking, that doesn’t prevent me from occasionally coming up with the correct emotional path to follow, as I did this week, coming to Lexington to be with my boys over this first reunion since Jonathon (my son) entered rehab last October. Even though I thought I had some idea, as we’ve been fighting our Son’s addiction for six years, I didn’t. Anyone who has addicted children know how absolutely insane life can get.  Just when you thought you’ve seen it all, or that things couldn’t possibly get any worse, they do, and by multiples of one hundred percent. So when my ex-wife, Katie and my son Jonathon planned their trip to Lexington to see our grandson, and my son’s son, I approached it all with grave caution, hope for the best but certainly prepared for the worst. And the worst in this case I knew could get pretty darn ugly. My little immediate family consists of my son, my ex-wife, my grandson, Carter, and his mom Chelsea. Out Son’s recent excursion “off the deep end” sent everybody running for emotional shelter as we watched our loved one crash into behaviors that were so hurtful and unbecoming and so potentially life threatening.  I had no idea how this weekend would go, but I had in mind a spectrum  of possibilities from very positive all the way down to the unthinkable.  Jonathon has been struggling greatly trying to prepare himself from the damages the substances caused, so as we sat in our hotel room waiting for Chelsea (who had long since ceased to even talk to my son) an d Carter, his son, to arrive.  He was beside himself, so nervous, yet so excited to see his little toddler son. I had become worried about my son and his relationship with Carter. I didn’t know if he would remember my Son that well, or if he would be so cautious as to hurt my son’s feelings, heaping more wreckage weight upon Jonathon’s shoulders.. Passing the floor of the small room, suddenly the knock on the door came and when Jonathon pushed it wide open, there stood little two foot high Carter. As the boys gazed upon each other, Carter had a moment of puzzlement on his face, then broke into the biggest most beautiful smile ever contorted in the Universe, as Jonathon bent over to embrace little his son, little carter laughed in happiness, and my son started to cry tears of Joy I’ve never seen in my son. The last time my Jonny had seen Carter, he couldn’t walk or talk. When Carter leaped out of Jonny’s embrace, he ran down the hallway of the hotel shouting the words “Daddy!!”, and none of us could hold back our tears.

The weekend has proceeded far beyond my wildest expectation. Even Chelsea, who we didn’t expect to even speak to Jonny really came around.  After three days of watched this little family, Jonathon, Carter and Chelsea play and laugh together, I am reminded how much good is left in Gods Universe for me… for us. I know the kids have a long long way to go, and there is much forgiveness and much learning and growth to occur before they can even know for sure if they will get back together. But if they could just remain happily separated, that would be far far more than I had hoped for. To see them so happy and so engaged with little Carter is just simply the most beautiful thing I have ever ever seen in my lifetime. I couldn’t’ hope to experience a more joyful time, or events as I have in the past 72 hours. And I Thank and Praise God for every ounce of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEiwhpiagLM&feature=c4-overview&list=UUuaA1WB4F32lDpODEKcJ1Jg

A song by Loreena McKennitt called Dante's Prayer -

"Dante's Prayer"

When the dark wood fell before me

And all the paths were overgrown

When the priests of pride say there is no other way

I tilled the sorrows of stone

I did not believe because I could not see

Though you came to me in the night

When the dawn seemed forever lost

You showed me your love in the light of the stars

Cast your eyes on the ocean

Cast your soul to the sea

When the dark night seems endless

Please remember me

Then the mountain rose before me

By the deep well of desire

From the fountain of forgiveness

Beyond the ice and fire

Cast your eyes on the ocean

Cast your soul to the sea

When the dark night seems endless

Please remember me

Though we share this humble path, alone

How fragile is the heart

Oh give these clay feet wings to fly

To touch the face of the stars

Breathe life into this feeble heart

Lift this mortal veil of fear

Take these crumbled hopes, etched with tears

We'll rise above these earthly cares

Cast your eyes on the ocean

Cast your soul to the sea

When the dark night seems endless

Please remember me

Please remember me

If you can't make it to the fund raiser on Sunday, February 9, you can contribute here.

