April 3, 2010 - When All You Have Left Is Yourself

Today I’m reading an unusual article in Cure magazine online, "Keeping the Faith," by Kathy Latour. What’s unusual about it is that it deals with the topic of cancer and spirituality with attention to spiritual community.

I find that refreshing, because there’s lots of talk about a sort of generic spirituality when it comes to cancer survivorship. “If it makes you feel good, do it” is the all-purpose mantra. The problem with this sort of approach is that it ends up being a do-it-yourself activity, like trimming your nose-hairs or working out with a Thighmaster.

I think this individualism comes out of good old American separation-of-church-and-state thinking – something I’m in favor of when it comes to politics, but which is woefully inadequate in all but the most superficial discussions of religious faith. Take that line of thinking to its extreme, and you’ll end up like poor old President Eisenhower – who supposedly let himself be quoted saying: “Our government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.”

Some presidential scholars insist that’s an apocryphal remark, and it may well be – but, it catches the spirit of the age. (Eisenhower was a Presbyterian, by the way – though, if he really said that, I suppose he missed Sunday School the day they were teaching Calvin’s high conception of the church.)

In cancer support groups, “guided meditations” abound – those stress-relieving exercises that begin: “Close your eyes, pay attention to your breathing, and imagine yourself walking across a grassy field...”

Now, I can understand the appeal of that approach, to those who arrange chairs in a circle for their cancer-and-spirituality workshops. You can be Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew or South Sea Islands cargo cultist, and still get something out of a guided meditation exercise. Whether the glowing figure walking towards you across that grassy field is Jesus or the Bodhisattva Maitreya makes little difference, because it’s happening in your own, private mental world. No muss, no fuss, no cross-denominational misunderstandings. Everybody leaves happy.

Outside of houses of worship, spiritual support groups are often led by people without any strong (or strongly evident) religious affiliation – the “I’m spiritual but not religious” sort of person. You’d think hospitals and agencies would seek out seasoned religious professionals – nuns who work as spiritual directors, say, or Muslim teachers of Sufi prayer – as long as they’re committed to interfaith dialogue. But, no. Charitable-organization program directors aren’t known for sticking their necks out, so they smile beneficently on psychiatric social workers with no theological background who say, “I can do that,” or on generic “interfaith ministers” holding degrees from unaccredited seminaries (or, God forbid, even internet “ordinations”).

That’s why the article I’ve been reading is so refreshing. The author, Kathy Latour, interviews Harold G. Koenig, M.D., of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at Duke University – a prostate-cancer survivor himself – as he describes a discussion group he co-facilitated called “Engaging the Spirit.” It was a place “where cancer patients and survivors explored spiritual and faith questions as they traveled the cancer journey.” Knowing his group was composed of people from a variety of faith traditions, Harold began each discussion with a simple question: “How’s your spirit?”

OK, that’s a workable generic opening question, but Harold’s point is that the discussion need not remain in that level: “I learned from those who took part that no matter how someone defines his or her faith, in a group of cancer survivors there exists a common quest to understand existential questions about life and death.” When that quest is pursued through religious community, there comes an awareness that “God has a purpose for them and is in control and they don’t have to be. This is where mental health comes from.” Such a strongly-held conviction, the article continues, “frees them and reminds them that their illness can result in ‘something good.’”

From his own experience as a survivor, Harold upholds the value of “a belief system that frames your diagnosis in the context of your life and what you believe happens after life. If you have no framework to place that in, all you have left is yourself and it isn't enough. You can't carry the full load – you weren't meant to.”

A great many recent research studies of spirituality and health, Harold maintains, conclude that people who follow a particular faith tradition “need and use fewer health care services because they are healthier, more likely to have intact families to care for them, and have greater social support.”

The Rev. Isabel Docampo, associate professor of supervised ministry at Perkins School of Theology, “says her fear and depression after facing surgery for life-threatening cancer of the salivary gland came not from a crisis of faith, but from the pain and sadness that she felt from the idea she might leave her 21-year-old son, Ben, and her husband of 18 months, Scott Somers, also an ordained minister.”

“The way I have always looked at life is that it is what it is,” Isabel reflects. “Life is a struggle and God has been there for all the blessings and all the bad stuff, and God is going to be here for the cancer.”

Amen to that.

I wouldn’t want to face cancer knowing that “all I have left is myself” – nor some individualized spirituality I’d made up out of whole cloth, either. One of the great strengths of submitting oneself to the discipline of a particular religious tradition is knowing it’s not all about me, nor will it ever be so.

Now, on to my Easter sermon...

March 29, 2010 - Survivors' Tips from Dr. Laura Liberman

When I attended the Lymphoma Research Foundation’s national meeting in New York last fall, one of the most helpful presentations I heard was by Dr. Laura Liberman, a radiologist on the staff of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Liberman spoke not so much as a physician, but as a cancer survivor. She herself has been successfully treated for lymphoma.

