Purple Iris

Be kinder than necessary
Because everyone you meet is fighting
Some kind of battle.

The KIVA

Remember back in the 70's when the Kiva was a big warehouse down on 11th, next to a dance hall, and other good stuff. The whole foods grocery if I visualize it right was in the back right hand corner. There were books, and wines, and things--kitchen things, homesteader things, bulk foods. There was an earth shoe shop in a little loft near the front door accessed by a ladder and not tall enough to stand upright in. Remember? And down along one side there were booths and tables and folks hung out there. We ran into friends. I was living down by Cottage Grove then, and would come in with my partner Wayne, and friends from our little "back to the land" farm we called Tanager. I was the only person in our friend group to have a baby one of those years--Day, born in 1974-- in our little home made house on Blue Mountain School Road made from the recycled boards of the old Cottage Grove Hardware Store. There was a bunch of us living there then, maybe a dozen. It was eventful and full of love, work, gardening, goats, and other forms of angst. When Day was born, being the baby of a big household he was a pretty popular item. Everyone wanted to hold him, a phrase was born--"Let me hold 'im", which came out "...hold eem" and then became a nick name for a while. I remember being in the Kiva one day after Day started toddling and he was loose running around. Across the room I heard a happy shout. "It's Eem! It's the Eem beam!" Our friend Michael Forster, Magic Michael had spotted his little darling.

One day not long ago, I saw a young mom with a little kid, blond hair long enough to blow in the wind, wearing a little jean jacket with the sleeves rolled up to let out his baby hands. They were stopped on a street corner she bent over him. I felt liked I'd looked in a mirror to the past. It made me cry for those old days of hope and friendship, before the fall. When a new baby was the hope of the world, our world, the one we were envisioning and building.

I guess what was lost, for a while, is how ongoing that task is. How it doesn't just happen by our hard work and then we get to live in it. It happens, and unhappens, and morphs, and changes, and succeeds, and fails, and births new fears,and new dreams. Some of us are still here, or here again, or left the planet for a while and will maybe be back.

Today, I called the Kiva with a special request, and guess what! Its still here, its still real, its still the heart of the downtown community, and the Kiva came through--the people came through. Because that's always all that can come through. The people. The love.

My friend Sherril Bower who is a clerk there shopped for my groceries for me--cuz I'm house bound--and my son Arlo, born a couple of years after "Eem", stopped by the store which is just blocks from his workplace, to bring me my groceries.

May the circle be unbroken. I'm just spilling over with good feeling right now.

Love to you all.

Body Size as Blessing

artist: Noora K, age 16, Finland

This morning in the tub I thought, hey, after all those years of having a large body, I finally have one that can be completely submerged in a tub full of water. No belly and boobs emerging into the air. Pretty cool. I don't recommend the weight loss method, but it is enjoyable to have a body that can completely soak in warm water without my going to the hot tubs.

What that submerged body looks like is quite another matter, unique in my well fed, always trying to lose weight life. My body is now a deeply wrinkled and creased bag of skin.

Seriously we are so screwed up about what constitutes a healthy body, so certain that thinness is preferable. I remember reading that a woman entering older age is somewhat better off carrying a little extra weight. I see now how having a bit of bod can start one out on an illness or other stress with a resource to help you get through it.

Definitely we are not talking about obesity. After years of nursing and care giving, I am very aware how difficult it is for the patient and the nurses to keep an over sized body comfortable and healthy. Everything--toileting, skin care, mobility, everything--is more difficult and may require special equipment to avoid injury to the patient and the care giver. I strongly recommend maintaining a healthy weight.

However, I am seeing the other side of this picture. During this illness and during the devastating side effects of chemotherapy my body has wasted. I now don't have an ounce of unneeded fat, but I also do not have enough muscle mass. Muscle, when it is adequate will allow me to move, walk, sit, stand, and do tasks without the pain that comes from muscle strain.