Post by Jonathon Thompson.

happy new years. 2014

Day 850 - It's all about the cancer. It's not All about The Cancer

It is day 850, in terms of the cancer. I add the words “in terms of the cancer” as if I am so far removed it, that needed to be explained to you or even me. I don’t think there is any doubt why I know how many days I’ve been fighting. It has been a fight! A fight lasting 850 days. I would like to believe that it doesn’t occupy my life to such an extent, I’d number the days since they first discovered it. But that’s just the way it is. I think it is like a job – a person’s job is the occupier of their time, and more. The cancer fight for me is the great occupier. I do other things that I love. Photography, sewing, painting, building boxes and chests, writing and gardening when it is time for that. But the bulk, the level of my energy is due to the cancer. While I don’t like it, I accept it. Sometimes I don’t write or post on Facebook because I fear you’ve grown tired of hearing about it. Sometimes, there is little else to write about. As any of your cancer patient friends, or family members will tell you, being a cancer patient is a full time business. In fact, it is not bound by any sort of reasonable hours such as a job. There are some days I can’t eat solid food (most days) because of the colon resections and the lack of functioning of my bowels. So I have to make sure there is plenty of good drinking water around and lots of Ensure® and other nutritional supplements’. I have to take so many different medicines I can’t even keep them straight. There are the myriad of vitamins’ (which had to be cleared by my oncologist). There are a dozen or so laxatives and anti-dihedrals. And since I like to stay as selfsufficient as I possibly can, there’s laundry to do, grocery shopping, home cleaning (which takes a “back seat”). From 6 to 8 out of every 14 days, I am very sick, either constantly throwing up or having difficulties in the bathroom. So if I need fire wood for my wood burning stove, I have to have that carried in and convenient. Out of these 850 days or 121 weeks, I’ve had an average of two doctors’ visits a week, totally 242 and that is not even counting the month I was in the hospital in Pittsburgh. I never know if I am going to be well enough to get out and run errands – go to the grocery store or shop for some fabric for a new blanket I am making. But I get ready each day, and within the first few minutes of getting out, I know whether I can stay out or not. Last summer, even though I was on the very same schedule, I had the strength often enough to get a very good start on a log cabin. But with the onset of cold weather, I haven’t been able to tolerate it as well as years past, so that project sits in Mom’s yard, waiting for me to get stronger, or for warmer weather. (There is also the known effect that the longer chemo goes, the more difficult it can get.) My life before was about bicycling and racing, fishing and ginseng hunting and teaching mathematics’ at the local community college. All of that is gone for now, and no matter how much a few of you may think I could pick those things up and go, just shows that you don’t know much about being a cancer patient. Also, I have found, there are those to think I exploit my condition for sympathy and other “possibles”. This is insulting in the highest degree not only to me but every cancer patient on the face of the earth. All of this may sound like I am complaining, but I am not. These are facts, and I am proud at the manner in which I have conducted my life in these 850 days. I have very happy times, and I am hopeful even in the face of very small odds. I cherish the things that are my life; photography, sewing, painting, gardening, my Son and Grandson, my friends and writing. I am sick, but I

DO these things for pleasure and, believe it or not, worship. Yes, when something new comes down the pipe regarding the cancer, I get nervous and frightened, but I am not frightened on a daily basis. I enjoy my life as much as I ever have, and that is because I believe in God. My life is limited right now, but I don’t believe it always will be so limited. Regarding the cancer, I have survived 850 days and I am as healthy as a person with my illness could possibly be. I think this is because I remain as active as I possibly can. When I can, I chop my own fire wood, I walk 1 to 2 miles every day that I can. I live upstairs, so I carry all of my groceries up the stairs as well as firewood and laundry as well; not because I have too. There are plenty of people who would do this for me, but I figure, as long as I can do it, I am better off doing it. In these 850 days, I have had ups and downs. I have gotten very very sick and I’ve gotten better. I have had days where I felt almost normal. There have been days in which I thought I’d be gone in mere days. And it seems like, down deep inside, I am getting better. Some of the pain has eased. Some of the symptoms have gone away. It seems I am almost as strong now as I was the day they found the cancer, and I take this as a very good sign. You, my friends have been so very good to me. Caring, prayerful and concerned. Together we have been fighting for a long time, and I am afraid we are going to have to keep fighting for an unknown while more. But the hardest part of this whole thing, has got to be the unpredictability of the sickness. I never know really when I am going to be sick for the day or not. So it is hard to plan anything. When I am at my sickest, I don’t like to be seen nor do I like to speak on the phone. I don’t like people seeing me in those states. I think this is because I cannot tolerate pity. I have actually gotten angry two or three times at friends or acquaintances who displayed outright pity. THERE IS NOT ONE THING IN ME OR ABOUT ME TO PITTY. I have God, Christ and the Holy Spirit strengthen me and guiding me. He is not leaving me comfortless. The bottom line is, I will either beat this cancer or not. However it turns out, does not matter at all to me today, for what it is I want to accomplish….. For today, it simply does not matter. And today is all I have. Today is all you have also. I find there is a residual sickness that I can’t surmount, but I don’t have to lay down and die either. I respect the boundaries the cancer has placed on me, and I try and often do flourish inside those boundaries.

donate to my cancer fund, and recieve greating cards or a copy of my wildflower book.

