So There You Go

Week two of the second session of R-Chop, feel good. A bloody nose the other day led to a trip up the hill for platelets. Thanks donor. The next appointment is next week. Within a few weeks we’ll have a better sense of when the actual transplant will happen. I’m ready. Yesterday at the clinic we sat next to a woman who had a transplant twenty years ago. I’ve have never met someone whose survived that long and it gave me good vibes to see her. She said she would pray for me. I thanked her. She spoke with a lyrical accent in her native Spanish and her name was Mary and it looks like she’s going in for another transplant. It seems to me that we are capable of doing so much more than we think we can.Just finished a book called “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak. It takes place in Germany during Hitler’s reign. The young girl (the book thief) has her story told by the grim reaper. It took me a hundred pages to figure this out. Sometimes reading makes me feel no very bright. Once I understood who was narrating it was easier to nestle into the tale of Leisel. This family of Germans takes in a young Jewish man who lives for more than a year in the confines of their basement. Not enough food. Despite the overtones of suffering and plight, there was a warmth and humor in this book that had me crying in the end. It seemed to demonstrate how capable humans are of doing good and how capable they are of evil. There is actually a perfect quote about this in the book but I can’t find it so, there you go.Reading gives me this feeling that I am not alone. This form of communication bred out of a configuration of symbols feels timeless and helpful.When I’m sitting in the clinic waiting for the platelets to arrive and reading the newspaper about the whole host of worries that exist in the world today, I find a genuine solace in experiencing the goodness of the person who donated their cells to me, a total stranger to them. Every day somewhere, there is heartache and loss. Every day somewhere there is courage and kindness.