She evidently gave the same talk again at a more recent event at MSKCC, and they’ve posted an online video of it. It’s just 30 minutes long, and is well worth it.

Laura’s experience was, like mine, one of tables being turned. As a pastor, I’ve visited with many cancer patients, and have tried to give them what help I could. She and I both found it disorienting, at first, to assume the role of a patient. In fact, the title of Laura’s book is I Signed As the Doctor – the first several times she signed consent forms for medical procedures, she made the mistake of signing on the line marked “Doctor,” rather than “Patient.”

Here are Dr. Laura Liberman’s cancer survival tips, a baker’s dozen:

1. Reach out to your friends.
Some people can’t deal with your cancer (it’s not in their nature), but many will be grateful for the opportunity to step up and help.

2. It’s OK to cry, but try to keep it to 20 minutes a day or less.
This is no joke. An oncology nurse gave her this advice. Laura actually found it helpful to try to fit her crying into that period of time (20 minutes at a stretch, four 5-minute crying jags, whatever worked). I didn't do much crying myself, being the typical male in our culture, but I appreciate the importance of giving ourselves permission to feel sad.

3. Ask people to pray for you.
Laura’s of the opinion that prayer, from any and all religious traditions, is a good thing. If nothing else, you may receive a sense of positive energy coming toward you, and it allows friends want to do something to help you who may have no other way to do so.

4. Find doctors you can trust.
You don’t want Dr. House from TV, she says. You want someone who’s empathetic as well as technically skilled

5. Take it bird by bird.
A literary reference to Anne Lamott’s book of that title. Lamott tells the story of how her brother was frustrated at the magnitude of his grade-school report assignment on “The Birds of North America.” Their father gave him the sage advice to “take it bird by bird.” So, too, with cancer. The big picture can feel overwhelming, especially at the outset. Take it one medical procedure at a time.

6. Be sensitive to your family.
Be honest with your kids, but don’t overwhelm them with more information than they can handle. Make sure your kids know you will still be there for them.

7. Be your own advocate.
Do your own research. Bring someone with you on doctor’s visits – not only to help you advocate for yourself, and also to listen for details you will probably miss. Laura suggests “bringing your own anesthesia” – not the big stuff you need an anesthesiologist for, of course, but she sings the praises of something called Gebauer ethyl chloride, a topical application you can get at the pharmacy with a prescription. The stuff numbs the skin; it’s what they spray on kids’ skinned knuckles in the emergency room. Emla Cream, she says, is also useful, though you have to apply it a half-hour before. Not every doctor, she says, is alert to the value of preventing minor pain, like that of a needle insertion, with such topical preparations. Bring the stuff with you, though, and the doctor’s unlikely to object.

8. Find silver linings (it’s an opportunity to get new hats!).
Laura says she indulged herself, when she was losing her hair, by buying herself an embarrassing number of fashionable new hats. People want to say “You look great,” she points out – but when they can’t, you can always ask them, “Do you like my hat?”

9. Discover your inner Zen.
By this, she means whatever it is that brings you to a place of inner peace. There’s an awful lot of waiting associated with being a cancer patient, and all that downtime can lead to excessive worrying. One friend advised her to pretend each doctor’s visit is a trip to the airport – if you don’t have to wait that long, you’ll be pleased. Get an iPod, she also advises – so you can listen to music during all those waiting experiences. Putting songs onto your iPod is something teenagers can do for you.

10. Keep your sense of humor.
Nothing about cancer is a joke, but if you can focus on things that make you laugh, that’s a good thing.

11. Play the cancer card.
Every once in a while, it helps to mention that you have cancer. Sometimes people will give you special consideration (she’s got a good story about this on the video about getting a cab in New York).

12. Savor celebrations. It’s not all about the cancer!
Celebrations are important at any time of life, but especially when you’re sick. “The way you make life good is by incorporating good stuff into it.”

13. Use your experience to help others.
Give back, pay it forward, or whatever you like to call it. This can help you feel you’re going through this experience for a reason

Good advice. Check out the video!

March 27, 2010 - Post-Traumatic Growth

Well, well. Here’s a new psychobabble buzz-word: post-traumatic growth.

OK, it’s more than just one word, it’s a couple. It echoes the dreaded “post-traumatic stress disorder” (PTSD), although it ends up being a good thing, not a bad. Mostly, anyway. To get to the good, you have to slog through some pretty rough stuff.

I read about post-traumatic growth in an article, “Cancer’s Silver Lining,” by Don Vaughan, in CureToday.com. The author lists “five common growth outcomes” of being a cancer survivor:

• A deepened appreciation of life.
• Enhanced relationships with others.
• An appreciation for personal strength and endurance.
• Setting out on new pathways or pursuing new interests and opportunities.
• Spiritual growth and development.

