Music; It's More Than What's For Dinner

This past Thursday I took a sporadic trip to Asheville. Back in June I had started planning to make this trip, so in some ways it wasn't sporadic at all. The largest determining factor about making the trip was how I was going to get there. As you know, July kinda came barging into my sumer with its unexpected news of Hernando (this is the name I've given my Hodgkins. I like to think of the cancerous cells as an evil Spanish man. I haven't ever met a truly evil Spaniard or even a man named Hernando, but I felt the name fit its purpose.), and hence my plans were halted until further notice. The whole reason for my wanting to go to Asheville this past Thursday was to 1) visit my good friend Betty and 2) see the Scottish rock band Frightened Rabbit. 

Thanks to social networking and a news feed, I was able to find a ride.  A friend of mine had posted that she wanted to go to Asheville to see The National, and "did anyone want to car pool with her?" I saw this at 2:20 something. The show started at 8. It takes just under 2 hours to get to Asheville. We left town at 5:30. If only congress could make decisions in the amount of time that all of this transpired.

If you haven't ever visited Asheville, you're missing out. It's similar to Boone in regards to geography and that it's sort of like a college town. It also has hippies like Boone, but the hippies there are a whole other kind of their own. For example, while trying to find free parking, Amanda and I had pulled into a unidentifiable gravel lot a few blocks from the venue. She stopped a man walking through the lot to ask about whether you had to pay or not to park there. He joked around for a second or two about how you did, and that we could pay him, and then he gave up the whole charade. Our little jokester friend was named Shay (not really sure how he preferred to spell his name), and he didn't do handshakes, "Just good ol' fashioned hugs." After he directed us to free parking around the corner, I asked Amanda as we left, "Was he wearing a purse, or did he have rope thrown over his back, or something?" Amanda said no, and she seemed a little confused why I would've asked that. "It felt like he had dreads, or rope, or maybe just dreads that felt like rope..." Turns out Shay had dreads, not rope. Later a Flintstone like trolly came rolling down Haywood St. and we weren't really sure what that was all about. We became informed much later that it was a "Brews Cruise."

This was my second time seeing Frightened Rabbit. A friend had turned me on to them about 5 or 6 years ago. Their vocalist has a strong Scottish accent and a very honest way of sharing the lyrics. Their guitars are raw electric sounding, and the drummer is phenomenal at blending rhythms signature of Scottish and popular genres. I think i own almost every one of their albums and even a couple of them on vinyl. This summer I listened to their most recent album, "Pedestrian Verse," so many times! I'd set it on my turn-table and listen to tracks over and over. There may or may not have been solo dance parties, and my living room furniture may or may not be scarred for life for having been the only  viewing audience.

There's something about live music that you can't experience any where else. And I don't mean having to wait to use the public restroom or the amount of hearing loss one can acquire from lack of protection. Music, in all forms, has a very spiritual and, obviously, very emotional quality. I realized, while listening and experiencing this live performance of music with hundreds of other people, that so much of my life was directly related to my experiences with music, small and large things. My degree at university is through the Hayes School of Music. My career goals are to work within the music industry. My bank account is often the victim of purchases related to music. The reason I was even friends with Betty was because of our study abroad trip to Ireland where we had studied Irish MUSIC! I've met some of my closest friends through an internship I had at a radio station where we played, you guessed it, music. My passion for running is connected with music, because I only began to run when I was interning with a non-profit music company while in New York. The whole reason Amanda and I had taken our last minute road trip was because we both are crazy about music. After the first meeting I had with my oncologist, the only thing I wanted to do was to go sit in front of a piano and just play... I wanted to play music.

"I went looking for a song for you

Something soft and patient to reflect it's museI took a walk with all my brightest thoughtsBut the weather soon turned and they all ran off..."

1.75 Miles

Last summer I was living up in Borough Park, Brooklyn. The time will come when I share stories about my predominantly Hassidic Jewish  neighborhood and adventures in the Big Apple, but for now, I was an intern at a not for profit organization that supported musicians, songwriters, engineers, anyone working in the music industry that was blind or visually impaired. In addition to the not for profit, I was also interning down the hall at a small  commercial studio with a blind producer. Monday-Thursday I commuted into Manhattan on the unreliable D train.

