Special Tribute

Special Tribute- I wrote this in Jan 2011 to three incredible human beings that walked with me the treacherous journey. Today is a day of celebration for me. It's the day I have met the lady who saved my life!!!!! Once my results came out clean with no evidence of cancer in the surrounding tissue or lymph nodes, I consider myself more than lucky. Of course, I say that knowing that a lot of patients that I know have passed on and here I am preparing to celebrate cancerversary next year January 31, the last day of the month I was declared cancerfree and its coincidentally my birth month. Three years ago, in February, I wrote my journal just before I headed to the hospital. It is entitled "Lord, please make these tumors benign!" Well the Lord didn’t exactly grant my plea and as I read through that, I reflect on all the changes I've endured over the past two years. There have been a lot of them! In a comment I made later that night, I mentioned that I'd been told prior to the test that the tumor was 2.0 - 2.5 cm and when I learned the lab had trouble locating it I rejoiced because that suggested to me the tumors must be was smaller than earlier believed. Two days after writing that comment, I learned the reverse was true. The tumors had grown since the last scans and was actually 3.5 cm…it was all the lymph nodes in my upper torso, and it wasn’t just one tumor. They were growing pretty aggressively at that point. The problem in locating the tumor in the lab was due to the marker coming out and the doctor actually had to leave surgery and come make a positive identification as a preliminary biopsy (FNA- this is just about the most horrible procedure *sigh*) had to be done before the treatment could continue. In 2008 it was somewhat a slow progress nothing alarming until 2009 September when I got meningitis successively followed by amoebic infection. I grew thin and emaciated. I “knew” the end was near. As the doctors struggled, I felt sliced, diced, pickled and fried. I have gained incredible respect for what the human body can endure and can attest to the fact that we are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made. I am in complete awe of God's design. In 2010 I faced things I never thought I could face and went places I never thought I my small frame could endure. And the miracle of it all is indeed the essence of this entry. The three of you, in different ways did me up in ways I'd never been lifted up before. You basically stayed my side and said, "We want to walk with you and hold up your arms when you just can't do it anymore." Yes, we do have our faults but I have discovered that love is truly amazing in spite of our faults. In 2009 I had to become extremely vulnerable mostly because I was going through what was then really difficult emotional wilderness. That wasn't something I wanted to do, but cancer throws on your path emotional hurdles that are hard to understand. I wanted to be tough and strong but I quickly learned I was not. I could either take a risk, open myself up and truly receive care and concern or I could seal myself up even more which would result in not really living at all. LPA(identity concealed), thank you for sticking even when you had the reason and freedom to walk away. That you stuck with me means so much and this is written on the tablets of my heart. Physically, the very location of my cancer made it impossible not be vulnerable. Any dignity you may have had has been stripped away by the time they finish treatment. Dr P, thank you for your counsel and for making sure that I didn’t feel dirty when I couldn’t undertake the most basic biological processes by myself. I know what made the difference- when it came to emotional and spiritual vulnerability, I wanted to willingly place myself in God's hands and say, "Here I am, do what you will." I wish I could say this was easy. It has probably been one of the hardest yet most rewarding things I've ever done. I've shed many a tear over it at times when I wasn't physically able to cope with it. That's when I had to remember that God could and He did! In all honesty, I have to say the joy I've been given as a result has far exceeded the pain I endured. In 2010 I looked back and discovered I really didn't have regrets to speak of, meaning I realized that I really had been pursuing the things that mattered all of my life. I'd always understood that life without God is not life at all! And People are much more important than things; and that relationships take work, hard work. Money and worldly positions have always had very little meaning for me, as I really do view those things as temporary and I learned very early in life (thanks to my darling parents) that life as you know it can be changed without warning in an instant. Life as I knew it before cancer has changed forever. I still have to poke myself a couple of times a day and I hope there is never a recurrence that I may live a long, productive, wonderful life. This experience has touched my life irrevocably. I feel like I am so much stronger now, and I have more energy than I used to have. I am no longer struggling to get through the day, but am still struggling with this sudden tiredness that just hits me suddenly and vanishes as suddenly as it appears. I don’t know what lies ahead. We are all waiting in hope. Cancer might come back. Or it may not. God, however, has not changed and He never will. He is still my Heavenly Father and I am still His little princess! I am rejoicing daily and looking forward my 1st cancerversary but I am confident now that the very best is yet to come! In all these, G*, P* and A*, you are the heroes. May you have the most wonderful and joyous days all your lives!! You three continue to be a shining example to me. For you dear angels from India, to all your patients who, like me, go through in their journey dealing with severe disease and sickness I will say this: Your willingness to be more than doctors helped me to be open and honest about my feelings, my doubts and fears along with sharing my victories which have been an inspiration to me as I went through this battle. Thank YOU. Unless a person has to deal with a chronic disease or devastating situation such as cancer, it is hard to understand the raging battles that go on within the mind and heart. It is hard to understand how a day such as this, when assessment says “I am healed” (and will remain in the trust fund list), would produce such feelings of joy unspeakable and Thanksgiving. Unless a person has experienced the mind numbing time when a doctor says in so many words, "you may die from this", it is impossible to appreciate the thrill when those projections did not come to pass. Unless a person has been to the floor of the valley it is impossible to really enjoy the mountain top. I cant thank God enough that He has healed me. I thank him more that he has given each of you the heart of a servant and a champion to take my experiences and use them as means to help and strengthen me. So many would simply be content to bask in their personal victory, but, I deeply and profoundly thank God we have so far made and wish we can make it our mission to use our victories (and set backs) to help all of us better understand what it is like and what it means to live with such a serious and devastating disease even for a season. It is my prayer that as I share my journey, others will truly realize that our God enables us to be victors over our circumstances rather than victims for His own purposes! There is no darkness so dark that God cannot penetrate it and slay it! There is no path that is too dark, steep or hard for God and to be with God on those terrible paths is far better than to be a smooth, sunny, pleasant-looking path without Him because the former leads to true life while the other one leads to destruction. I wrote a journal entry during chemo which was called something like "It's A Setback, or Is It". I can't remember for sure, I lost the booklet in the many trips to the hospital in a dazed state. The title contained the word setback anyway. I had been looking at my bloodwork results and was concerned that some things were coming back somewhat and other things seemed to be getting worse. Dr Col.S* P* you told me that while those appeared to be setbacks, they really weren't. You were actually causing those particular numbers to go down on purpose and systematically dismantling some of my body defenses so that the drugs could destroy cancer cells without the interference by my immunity system. This is one of my "cancer lessons". What I view as a "setback" may not really be a "setback" at all. I had to trust that God is in complete control and He has a purpose for everything which befalls me whether I understand it or not. I have to say that if one person comes to understand this truth through something I say or do, it is truly worth the cost! I wrote this to the three of you because I have wept enough today, I have now understood clearly the trouble to which G* and Dr P* went through in order to secure the treatment regimen for me *Sob, Sob* Really I have absolutely nothing to say to express my gratitude. And for you LPA, you will always be my pillar. I am profoundly thankful and I know without a doubt that I could not have fought by myself without you 3 angels. May God bless you. In a very profound way.