I’d have to say – with no trace of bragging in my mind, just gratitude – that I’m 5 for 5 on that list.

I didn’t achieve any of those things myself. They’ve been gifts.

Cancer’s not an experience I’d wish on anyone. But if you have to get it, you may as well make the most of it. As I wrote in a much earlier post, try to emulate Jacob as he wrestled with that mysterious adversary of his at the fords of the Jabbok. See if you can put your scary opponent into a half-Nelson until he dispenses a blessing or two.

March 8, 2010 - Hope on the Horizon

The big medical conference each year in the field of lymphoma treatment is ASH – the American Society of Hematology. This year’s conference, I understand, contained good news for people like me with indolent lymphomas – particularly follicular lymphoma. Check out this video interview with Dr. Dr. Ephraim Hochberg, Director of Clinical Lymphoma Research at Dana-Farber/Massachusetts General Hospital:

An Expert's Perspective on the Latest in NHL from Patient Powerr on Vimeo.

It’s encouraging to hear this lymphoma researcher speak of turning the corner and heading into the home stretch on some long-term research efforts. The longer my lymphoma remains sluggish, the longer my watch-and-wait treatment approach continues, the more likely it becomes that some new medicine will be available when I need it.

March 6, 2010 - Going to a Different Place

Yesterday I spent three hours in the dentist’s chair – or, more specifically, the endodontist’s chair. It was the third session I’ve had in the past week or so, with one more coming on Monday.

I’m having a root canal done on a molar that’s developed an abscess. The tooth’s had a crown on it for years, so the doctor’s had to drill a hole down through the top of the crown and leave it open all week, to relieve pressure on the abscess and allow it to drain.

Dr. Donald Fahringer, the endodontist, is fabulous. He’s obviously highly skilled at his craft, and he’s very understanding of his patients. Each session begins with 4 (count ‘em), 4 shots of novocaine – slam, bam, one after the other. No messing around. None of this, “I’ll give you a little spritz of novocaine, and you raise your hand if it starts hurting.”

While it’s thankfully been a pain-free experience, it’s by no means been a comfortable experience. Sitting with your mouth held open for hours by a stainless-steel torture instrument topped with a latex dental dam, while somebody slowly rasps away at the inside of your tooth with tiny files, then peers inside your mouth with a microscope before rasping some more, ain’t exactly my idea of entertainment.

Fortunately, I’ve had a little experience with this sort of thing. Yes, I’ve had root canals before – but, it’s been many years, and none seemed to be as extensive a project as this one. The recent experiences that seem most relevant are my two bone-marrow biopsies - one in December, 2005 and the other in July, 2007.

On both those occasions, I instinctively knew I had to take myself to a different place – to be present, as I needed to, when the doctor needed to ask a question or to instruct me to turn a certain way, but otherwise I drifted off to a different plane.

During the bone-marrow biopsies, I randomly chose an object across the room to serve as a focal point, and focused my eyes on it, as I somehow burrowed down deep within my own consciousness. I can’t tell you how I did it, exactly, but I did it. I was there, but not there.

This time – with Dr. Fahringer’s permission – I brought my iPod into the chair, set it to pick songs randomly, and stuck the earbuds in as soon as he got started. I could hear and feel him doing things inside my mouth, unpleasant things, but I felt detached from the experience. I could just about hear his voice, over the music, when he asked me to turn my head toward him or open wider, but then, once I’d complied, I settled back into my own private la-la-land.

It’s one of the little lessons the cancer experience has taught me – not to mention the experiences I’ve had with contemplative prayer. Pain is real, discomfort is real, but up to a certain point, we have the power to influence the way those negative forces affect us.

All we have to do is go to a different place.

February 25, 2010 - A Time to Act

Today I received an email from Lance Arm- strong’s Livestrong organi- zation. It begins with this call to action, issued in coordination with the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network:

“Today, our elected leaders in Washington are gathering to continue their debate on overhauling a health care system that fails far too many Americans. We’re hopeful they do the work we elected them to do: break through the gridlock, work together and leave the partisan posturing at the door.”

“Partisan posturing” is right. Along with a great many other Americans, I’m feeling appalled by Congress’ growing dysfunction, especially on the matter of health care reform.

Poll after poll has indicated that this is the number-one priority for the electorate. What’s wrong with our elected officials, that they can’t make any progress on this issue – which for a great many of the uninsured is literally a matter of life and death?

Not that our Senators and Representatives know much about that. Personally, they’ve got some of the best medical insurance around. No part of their health care system seems broken.

Nowhere is this clearer than in an incredibly boneheaded comment House Republican leader John Boehner made to the President at today’s healthcare summit. He gestured towards a copy of the Democrats’ proposal and grumbled, “This right here is a dangerous experiment. A dangerous experiment with the best health care system in the world.”

