Back to School Thoughts...

While I was trying to think of an update for my latest blog when I ran some errands yesterday, my thoughts drifted away from cancer to my old Back to School thoughts. I seriously prefer defining myself as a teacher rather than as a person with cancer.

Back in the olden days, whenever I heard the cicadas or saw the lawn furniture being replaced by school supplies in most retail stores, I knew that the end of summer was around the corner, and I knew that it was time for me to take in the smell of freshly waxed floors at school, to get back into my classroom to hang new posters, to re-arrange the desks, and to get new lesson plans ready.

While I always tried to mix things up with my lesson plans, I always started every school year the same way. If my room was large enough, I placed the desks in a circle or a semicircle, and I had the students introduce themselves with this: 
My name is ---- and I like this.  Then the next student introduced himself, repeating the intro from the previous student and so on. By the time we were finished with the exercise, not only had every student spoken, but the class had loosened up and had some little factoid to help identify everyone in the class. 

The benefit of all of this was that it set the tone in my classroom, and by the end of the first day, I knew and remembered the names of about 99% of the 150 or so kids on my class lists. As I stood by my door the next day to welcome students each period, I greeted each of them by name. While this may not seem like a big deal, it helped establish a positive climate in my classroom.

The point of establishing a positive climate in my classroom was pretty simple. Each of us wears an invisible sign that says I Am Lovable And Capable, and as we go through our daily lives, little pieces of our signs are slowly ripped away by the comments and actions of others. My goal each year was to get to know each of my kids and to find ways to instruct them  without demeaning or tearing away at their signs. For example, if a student didn’t understand a concept or an idea or whatever I was trying to teach, I would go to Plan B to see if I could find a better way to explain. Sometimes when I felt as though I was banging my head against a wall, I would ask if someone had a better way of explaining, and most often they did....and I would ask that student to come to the front of the room to help me.

Those who want to fix teachers and kids seem to forget that all of the testing and all of the online learning and all of the latest technology and all of the moronic plans of those who have no idea about what is instructionally or developmentally appropriate have little to do with children. While it may seem quaint now, teaching the whole child works. Children come from all kinds of backgrounds and conditions, and teachers need to be mindful that until we figure out who that child is and what he/she really needs, all of the technology in the world will do little to change that. Regardless of how tough or world-wise kids may act, they are still children. As a case in point, my classes always had weekly SAT and Words of Power vocabulary quizzes. After we graded the quizzes, I told the students that anyone who got 100% could have a sticker. While that seems pretty juvenile, most kids were eager to get their stickers, especially the AP students.

All of this goes to the  point of what is currently being done to students in the name of reform.   Do we really need to make our children college and career ready for jobs that will probably be obsolete by the time they are out of school? Perhaps, we need to teach students to learn how to learn and to learn how to think critically rather than robotically.

I am profoundly saddened by a world that is all too ready to tell our children where they fall short. All of the technology in the world will not fix a broken child, but kind and caring adults are a good place to start.

If It's Not One Thing...

In the words of Roseanne Roseannadanna, “If it’s not one thing, it’s another. It’s always something.”  Such is the course of my cancer schmantzer odyssey.

I sailed through chemo two weeks ago, and despite being tethered to my chemo fanny pack for two days, I was feeling pretty optimistic.

Because I have had digestive issues and their accompanying queasiness for years, when I started to feel a bit queasy the day after chemo, I didn't take it seriously.
BIG MISTAKE!

By the time I decided that I had better begin taking the anti-nausea drugs that had been prescribed for me, it was too little, too late, and thus began my quest of trying to figure out “my new normal.”   As a child, I used to look forward to visits from the Tooth Fairy. Without going into too much detail about my obsession with my ever-changing bodily functions, suffice it to say, a visit from the Poop Fairy was the highlight of my last two weeks.

Among the things that I have learned along the way is that Fort Wayne has excellent resources for cancer patients. I have already taken advantage of a free massage at Cancer Services of Northeast Indiana, and I have made appointments to check out the exercise and wellness programs that both Cancer Services and the LIVESTRONG at the YMCA  offer. Fortunately, every day I am made aware of more and more resources that are available.