I made choices, which included miscalculations, about how to deal with it when I first realized that the chemotherapy, by contributing to demineralization of my bones, had caused compression fractures in my spine. I was in pain at the time, not only from that, in fact possibly not from that at all, but I set about immobilizing my back--resting in correct positions keeping my back straight, resting more, staying off my feet. I did do a few exercises to try to keep the muscles functional. The exercises I did were seriously not enough. I was ill and did not do them regularly. I could have, but I did not. I went often for much of every day into a drifting mindless state, and during a week I might remember to do bed exercises twice for a few minutes. Hardly adequate.

Suffering from the weakness eventually defined itself, and I recognized that I have a very big task in front of me. It got so that shuffling across the house to go to the bathroom was enough to make my back ache. Muscles I wouldn't think of were affected. My handwriting became shaky, my bladder weakened.

The good thing is this is something I can do something about. Affirming that I am healing from my disease, then the task of building my body back becomes very near the top of the list for daily activities. Working carefully I'm getting to where I can do a little "workout" and then rest. I can take a walk.

I've seldom been a disciplined person. I'm still not. This is not discipline, it is motivation, it is hope, it is intent. It's something to do, too. You may be able to imagine how boring it is to be sick. To have just about zero energy for activities, and on top of that to be plagued by the notorious "chemo brain" so that even mental activity becomes null and void.

So in my sudden maturity, suddenly having a body that shows its age after a lifetime of seeming younger than I am, there is this brand new thing. I've become a body builder.

What Has Happened

I'm back at Arlo and Marina's Eugene house. Marina has her first big, real, teaching job after graduating U of O. Its in a nice charter school in Newport, lovely Newport, on the coast. Arlo spends as much time over there as he can. Aren't they lovely!

What happened, in August, is that I got sick so bad and so fast that a moment never felt like the one I could take to talk to you all. Only those I specifically called for help knew what was going on.

It was pain. I have a great deal of respect for pain, long have had from a nursing point of view, and now its personal having experienced some of the effects of constant unrelenting pain, not only unrelenting but increasing on a daily almost hourly basis. Pain management advises getting on top of it and staying there, because playing catch up once you're out of control is a battle won only after major scrimmages.

Knowing why one is in pain helps determine the approach. One might expect a cancer patient to immediately expect and explore new tumor growth. Instead I immediately said well it probably is not that because I'm doing all these good things and have high positive expectations.

I was invested in being well and continuing to do the things that I have wanted to do. I'd written to friends and professional contacts with the information I'd be coming back to New Mexico--in September or October. I was leaving open for myself the idea that I'd return to a retreat setting for further healing. I corresponded with the New Mexico Women's Retreat--a wonderful place where women teach, learn, and share, healing and building homes, among other planet loving activities in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Unfortunately, pain and other indications of ill health led me to believe that I had some other problems that, frustratingly, I would have to deal with here and now while I am in easy contact with my long time physician, Dr. Cordes, and with others in the medical community, as well as with many of my wonderful friends, sisters and brothers and guides along the path.

Subsequently my various theories surfaced, were considered, treatment instated, and after a hopeful day or two, the repeated result: this is not working. We considered a gastric ulcer, post shingles neuralgia, liver disease, compressed discs, pain from a long time post surgical umbilical hernia. I saw a pain specialist, Martin Kloss, who agreed to advise me and my doctor though he didn't officially see me--I'm on medicare only. He was very very kind and good and suggested the compression fractures which were subsequently found on a new xray the next day.

I was on various medications specific to those possibilities, doing back exercises--passive, positional-- and wear a back brace when I could stand it.

One weekend it all came to a head. I went to stay with Tricia and Paul who said, "You go to bed and do nothing, we'll do everything. OK?" On the following Monday, I kept an appointment made weeks before to explore the possibility of repairing the umbilical hernia. I arrived at that baffled doctor's office vomiting in his waste basket and clawing the paper of the exam table. Dr. Dickinson walked in took a look and said, "...and What are we here for???" Clearly not his patients' usual presentation!

