Mementos and Memories

I'm not much of a collector, at least not in terms of material possessions. I had a friend tell me once that if people were to break into my place to rob it, they'd think someone had beat them to the job. Mind you, at the time he said this, I had gone from living in a 350 sq. ft. studio apartment to roughly a 1,200 sq. ft. condo. My parents thought I had been living in a shoebox in the first instance, and I thought I was living in a mansion in the second. I basically had no furnishings when I moved into the condo because of the shoebox I had come from. I slept with my mattress on the floor for I don't know how many months until I finally bought a bedroom suite, and I borrowed a couple of folding chairs from my parents for a number of months, too, while I sorted out what to do about kitchen furniture.

It's not that I didn't want to spend the money or anything. I just simply didn't care. Dealing with that version of adulting is a little soul-sucking and requires a lot of energy for me. I rather dread shopping and browsing around to find a good deal or looking through styles. Things like Pinterest and Etsy make my eyes glaze over, or at the very least make me feel very overwhelmed. It took me seven months to work up the energy to finally buy a couch when I first moved into the condo. Even in my current house, which I bought three years ago, I just now bought a combo bookcase/filing cabinet for files I've been carting around in a copy paper box for probably four years and books I've had stacked up on the floor for at least a year.

About the closest I have come to collecting material things are smashed pennies and ticket stubs. Both are compact, easily portable, and the items themselves clearly mark a moment or location, as there is identifying information inherent in their nature. Meaning when you look at any one of my ticket stubs you can clearly see things like a date, time, or location. Also, in the scrapbook in which I keep them (where they are all in order by day, month, and year), I typically write off to the side who I was with when I experienced the event. I have nearly every ticket from any sort of concert, recital, movie, etc. I've been to since 1998. Yes, you read that right. 1-9-9-8. If someone really wanted to, they could probably cobble together a narrative timeline of my life just based on that ticket scrapbook alone.

And the smashed pennies? That collection was inadvertently started by my grandparents. For as long as I could remember, they had this sort of 'junk pile' in the middle of their kitchen table filled with knick knacks, mail, an assortment of pens, a napkin holder, and usually a half-empty sleeve of Saltine crackers my grandfather snacked on along with peanut butter, and then a scattering of crumbs around it from Sunday family gatherings. My vague memory tells me this is where I found my first smashed penny somewhere loose in this pile of 'junk.'

It's from a trip my grandparents took ultimately to Australia, but with a stop along the way in Hawaii. They had occasion to visit Pearl Harbor, and the pressed penny from the visit shows an image of the USS Arizona Memorial. They picked up that little coin in 1978, not knowing they'd have a granddaughter someday who would have over 150 similar coins, marking her own travels, from coast to coast and even ones from Russia and New Zealand.*

Then 2024 hit, the 'year of cancer,' as I sometimes call it. Obviously there was -  and is - so much more to last year than merely cancer, but it nevertheless is the defining marker. I acquired precisely two ticket stubs and zero smashed pennies last year. 

However, as last year passed, I unintentionally found myself setting aside little trinkets, little mementos, to mark various moments and memories. A single staple from my brain biopsy (weird, I know). A golf ball I found on one of my morning walks when I was still living at my parents'. There's a story behind that golf ball which I won't get into right now in the interest of time and space. It’s nothing dramatic, but it’s of value to my family. Some of my favorite cards and letters friends sent to me that carried me through hard days. Some of the papers of brain exercises I had to do in rehab. My wristband from the first day of being admitted to the hospital, and I was told I had a large mass on my brain. 

For every tangible item, there are also some intangible items I collected via photographs. I took photos of odd details in my physical surroundings at the time and recently printed a stack to add to my growing collection of tangible items. There's a photo of the light fixture in the room I stayed while at my parents', taken from the angle of how I saw it while lying in bed. I stared at that light fixture for what seemed like hours some days, usually seeing it through tears, wondering how life had taken such a hard left. There's also a photo of this rather large, old osage orange tree at the side of their property, a photo I took on one of my early morning walks when I had a ton of energy from the steroids during radiation. The sunlight is streaming perfectly through the branches and you can see just this wisp of a sunbeam reaching down from its branches.

Memories marked by mementos, a little collection that has grown over the last fifteen months and continues to do so, all tucked into a wooden box, which is part of the collection itself, as it was part of a care package. There are a good deal of moments and memories from last year I'd like to forget. The moment when my dad had to shave my head. The moment when I kept staring at the grid sheet in speech therapy and could not figure out how to solve the task, no matter how hard my brain tried to sort it out. The moments when I couldn't type or get my left hand to work. Every moment of every seizure. The moment when the occupational therapist came into my hospital room and asked me to simply raise my left hand at the wrist and nothing happened. The moment when I texted my friend and told her I didn't know how I was going to make it.

But there's also a good deal I'd like to remember. The moment when I hugged my mom and neither one of us could stop laughing. The moment when I went to a Ben Rector concert with my friend Jill, one of the two ticket stubs I have from last year. The moments when getting mail felt a little like Christmas, a seemingly never-ending stream of cards and care packages. The moment when my co-workers and I successfully pulled off our online conference of nearly 2,000 people and the public was none the wiser for the hellacious year we'd all managed to survive. The moment when I moved back into my house, living independently again, almost a year sooner than we anticipated.

All those tangible items are tucked away in that wooden box, but the box is nearly full and I'll need to upgrade to another size. Because I know the story isn't over and there are moments yet to come that I will want to add to the collection.

And if my 'keep making plans' healthcare system has anything to say about it all, someday I will add more ticket stubs and more smashed pennies to my collections. I look forward to those days.

*And no, please do not make or send me any smashed pennies when you see a machine. I have a small handful from locations I haven't been to that friends have given to me over the years, but I generally prefer to have them from places I personally have been to.

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Health Updates

There was a moment in this latest chemo cycle when I had to pick up the bottle the meds came in to make sure I was shipped and taking the right drugs, I was feeling that amazing. This was BY FAR the best cycle I've had, at least as far as my memory can recall (they all start to run together after awhile). It was like the good Lord himself reached down and flipped a switch. After cycle number eight was so miserable, I really was bracing for number nine. At my last neuro-onc appointment, we decided to lower the dose of chemo this month, see if that helped things. I think that change and several other changes resulted in the improvements. I ended up having minimal nausea and no vomiting. My appetite was normal and I had no problems drinking fluids. I maybe napped a little more, but by and large, had really good energy. It really was stunning how well I felt. I rebounded days sooner than I normally do. You better believe I spent a lot of time thanking God for his kindness.

I'm still savoring the changes the new anti-seizure medication have induced, continuing to improve my ability to function and move through the day. Just doing common, ordinary things, like being able to schedule appointments and run errands in the mornings while also gaining evening hours, too, makes me feel like I have discovered a whole new world. 

My next scan is June 3 to assess again what the tumor looks like. After that, I will start cycle ten, which means I only have three more cycles to go. If the schedule plays out as intended, I should start the last cycle sometime in August and then actually finish in September.

Definitely keep praying that my body would tolerate the drugs with no side effects and that the next scan would show that the tumor has shrunk (I'll also go for vanished!). 

Again, thank you to everyone who continually reaches out and checks on me. I'm still so grateful for the intentionality of each of those gestures.