Oh, Larry The Cable Guy, what you and Billy and John have done to me.

I’m at a wedding on Saturday.  It was the wedding of a certain local assistant fire chief and his beautiful bride.  They’re about my age, and friends of mine, so I accompanied my dad. 
“Which church is it?” my dad asked me.  For a town of about two hundred people, we have a plethora of churches.  I knew where it was, but the Presbyterian and Methodist churches are across from each other and both red brick, and I never remember which is which. 
I pointed to the street we needed to take, and then I said, “That one.”
“How’d you know?” my dad asked.
I roll my eyes. “The firetruck parked out front,” I said dryly.

Some of the fascinating details are simply too fascinating for the internet, so please speak to me privately if you would like to know.

We greeted the fellow fire department outside, hovering around the firetruck.  Actually, most of them were busy filling their inner lips with tobacco, which my friend Melanie and I find disgusting, so we let them ooh and ahh over the truck, while we found ourselves inside the 110 degree-with-no-air-conditioning-church.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” the pastor began, “We are gathered here to celebrate the blessed union of this couple.  As this is a sacred event, we ask that you refrain from flash photography during the ceremony.  The couple also requests that all pagers be turned down. In the case of a structure fire in the county, there will be a brief hiatus of the wedding ceremony until the groom returns.”

“Oh,” I sighed. “Lord have mercy,” and I fanned myself with the bulletin.

Fortunately, the ceremony went off without a hitch, if you don’t count one of the men in my row yelling, “Don’t do it!” when the groom put his ring on the bride’s finger, and when the groom had to remove his chewing tobacco to kiss the bride.

But we knew that was coming.

At the reception, I do not kid you, someone I haven’t seen in a while came up to me and said, “I heerd you done git yerself an eddication.”
Without even thinking about it, I turned to him and said, “Yep, I did done git meself eddicated.”

I love this crazy, tragic, sometimes almost magic, awful beautiful life…

Well…

My life has not been that interesting.  I wound up in the hospital Wednesday night, because the doctors thought I was having a mini-stroke.  Nothing showed up on the CT scan, but ministrokes don’t always.  In any case, they finally gave me Demerol, which is a blessing from God.

But then I turned out to be allergic to the pain meds they sent me home with.

Secondly, the doctors think I have something called Mulitple Endocrine Neoplasia.  You can read about it here…http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec13/ch167/ch167a.html.

I hadn’t even heard about it until my doctor mentioned it in passing yesterday, and then Sharon also ran across it while doing research online. 
And that is the end of my not-interesting news.

Two very important things:

Number one, my grandmother is giving me a trip to Hawaii and the Caribbean in October for my birthday/Christmas/master’s degree graduation.  As I will be going to Aruba, stay glued to Fox News Channel for breaking updates.  Also once I disappear please do not believe anything in the tabloids.

Secondly, Danica Patrick is talking to NASCAR teams.  THE WOMAN CAN’T DRIVE and she hangs out with Melanie’s brother.  Also, she’s just not nice.  She is really rude to certain people who park her.

NASCAR, I love you.  I love your drivers, your pit crews, your cars, your fans, and even your radio personalities on the rare occasions I get a check in the mail.  Please do not allow the most annoying Indy Car driver in the world to mar your beautiful NASCAR world.

For the time being, Veronica will be fought with medicine.  If she gets bigger, then the surgeons will go in and take her out.

Stupid Veronica.  I have to carry her in my head for the forseeable future.

 

It is something of a bittersweet day.  Two people I know are being married today(not to each other), and one of them is the man I once thought I would marry.  Was sure I would marry.  We were together seven years…seven years of our lives.  It was the most serious relationship I have ever been in…probably the only one whom I actually loved.  Looking back, the reason for the seriousness and the love was that I lived in New York and he lived in North Carolina, and there were no phone calls, just letters, which meant we stayed out of each others way.  Every relationship I’ve had has broken up because I simply hate having to spend time with someone else.  Selfish?  Not particularly; it’s more that I’m focused on school and career, and I always have been.

But part of me really thought I would be married with a child by the time I was 25.  I hadn’t truly expected that I wouldn’t marry–or even date.  I live in a little town in upstate New York, and there is simply no one here to date.  And it is my choice to live here, and I knew when I made the choice to stay that there would be no boyfriends and precious few friends.  Most people here marry or move in together shortly after high school graduation, and those who go away to college don’t return.  I am one of the very, very few who went away to college and came back.  I am the only one I know of who moved back out of choice and not necessity.  I could have easily made it in Binghamton or Charlotte, I had those choices, and I chose to stay. 

And today, a year or two or three after those choices, I have few regrets. Yes, there are few people here, and even fewer jobs.  And still…still, I know I’ve made the right choice when I’m awakened in the morning by the sound of engines on a paved race track.  When I sit on the rocks on the 4th of July, the waves crashing at my feet, the fireworks shooting off high over the lake.  When I hike through the state park, or stand underneath a waterfall.  This is home, and I’ve chosen to stay. 