What planet does that man come from? “The best health care system in the world?” Sure it is, for members of the well-insured elite like Mr. Boehner. Not for most of the people who elected him: whose taxes bankroll his princely medical benefits, that allow him to continue to dwell in such a fantasy world.

Republicans, it’s time to put people ahead of politics and stop your random, mindless obstructionism. Democrats, it’s time to find some nerve, and negotiate from the strength of your majority - filibuster or no.

I invite you to join supporters of Livestrong, the American Cancer Society and myself in signing this bipartisan petition to Congress, urging them to break the deadlock and move forward.

February 20, 2010 - The Senator Joins the Club

News bulletins yesterday focused on one of our U.S. Senators from New Jersey, Frank Lautenberg, who’s just been diagnosed with cancer and will undergo chemotherapy.

Some of the early news stories about the Senator’s condition were shockingly inaccurate. Even the venerable New York Times got it wrong, saying Lautenberg has “stomach cancer.” A subsequent article corrects the error.

What the Senator actually has is the same thing I’ve got: non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The sub-type is diffuse large B-cell – which also happens to be the same aggressive form of the disease for which I was treated in early 2006. The indolent lymphoma I now have is small B-cell.

There’s a world of difference between stomach cancer and a lymphoma that manifests itself in or near the stomach. Subsequent news reports do seem to be getting it right, though.

I wonder if Senator Lautenberg will be receiving R-CHOP chemotherapy, as I did. One of the articles speaks about 6 treatments, 3 weeks apart, which certainly does sound similar.

An article in the Newark Star-Ledger quotes Roger Strair, director of Hematology, Oncology and Internal Medicine at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, who observes that lymphoma is “an unfortunate consequence of the body's need to make hundreds of millions of immune cells every day.” Sometimes, he explains, those cells are “copied" incorrectly.

“It’s not because of or the fault of what people ate or drank, or the way they live their lives, or electrical lines in the backyard,'' Strair said.

That’s because NHL is largely a genetic disease. Most often it strikes randomly, without regard to family history.

The article includes a general prognosis for all forms of NHL, provided by Dr. Aaron Chevisky, chief of surgical oncology and co-director of the Carol G. Simon Cancer Center at Morristown Memorial Hospital: “The survival rate after one year is 80 percent; after five years, it's 65 percent after five years and 54 percent after 10 years.” That’s pretty good news. With the generally favorable prognosis for B-cell NHL and the wealth of effective treatments out there, I have a good chance of living with the disease a very long time. Which, of course, is better than dying from it.

I feel for Senator Lautenberg and his family, as he continues treatment and – as I presume he will – experiences side effects like hair loss. Right now, I expect he’s in he midst of the whirlwind. The papers do say he plans to continue in the Senate, though – showing up for debates and votes as he is able. That will surely be a tough road for an 86-year old.

With the Demo- crats’ health care bill balanced on a razor- thin majority, Senator Lautenberg’s presence and the Senate floor will be very much needed. I hope he won't have to rush over for any votes during one of the bad weeks out of the 3-week cycle.

Welcome to the club, Mr. Senator: the club no one wants to join, but which a great many of us will join eventually. You’ll find there’s a lot of support and caring among other members of the cancer community.

February 10, 2010 - Bean-Counter 1, Oncologist 0

Snowed-in today – or, to be more accurate at the moment, sleeted in. It’s a “wintry mix” out there – a real mess.

So, I have a little time to do a blog entry.

I just happened upon a link to a blog posting by a pediatric oncologist, David Loeb, who works at Johns Hopkins. It’s called “Why David Hates Health Insurance Companies.” Here’s some of what he writes about one of his patients, a young woman diagnosed with liver sarcoma:

“My patient will need a chemotherapy drug called ifosfamide to treat her tumor. This drug has a significant risk of infertility associated with it. After consultation with a reproductive endocrinologist, we decided that the best way to try to protect her fertility would be to use a drug called Lupron. Unfortunately, Lupron is expensive, so it requires prior authorization from the insurance company. I just received an email from our clinic coordinator that read, in part, ‘It won't be covered if it's for fertility reason (per her case manager).’”

“So... I have some choices to make. Do I lie and say the drug is being prescribed for another indication? Do I tell the truth and risk the family having to pay $750 per dose out of their own pockets? Or do I choose a different drug, one that will not work as well, and know that I am not providing optimal care for this young woman, and am increasing her risk of infertility?”

The rest of the blog entry indicates how hard this doctor has been working, documenting all the complexities of the case, emailing copies of medical-journal articles to insurance-company drones – trying to convince them to make an exception. Bravo to Doctor David for going the extra mile for his patient. I hope he gets someone to listen to him.