Educating the Heart

We live in an environment of life skills crisis which can be conceptualized as a potentially disastrous imbalance between resource and need. In education circles there is abundant discussions of the need to boost academic achievement with solutions given that include boosting provision of textbooks, increasing the number of teachers, and formulating what is perceived as performance enhancing policies. In reality, though, in terms of importance, the need to boost academic achievement runs a distant second to the need to boost life skills. The happiness and success of our students and the productiveness and success of our society depend on the level of our life skills and, as educators, we need to admit, face, and address the challenge of life. Being in the profession of teaching and curriculum development for as long as I have, I can tell students today are radically different from students a generation ago. Students of past generations came to class with basic virtues and life skills such as honesty, courtesy, and perseverance which were nurtured and ingrained within the family or the closely knitted communities. If we fast-forward from that time to today, we find the norm has become dishonesty, rudeness, and impulsiveness arising from fragmented families and communities. Students were sensitive to the feelings of others; today's students too often treat others as objects. An alarming percentage of students have lost the fundamental values of respect, honesty, kindness, and lawfulness. Today they are insensitive; they are hurting, are not sure of their identity and feel lonely. In a nutshell, today's students do not come to school with basic life skills. Compared to students of a generation ago, students today lack basic intrapersonal and interpersonal skills. They are rude, and uncooperative. They lack emotional skills: They act out their feelings without awareness of the feelings. They are not empowered with personal, organizational, and planning skills, and are not exposed to basic citizenship skills. We know that when we learn to deal with the psychological requirements of learners, and when we become sensitive to what makes them want to learn, we can then focus on what they need to learn. “Addressing the needs in the affective domain is more important than cognitive needs”. We need to educate the heart as we educate the heart. A humanistic approach is needed to view the child as a whole and everything that makes him an individual. Instruction in EQ will help students understand themselves and understand others. Instruction in emotional intelligence is not a quick fix or a one-time lesson. Social and emotional learning programs work best when parents and teachers are partners, and that means schools need to bring together parents and teachers in ways to promote behavior that improves communication, empathy, self-awareness, decision-making, and problem-solving. Parents, educators, policymakers, and business people all have a role to play in supporting the social and emotional learning of schoolchildren. It’s a whole new vision of education that says that educating the heart is as important as educating the mind.