Richards Bend Cabin Slide Show - 2000 - 2005

2004 - Life at the Cabin November 20 I also have my discontent moments here at the place. Not as many as I used to have, elsewhere. But I still have them.. Take this morning for example. Mornings are a busy time. Just like most folks, here you have to hit the ground running. I leave one lamp burning all night, very low. Once I turn it up, and brighten the place bit, I go around and light the remaining five. This can take a minute or two. certainly not the flip of a switch we all know and love, if not outright take for granted. Then if it's cold, like it is this morning, with the fire having died down or gone completely out, it's hard to get out from under the covers and into the cold air filling the cabin. Having provided myself with enough light to avoid a serious accident, usually shivering, I fling the stove door open, and scrounge around in the ashes for what ever coals may still be hot. Once I find some, I toss in a randomly oriented wad of small cut wood to kindle a new fire. So I sit and blow and blow until flame bursts forth. Then, as that crackles and burns, I get larger pieces of pine, then oak and fill the stove full. Once I'm sure it will take off, I dive back under the covers, wondering how I could have ever gotten from underneath them - they are pure comfort! The shutout of the cold air is bliss. It usually takes about ten minutes for the stove fire to warm the place, so sometimes I fall back to sleep, it having only been four or five in the morning anyway. Other days, like today, I go ahead and stay awake. Other days still, I stay up and wonder why the hell I don't go back to bed. I'm not sure what it is, but once I've been up for more than about ten minutes, I can't get back into bed. It feels funny to me. like I am lazy or something. I've been up an hour now, so there's no way I’d go back to bed, even though I feel like it. I feel tired and sleepy and I feel irritable. It wasn't enough I was feeling sleepy, but I knocked over and smashed a globe to one of my lamps; a $2 item, but when you don't have another one, and six lamps are exactly what it takes for it to be reasonably bright in here, a replacement globe is worth more than $2. Why on earth I don't keep extras is beyond me. Perhaps it has to do with the fact, there just isn't enough space here (16x16, the size of the medium sized bed room) to actually store anything. I can only keep what I will consume within the next few days, and that's about it. You'd think that lamp globes wouldn't take much space, but it's not only the space for the globe they need. They also need space around them to insure that nothing is placed on them or falls on them to smash them up, so I don't store any here. I just brave a dimmer cabin until I can get to town. And I usually don't mind the dirty floors, but sometimes it gets to me. I sweep my floors at least three times a day, and each time, it looks as if they haven't been swept in a year. Like I said, I usually don't mind, but I was thinking about it yesterday, as I was directing a plume of dust and debris out the door, this wouldn't work for most people. It only takes a moment to sweep the small space. But sometimes, I can't stand the feel of grit and sand under my shoes, and I have to sweep it again and again and again. No, I'm not the most content individual in the world this morning, but I am still glad to be here. The stars last night and this morning were and are something to be happy about. So many stars in fact, it's hard to make out the constellations you're so familiar with. There are so many more stars visible, the ones you know so well are hidden in the multitude. And the visitors. I like what visitors I have here. Yesterday, a man that I know of (I don't know him well, I just know who he is - he owns land on the other side of the mountain from me) came through here, asking if I had seen any of this hound dogs - beagle hounds. I hadn't seen them, nor had I heard them baying, but as I told him, it had been raining, and my tin roof makes it hard for me to hear anything during a rain storm. He said that he'd lost track of them down the river "a ways" from me, and they were last seen headed up this way. I told him that I’d keep and eye out and he was appreciative. Then talked about a great many things. the caves, the mountains, the old people and the old home places up in the high ways now victim to natures reclamation - and he knew so much. So even on my discontent days, I still have my great joys. I am working on an autobiographical history of Richards Bend. My autobiography from the period since I arrived here in 1998. all five years. I think you might find it interesting to know how I came to be here, so far away from my Son, where the idea hit me, and how and why I became so neurotic as to leave the comforts of a large city, and move not only to a small town, not only the back country of a small town, but to the woods. I am looking forward to writing it. I am looking forward to you reading it.