Who can put a price on a young woman’s fertility? The very notion of it boggles the mind. Yet, this is the Godlike power our broken health-care system places in the hands of insurance-company functionaries.

Think about it: an insurance-company clerk at a computer terminal vs. an oncology specialist at Johns Hopkins. The clerk is supposedly advised by a consulting physician – who’s on the payroll of the company and who receives bonuses for declining claims – who may not even be an oncologist. And who’s this “case manager,” anyway? My case manager, when I had one, was a nurse. A very capable and helpful person, but certainly not the equal of a Hopkins oncologist when comes to making treatment decisions.

This is the nitty-gritty of our present healthcare mess. This is where it gets up-close and personal. Those rageaholics at Tea Party rallies, ranting on about mythical “socialized medicine,” are perpetuating a system that forces highly-trained specialists to take precious time away from caring for patients to educate insurance-company bean-counters.

It’s not that this is an occasional aberration. This sort of Kafkaesque scene is replayed day in and day out, in hospitals across this land. It’s why our healthcare dollars buy so little patient care.

In a comment on Dr. Loeb's posting, his clinic coordinator chimes in:

"Why do physicians have to charge a high rate for service? They have to pay for me! On a daily basis, I have at least 20 cases on my desk to try and convince an insurance company to approve treatment and/or medications that will improve the patient's quality of life. This is distressing for the unfortunate loved ones who have to deal with the sometimes long wait. As if a child with cancer is not enough to deal with!"

We all know it’s a wasteful, inefficient system. Yet, there are also hidden costs, like this doctor’s and this clinic coordinator's time, that don’t show up on the usual balance sheets.

I wish every obstructionist Senator could read Dr. David’s blog entry.

This is our national shame.

February 4, 2010 - A Double-Dog Dare

Today is World Cancer Day. One of the simple facts about cancer, as we all know, is that early diagnosis is tremendously important. Sometimes it can mean the difference between life and death.

Yet even so, there are many people who have noticed something unusual or out of the ordinary about their bodies, but procrastinate on going to the doctor. Of the lump or mole or recurring pain they say, “I’m sure it’s nothing,” then go back to business as usual – until the next time, when they’re just about as likely to repeat the process.

Although I had none of these symptoms, myself, I did have a recurring sense that something wasn’t quite right, and felt led to ask our family doctor to check me for an aneurysm (something my father had experienced, and nearly died from). It was that ultrasound scan that revealed the presence of the large abdominal mass that was later diagnosed as lymphoma.

An email that arrived today from Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong organization suggested I pass along a little reminder that, if you’re going to get checked for cancer, sooner is surely better than later. Here’s the message:

Know your risks. Call your doctor….What are you waiting for?

Learning about your family history and talking to a doctor about your daily habits can give you valuable insight into the steps you need to take, right now. It’s true – talking to your doctor about cancer can be scary, and many of us just forget to bring it up. But your health is important to me and that’s why I’m asking you to start the conversation now.

All of us can take some simple steps, like this one, to fight cancer. For help in taking that first step, go to livestrong .com and DARE TO CALL YOUR DOCTOR.

Want to nudge your friends to call their doctor? Drop the soda? Stop smoking? You can do it here.

So, I dare you. No – I double-dog dare you.

January 28, 2010 - When Positive Thinking Isn't Enough

One of the hardest things to do, in ministry, is to stand by people who are going through hard times: not trying to change the situation, but just being with them, accepting things as they are.

An invaluable lesson I learned, years ago, in my clinical counseling training in seminary, is that sometimes you can’t fix it. Sure, there are some counseling situations in which an easy answer – be it a scriptural citation or a word of practical advice – can make a world of difference. But, not every situation is like that. Sometimes the only thing you can do is to be there – accompanying people through their difficulties, sometimes even to the edge of the grave.

It’s one of the reasons (among many) why I have such admiration for my wife, Claire - a minister who works as bereavement coordinator for a hospice program. Accompanying people in just this sort of way is what she does all the time. When she was a hospice chaplain, she worked directly with dying patients. Now, she specializes in accompanying family members through their days of mourning.

Claire’s grown used to a certain awed response she gets from people she meets for the first time. They often say something like, “More power to you! I could never do a job like that,” or, “That must be so hard! How do you keep doing it, year after year?”

Frequently, she gets another sort of response: “I think hospice programs are wonderful. The hospice team was such a help to us when my mother was dying!” A person who says something like that has come to appreciate the value of standing by those who are suffering. It’s like the famous first line from Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

In my sermon this past Sunday, I spoke about a certain tendency toward magical thinking that can be a detriment in situations of serious difficulty, medical or otherwise. I was inspired by reading an insightful book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, by Barbara Ehrenreich.