The good physician however did exactly what had to be done. He called my oncologist, who was out of town, but arranged with the Willamette Valley Cancer Center to do a new CT Scan that very afternoon. The contrast material didn't work out well for viewing inside the stomach because I was retching, but the photos were sharp and revealing: New lesions scattered down behind my sternum, one sitting on the adrenal gland, others across the waist, and one big old grapefruit hunkered in tight behind and between my liver and my stomach.

Dr. Cordes gave me the word, held my hand, waited for it to sink in, discussed the options, got me on real pain medication, got me an appointment the same day with the on call oncologist, Dr. Caton, at the Cancer Center, and sent me on my way with a healing hug.

These tumors had grown very very fast. Barely a month earlier a scan had indicated a tiny possible something-or-other that we had decided to "watch" and a further scan had been scheduled but was not yet due when all this happened. Its terrifying to see something like that in my body. But I did see it, clearly, on the films in Dr. Caton's office. And had "seen" it during a recent middle of the night melt down with my sister. Gwenda, holding me while I cried, asked me what the pain in my abdomen looked like. I said, "...it's...a...cantelope".

The short of it, and hopefully not the long of it, is that the large tumor on the liver was in a position to stop my life fairly promptly and of a very unpleasant shut down liver and subsequent necrotic liver disease. I chose not to opt for that, and the option available, the only thing known to be fast enough, is chemotherapy.

I've had the first of my second round of chemo now which consisted of weekly sessions, once a week for three weeks. I have a "break" this next week to allow my bone marrow to recover, and other damage to recover. Then I go back for another three weeks of sessions. After that the cancer doctors will do a new Scan to see how much we've been able to destroy.

Chemotherapy we know, does not only target cancer cells, the way it does identify the cells to destroy is to destroy the fastest growing cells, so that a cancer, generally growing faster than the rate it takes to maintain a healthy body organ, is targeted in a scattershot kind of way that also destroys other fast growing cells that we constantly need for renewal--nerves, heart, skin, various repair jobs, bone marrow, bone. We walk a narrow line--using a damaging toxic substance and betting on the body's system renewal mechanisms to repair the collateral damage.

That is the important bet: That my body can celebrate the removal of dead damaged material, repair and replace necessary healthy tissues, and return to its natural state of vibrant health. This is my strongly held belief.

Morgen, Day, Rose, and Rebekah

Cancer is a formidable foe. My son, Day, who is visiting me here right now, met a man on the train coming up through the Cascades. The man is living with and soldiering against cancer--he called cancer a "magnificent" enemy. Not sure of that term, but bein' as the man may be a soldier, a warrier, then probably approprieate for him. What bopped me on the head this time around was the mere fact that "my" cancer did not turn tail and run with the very first clobber with a big stick. I really thought it had. I'd turned happily to my alternative therapies and though I'm less disciplined than I ought to be I believed I was succeeding.

I'll tell you more about the alternatives I am using in another post.

Having this setback, and serious enough that I chose another go round with chemotherapy brought out in me deeply conflicted feelings. I've been sad, mostly. Disappointed. I've also felt I've been naive, and that I really did not "get" the seiousness of this disease and its lessons for me. Those lessons are beginning to come and they are good, and I still feel some unnecessary shame for being so difficult to teach. But mostly even that shame is nothing beside the depth of insight that is occurring in me.

When I am well, when I look back on this phase of illness and treatment, shining through it will be a thread of bright illumination, happiness and gratitude for the deep deep gifts that are beginning to transform my life.

What an adventure.

Summer Visits, Visitors, and Visitations

Me with two of my sons and their women--Arlo, Marina, Day, and Rebekah.
Happy Picnic Day at Joan's.

Waiting for a day I feel better, feel creative again, may be a long way off. I hope not, but I feel the urge to be in touch with all of you, to bring you up to date on my journey. Things do not look the way I expected them to. After being with my daughter in South Dakota, and having a lovely time in the Black Hills with Wendy and Rock and their kids, my grandkids--four delightful teenagers and a whip smart eight year old almost able to hold his own--I thought I would continue to feel better and better.

