Letters From Cancerland: Opening Doors
I have started 2014 in the throes of a relapse that has dogged my heels throughout the fall. When I see my oncologist this month, we will be discussing treatment and, presumably, starting it soon thereafter.
Because the relapse is steadily increasing and my energy and overall health are steadily diminishing, we spent the holidays quietly. (Well, quietly after my husband finished five rehearsals and five performances in the space of three weeks.) When coworkers ask what I did for Christmas, I smile and say “nothing.” They think I am joking.
Similarly, when they ask me what I resolve for 2014, I give the same reply. I am not one to make New Year's resolutions. If I could not make life changes during the course of the year, why should I think there is any magic to making them now?
It is appropriate that the first month of our calendar is named after the Roman god Janus. Janus was always represented as having two faces looking in opposite directions. To the Romans, he was the god of gates and doors, doorways, beginnings and endings, and transitions.
New Year is both a beginning and an ending, a transition from then to now. Janus is a powerful symbol as to where I am at the start of 2014.
Treatment is a doorway, a step from my current ill health into the unknown. My hope is that treatment will be a gateway to feeling better and to pushing the myeloma into a quiescent state once again.
Only time will tell. I don’t know what treatment will bring, so I do not yet know what the year may hold on the medical front.
I don’t know what door Janus is opening, but I do not fear it. Despite the treatment uncertainty, I am not dour on the prospect of 2014. Ebenezer Scrooge denounced this time of year as "a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer." My health may be in shambles and I am certainly not an hour richer, but I am no Scrooge. The year before me is endless in opportunities.
Two centuries ago, the sage Hillel said, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself only, then what am I? And if not now, when?" I have had that quote committed to memory for decades. I take that saying out now and hold it up against this time of year, against endings and beginnings, against old and new, against transitions and doorways to the future.
There is a moving scene in the novel I Heard the Owl Call My Name, by Margaret Craven. The key character, a young priest dying of cancer, has been killed in a landslide and the Canadian tribal village he serves has gathered to await the return of the body. There is only one other white man in the village, a government-hired teacher who hates his assigned post. As the villagers hear the canoes coming up the river, the children run down the path to the riverbank. The embittered teacher “heard the running footfalls on the path to the riverbank, and he went quickly to the door and could not open it. To join the others was to care, and to care was to live and to suffer.”
Opening a door is a magical act, as that poor teacher never found out. A door separates you from “here” and “somewhere else.” There is that wonderful, hold-your-breath moment in the 1939 “Wizard of Oz” when Dorothy opens the sepia farmhouse door to see the Technicolor of Oz outside.
Regardless of where the door is, or what it is, we all choose to open the door at one time or another in our life. I am standing before such a door now as I face the resumption of treatment. Sometimes opening the door does mean caring and living and suffering. Sometimes it means dying. Sometimes it is just a door.
And sometimes we step into Oz.
April Nelson is a multiple myeloma patient and columnist at The Myeloma Beacon. You can view a list of her previously published columns here.
If you are interested in writing a regular column for The Myeloma Beacon, please contact the Beacon team at .
Thanks April, for the beautiful, philosophical column! I must read the book 'I Heard the Owl Call my Name'. It is a title phrase which has gone into popular use, and when I hear owls hooting around here I often think that too. Thanks for the book summary.
I hope that the new door you go through leads you to good health, and that 2014 is a good year for you that way.
I know what you mean about musicians being so busy in December. I just finished singing a song at a recital that had been scheduled for Dec. 20. My vocal teacher had a really bad cold and had to reschedule it to last weekend! It was a bit odd to be hearing seasonal music again now, but the sentiments of the season can still carry on into January!
Was your husband playing in the 'Nutcracker Suite' by Tchaikovsky? I just love that seasonal ballet.
Thankyou April that was beautiful. Good luck and God speed as you go through another door and a new transition begins.
A beautifully written column, April ... lots of food for thought. By the way, the mid-Atlantic states, including my neck of the woods in New Jersey, just got whacked again by a polar vortex from Canada yesterday (thanks, Nancy ... LOL!) Everything is shutdown, states of emergency, etc., and it is close to 0 degrees Fahrenheit. The storm was named Winter Storm Janus. Go figure! All the best. Terry L. from blistering cold Haddonfield, New Jersey.
I always enjoy the comments--my favorite part of writing this column!
Nancy, no "Nutcracker" but 3 holiday concerts (2 jazz, one pops), a church service or two, and a breathtaking performance of "Messiah." Beethoven's 9th is up next at the end of March.
Ad it was -8 this morning here, Terry, but we don't have the snow. Just darn cold!
Good Morning from Canada. April I really enjoy reading your articles. I also love to hear what others are reading or recommending, and your quotes. I wish you improved health as you go through this next door of your treatment. My energy level is low at present, I hope that it's just this cold winter weather that we are having here in Canada, - 20 yesterday. I just want to stay home and read!!!
I look forward to hearing your next article and how you are doing. Blessings, Diana.
April, I find myself teary eyed after reading your wonderful, poetic writing. I recently started back on chemo, and you are right. This is a door I must pass through without knowing what the journey will bring. Your seeing the new year as bringing endless possibilities is so uplifting. Our son is getting married in August so there is a lot of living to do. I still have the tears which feel like peace and comfort now. Your sharing has enriched my life, and I thank you.
Beautifully done April! Nice job. Those doors are always a mystery until we step through them. Wishing you the best from a fellow buckeye!
April, thanks a lot for the great article. As a runner, I often think of a starting line in the same way as you speak of a door here. Amby Burfoot (winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon) had a great quote about starting lines: "When you see the first hazy edges of a starting line begin to form in your life, don’t avoid it. Don’t look the other way. Try to bring the starting line into sharper focus. Consider its potential. Remember that if you don’t go to the starting line, you will never view the whole course with all its possibilities. And you will certainly never see the glories of the finish line."
Here's hoping your next door, your next starting line, leads you where you want to go!
@April - we are entering a quiet phase with SCT starting in 8 days. Your comments are so helpful. Thank you, and God bless you through your new treatment phase.
@Diana - You like recommendations; me, too. So this is a thank you to a blogger a few months back who recommended books by Kathleen Flinn: a) Le Cordon Bleu, and b) Kitchen Counter Cooking School. a=fascinating and worthwhile but I probably won't try those recipes; but b=fabulous and HELPFUL! Wish I'd had this as a newlywed 40+ yrs ago. She has videos online, too.
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