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Ehrenreich has gotten a lot of press because of the forthright way in which she takes on the 200-pound gorilla of the self-help world: positive thinking. Her point is that our culture so unquestioningly considers positive thinking to be a good thing, that in situations – like the final stages of hospice care – in which it’s no longer appropriate, people just don’t know what to do. They feel abandoned, adrift, without the familiar life preserver of positive thinking.

Many of us think that, in a tough situation, we’ve got only two choices: think positively, or give up altogether. My point in Sunday’s sermon is that, while positive thinking is often a good thing, there are some situations in which it crosses the line into magical thinking – which is not. Some things that happen to us in life are simply bad things, and there’s no getting around it. It’s one thing to cultivate a positive outlook generally, but it’s quite another to believe we have an obligation to think positive thoughts all the time – and that, if we don’t, we’re somehow putting ourselves at risk.

Sadly, some cancer patients get precisely that message from those around them. Some feel guilty, beating themselves up because they can’t keep the sunny side up all the time. If their disease progresses, they feel irrationally responsible for failing to stoke the positive-thinking furnace.

A new illustrated article on Beliefnet.com, “In Praise of Thinking Realistically: When Positive Thinking Isn’t Working,” by Lori Hope, speaks to this same theme.

The positive-thinking movement is very often an ally of Christianity, but there’s a point at which the two part ways. Bottom-line, the Christian prescription for spiritual health is not positive thinking, but rather, repentance and the forgiveness of sins. As the Gospel-writer Mark sums up the essence of Jesus’ message:

“Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’” [Mark 1:14-15]

If we’re constantly trying to push everything but positive thoughts out of our minds, we’ll never be able to recognize sin in our lives, because we’re so afraid of the negative thoughts that go with it. Without a recognition of sin, there can be no confession. Without confession, there can be no forgiveness. And, without forgiveness, there can be no experience of grace.

I ended my sermon on Sunday by telling a familiar story from the classic Broadway show, The Music Man. It’s about the con man, “Professor” Harold Hill, who travels around selling band instruments to schools, promising he’ll stick around to teach the children how to play – but he never does. He always hops the first train out of town as soon as the money’s in his pocket. In the Midwestern town of River City, though, he falls in love with Marian the librarian, so he’s got to think of something. Harold’s problem is, he knows nothing about music. He’s not a professor of anything, except shady deals.

What he does is tell the children they can learn to play their new band instruments using what he calls “The Think Method.” All they have to do is think of the melody he tells them to play, recalling it over and over in their minds. When they pick up their instruments, he promises, they’ll be able to play it perfectly.

Well, the day of the first band concert comes, and Harold’s ready for his slippery scheme to fall apart. The children pick up their instruments and start to play. The sound that emerges is one of the most awful things you’ve ever heard – everything you’d expect from a teaching strategy so ill-conceived as “The Think Method.”

Wonder of wonders, a miracle occurs. The parents of River City are so pleased to see their children tooting away on the band instruments, they completely ignore the fact that there’s no discernible melody. Professor Hill’s reputation is saved, and he settles down in River City to marry his beloved Marian.

Positive thinking won’t teach us how to play the trombone, any more than it will guarantee we’ll beat cancer. The lesson of The Music Man, though, goes beyond the concrete task of producing the right musical notes at the proper tempo. It’s a lesson about grace and love and unconditional acceptance of children by their parents. Professor Hill’s brand of magical thinking was a complete dud, but the magic of love proved far stronger.

There is no greater magic in the world than this. It’s the love of God, that Christians believe is experienced uniquely in Jesus Christ. We believe that love was demonstrated for us on the cross of Calvary, and is given to us as an unconditional gift. It comes to us in good times and in bad, in sunshine and in storm.

“Thanks be to God for this indescribable gift!”
– 2 Corinthians 9:15

January 18, 2010 - Aisle or Window?

Here I am, again, in Bradenton Beach, Florida, attending The Homiletical Feast – a gathering of fellow preachers who meet together once a year to share sermon ideas and support one another in our work. It’s always good to get back together with this group – especially on the first day, as we share stories of what our lives and ministries have been like in the past year.

I’m thinking, now, about an experience I had on the airplane last night. Usually, when I fly, I reserve an aisle seat if I can. It’s always seemed more efficient: it’s easier to get up and walk to the rest room, if I have the need, and it also makes for a slightly quicker exit from the plane after landing. At one time in my life – when I was serving as a seminary admissions director – I used to fly frequently. I had it down to a familiar routine.

This trip, for whatever reason, I reserved a window seat. Maybe I just wanted to vary the routine. I haven’t sat beside an airplane window for years, so I thought I’d spend a little time reacquainting myself with that view, weather permitting.

Weather was permitting. It was dark for most of the flight, but I could look down on the glistening lights of the east coast, far down below me. It was lovely.

