Me and Fellini

This is my 1000th blog. Wow. I figure it's an opportune moment to step back and reflect a bit on what's transpired since I launched this site in December 2007.  8-1/2 years. Me and Fellini.
 
Frederico Fellini released his autobiographical masterpiece, 8-1/2, in 1963 (I was just graduating from eighth grade), featuring a movie director (played by Marcello Mastroianni) who takes a step back from a busy, harried life to slow things down and consider what he's accomplished and where he wants to go. This movie was notorious for its examination of intimate details in the director's life. Though it would be considered tame today, it was risque at the time. Now why would that remind me of my blog... or for that matter, my life? Hah! Art foretells life.

I started this blog to help drive traffic to the FIC website through the more contemporary venue of social media. While you'll never catch me tweeting, I at least have this one oar in modern waters. While assisting the Fellowship still motivates me, that alone would not have been sufficient to have sustained my interest. I reached this milestone because my blog has also served as a place to lay out my thinking about cooperative group dynamics—strung out like so many pearls, released one monograph at a time. Finally, I personally benefit from the discipline of writing, which requires me to be more precise and complete in my thinking. I write better reports, for example, because I write regularly for my blog. (Is one ever through learning how to be more to the point?)

This auspicious date comes on the cusp of my entering a new and crucial phase in my cancer chemo-choreograhy. (I came within an ace of writing "battle" with cancer, but I'm uneasy with the martial metaphor and believe I'll ultimately have greater success learning to live with cancer, rather than attempting to "vanquish" it.) In fact, I'm polishing today's post from my second floor room at the Gift of Life Transplant House in Rochester, where Susan and I landed Monday evening for the start of my stem-cell transplant procedure at Mayo Clinic.

It's interesting to have manifested cancer just as I stepped out of FIC administrative work. I reckon it's true that nature abhors a vacuum. As a cancer survivor (since January) I now have one more powerful way to bridge to people who feel isolated, which is a set of tools you never have too many of as a group dynamics technician. I've found that being able to bridge to folks who feel isolated is an unsubstitutable skill, so it's great having another point of entrée.

After two days in Rochester, I've been poked and prodded more than a side of US Grade A beef. This afternoon I met with Dr Buadi, who will oversee the transplant procedure. He gave the green light to proceed based on my baseline test results, and I received my first shot of Neupogen, a stimulant that will cause my bone marrow to release stem cells into the bloodstream, from which they can be harvested starting Monday.

Stem cell collection is accomplished through a process called apheresis. They'll draw my blood out of an intravenous port in one arm, cycle it through a machine that separates plasma from blood cells, and then return the residue into a matching intravenous port in my other arm. A single apheresis session takes about five hours and I'll do 2-4 of them to gather enough stem cells: about 6 million.

After that I'll be injected with a poison that will kill everything in my bone marrow—good cells and bad. Two days following that, they'll reintroduce my healthy stem cells to start the recolonization of my bone marrow.

As you might imagine, my main job throughout this is to maintain a positive attitude and to recover energy, motivation, and appetite. I'll be immuno compromised right after the poison injection, will lose my hair (such as I have any), and will feel like shit. But health is on the other shore and I'm highly motivated to cross this river.
For the duration of my time in Rochester (maybe six weeks altogether) I have a terrific caregiving team lined up. In addition to Susan (my main primary support), I'll have Alison (my youngest sister), Ceilee (my son), Annie (my ex-partner and Ceilee's mother), and Jo (my daughter) all doing shifts to give Susan a break. As if that weren't enough, there are even more who volunteered for shifts, but I didn't have more spaces on my dance card! 

It's an incredibly good feeling to know that so many folks are rooting for my recovery, and are willing to suspend their regular life long enough to lend a hand. The power of being touched by this kind of love is palpable, and it appears that one of my main life lessons these days is learning to place relationships more in the center of my life.

What does that mean? Let me share the story of two unplanned visits that created delightful bookends for me last week. On Sunday afternoon River Oneida came by for a couple hours, taking advantage of being in town to visit his son's family (most of which are in Duluth) and knowing that I was going through a major health crisis, he decided to see me as well. River lives at Twin Oaks, an income-sharing community in central VA that will be celebrating its 50 birthday next June (which is a far more significant accomplishment than my posting 1000 blog entries). I have been visiting Twin Oaks off and on since 1980, and have known River for decades as a fellow traveler in the arcane word of income sharing. Though I had not seen him in 4+ years we had no trouble whatsoever picking right up with the threads of our lives, as if it had only been last week. Sharing a community bond with someone creates that kind of intimacy.

Amazingly, this was followed by a surprise visit from Jim Crowfoot & Ruth Carey, two long-time friends who live at Sunward Village, a cohousing community in Ann Arbor MI. They were in state to attend the  Quaker annual meeting (held this year in St Joseph, close to St Cloud). On whim, after the meeting ended they decide they wanted to see Lake Superior and at the same time to see me before I headed to Mayo. Saturday they made both wishes come true wish and we had a lovely visit, replete with fresh blueberry pie and ice cream. (Does it ever get better than good friends and fruit pie a la mode?)

I love that I'm moving into a lifestyle where these kinds of accidental visits can find ready oxygen.

Today we arrived at Mayo for our first appointment mid-morning and settled into the waiting room. When the escort nurse collected us and took us to an examination room, she remarked , "Welcome back." I looked at her quizzically and she replied, "I recognized your devil bag from March." Holy cow! She had remembered my canvas tote bag from four months ago. Talk about putting patients at ease with a personal touch. I was gobsmacked. 
Later, after the doctor's assistant went over the adjustments to my medication list, we asked if there was a pharmacy she'd recommend. We were told there was one in the Mayo complex. When we asked where, she began her explanation with, "You know where the Starbuck's is, right?" You know you're in America when even the directions at Mayo Clinic start by referencing Starbuck's as a universally known landmark. What a (caffeinated) country!

For the next six weeks (or so) I'll be bivouacked at:
Gift of Life Transplant House
room 238
724 2nd St SW
Rochester MN 55902

Who knows where I'll be when it's time for blog #2000?