Being a student at a university in the western mountains of North Carolina, I enjoy hiking, back packing, other outdoor activities, and doing yoga. After I had been in the City for a couple of weeks, my body had started screaming at me craving that active lifestyle it was used to. Of course, hiking and back packing, in the conventional since, aren't very practical in the concrete jungle of New York. i'm sure you could dawn the apparel and appropriate accessories and go meandering through central park, but that really didn't sound appealing.  There are hundreds of yoga studios, but my bank account couldn't really manage the cost of a class. Yes, there are numerous free classes that're offered through out the City; I did practice, sweating profusely and my guide dog Alexa nibbling grass at my side,  with, literally, hundreds of other New Yorkers on the lawn of Bryant Park one Thursday evening. That was memorable...

One Saturday morning I found myself getting up early (before 8 am), eating a light breakfast, and making the treck up to the North East side of Central Park. The ride took a good hour and 20ish minutes. I was headed to meet up with a group I had heard about from a fellow athlete and guide dog user; she had trained for and competed in half marathons and triathlons with this group call Achilles International. They promote and support athletes with various disabilities, and twice a week in Manhattan they have group work outs in the Park. I had heard of other organizations like this one, and I had even participated with similar sounding groups, but I had always been disappointed in the lack of actual physical challenge the work out gave me. But, I was desperate. I should also point out that these work outs were primarily walking and running through the Park, and up until then I had hated running. My level of desperation for movement had become so intense that I was willing to go run, outside, in the middle of July, with strangers.

Right outside of the New York Road Runners Club I found a group of chatty people. They were very welcoming. We all gradually walked a couple of blocks over to the Park and then disbanded, athlete paired with guide(s). Like I mentioned before, there were athletes with a variety of different disabilities, and this really was empowering. For those of us who were blind and visually impaired, we would run/walk with a sited volunteer, one person holding the end of a tether and the other holding the opposite end. The guide would use the tether (e.g. shoe lace, grocery bag, bandana, etc.) to lead the athlete around people, pot holes, and other obstacles. My guides were Caroline and John, and they'd both been running for years. John was originally from New York, and he gave me all kinds of historical and social tid-bits of information about the part of the park we were in as we ran. On that one Saturday morning I ran 2 miles.

Fast forward to the fall semester of last year, and I found a running buddy to help me keep up my new found hobby. Maranda is a faculty member who I've come to know and sincerely love. Fast forward to January of this year, and I decided to sign up for the New York City St. Patrick's Day Half Marathon. John gladly agreed to be my guide, and Maranda was ecstatic about helping me train for my first race ever.

[Crossing the 13.1 mile finish line with guide John]

In the late spring Maranda found out she would have to have leg surgery. We were both saddened and upset that our weekly runs together would be postponed until, what the doctor was saying at that time, October. Unable to find a comparable running buddy, my runs became less frequent during the months of May and June. And July first flipped my world upside-down with news of my having Hodgkins.

During my first appointment with my oncologist I was told that long distance runs were not going to be in my near future. This piece of news was probably one of the hardest things for me to hear that day while my mom and I sat in the cold, obnoxiously bright, florescent lit, exam room. The doctor advised me that, because of the chemo, my body might not even feel up for running. He wanted me to avoid cardio heavy exercise. My mileage allowance was a single mile. Going from 4-5 mile runs once or twice a week to a single mile was devastating! I moped for a while about my doctor's news, but one day about a month ago a good friend really helped me gain a different perspective. There I was sulking about only getting to run a single mile and my friend says, "At least you're doctor is letting you run at all. You can relish that mile for all it's worth."

The first week of classes started in the middle of August, and Maranda had received great news from her doctor. Her legs were healing beautifully, and she was going to be able to run a  lot sooner than anticipated. During the first week of class she ran a mile, and the second week we were scheduling a time to run together.

