Support for LateToSchool

[mafool]

<p>LTS-
Bottom line: You cannot post too often, but you also must not post more often than is comfortable for you. </p>

<p>Our role is to support you, not to add a burden.</p>

[mafool]

<p>thanks, 2blue!</p>

[F.O.LTS]

<p>Yay for the weekend caregiver! Bless the current caregivers and all the staff who take your cancer so personally. </p>

<p>Wonder if padad’s book is on CD?</p>

[epistrophy]

<p>fighting cancer with a lemonade stand</p>

<p>

Tyler Lynn (far right) with friends Ryan Fischer (left) and Emily Fischer (center) organized a lemonade stand in Reavencrest to raise money for Anne’s Pool Crew, one of the top fundraising teams of the 24 Hours of Booty charity cycling event. The team was named in honor of Tyler’s mom, Anne Lynn, who is a lung cancer survivor and team captain of Anne’s Pool Crew. The lemonade stand was a huge hit and raised $130 to help fight cancer.

</p>

<p>[South</a> Meck Scrapbook Photos 07.18.08](<a href=“http://pubsys.charlotteobserver.com/multimedia/galleries/gallery/719101-a719121-t2.html]South”>http://pubsys.charlotteobserver.com/multimedia/galleries/gallery/719101-a719121-t2.html)</p>

[snowball]

<p>Another first in the morning, last before going to bed reader. I check in on you before I read email or brush my teeth! There have been mornings before running out the door that I check in here only; the emails can wait until I return home!!</p>

[paying3tuitions]

<p>If anyone doesn’t know where you are for a few days, we certainly know “where you are” the moment after you post, because of your clear voice.</p>

<p>Reading your thread has not only let us support you (a gift that you give to us), but I;ve found it changed how I support others with big struggles whom I know IRL (= ‘in real life’ for some new readers.) </p>

<p>I also forwarded a link to this thread several months ago to an M.D. relative who teaches at a tip-top medical school. His subject: How to Communicate with Patients. I was hoping it might enter into his thinking or the students’ (future doctors all) in some way. These are the kinds of ripple effects your thread inspires.</p>

<p>I know it helps you to realize your impact is felt, so these are things I wanted you to know. </p>

<p>And, grrrrr about the Pepto Abysmal. </p>

<p>Your gut instinct to avoid premature discharge was backed up by the posters who know “discharge planning” above on a professional level. I am so not surprised. You might have only felt confused because you are tired from being sick and NOT ready to go home, but there’s another great example of trusting your sure-fire instincts.</p>

<p>Wasted band-width? Well, maybe I’ve gained a few inches around the waist, stretching some elastics, with all this reading, but that’s not you…it’s ALL of CC. :D</p>

[epistrophy]

<p>

Bedside<br>
by William Olsen</p>

<p>Because it turns out the world really is a hospital,
Because we had to have had before us a giant pair of scissors
Before four bold wings can have newly ascended,
Before new doors can revolve, before new elevators
Rise and fall empty and full, new numbers light,
New floors with new doors both open and closed
Because there are nurses to sail in and out of need,
Because need walks the doctors somewhere or another,
Because of elaborately adaptable need the bed . . .
The bed could be wheeled right into traffic and snow
Because so far there is only inside and outside
And more of both than even creation could have concocted,
Because the bed that bore us all and our desires
And our exhaustions has become a contraption,
Because the bed that keeps us coming back to it,
The bed that once sailed to the ends of the earth—
Now tied to trees dripping blood and sugar and sleep,
Anchored where overhead a TV persists, such news
As snows poor reception—because the reliable bed
Is something even a family understands, the family
Is how the world goes—a fool’s dream of awareness—
Grouped around this steel altar at its least and lowered
Because the bed is a helpless, blameless invention,
All the same to it if it is made or not, empty or not,
Same fatiguing last probabilities, because there are
As many ways to die as people to find these ways
Because there surely are, because the tried is ever new,
Who can’t lose their way anew among so many alive?
Because who hasn’t made their own bed, because
Who hasn’t slept who hasn’t been led by night there,
My mother’s hands playing the fabric of the spread
As if it were a piano, tongue-tied, isolate fingers,
She’s ghost-smoking, working on an invisible crochet
“Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate . . . I want to die”—
“Wake up!” Machado said the Gospels reduced to
But not now, not until you have what you want—
Any belief in love itself is what I’d have you want—
Look me in the eye with that sort of love that looks
Through me as if grief were so much tissue paper,
With a love that doesn’t stop with me or you, that
Doesn’t stop when there’s no more world to fear
Because there is no need to wheel the bed outside,
Because a hospital melts like a snowflake, because
The walls and windows and even the bed liquify,
Even the things she’s seen that aren’t there vanish
Because how much energy there is in emptiness,
Take everything away, there’s still something there.

