Tag Archives: mellie

Journal

On the Mend

Mellie’s little thyroid went to be with the Lord Tuesday, Feb 24 at about 1pm. Hopefully it won’t be missed.

Surgery took 2 hours. Doc said all went well, Mellie was a champ. Initial tests look cancer-free! Thank God and thanks for your prayers. We’ll get the full pathology report when we get a check-up next Wednesday. A bunch of folks came by for a visit post-surgery, bringing warm fuzzies for Mellie. No beds at the hospital so we stayed in Post-Op for the night. Pretty lame place to begin recovery—lights on, slamming doors, people in and out all night, not to mention somebody drawing blood or prodding her with questions every three hours. I doubt she got more than a couple minutes of sleep at a time. I’m sure me snoring in the chair beside her didn’t help. We made it out of there by 11 the next morning; our hospital stay was almost exactly 24 hours. Mellie got to ride in a wheelchair out to my waiting car. Got her home and tucked into bed, and she’s been resting ever since. Mom and Darci have been great, the three of us just hanging out and helping M with whatever she needs. We’ve declined most visitors but friends have been delivering meals each night. How awesome to have such great support! We have a little womb here, safe and warm and well-fed, and Mellie is on the mend.

Journal

Ready To Roll

Mellie likes waterfalls, tasty food and massages, and she’s had all three in the past few days. We’ve got all the paperwork laid out, she’s got a little overnight bag packed up, Mom and Darcy, down from Vacaville, are safely ensconced in the Brewsters swank backyard casita in Pt Loma, ready to join us tomorrow for the trip to the hospital. Now she’s taking a shower to warm up her cold feet before heading to bed. I had a few minutes so I uploaded the latest Marginal Art submissions over here.

I guess we’re ready to roll.

Journal

Three Sisters

flickr | driving directions

We took an expedition out to the Three Sisters Waterfalls, in the Cuyamaca mountains outside Julian. One last hurrah for Mellie’s sick little thyroid. In a few days the doctors will chase away the cancer with their knives. The peaks are dusted white with snow. The gorge opens at our feet, a zig-zag scar narrowing to a box canyon in the distance. We can see the falls glinting in the sunlight. Who knew this place was here, just fifty-five miles outside San Diego?

One hour and we’re down a steep trail, from the car to the stream at the bottom of the gorge. Another hour of rock-hopping up to the top-most of the three waterfalls. With the recent rains the water is gushing. The top sister plunges a forty-foot freefall from a clean overhang down into a round echoey bowl, drumming and rushing, swirling and then squeezing into a narrow chute exiting off at an angle down the creasy face of the second sister, gathering speed, hitting her stone lip and spraying out in a bright arch down into a long rippled pool. Slowed, the sloshy water leans up against a wide edge. Slipping over, it spreads itself out across the bumpy granite all white and intricate like lace, twenty feet wide and sliding down soft into the lowermost green pool.

From the top, beside the misty bowl with the sun on our PB&J fingers, we rest and watch the stream make multiplication among the red and brown boulders, tumbling away silver along the canyon floor.

Then we turn to answer the challenge. We gather flint-jawed and scrunchy-toed to the edge of the elder sister’s pool. Into icy water, snow-melt squeezing lung aching groin clutching numb-fingered against the swirling current, fighting—winning!—to see what is behind the thunderous curtain of water. Stinging skin, squealing like little girls, standing knee deep on a sandy bank for a moment, finding it, wide-eyed, taking it for our own. Then flinging ourselves into the icy numbness again, rib cracking pushed by the flow toward sunny rocks. And out, breathless, steel nippled, hooting and blowing. Spread out flat against warm stone, pasty white February bodies goose bumped and cursing the shreds of cloud obscuring the sun. Laughing together with her, I feel clean.

Before church the pastors and elders gather with us in a quiet room upstairs. Oil on her forehead and prayers over her. Reasoning with God. My hand against her back is warm and moist. God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our trouble, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we have received. The sufferings of Christ that flow over into our lives. Later, downstairs, the water leans up against my eyes, and then slipping over, it spreads itself out across my face, intricate like lace.

Journal

Updated Surgery Details

Doctors called this morning and bumped Mellie’s surgery time up to 10:45am tomorrow. So I guess that makes the day’s schedule something like this

10:45am Check-in for PreOp
11-1:00pm PreOp, 1 visitor at a time
Surgery 1-3 or 4pm
Add a few hours for Mellie to wake-up and sleepily wonder if Chad is available to rub her back.
Visiting maybe around 6 or 7pm?

I don’t know if this affects whether or not she’ll stay at the hospital over-night. We’ll plan on her staying.

Journal

Surgery Details

Tuesday, Feb. 24th, is Surgery Day. Adios, lil’ Mellie thyroid!

Here are the details:
Kaiser Zion
Check-in for pre-op at 2pm
Pre-op 2-4pm or so, 1 visitor allowed at a time
Surgery goes til around 6 or 7pm
Afterward Mellie hangs out for a couple hours before she can have visitors again

Odds are that she’ll be there overnight!
Room service and bed pans… high class.

