Day 6: June 22nd - The Day After

Day 6: Feeling a little nauseous and weak today. I guess the chem's are catching up and doing their thing. My treatment continues to go well with a booster shot yesterday to re-stimulate white cell production. Most of the week the treatment was designed to break up the overload of white cells hanging out in my lymph nodes. Yesterday's shot was to re-stimulate, hopefully, good healthy ones that will keep me from getting little infections.
I am overwhelmed at the moment by the outpouring of generosity and care that I have received from friends and family. It has allowed me to even consider to trust G.O.D. in all things. I abbreviate the deity's name not to be funny or cagey, I guess, but simply to acknowledge that there are many different people, with many different concepts and experiences that I would like to acknowledge. In my program we often use these abbreviated forms to express stages (training wheels?), or characteristics of the Deity that we can grasp at the time of crisis. This G.O.D. stands for the Gift Of Desperation! (What the hell could that mean?) I mean, it is not exactly the comforting image of the Good Shepherd (Psalm 23) that I have read to myself and my patients over the past year. No, this God is the one you meet when you are stripped of all of the niceties that you/I usually cling to for our dignity and autonomy - of sorts. He's the One we grasp for when we've already been under 2 times and are going down for the 3rd and final time. He is depicted in Leonard Cohen's song, Suzanne, Who sadly looks out at humanity and declares that "all men shall be sailors then, until the sea shall free them."
I am currently reading two books about this: one is titled, Learning To Fall, and is a memoir written by a youngish, middle-aged, father and husband who is suffering from ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. The other I'm reading with my small faith group and it is titled, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, by Richard Rohr, OFM. I will say more later when I have more energy.