</p>

<p>[Amazon.com:</a> Avenue of Vanishing (Triquarterly): William Olsen: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Avenue-Vanishing-Triquarterly-William-Olsen/dp/0810151820/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216518945&sr=1-1]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Avenue-Vanishing-Triquarterly-William-Olsen/dp/0810151820/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216518945&sr=1-1)</p>

[roshke]

<p>LTS, I’m really sorry to hear that you are having such a difficult week. Not being able to catch your breath is the pits. Having GI trouble on top of that and not being able to settle your stomach asap had to be so frustrating. Hope you start feeling better - yesterday. I’m thinking of you, read here often, and am praying for your recovery along with the hundreds ( thousands) of others all around the country and world who follow this thread.</p>

[mommusic]

<p>mafool–a wise friend of mine said the good thing about living to be 90-whatever-it was-at-the-time (he lived to 99) was that you could eat whatever you wanted to. (What’s it gonna do…shorten your life?) :D</p>

<p>Silly hospital bureacracies. :p</p>

<p>And add me to the long list of people who rely on this thread to keep track of LTS’s recovery, even if I don’t post cause I don’t have anything special to contribute. All the Best, LTS!</p>

[eddieodessa]

<p>LTS - I’ve been lurking around for some time. Decided to finally sign up specifically to tell you how much I respect your courage, sense of humor, and strength. I’ve prayed for you, your daughter, the caregivers and medical personnel many, many times. I’ve recently broken a bone - when I start to pity myself and think about this inconvenience, I just think about your situation and your strength - and tell myself “If LTS can get through her day, then I can certanly can get through this situation - no whining allowed.” Here’s wishing you a good night’s sleep. I live about one hour from DC, so may actually be in a position to be of some help to you.</p>

[padad]

<p>In many ways, this thread reminds me of John Donne’s Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, which I alluded to in a previous post, and it is perhaps the reason that I have followed it since the beginning.</p>

<p>“The work consists of twenty-three devotions, each in three parts–a meditation, an expostulation, and a prayer–recording and exploring Donne’s experience of illness (probably typhus). The work traces the disease’s course and treatment, beginning in the first devotion with the first signs of illness, moving through the patient’s taking to bed and sending for physicians, their prescribing and carrying out various treatments, and a worsening of symptoms followed by the crisis where, in Devotion 17, the patient prepares himself for death. He then begins to recover, the physicians purge him, and, like Lazarus, he rises from his bed.”</p>

<p>Many of you are undoubtedly familiar with Devotion 17, which includes two of the best known phrases in English literature: “never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee” and “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main”. The entire text is available electronically at Project Gutenberg, and if you are pressed for time, you can jump directly into Devotion 17 which I will post below.</p>

[gusaspara]

<p>LTS -</p>

<p>Don’t stop posting - ever. Doesn’t have to be long or too often but there are lots of us who need to hear from you.</p>

[padad]

<p>Devotion 17-Meditation</p>

<p>“Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine[Pg 109] own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another’s danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.”</p>

[latetoschool]

<p>You know, I really, really wish there were more ways to say thank you, but, I cannot think of any off hand. </p>

<p>Marite, your son earned that money, and brilliantly. If he executed his craft in that manner as a high school student, it will be absolutely fascinating to see what his body of work will look like when he is well into his career. That particular client is a tier one financial institution, and very, very important to my portfolio. This institution would NOT be my client today if your son had not done that work. I was in the position of needing to cancel the contract and refund money and then he did the work he did. </p>

<p>As to other news, can everyone remember Job? Or contemplate divine intervention? Karma? Air conditioning system at home totally broke down today. Landlord spent $8,000 and the day in the heat having the new system installed. I dodged a major bullet - of all weekends to be in the hospital…clearly, the collective power of CC positive energy</p>

[latetoschool]

<p>Hmmm…I am not sure why but the majority of the post I wrote disappeared…and it’s hard to write the same thing twice!!!</p>

<p>Mostly I wanted to say thank you, especially to those of you who “delurked” (is that a real word???).</p>

[churchmusicmom]

<p>

“delurked” (is that a real word???).