Among other things that I have learned along the way are that some people find it helpful to visualize what they want to happen during chemo, so I am visualizing that my little army of Pac Men/Women is relentlessly charging around my insides gobbling up cancer cells. I have also decided that as soon as I get home from my next treatment tomorrow, I plan to stay ahead of the nausea. I have also learned that if something doesn’t feel quite right, I need to deal with it immediately rather than overthinking it. As much as I hate taking meds, I am going to slam those pills because I have no intention of toughing out anything. 

Since April, my life has been divided into two separate but unequal parts: life before cancer and life after cancer. The learning curve has been steep, but like Sisyphus, I will keep rolling that huge boulder up the hill.  Tomorrow's chemo is just another Manic Monday....and like Sisyphus, I will rock on!

Cubs, Cars, Chemo, and a Few Eventful Days

On Saturday I made my long anticipated trip to Wrigley Field with Donna and the Bush Boys to watch the Cubs play. We expected lots of road construction and delays all along the way, and we were not disappointed. The exit from 90/94 to Lake Shore Drive was a special treat, but the weather was picture perfect all day long, making the slowed traffic much less frustrating. When we arrived at our hotel, we took an hour to chill before we headed to the game.

While my cancer-schmantzer world has been rife with frustration, it has also been filled with unexpected kindnesses. One of those was from a friend who emailed me a few weeks ago to ask if I would like for him to acquire a handicap parking space near Wrigley. Of course, I accepted. Awaiting us when we got to the parking lot was a golf cart, and even better, our driver--who was absolutely hilarious and who kept us laughing all of the way to the ballpark.

The Cubs lost, but as die-hard Cubs’ fans, we have experienced a lifetime of disappointment and despair. Cubs’ fans are a resilient and patient lot...and there is something about being at Wrigley Field that always makes me happy. If worse comes to worse and the season hurtles into too much frustration, I can bust out the video of Game 7 and relive the excitement and cry for joy again.

On Sunday morning, we left the hotel early to avoid the traffic, and we got out of Chicago in record time. Feeling smug and slightly cocky, we stopped for breakfast in Schererville, and when we got back to the car, the tire air pressure light was on. So we drove over to a nearby auto store to see if they could take a look at the tire, but they didn’t have the equipment to do anything and suggested that we use an air pump at one of the nearby gas stations.

IRONY ALERT: Concerned about having a nail in the tire and not wanting to have a flat on the highway, we called AAA, and after about an hour, the tow truck arrived and the driver worked on checking the tires while we were sitting in an auto store parking lot. Even after this delay, we were safely back on the road again by 10:30 and home by early afternoon.

On Monday morning we said goodbye to the Bush Boys and headed to the hospital where I had all of my lab tests, talked with my doctor, and then headed to the infusion (which sounds like something straight out of the Twilight Zone) room. Like everything else that has happened with this cancer-schmantzer thing, there was more “hurry up and wait” until my magical chemo potions were prepared and ready. Fortunately, there were gazillions of checks and balances to make sure that everything was going well and that I was not having any reaction to any of the meds. Because this was my first treatment, the whole episode took nearly seven hours. My super kind and extremely thorough nurse in charge of my chemo told me that I sailed through the whole treatment and didn’t need any extra drugs to control any reactions. So that is a good thing. Shortly after we got home from the hospital, a home health care nurse came over to make sure everything was working right with my pump and to finish all of the administrative paper work.

At this time, I am happy to report that I haven’t had any unusual side effects so far that would give me a shot at making it into the Guinness Book of World Records. The bottom line is that I am pretty exhausted—both from the day and from our busy weekend with the grandkids.

Throughout this whole odyssey, I know that there are life lessons to be learned. While I am working on learning patience, I am still deficient in that area. However, there are lessons that keep being repeated on a daily basis. The doctors and nurses on my oncological team have been remarkably thoughtful, kind, and concerned about my well being, and my family and the friends in my life have been surrounding me with healing energy, kindness, support, and most of all, with love....and it doesn’t get much better than that.