The thought occurred to me that flying is a truly marvelous thing, something the vast majority of airline patrons absolutely take for granted. The expansive view I was taking in so casually is a perspective no person on earth – no human being ever born – had viewed prior to the 20th Century. Maybe a very few people ventured up several hundred feet in hot-air balloons, but no one had ever ascended the heights a modern airliner achieves with such ease. I found myself thinking of those earthbound people of centuries past, whose feet were planted firmly on the ground and who gazed up at the skies with longing. Surely some of them spent their lives wondering what the earth looks like, from the perspective of the birds circling slowly overhead. Yesterday, I – along with every other person who’s ever boarded an airplane – had that opportunity.

So what? What do we do with that opportunity, typically? Not much. We spurn the window seat, in favor of the aisle. The view from the airplane window has become commonplace. For most of us, it has lost its wonder.

If we could somehow transport a curious person from centuries past – let’s say, for example, Ben Franklin – into our century, and offer him a ride on a jet airliner, what sort of seat would he prefer? You can bet your bottom dollar ol’ Ben would choose the window. No way would he pass up the opportunity to view the earth from the perspective of the heavens!

There are numerous experiences in life that can change our perspective. Cancer is one of them. There was a time, as I was going through the worst of my chemo side-effects, that I couldn’t walk around the block without stopping to sit down a few times. It wasn’t just that I felt tired and thought a little rest might feel good. I literally couldn’t do it. Now, of course, I can complete a short stroll like that without thinking twice about it, but do I ever stop and ponder how wonderful it is – how blessed I am – that I have regained my strength? Not often enough.

Of our short attention spans, our stunted capacity for sustaining wonder, the prophet Isaiah has this to say to a wayward people:

“You have forgotten the Lord, your Maker,
who stretched out the heavens
and laid the foundations of the earth.
You fear continually all day long
because of the fury of the oppressor,
who is bent on destruction.
But where is the fury of the oppressor?”
– Isaiah 51:13

Life is good, in so many ways. Life with cancer, life without cancer – there are still plenty of sights to see, lots of new experiences to be had (even some old ones that haven’t yet been drained of their wonder).

Aisle or window? You decide.

January 9, 2010 - Everything In Its Time

Today I run across an inspiring story on National Public Radio: the saga of one Seun Adebiyi, who has dreams of becoming – I am not making this up – Nigeria’s first contender in the Winter Olympics one-man sledding event called skeleton.

Seun (who pronounces his name “Shawn” when here in the United States) missed making the Nigerian Olympic swim team by a tenth of a second. So, he turned his attention to winter sports, setting his sights on the skeleton event. A student at Yale Law School, who was brought to this country as a child by his immigrant mother, Seun sounds very American. Yet, he does have Nigerian citizenship – which means that, as he trains 5 hours a day on the skeleton track outside Salt Lake City, he’s possibly the only Nigerian aspiring to represent his country in this event.

Seun’s circum- stances sound like those of the Jamaican bobsled team that was the subject of the 1993 Disney film, Cool Runnings – with one exception: he’s just been diagnosed with cancer.

And not just any cancer. Seun’s got two aggressive forms: stem-cell leukemia and lymphoblastic lymphoma.

The most promising treatment for him is an allogeneic stem-cell transplant, one requiring closely-matched cells from a living donor. (It’s the type of stem-cell transplant I’d need to have, should it ever come to that.)

Seun’s problem is that people of African descent aren’t well-represented in the donor registry – and for patients who are actually from Africa, the outlook is even bleaker. Still, that didn’t stop Seun and his mother from traveling to Nigeria recently to set up that country’s first bone-marrow registry.

Seun’s best chance lies in a cord-blood transplant, which he’s going to be having soon at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

The online audio of NPR’s story on him is well worth the 5 minutes of your time it will take to listen to it. As NPR correspondent Mike Pesca summarizes Seun’s description of his situation, “Living with cancer is like living an extremely concentrated, extremely potent version of life.”

And how. It’s an apt description of what it feels like to go through the cancer-treatment experience.

Then, Pesca relates another thing Seun said to him: “There is a time for all-out effort, and then there’s a time for surrender.” Seun’s approach is to pull out all the stops during the weeks leading up to his transplant, training for that ordeal with the same intense effort he’s brought to his Olympic bid. Yet, he knows there will come a time when he can do nothing but trust the expertise of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering doctors and the technological wizardry they have at their disposal.

Truly, there is a time for everything in life – as I reminded a family just yesterday, at the funeral of their 104-year-old matriarch. At the funeral home, I read these beloved words from the third chapter of Ecclesiastes:

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance...” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-4)

On an on the ancient poem goes, weaving its way in and out of all life’s adventures. Its words sound a very different note at the funeral of a centenarian than they do on the eve of a twentysomething’s risky stem-cell transplant. Yet, the best any of us can do, regardless of our circumstances, is to trust that, in God’s providence, there is indeed a time for everything.