This is me now, writing, talking. It’s not a journal from the past, or a quick feed update, but me. Now. I suppose I am not surprised by the results of the PET scan. It is just about what I expected it to be, although I could not rule literally anything else out, and that is the difficulty with medical test results… cancer test results. They can go anywhere. I mean, I could not rule out all of the pain in my stomach, chest, back, shoulder and head were not from runaway cancer cell growth. And that thought does run through your mind, I don’t care who you are. But at the same time, I could not rule out a “no evidence of disease” result either. (Some cancer patients call that NED). Surely that is the difficulty with cancer test results…. You pretty much know what they are going to say, but you just never know for sure. I was watching Book TV the other night as they were interviewing S. Lochlann Jain, the author of the new book “Malignant, How Cancer Becomes Us”. The book, a no crap summary of everything cancer in the U.S., comes off a little angry to me, but I’m still reading it. Even the title is befitting of me, or should I same, it becomes me. I’ve been a cancer patient 804 days. I’ve had five major surgeries, four going on five different chemotherapy cycles including twenty four devastating infusions each lasting three days, fourteen CAT Scans, eight PET scans and I don’t know how many x rays. I had a colostomy bad for six months, had a barium enema, eight bathroom related accidents, and I’ve already outlived one doctor’s prognosis and I am not expected to live past another three years in all of the other medical opinions. In two and a half short years I’ve gone from hearing “did you ride your bicycle a hundred miles this weekend?” to “it was so good seeing you out walking the other day”. I suppose I could ask how does cancer become me. Like it not, tucked away on that long list of a million things that cancer does to its prey is the fact that it eventually defines us. Everything, and I mean literally everything revolves around the cancer, from what to eat and how to eat it, to whether or not I’ll go the movies with a friend. I think, the hardest part of the process is letting go, and actually letting it define you – and as I read this book, I think this might even be the authors point for us as a country. I see so many people out running or biking or walking, being healthy and while that used to be me, I will want it to be me. I am sick and of course, I don’t want to be sick. And it’s not the obvious: I don’t want to FEEL sick, or fell pain, I mean, I don’t want to BE sick. I don’t want this definition. But as time goes on, you begin to accept so much that you never imagined that you could accept. And the amazing thing is, it’s not as bad as you thought it would be. Of course, there is every chance that I may be cured one day, no matter how small the chance. But even if the cancer were completely destroyed, never to return to my body, I will never be the same (I am not complaining, so hear me out). In fighting the cancer, the doctors have had to do things to my body that are irreversible and debilitating, and there are times this fact has been extremely sad for me. But as time passes, and I begin to accept it, I realize, these are just “new normals”. I can still do the best I can do, and that is all I ever did in the first place. It used to be, when I did the best that I could do, I won races, and championships, but that is just vanity. Was it the winning I enjoyed, or being the best in the crowed, or was it being the best that I could be for me and the simple joy of the activity in the first place? So much has happened. So may prayers answered. So many horrors overcome. The war is not over, but the battles have ceased for the moment. In my new states of existence, as I am defined by my circumstances, it is almost as if I have new legs. It is like I have new legs, and I have yet to test them out. I am in a state of happiness about it, and I am enthusiastic about seeing what they can do and I know I will be pleased. Friends, as I sit here, becomed of cancer, let me expresses how blessed I am! There is no way a person can go through this and not come out blessed beyond measure in that we know God has provided us with everything we’ve needed to succeed, even in the face of the harshest circumstances imaginable. I don’t think I will ever be totally afraid ever again. Not only have I always thought God would provide, I no longer have to wonder, or search for the faith. At least, on good days, I can go forth with the greatest confidence I’ve ever known, knowing that He is with me, and that there is nothing more I will ever need.