Tomorrow we’re heading up to the mountains. Mellie wants to make sure that if anything goes wrong on Tuesday she won’t have spent her last few moments hunched in front of a laptop working for somebody else. So tomorrow is designated Fun Day.

I think we’ll hike in to the Three Sisters waterfalls. We’ve never done this one before. With the recent rains it should be pretty great!

Journal

Perspective & Spaghetti

I’m not naturally a community person. Which is funny, because my job, which I love, is all about fostering, building and organizing community at Uptown Church. But left to myself I tend to keep to myself.

For the most part, that is. Having Mellie in my life is a notable exception. Whether it’s traveling across the country or walking around the block, there is no question that things go better with Mellie. I probably need to tell her this more. I think she believes that my favorite feel-good romantic comedy film is Into the Wild. Not true. Now, if that guy had an awesome cutie like Mellie with him in that bus in Alaska, just the two of them eating the correct herbs and saying “Hey Babe, let’s get this moose meat back to camp, pronto!” that would be different. That might be Oscar quality.

Or it might be Grizzly Man. I don’t know.

But the point is, I’m not naturally wired to want to “do” life with others. All this stuff that real community requires time, energy, listening, caring, trust, emotional bandwidth, permeable boundaries, sharing burdens, forgiveness. Not my forte. And it’s not just that I’m bad at those things. It’s the fact that in community those things are two-way, not just one-way. Therein lies my true incompetence. You don’t just give forgiveness, you have to receive it, too. You don’t just take someone else’s burden, you have to give them yours. It’s messy. It’s sticky. It’s cooked spaghetti, all tangled up. You try to fork out three noodles and you get fifty, so you twirl and twirl and only succeed in gathering more so that now it looks like you have stabbed a large ball of yarn with your fork and in rash despair you are driven to cram the entire wad into your mouth and hunch down over the plate clenching the edge of your chair to suppress gag reflexes as the ten-foot long knotted mass slides down your throat with the sauce scalding your neck.

I prefer my spaghetti dry and straight. See how happily the little spaghettis live in their plastic home? They are together, but separate. Not quite in community, but perhaps close enough. I can select a single noodle, if I so choose. I can examine it for quality and decide it I’d like to make it part of my meal. If it displeases me, behold, I can leave it to be pecked by crows.

I can tell you all about the riches of community. Heck, I can even believe in the riches of community. Nevertheless, the strange truth is, when left to myself I will keep my spaghetti dry. Weird and stunted, I know.

Into this small world comes a lump. Then a phone call from Mellie’s endocrinologist. Maybe cancer. Definitely surgery. Soon. She’ll need to take a pill and come in for checkups. For forever. She’ll have a scar on her beautiful neck. Ahh, how do you process this stuff?

Mellie actually seems to be doing well. She’s concerned, a little nervous about the surgery, aware of what it means. But she’s upbeat, positive. It’s cool to see.

I’m under a heavy blanket. It’s hard to move my mind around what’s happening, it’s hard to pray about it. I keep thinking about the scar that will appear on her neck. I think it’s just the most concrete thing my mind can latch on to. I need more than this scar.

We put the word out to some folks. And the response has been good, even amazing. Calls and emails and texts of good wishes and prayers. Good in and of themselves. But look, let me explore this. In an odd way, I think they have also provided for me a means to navigate this dense and unfamiliar terrain. Instead of relying on my own perspective—limited, down here in a ditch, hemmed in by circumstances—Instead of my own perspective, I’m getting reports from you. Different perspectives from higher ground. Ashley has been emailing us—she’s been through this very surgery and she’s letting us know what it looks like on the other side. Forrest sent a link to an article John Piper wrote on the eve of his prostate cancer surgery—perspective-shifting thoughts on not wasting your cancer. Chris prayed for us over IM—that’s a new one for me. Kiley is putting together a schedule of friends to bring us meals so we can take it easy next week—a reminder of how well we are provided for. Listen, without this community intertwined around us, I wouldn’t have these perspectives. I wouldn’t have the help I need to process this stuff. All I would have is that scar. Does that make sense?

So it’s true that I’m not naturally a community person. I can tell you about the riches of community. I even believe in the riches of community. But right now I am experiencing them for myself. It’s a change of perspective. Thank you. It’s a good lesson.

Journal

The C-word

We found out last Sunday that there is a good chance that Mellie has papillary thyroid cancer. It’s very, very treatable, but they want to remove her thyroid next Tuesday. It’s all happening pretty fast and we’re trying to clear schedules and get some questions answered before moving ahead. Prayers are appreciated. There has been a wonderful outpouring of love and concern from our community of friends and family. Thanks for the good vibes!

Today we met with the surgeon for the pre-Op. He answered a bunch of questions for us about the procedure. He was very positive and confident and kind. Mellie is scheduled to go under the knife next Tuesday Feb 24. We’ll get the exact time later. Mellie also got an EKG. First timer! I’ve never had one, so I was jealous. At first she thought EKG was one of those things where you rub the paddles together and shout “Clear!” before you zap the person’s body, making them convulse off the gurney. That’s not an EKG, but it does sound like a fun Wii game.