</p>

<p>LOL it is now!</p>

<p>Hope you can get some sleep soon! And, as I am sure all here will agree: No “thanks” are needed. It is we who thank YOU.</p>

[epistrophy]

<p>and more</p>

<p>

“Cancer survivors help each other to live stronger”</p>

<p>Radine Cox’s story is hers alone, but in a way, the 58-year-old Decatur woman’s tale echoes the experiences of countless others.</p>

<p>It started with a nagging ache. Cox awoke one day with a deep pain in her chest. She thought it could be a heart problem, bronchitis or pleurisy and ended up in the intensive care unit at Decatur Memorial Hospital. There, a chest X-ray and a CT scan revealed a mass in her left lung.</p>

<p>“I didn’t know it at the time, but I was having shortness of breath like going up steps, and I was working out at Curves at the time,” Cox said. " ¦ I was probably in better physical shape right then than I’d ever been."</p>

<p>She had blamed the breathlessness on being a few pounds overweight. But the culprit turned out to be something far more serious - stage IIIB non-small cell lung cancer.</p>

<p>"The first thing I thought is, ‘What is my family going to go through?’ " Cox remembered.</p>

<p>After enduring chemotherapy and radiation treatments in an effort to shrink the tumor to an operable size, Cox went through surgery in which doctors cut out a substantial portion of her left lung. She has been cancer-free for a little more than three years.</p>

<p>“I still feel like I probably had a miracle,” Cox said.</p>

<hr>

<p>She sought to connect with others in the local Facing Cancer Together support group. When she started, the sessions were being led by current Education Network to Advance Cancer Clinical Trials grant coordinator Abbey Britton.</p>

<p>Britton said she isn’t sure if Cox would remember her from her early days in the group, but her name is one she’ll never forget.</p>

<p>"I saw her basically just kind of tell herself, ‘This is something I’m going to beat,’ " Britton said.</p>

<p>She remembered Cox as someone who "kind of took in her diagnosis internally and just said to everyone, to herself and to those around her, ‘This is not going to take me down. This is only going to make me stronger.’ "</p>

<p>Britton said she could see Cox’s determination to beat her cancer shining through the toll it took on her body. Despite those effects and losing the love of her life, her husband, Mike Cox, to ALS during the course of her own illness, Cox emerged a stronger woman.</p>

<p>Soon, she became a leader, guiding others who were beginning their own journeys with cancer. Cox’s Sunday school teacher asked the class to pray for his sister who was battling cancer. A short time later, DMH Cancer Care Institute coordinator Nikki Damery asked Cox to mentor a woman newly diagnosed with lung cancer. The woman for whom Cox had been praying for weeks turned out to be the same one she began counseling. And she saw her through tears and treatments and into remission.</p>

<p>“Her faith is what helped her get through this, and it makes her who she is,” Damery said of Cox.

</p>

<p>[Herald</a> & Review | Life: Cancer survivors help each other to live stronger](<a href=“Cancer survivors help each other to live stronger”>Cancer survivors help each other to live stronger)</p>

<hr>

<p>

OUR best wishes go out to champion Souths and Balmain halfback Bobby Grant, who is in Concord Hospital recovering from a heart attack. The former Test player has beaten bowel and lung cancer in recent years. We wish him all the best.

</p>

<p>[French</a> rugby&squo;s Thurston bid | The Daily Telegraph](<a href=“http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24046329-5016360,00.html]French”>http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24046329-5016360,00.html)</p>

<hr>

<p>

“Fundraiser Assists Lung Cancer Patient”</p>

<p>As a North Carolina man recovers from his second double-lung transplant this week, his extended family in Lawrence helped support him and others fighting the same battle Friday night.</p>

<p>Bo Johnson, 36, who married Lawrence native and Kansas University graduate, Christi Johnson, received a stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis in May 2006.</p>

<p>He underwent a double-lung transplant at the end of May 2008. The lungs immediately started swelling. Four days later, he was put on a list for another transplant and was fortunate to be the recipient of a second set of lungs.</p>

<p>He is in recovery at the intensive care unit of Duke University Medical Center with Christi and their 2-year-old daughter, Addi.</p>