I began my plan to return to New Mexico, investigated a place near Sedona called New Mexico Women's Retreat, thinking to bring spirit back to body more fully. My brother visited from Seattle and we walked by the Willamette River on a day that Eugene weather showed off and made everyone believe this must be paradise. It has been a lovely summer here, really, and as we let it go and move into fall I'm not as determined to escape as I might have been. That is, not yet!

Me and my little brother Paul

The primary distraction from moving back to what I personally think is paradise, however, is a very unwelcome visitor, visitation, invasion. As yet we don't believe it is an extension of cancer, it is not being treated as such. I've not had chemotherapy since April.
But what has come is Pain. My entire middle is in pain, centered at a focal point near my spine to the right just above my waist, and extending throughout the diaphragmatic area and organs, and into my right shoulder.

My wonderful general practitioner has been unable to determine a cause, my oncologist has likewise come up with no clear idea, I've seen a pain specialist who has some ideas that might help. We're on it. But so far, Aaaaaaghghghgh!

So that's why you don't hear from me. I am so hideously under the influence of constant pain, constant, and then also under the influence of various pain medications and nerve pain medications which confuse my thoughts, and flatten my mood. I feel sometimes like I'm coasting. My digestion seems affected, so eating is difficult again. Most days I'm unable to drive. My sister Gwenda has been here with me for almost two weeks. It's been wonderful, such a help, she's done the driving, shopping, and homemaking, and supported me to do things I might not have done. And helped me get on some homeopathics that help. We're great friends too, and have had fun.

Gwenda doing healthy things in Arlo's kitchen

Last weekend we went to the Shrewsbury Faire near Corvalis, Oregon. Lots of people in Renaissance and other period clothing--garb. Amazingly good traditional food. We had some Hagis--lamb and oat, comfort food. We watched madrigal players, fencing, and real full contact jousting on horseback. Gems, jewelry--his and hers--metal work, wizardry, alchemy. It was lots of fun. I could never have done it without the "horseless carriage" that a gate person graciously offered ("m'lady"). They were renting electric carts--my first experience.

Special shout out: David and Debra, if you have a photo or two to send from your delightful presence at the Faire, I would love to have them, to display them here.

At the Faire

We made it to the Eugene Celebration Parade too. Real party animal, I am! Old news is that the end of August, I moved back to Arlo's house in West Eugene, from the sweet little room I had near Friendly Street Market. So those of you who've visited me, know where I am again, or where I'm not, depending on when you were with me!

I will need and want your visits. My sister is leaving tomorrow morning and I will miss her. Being a little bit mobility challenged is a new thing for me. I may need rides to appointments and shopping. What would be really nice, too, is to do fun things--go places, a movie, an event. I'll be working that out for myself with my network, and simultaneously hoping that the inability to walk a block will be very, very, temporary.

This is deteriorating! I'll add a few photos and let it go. Let me know if you visit the blog. Love to all. Thank you for your beingness.

Health Wealth and Beauty

I'm leaving in the wee small hours of morning day after tomorrow to fly to South Dakota. My heart races at the delight of returning to this childhood homeland.

"Health Wealth and Beauty." Where I grew up, Kadoka, was even flatter, and less green. In Kadoka there was a place where we played that was around a small muddy sometimes dry cow dam at the edge of a corn field abutting our back yard. We called it "The Trees". The town park also had about four trees, in a line. Old gnarled, gray, been there since pioneers, which come to think of it when I was a kid wasn't so far in the past. And there was another place, really wet, a swamp with an island and muskrats, off beyond the school, an anomaly in a place where trees were planted and nurtured as wind breaks along farmers fields, and where every Arbor day school let out for a tree planting ceremony. It is so amazingly different now. Families, mine included, planted trees in their yards, little whippets, and watered them faithfully. Now, fifty years later, its a different town. No longer transparent and windswept. Windy still, but the trees make such a difference! There are still places you can see through the town from one side to the other, but it used to be wherever you stood, now its maybe a particular intersection. [Pretty Quiet Around Here]

Why I'm going on about Kadoka I don't know. I'll be visiting my daughter in Rapid City. As a kid we drove the 100 miles to Rapid City to see a dentist or to buy shoes. Or to go up into the beautiful Black Hills, where my great uncle had a vacation cabin, and where eventually my family also built a cabin.