My belief’s save me. This summer passed has been horrendous. I hate to keep complaining, and I am not now, I swear. I just need to share this with you as I promised I would. In the meantime, in order to show you that I am not, now complaining, I am actually doing quite well, feeling refreshed, quieted and implausibly rested. As I fought with cancer this summer passed, I had to lay down even the hammer and saw at the cabin for lack of energy and strength to carry out even the meagerest of tasks. Even during this horrific time, the cancer treatments weren’t even my largest worry, my greatest source of pain and sickness, nor the largest drain of my energy. My Son’s battle with drugs far out shadowed the cancer and treatments. I will spare you the details as reliving it now is not my intension. But suffice it to say, I had no idea that people got that bad off with drugs, I simply did not know. I had no idea what drugs could do, and I thought I was fairly well informed (as I still believe I am). With drug addiction, there is no end to the Hell and you when you find yourself entangled with an addicted family member, you are robbed of any reasonable sense of sanity and decency and left, writhing in illogical, incomprehensible pain of so alien a character, you’d sooner believe you, your own self had gone mad. It is in this context I wish to begin your understanding of what happened recently. I was at a bitter extreme as to how to handle my Son. No matter what I did, and it seemed I didn’t have any help. As I got sicker from the treatments, my ex-wife began to get more involved (which was hard for her sense she lives several hundred miles away, and our Son simply would not return her calls or texts). When things literally couldn’t possibly get any worse, he finally agreed to go in to treatment. I couldn’t believe what happened next. As our loved one suffered some of the worst pain I have ever seen or even heard of, we could find NO help for him! The local “hospital” wouldn’t take him. Nor would any of the regional hospitals near Somerset. Finally, he agreed to go into the Ridge where he had been earlier, but had left against medical advice (AMA), but even they left him waiting what would have been 24 hours in their waiting room, withdrawing from drugs while the insurance company decided whether or not to allow the payment of the treatment. He finally left the waiting room, as would I have done myself, and he found more dope. I simply didn’t know what to do, I went up into the woods behind my mother’s house, and I prayed to God. He had been answering prayers in my own life every day in an astonishing way, but when it came to prayers for my son, God didn’t seem to be listening. I had been praying for him all summer yet nothing was happening at all. I was dumbfounded when even the Ridge wouldn’t take him in for help. But then the morning after my prayer, my ex-wife called and proclaimed that she had found a treatment facility which would take him in that night, and they would handle every detail! This seemed beyond hopeful and as I remained cautiously optimistic, suddenly things started happening. But I went down for the count. I became so ill, my mother had to come get me and take me home with her for a few days. I could not rise out of the bed for several days, and I had never, in my life, been so sick. When I came out of the haze, even though I had all of the facts as they occurred I realized that my Son was in Florida and he had made it through detox with no problems. Yesterday was his seventh day without drugs and he was on his way to a new treatment for the next 30 or 60 days. When I spoke to him, he was so happy and he sounded so happy and sane! I know he is not out of danger, but at least he is in a good place, and he is out of immediate danger. What I find astonishing is how God answered this prayer. He closed off every other avenue, except the one in Floridian and I am certain he did this for a reason. He disallowed what I considered to be our only option, The Ridge. But if my Son had gone to the Ridge, he probably would not have stuck it out, and would have checked himself out like he did last time, and he would be right back in the town he knows so well. Alternatively, he is happily along his way to rehabilitation in Florida. Even is he checked himself out, he would have nowhere to go, and no way to get home! It is amazing how this worked out. Then, to top it all off, last week, when my Son arrived, somebody took a photo of a cloud in the shape of an angle in the sky’s over Palm Springs, Florida. It is amazing that I even saw this photo, with the millions of photo’s that people put on facebook. Friends, I am not a very good Christian. I was raised in this belief, and I have never renounced it. In fact, I have always believed, but I have not been active in my beliefs. I have not prayed as often as I needed too. But even after many years of me sitting on the sidelines, God has been there for me through this cancer and all other problems. Any doubts I might have had about Christianity, those are now long gone, and I am left with the sweetest faith and belief in a God who loves me and is moving me through my life by my side. We need not face a single thing without God at our side.

