Our Onion

As this journey began, it was apparent that many answers to our questions would take time and come in many forms.  As if peeling back the layers of an onion, we slowly started getting to the core.  Layers came off in the way words were chosen carefully, a look, body language, voice inflection, what was NOT being said.  My Intro to Speech Class 101, from 9th grade has finally paid off.  Visiting with doctors over the last month has heightened my observational skills (or at least I would like to think so) and from piecing together the information that we were not told until now, I can't say we were totally surprised by what we learned.  Evidently we have taken enough layers off to get to the core today, when we met with a new oncologist from KU Med. Ctr.  Her name is Dr. Chintala.  It appears that the pathology results point to a kind of mixed lung cancer.  It does have quite a long descriptive scientific name, with words that tease my spell check, but for us lay people..."mixed lung cancer" is as plain as it gets.  She visited with us for for a healthy dose of time and will return each day as a plan comes together for confronting Miki’s pain and dealing with the cancerous tumors we are aware of.

The one thing we have been looking for this whole time was a culprit.  Now that it appears to have been identified, a name has been placed with a face and it appears that it is a scary face.  It won't be a piece of cake, but the outcome is promising.  While we are still processing this news, the initial scare is still there, but now it feels like some of that fear is turning into a sense of “opening a can of whoopass” and like you would expect, we want to get on it and Miki is leading the way.

While this news to us is still only hours old, I go through the corridors of this hospital and can’t help but wonder how may others I am passing have the same thoughts and feelings running through their minds, because they too are rookies to this game.  While others may be veterans I walk by and are on a whole other level than we are at this time.  It feels so personal, like we are the first to step out onto this playing field, yet we know that it is one of the oldest games in town, and we owe the benefits that will help Miki heal to those that have come before her.

Like a real onion, whose enzymes permeate and diffuse into the air causing many of us to cry, this onion causes tears too.

My Zen from Home:  You cannot worry about what you cannot control.  In a past entry I talked about having control over things.  For me right now, it is taking care of the house and not accepting any help with it, yet.  When I was teaching and had a kid that was making all kinds of wrong decisions for themselves, when it boiled down to it, they had no control over anything in their lives.  They were acting out to be in control of something.  One of the first things Miki and I talked about after the doctor left, after delivering our future, was you can choose to be depressed and negative or upbeat and look forward.  We don’t control the existing cancer, but we do have control over how we react to it.  Guess which direction Miki is choosing.