Mick McKellar Update--Day +75
The intrepid walkers made one journey together today -- we traversed the urban wilderness to obtain a refill of steroid cream. At the world's slowest pharmacy, I had a chance for some serious face-time with my nook, and Marian had a nap. It took an hour to refill my medication.
Did I mention steroid cream? It appears that the rash is back. I don't see it, but it would be silly of me to argue against it, AND not take steps to treat a possible flare up. I still think it is just that I have very ugly skin. However, folks with ugly skin should not throw steroid creams...or something like that.
Fortunately, no other indicators of the rash have returned -- just some reddish areas on my body. Otherwise, I am doing well and still coping with daily changes.
Time, Lord
I am acutely aware of the truism that time cannot be saved, it can only be spent. Before the leukemia, I operated on the assumption that I could bank, or save time by working harder now, so I could spend it at my leisure in a comfortable, fixed-income future. Someday, we'd travel and visit places from our dreams. Someday, I'd spend treasured hours with my grandchildren, telling them stories of the time spent with my grandparents, with their mom and dad, or just about all the crazy mistakes I made when I was a kid. Well, on May 26, 2010, Someday Savings Bank went bust, and with it went my fictitious time account.
As the anniversary of my temporal bankruptcy approaches, I think more about how I use each and every minute of each and every day I am gifted. Battling GVHD and following medical protocols demand a major portion of that time, as well as hours spent in waiting rooms, lines, and offices. I try to make the time count, by reading in the offices and waiting areas, by writing my thoughts in journal form to be shared, rather than simply hidden between the covers of a diary, and by just living every minute in between. Quiet time spent day dreaming or re-living precious instants from my past, is time well spent, especially if it helps me deal with current challenges.
Time spent worrying about things I cannot control, time, for instance, is time wasted. Yet, that little fear remains...the fear that hours have flown and I missed them. As I pondered and prayed about that most human fear, another poem slipped out on the page.
Thanks for your communications, e-mails, and messages. Thanks for your prayers and good thoughts.
God bless and good evening,
Mick
And now: Losing Hours
When I was introduced to the finite nature of my residence on this Earth upon hearing the words "you have leukemia," my future collapsed from a panoramic scope to a tiny lens in an instant. On the ambulance ride to the medical center, I faced backwards. There on that gurney, I watched miles slipping by at high speed as though sliding into my past without a view ahead...a rapidly receding past and no future. As I grew up, leukemia was a death sentence, and though I knew it was no longer a certainty, I now had an expiration date.
That was May 26, 2010, an anniversary swiftly approaching, stirring within me both gratitude for God's gift of each new day and trepidation about losing or wasting a second of those precious hours. Despite my best efforts to just accept and fill that time with the best I have to give, I still harbor fear of missing the treasures of hours that somehow fly away. It is a wonder I can sleep at all, and when I wake in the wee hours, sometimes I feel those hours flying away, lost forever...
Mick
Losing Hours
The hours sometimes fail to touch my soul,
To sway aloft on silent silver wings,
Or drift in darkness on wings black as coal,
And abandoned, my earthbound spirit sings.
Slow measure and dark melody, forlorn
Hymns that echo emptiness in their cry,
From my most human breaking heart are torn;
The plainsong of my soul streams to the sky.
In answer, silent wings may swift comply,
To carry me through golden instants bright,
Or lifted on unseen currents to fly,
And leave my spirit stranded in the night.
Although more hours each gifted day contains,
My fear of losing precious time remains.
Mick McKellar
May 2011