Since the day they found the cancerous mass, August 26, 2011, I have prayed for God to heal my body. After days of bedridden sickness due to chemotherapy, I was driving to the lake to meet my mother and step father for a boat ride on Lake Cumberland in the glorious October. Hazy and still a little foggy from the chemo, something profound occurred to me (don’t stop reading). Reeling from the deep depression and anxiety of being as sick as I was, I prayed that daily prayer…. For God to remove all cancer from my body. As a gust of wind blew a bundle of yellow leaves just in front of my vehicle, I wondered briefly, when and how would I know I was healed. When I would know that God had healed me? After more than two years of praying this same prayer, I have come to realize, in order to improve the quality of life, I need to know if God intends to heal me or not. A solution came to me in a push of great relief woven perfectly with a sense of duty and mission. That great question was entirely up to me. My whole life, I have expected to be normal. I have expected I would live to be 75 to 85 years old, and that was fine with me. Just like every cancer patient, I have lived the last two years knowing that my lifespan could be and most likely would be greatly diminished. So you and I have been praying for divine intervention – for God to remove the cancer from my body and restore me to my previous sense of mission. Driving, I thought about how I would know I was healed. Would it come with a clean PET Scan? After having several clean scans, I realize a clean PET scan would not be evidence of God’s healing. If there is no diagnostic instrument that can answer the healing question, I guess I would have to wait till I was 75 to 85 years old in order to see if God healed me. But if He did heal me, but I waited the remainder of my natural, cancer free life to know it, or to witness the “proof” of it, what good would the healing be anyway? I would have lived a complete life believing I was still sick and diminished – forty, fifty years of NOT living, but wondering. It then occurred to me in that emotional push of great relief and a long, firm reach for strength, God would heal me the moment I accepted it. I have already lived longer than the doctors expected. I have no reason to believe this will not continue. In the absence of any medical tool that can proclaim me healed, the only other device would be in taking the journey to the end of my life to know whether healing had occurred. If I continue in the mindset I have been in for the past twenty-six months (wondering if I had been healed or searching for the answer), forty years hence, I would have destroyed any and all healing God had actually done for me, no matter if I lived one more year…. Five more….. ten more…. 50 more years. The entire question and Idea of healing collapsed right in front of me and I realized that true healing of this cancer means living each and every day that I possibly can, for the soul purpose of living that day. And if I had the strength to do this, then I am healed by God through my faith. The need for “proof” would fasten me to a diminished life of illness of any given length. So I suppose I will borrow a device from my friends in addiction recovery. I am healed from this cancer if I can live each day as it comes and as long as I keep looking for healing to come, it never will. Rather, if I accept that I am already healed, only then am I truly healed. And I will go forward stitching together the days of my life just like everybody else; with no idea when it will all end. I suppose it could be argued, the only illness I have is an emotional one wherein, I cease to completely live for fear of dying.

video blog "DRIVING"

Two Year Anniversary

This is the anniversary week for the discovery of the cancer in my body. On august 26, 2011 I had a colonoscopy that found the large mass at the very end of my large colon. I remember being miffed about having to do that and miss an afternoon fishing on my beloved creek. I had no idea that anything was seriously wrong with me, so when they woke me up, (the doctors pretty much knew on sight/site what I was in for) I remember feeling, though I never spoke the words, “oh no”. I kept feeling like I needed to push “stop”, then rewind the tape, and start over… it felt as if that should have been an option. In those first few minutes as a cancer patient, the anxiety that sank down through my body from my mind was unspeakable, and it was a perfect blend of pure horror, a desire to do the tests again – just to make sure there wasn’t a mistake – and that I wanted to erase what I had just learned and rewrite a new script. I was in an all-out, all encompassing, grand mal panic episode, and I had no idea how I would ever escape it. So severe was the anxiety, my hands and feet felt hot, even to the touch, and I felt like running – sprinting as far and as fast as I could. The anxiety was as frightening as anything else, and I just wanted it to stop; but in order to get the panic to stop, I had to remove or eliminate its source. How was I to do that? But to the Glory of God, the panic and debilitating anxiety subsided fairly quickly on its own, just like normal anxiety, the kind that arrives without cause or purpose. A few days later, after surgery and diagnostics, they gave me the news, stage 4 colon cancer, and I didn’t even know what that meant. The shock and horror of those early days escape me, and lay beyond my ability to convey in words. I thought, my life as I knew it, was over. I was standing on the edge of the most vast, wholesome, necessary learning period of my life and I suppose, in a great many way, I am thankful for it. I had no idea where the cancer would take me, or how sick I would get (from the cancer or the treatments). I never imagined how difficult it would be. I mean, I really had no idea. The worst part of it all came in the first few months. Doctor after doctor after doctor told me that there was no cure, and that I had probably 2 or 3 years to live. A brand new procedure, HIPEC vastly improved that prognosis, but it tore my body down severely and permanently. Not only that, but the cancer returned (in my lungs) just nine months after the completion of HIPEC, far quicker than the average in the data. The second year has been somewhat more settled. In this year came general acceptance. I never felt like I only had 2 or 3 years to live. I always thought I’d far outlive that idea, HIPEC or not. I have been able to let go of the things I once loved to do so much, and I have found new, less physically demanding things to do. At this point, it appears as though chemotherapy is going to be a regular part of my life from now on. As times goes on, those treatments make me sicker than they did earlier, and I am worried that the time will come, I will not be able to sustain those treatments. I have about as many good days as I do bad ones, and I’ve been able to maintain some level of physical fitness (not through cycling – I can no longer sit on that narrow seat due to scars and surgical injuries) through working on my new cabin. I don’t have the stamina that I once had – not even close, but with some wise application of the strength I do have, I can accomplish a great deal I have learned. Most importantly, the worst symptom of cancer by far, the fear and anxiety have waned to almost non-existent levels compared to the first year, which isn’t to say I am no longer afraid. Some days I am consumed with fear and dread. But it is not constant, as one would think. I have bright and happy times, which I never would have thought. I suppose the most profound change I have seen in myself, is a general inability to spend any appreciable time with friends or acquaintances. Because of the dramatic treatments aimed at my colon, I am no longer able to function in any reasonable fashion. Many accidents occur, and that is pretty horrible. So I don’t tend to visit or have many visitors. Another reason for the solitude is the fact that even though I have good days, I do have bouts of sickness every day. I never know when these will hit, and the worst thing about these attacks is when I am with others, and I have to cut short the visit, or if I crash and actually need assistance from those I am with. The sickness and the bathroom problems cause needs that just make it vastly easier to stay at home, or near home or alone. You’d think that most people would understand this, but some have and do get their feelings hurt when I don’t accept an invitation to do things. I have made it two years, as I always knew I would. As for the future, I simply have no idea. Some days it feels like the end is near, and that I won’t make it another year. Other times, I feel like I will make it a great distance into the future, even to a normal longevity (70 or more years in age). When I am in a mood where I believe in the longer time scales, I function daily much better. I could not function at all without a strong belief in God. The number and ways that many of my prayers have been answered would buoy even the strictest atheist into believing. Praise be to God. Always.