Here's a photo taken near our cabin.

Sylvan Lake is also close to the cabin.


And this, my main reason for visiting South Dakota this summer, is my daughter Wendy.

Here she is again, wearing a dress that she sewed for festival. Wendy's a seamstress.


And yet again, this time with her brother, my son, Rock, and his youngest, Mitchell Rock, in Kadoka. Rock will be visiting South Dakota this summer too. Celebrate! Cousins and grandkids, siblings, alla that!!!

I am so blessed.

Help While I Heal

That's my beautiful granddaughter Deija and her sign over my head. And that shiny object is my head after chemotherapy. I've been granted a reprieve from further chemo for the nonce, and I'm using it to see what happens when I use only the non-toxic therapies that are considered "alternative" by mainstream medicine.

Contributions to my becoming absolutely completely 100% cancer free can be made by writing a check to the Kate Waterbury Wellness Fund c/o Selco Community Credit Union, P.O. Box 7487, Eugene, Oregon, 97401.

As soon after my first chemotherapy as I had recovered sufficiently to go anywhere I got myself to the nutritional counselor recommended by my sweet wonderful Eugene friends. Besides the enzyme therapy I sought, my NTP has been treating me with bioactive frequencies that help my body detox. I learned that the chemicals in the chemotherapy IV are only actively doing what they do for x number of hours. After that, my body is sick and detoxing from the therapy.

Its important to note that I learned this characteristic of my treatment from my medical doctor. My doctor is very helpful, and responsive to my questions and concerns. The key, in terms of patient advocacy, is knowing what questions to ask!

So I am cooperating with the toxic therapy, which produced dramatic results the first time, noticeable results the second time, and less noticeable the third time. I let it do its thing, even helping it along with positive attitude, and healing imagery. I have tapes and dvd's. Good stuff. My friends have been wonderful.

Besides tapes, books, dvd's and ideas, my Eugene "team" has been here for me every treatment, bringing me soup, organic vegetables to juice, and other wonderful home cooked foods. They've brought friendship, hand-holding, distraction from my feeling punk, an arm to lean on when I was weak. They've sprung me from my room when I began to vegetate in my low energy miasma, and taken me places--out to eat, the movies, shows, "coffee"--more likely a juice bar.

The therapies that I began using while still receiving mainstream treatment include:
Proteolytic Enzymes
BioActive Frequency Treatments
Good Nutrition, Anti-Cancer Diet
Anti-Cancer Nutritional Supplements
Acupuncture
Digestive Enzymes
Guided Imagery
Meditation, Relaxation
Fun
Gentle Exercise
[And I'm planning to up that last one to Dance!]

What you know, if you've faced any health challenges at all, is that insurance will cover the mainstream therapies, pharmaceuticals if you're lucky, and several things that your medical doctor might recommend.

My healing activities, therapists, and supplements, are not covered by my insurance--and my income is very low. My life depends on doing everything I know how to do to continue my healing and to live cancer free. Much I can do on my own with little expense. A few important mainstays like my enzyme therapy and nutritional supplements, and the professionals who are guiding me in using these, are not without considerable cost. During the first month of my treatment I spent several hundred dollars on supportive therapy and I will continue to spend more than I can afford for a long time.

A friend of mine, taking a more pragmatic approach than I could to my situation, has strongly encouraged me to ask for help. Asking for help was one of the very first lessons--it was new and a challenge, but asking my friends and family for help and receiving their loving help and support has been beautiful. Asking for financial help is taking it to an uncomfortable level for me, but here I am, with my hat in my hand...upturned to receive your dollar gifts.

Kate Waterbury Wellness Fund
Selco Community Credit Union
P.O. Box 7487
Eugene, OR 97401

Please write your check payable to the Kate Waterbury Wellness Fund. The lovely people at Selco will know what to do with it. Thank you. I gratefully accept any little thing you can send. If you know of grander donors looking for someone to help, hey, give them that simple little address above, or tell me how to contact them. Thank you, thank you, thank you.