This past Friday Maranda and I ran a glorious mile and 3 quarters. It was such a freeing time for the both of us, full of so much healing too. Before our start, we had a moment thanking our great Creator for His goodness. He has truly been both of our sources of strength these last 2-3 months in the midst of very uncomfortable and trying times.

Whatever it is that you're passionate about, running or other wise, I pray that you may find renewal through it. I hope that you might rejoice and be thankful for the big and little things.

List #1: Second Treatment

It took 2 hours before my treatment actually got started

(Something about both oncologists were, quite literally, out to lunch.)

I met a newer nurse named Kim.

(Kim claimed to be the "mean nurse" because she'd worked in the ER for the last 16 years.)

My sisters wanted to take photos of EVERYTHING.

(Apparently, my re-tying my shoe as I got out of the car was worthy of documenting.)

We played several rounds of the Famous Person Game before Rebecca gave up and said she was out of 'C' names.

(This is a great game to play in the car or when you're sitting around waiting for something. One person comes up with a famous person, fiction or non, who has a first and last name. The next person follows that up with a first name that starts with the first letter of  the previous person's last name. Example: Bill Cosby is followed up with Charlie Brown.)

Rebecca spotted a pair of cardinals.

(The cancer centre has huge windows over looking a valley, and there are many types of birds that come sit right outside the windows. Oh yeah, and chipmunks.)

Espresso beans are not the perfect cancer centre snack as you might think.

(My best friend Erin and her parents gave me a care package the last time I was home, and one of the items in said package was World Market Espresso beans. Don't eat espresso beans when you're some where that requires many hours of bed sitting.)

My knitting was accused of being something phallic.

(Kim questioned, "What in the world!" was I knitting. It's supposed to be a scarf, and it's not my fault that the ends have a tendency to curl up towards the middle. I never said I was a professional knitter...)

Nurses are under appreciated.

(Having to sit in a bed for more than 5 hours made me think about how precious the men and women who work in the medical profession are, specifically those who're nurses. Kim and Brenda were my nurses, and they, whether they know it or not, really showed me Jesus. There's just really something special about oncology nurses.)

Are there games that you play by yourself or with others when you have to wait around for a long time, like when you're in the doctor's office or on a road trip?

Two Weeks Notice

Here I am, one month, 20 days, and approximately 12 hours since my general physician came into an exam room where I was waiting and shared her assumption of what an x-ray had been showing in my chest. Of course, she wasn't just going off of an x-ray alone; I had had a CT scan a few days prior. regardless, when she walked in and introduced me to Paul, "He works for the oncology department at the hospital," I knew that the results were something that I could've never expected.  Paul was a very sincere man. He gave me his business card, and it read Oncology Nurse Navigator. "What an exciting job title," I thought.

There were so many tests with so many needles! Jump 2 weeks later and I had a biopsy done of the mass that is my lymph nodes in my chest. Jump another week and a half after that and I had a port put in, a bone marrow biopsy, met with a fertility specialist, had a PET scan, an echo cardiogram, and a pulmonary function test. Yes, the latter were all completed within one week! And have I mentioned I really hate needles.

One of my favorite visits  to the hospital--and I only say favorite because there've been many humorous moments at the hospital despite my reason for being there--was when they biopsied the mass. One of my good friends who's  a nurse back in the eastern part of North Carolina came with me. After the operation 3 nurses were adamant about informing myself, the blind patient with the guide dog, and my friend that I was not to drive for the next 12 hours.

 Since all of my tests, being poked with too many needles, and multiple adventures to the hospital, I've since met my oncologist and had my first round of treatment. I can't say that my doctor is the most amicable man around, but he knows his stuff. The game plan, if you will, is to undergo 4 rounds of chemo and then we'll come back to evaluate the situation.


I'm receiving ABVD: Adriamycin, Bleomycin, Vinblastine, and Dacarbazine (Can you say those names 5 times fast?) The chemo treatments will be scheduled every 2 weeks. My mom likes to refer to this as my cokctail. Maybe after all this is said and done I'll create my own alcoholic cocktail. It'll be my triumphant drink of choice, and every time I drink said cocktail I'll savour the flavour of   kicking Hodgkins in the butt!

Tomorrow is round 2 of chemo.