August 6, 2003 Wayfaring Stranger. I believe at times, I'm a perpetual wayfaring stranger. a stranger even in my homelands. It's odd, when I look at my family history, legends - At least the family I most identify with, the Indians over the Upper Cumberland watershed. there are times, the deepest since of belonging I've ever known, is upon a gaze of the Big South Fork River - At times I've gained such a powerful since of belonging, in an instant, upon a visit, deep, not focused by myself, tears form in my eyes. And for me, beings like me, the deepest, happiest, strangest tear one can shed, is the one of happiness - happiness in belonging - belonging either to a child, belonging to a lover, or, as in the case of which I now speak, belonging to a land, or a river. There are times when I look down on this River, I am compelled to the greatest since of ease. And it's not something I look for, deep inside. It is not something I assist, or bring upon myself - it is a natural swelling of the land, up to consume me - and I am powerless. And as is the case a great much of the time, such a powerful belonging to one place, one land, one river, often leaves a person feeling like a wayfaring stranger when not in those places. These eight and a half months - this year, 2003 has been a strange time for me. It has been a time of great self discovery. It has been a time of change. I don't pretend that the times or this phase is over - on the contrary, uncertainty is the only thing that I am certain of these days. I know that I have not kept up with this journal as I have in the past. It is something that wasn't a part of what needed to be done. but I have often thought about it, even had anxiety over it. wondering if I'd ever get back to it. Now that I sit here, and I write for you, I still do not know if it is something that I will maintain regularly - I am still writing the novel that I dream of. Regardless of what remains to be done, or what I will do, I am here, back at Richards Bend for a while at least - and, for the moment, I am compelled to write for you. I am rusty - the gears and processes between my ears are rusty - what I create here, I am not as happy with as I once was. And I think this is for many reasons. The most obvious reason is because I've not done it regularly in so long. Another reason is that maybe I've lost the belief that it is a worthy use of my time. Maybe I no longer believe my words or worth the time spent reading them. Or maybe, as I am led to believe at times, my life here in these woods, in this isolated cabin is more of a liability than an asset, at least in terms of how I am viewed by others. There have been folks think and say some pretty harsh things about my personality when they learn of where I live. What's interesting, there are those too, who say just the opposite - that a life like this one here, would be a marvelous thing. And it seems, nobody is indifferent. I guess I have come to ask myself the ask question that a great many other people are asking for me. and that is, why? Why am I here? I spent a year building the place, the project itself, decent and worthy in anybody's opinion. and then it came time to move in; the spooky nights, the remoteness, some loneliness, the cold, snowy nights and getting iced in for days at a time - no one else here but me - and with the loss of the ability to write, I really did begin to question why I am doing this. Writing a journal, an online journal from such a wholesome, isolated setting was something I wanted to do and it seemed to me, in "The Habitation", I failed. It felt as if it were to much. It felt as if the life were too perfect or something. It felt as if, no matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to communicate in this format, what it was like to live here. It is also hard to update my pages from the cabin. And so I slowly began to withdraw. And so I'm back now - I've made peace with this journal. I've made peace with a great many things this year. a great many other things, I'm still fighting. But I've come to believe, I don't have to keep this journal in order to believe in living here. At one time, it felt as if living here and keeping the journal were synonymous - that I couldn't do either one without the other. Now, at least I believe, I am at peace with it. I do love being here. I love the isolation, but I do go in to town for visits with friends. I love the remoteness; the solitude. I love being independent - keeping the place warm with wood. I love the wilderness, and for what it's worth, I love keeping this journal.