We lose something with each choice we make.  I could have been married by now.  But I chose graduate school over marriage; I chose to live in a small town over friends.  We give up something for everything we gain, but sometimes…sometimes I simply hope that what I gain will, eventually, be more than what I have lost.

So I have recently began watching Simon Cowell’s latest work of genius.  Yes, you know…America’s Got Talent.  In truth, I like it a tad better than American Idol, because people do so much more than sing.

And they have just some strange people.  Michelle L’Amour, who has a degree in finance, but would rather follow her passion and dreams, which turns out to be….stripping.  And, on account on the two male judges, even though Brandy tried in vain to hit their X buttons, Michelle got through.

And Leonid the Magnificant.  Gayer than the gay guy who walks down the gay street in gayland.  Not that I’m homophobic, or anything, but Russian guys who wear wings and makeup and high heels and balance swords just don’t do it for me.

But then….then, there is this, and this is what makes my life worthwhile…

Still haven’t gotten the cortisol test back.  Now we’re talking about radiation, which will cause failure of the pituitary gland within four to five years.

Excuse me, but how do you live without a pituitary gland?!

And they just look at me sadly, because, of course, I will not live five years anyway.

Whatever….I have much more faith in God’s predictions than the doctors, much more faith in the verse that says that Jesus came to give us life, and life abundantly.  Perhaps not physical life, but if I am to be one of those privileged to dwell in the presence of God early, than I cannot find fault with that.   I don’t know if there really is a Heaven paved with golden streets, and what exactly goes on there.  But what I have complete trust in is that when I am released from this tired, cranky, sick physical body, I will be ushered into the presence of God to dwell forever.   This is what was really lost in Eden; not innocence, not perfection, not warm weather and fruit trees….but a loss of the presence of God.  God came to Adam and Eve, and walked and talked with them in the evening.   I sort of view this as a wonderful friendship, where your best friend comes over in the evenings to sit on your porch and drink lemonade, and suddenly you do something and your best friend doesn’t come anymore.   And yet, through Jesus, in death, we gain back what was broken so long ago. 

So I do not fear death.  But I would, personally, really like to earn my Ph.D. and move to North Carolina first…

I am so excited.  I got my stuff from Liberty yesterday and am just waiting for the rest to show up.  I love distance learning classes, especially LU’s, because it’s: here’s all the material.  You have to have it done by such and such a date, but that’s it. Have fun.

I hate deadlines and classes beyond all comprehension.  To the point where I generally ignore them, thus adding to my less than stellar GPA.   This, on the other hand, is like God’s design for me.

I am such a Calvinist sometimes.  And other times I’m a Methodist.  Odd, isn’t it.

(I see the doctor today…hopefully hear the results of more tests…keep me in prayer…this is going to be a long road.  On the other hand, my parents did finally get satellite TV again, and are happily handing me a receiver so I can watch it on my own TV in my own room.)

Veronica is not behaving.  I can barely stay awake today…slept from 10 p.m. last night until 1 p.m. this afternoon…and having roused enough energy to do some errands, I will probably be back in bed for the night by 4 p.m.

And Veronica made me quit my job…well, my boss very kindly said that she really needed to hire another person, since I can barely work at all now.  And I said go ahead, it’s only fair…and it is.  But it’s just another blow…another thing gone wrong…I keep feeling like statistically, something has to go right for once.

This is all just getting so old. 

 

Rachel and I have named the pituitary tumor Veronica.

Votes on names for the tumor on my thyroid?

Also…if it is Cushing’s, which we’re almost certain it is, I have a fifty-fifty chance of surviving five years.

Veronica must die.

And so, we wait.

There is good news; the blood test for growth hormone indicates that neither tumor is currently growing. Yet the question of why two tumors, in different locations, remains.  There is bad news; one is on the pituitary gland, indicating, perhaps, probably, Cushing’s Disease.  The prognosis for that is not wonderful; treatable, but the side effects of that treatment worse than the disease.  Untreated, it is mostly fatal within four years of diagnosis.  Your tissues, exposed to massive amounts of cortisol caused by a pituitary tumor, deteriorate.

I am tired.  The meds make me sleep fifteen, twenty, twenty-two hours a day.  I register for summer classes anyway, starting Tuesday.  I go back to work, anyway, unwilling to let my life be destroyed by the presence of abnormally growing cells.  Not destroyed. Halted.  I am not waiting around for bad news.  But the exhaustion wears on me, draining energy from the very marrow of my bones.

When awake, I step outside.  The grass, after two weeks of hospitalization, is welcoming beneath my bare feet.  My child turned eight yesterday; I buy her shorts and t-shirts, we dance in the magic of midsummer.   She knows, but accepts as only the faith of a child can.  I go to movies with friends between doctor’s appointments and sleep.  I ignore the strands of hair that fall out, the weight slipping off my body,  the stuttering voices of people who don’t know what to say.

I don’t tell them I don’t know what to say either; in these spaces of waiting, in these moments, there are no words.  There is only faith, and hope, and love.  And the greatest of these is love.