<p>Back in her hometown, Christi’s family was host to a Hawaiian-themed benefit to raise money for Addi’s Cure, a nonprofit started by Bo and Christi to raise money for lung cancer research.</p>

<p>Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the U.S. according to lungcancer.org, a program of Cancer Center, a national nonprofit organization.</p>

<p>The diagnosis came as a complete shock not only to Bo, a healthy man and lifelong nonsmoker, but also his family.</p>

<p>With a determination to beat the cancer and live to see his daughter turn 1, he pushed on with his family’s encouragement.</p>

<p>The cancer had regressed and stayed contained in Bo’s lungs.</p>

<p>“When he found out he had cancer, there was just no knowledge, no funding, nothing for it, so he decided he wanted to do something,” said Terri Morgan, Christi’s mother, who lives in Lawrence. “If it didn’t help him, he wanted to be able to help someone else.”</p>

<p>One of Christi’s sisters, Crystal Dodds, 28, also had extra motivation to support lung cancer research and education. A year ago, her father-in-law died six weeks after receiving a lung cancer diagnosis.</p>

<p>Terri said the whole family had been strengthened by Bo’s fight, even Addi, one of Bo’s biggest inspirations.</p>

<p>As Bo works on his strength, walking the halls of the hospital, Terri said Addi cheered him on, encouraging him to keep going.</p>

<p>“Bo is an extremely strong young man; so is Christi,” she said. “What they’ve been through in the past six, seven weeks now, it is just amazing how strong, how determined, the young man is and what his will is to live.”</p>

<p>She said she expected Bo to be released from ICU next week, and he will continue his recovery with his family in North Carolina."

</p>

<p>[Fundraiser</a> Assists Lung Cancer Patient - Health - redOrbit](<a href=“http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1485810/fundraiser_assists_lung_cancer_patient/]Fundraiser”>http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1485810/fundraiser_assists_lung_cancer_patient/)</p>

<p>(P.S. And speaking of John Donne, what a great movie - absorbing, off-the-beaten-track, moving - this is: [Amazon.com:</a> Wit: Emma Thompson, Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Atkins, Audra McDonald, Jonathan M. Woodward, Harold Pinter, Rebecca Laurie, Su Lin Looi, Raffaello Degruttola, Miquel Brown, Hari Dhillon, Benedict Wong, Alex Gregor, Lachele Carl, David Menk](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Wit-Emma-Thompson/dp/B00005MKKV]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Wit-Emma-Thompson/dp/B00005MKKV).)</p>

[3boysnjmom]

<p>LTS, I do not post often but admire the way you have tackled this. Am relieved you did not have to battle lack of airconditioning this weekend at your place. I have accompanied several friends and relatives on their cancer treatment journies but due to distance generally assumed limited caretaking except in the case of my nephew when I was extensively involved. I felt privileged to be allowed into their lives at such a bittersweet time. My DH is an oncologist and becomes very involved with his patients. We both have learned from them and their families – just as I am learning from you. Thinking of you and sending you positive thoughts.</p>

[JEM]

<p>I have been away a few days and am just now catching up. </p>

<p>Marite, thank you SO much for
first, agreeing to serve as a go-between between LTS and CC and
second, for providing the link to that great LTS story of the missing car, hotel, etc. It is a true CC classic but I would not have found it on my own. </p>

<p>I just sent that LTS story to my H and D. We all share such absent-minded issues so can deeply appreciate this gem. I once traded cars with my husband for the day and only after considerable time in a hot parking lot searching for my car, then finally resolving to call H to tell him my car must have been stolen from the lot, did I realize I had been searching for the wrong car and the one I had driven (his) was right near me. :o</p>

<p>Thank you, LTS, for always sharing yourself so openly, whether in telling such a story on yourself or filling us in on your medical challenges. I cannot imagine server space being put to much better use. And yes, as **Soozievt **mentioned, there are NO arguments on this thread - a record, I am sure, for a thread of this length!! That must indicate something special going on – and it is a good special. LTS, I can only hope that these good internet vibes are reaching out to have an effect on your fight.</p>

<p>A special welcome to the the lurkers who are bravely making their first appearances here. LTS, you will never know the FULL extent of your influence, but perhaps you are getting some idea. THANK YOU.</p>

[CountingDown]

<p>Yup, I check in here first, too. Even if LTS hasn’t posted, I find inspiration in the stories and quotes that others post.</p>

<p>RE: the air conditioning – karma, baby, karma.</p>