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Just Another Day

Sitting here, as usual, well before daylight. I don’t know if it is from lack of sleep or something else, but I do not feel as strong as I have at other times. Practices long ago forsaken, lessons long ago learned, each time I feel good, each time I feel energetic or I feel that things are good, there’s nothing to worry about, I remind myself then, low times are again out there. Though I feel good now, I will not feel this way for ever. In fact, I probably won’t feel this way for very long. And this is not a bad outlook, or a poor attitude. Good times don’t last, Thank God, because then again neither do bad times, and if anything is constant it is that everything changes. (I’m trying to purge and eliminate redundancy from my writings) Are there times, as it seems, that I “see” further and better the true nature of things? I think probably. Even our ability to form accurate constructs of reality change from day to day, and if some days I can’t actually see into things more deeply, The Universe sure fooled me. In math we see this in linear algebra; that if we have at least one piece of information about every unknown, then we can ultimately solve the problem (morebetter, that the problem has a solution). In daily life, there are millions of variables and libraries of information to go along with that. I am not the county’s best mathematician nor the best problem solver, but no analysis can easily solve numerical problems involving greater than three equations and three unknowns; MY POINT BEING, it is not surprising that life is a mystery, and often we are doing very well with even our very best guesses (saving ourselves from the horrors of actual solutions which may not even exist). As time has passes, on those many and increasing days I am able to say “oh death, where is thy sting….”, I know it more and more better, life comes with its own “help” file, we go along “clicking” the question mark tab several times a day without even knowing it. Though a person cannot lose anything more than his or her life, and even there, the anxiety softens with time, ableing us to carry on in the face of great uncertainty. Cancer comes, we deal with it, accept it, and ultimately find ourselves more concerned about how well our cellular telephone is functioning than our lives themselves, and Thank God for that. Which isn’t to say, having long since dealt with it all, it doesn’t all come crashing back down to Earth again, making enormous noise at times (everything changes) scaring the hell out of us all over again. Even still, we are not even surprised when things are back to normal by that afternoon, and we are back to our merry selves. It’s like, I don’t know; it’s like feeling greatful for that horrible headache. It was almost worth having the headache to experience it going away. This particular crash (remember, I’m not feeling well again) I think came when I heard somebody mention how easy it was to learn the python computer programing language. I had a class in programing in college, and went on to use it at my job as a geologist many times. I enjoyed writing code and I was sad when it became less and less necessary for the general public to be able to compile little programs for themselves; little strings of computer logic to help us solve our own daily problems; to answer our own complex questions. Though I didn’t know it at the time, busy as I was, being a professional geologist/geophysicist, generating computer program code is soothing in the same way sewing is soothing. I became sad, because my mind’s voice said, well then, I must obtain and learn this “python”. The happier I became about learning python, the sadder I became knowing that I necessarily should limit myself on what I want to accomplish with my newly trimmed life expectancy. Good friends will tell me that I shouldn’t limit myself at all but it is me who hast to answer the question more expediently than most, do I want to finish a lot of things, or do I want to finish a few things but well (do I use a question mark here? I truly do not know). I “Mona Lisa” smile at myself when I remember Jonathan W. Thompson, versions 30.0 through 39.9. Having good days then meant that I had actually arrived at a new, happier state of being, the elusive wellness I felt was hard won war bounty which would endure and not fade. I have long since abandoned such stable and unchanging views of the world, trading them in for the reality that everything changes and I like it better this a way. I will gladly watch good moods pale for the knowledge that even my deepest “hell” is not permanent either, that I’d nearly endure that headache in order to know what it feels like when it goes away.