I’m beginning to learn, myself, that this has much less to do with the duration of life than with its quality. A long, serene run of 104 years is a beautiful thing. But then, so is a young man’s 80-mile-an-hour dash down an icy hillside in search of Olympic gold.

Either way, I believe the Lord is standing by, to guide and to bless.

January 6, 2010 - Watching and Waiting, a Little Slower

It’s been a busy holiday season, so I haven’t had much time for keeping up the ol’ blog. Today, though, I saw Dr. Lerner, after having had a CT scan several weeks ago, so there’s a little something to report.

Earlier, I’d received news by phone from the doctor’s office that the scan result was good – no appreciable increase in size. Today, Dr. Lerner confirmed that, and said the remains of the abdominal mass had actually gotten a little smaller – although he was quick to add that this is probably a testing anomaly, the result of the scan segment being “cut through” a narrower part of the tumor.

He did say that, since things have been stable for so long, I could probably wait a little longer between scans next time. So, he’s asked me to come back and see him three months from now. If all is well, and I’m not reporting any problems, he’ll then order a scan to take place just before the next 3-month appointment. In other words, we’ll be shifting to having a scan every other three-month appointment, rather than every one.

I take this as good news, of course. My disease is “stable.” I’m all for that.

I was standing in line afterwards, waiting at the window to schedule my next appointment. Under my arm was my patient folder – or, at least, the most recent one. It was pretty thick: 3 or 4 inches.

Looking around the office, I realized all the other files I saw weren’t nearly as thick. I’m getting to be a real veteran of this stuff. Who would have thought it, four years ago, when I was just beginning my chemotherapy?

A lot has happened in that time. There’s been a lot that hasn’t happened, as well – things I feared might have.

A happy, healthy 2010 to all of you!

December 17, 2009 - I Wonder As I Wander

On of the beloved songs of the upcoming Christmas season is “I Wonder As I Wander.” The song was written by a musicologist named John Jacob Niles, based on a fragment of folk music he discovered.

According to the Wikipedia article on the carol, in 1933 Niles was traveling through the Appalachian region of North Carolina, looking for traditional tunes. He was attending a fund-raising meeting held by an evangelistic group who’d been run out of town by the police (I’m sure there must be an interesting back-story behind that!). In his unpublished autobiography, Niles tells of how he first heard the song:

“A girl had stepped out to the edge of the little platform attached to the automobile. She began to sing. Her clothes were unbelievable dirty and ragged, and she, too, was unwashed. Her ash-blond hair hung down in long skeins.... But, best of all, she was beautiful, and in her untutored way, she could sing. She smiled as she sang, smiled rather sadly, and sang only a single line of a song.”

Niles was enchanted, and asked the girl to sing the line again. He offered her a quarter to do so, and she gladly complied (this was 1933, the midst of the Great Depression: folks earned money any way they could). Seven times he asked the girl to sing it, giving her a quarter each time. Seven quarters later – a dollar seventy-five, not a bad price in the 1930s – he had enough of a sense of where he was going with his composition. What he had was, in his own words, “three lines of verse, a garbled fragment of melodic material – and a magnificent idea.”

I think you’ll agree: a dollar seventy-five (in 1933 dollars) was not a bad price to pay for a hauntingly beautiful melody that’s become a Christmas standard.

“I Wonder As I Wander” is in a minor key. More often than not, hymns are written in a major key. Those hymns are bright, joyful, triumphant. The minor-key hymns, by contrast, are quieter, more introspective, more reflective. Some are even somber.

We need them both. One of life’s great lessons, for cancer survivors or for anyone else, is that not all of life is lived in a major key. “Into each life some rain must fall,” goes the hoary old cliché. When we discover joy amidst even the rain, when we can learn to sing praise even in a minor key, we’ve got it made.

“I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die
For poor orn'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.”

December 15, 2009 - Expectancy

This time of year, we Christians find ourselves – if we can stop our frenetic holiday preparations for a moment and be still – in the season of expectant waiting known as Advent.

It’s a tough season for most folks to wrap their minds around. Anyone who pays attention to the liturgical year feels oddly suspended between the now and the not-yet. This isn’t helped by the fact that the recommended biblical texts for Advent are of two distinct kinds. On the one hand, there are apocalyptic passages that warn of the final judgment and the return of Christ to judge the earth. On the other, we’re handed kinder, gentler stories like the Annunciation: the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary, announcing Jesus’ impending birth.

It can be tough, during Advent, to figure out what, exactly, we’re meant to be waiting for. Are we waiting for Christ to come crashing in and judge this mad, mixed-up world for what it is? Or, are we imaginatively placing ourselves into the Christmas story, waiting for him to be born in Bethlehem again in our hearts and minds?

I have a new appreciation for the ambiguities of waiting, ever since entering my extended, watch-and-wait treatment mode. Of course, unlike the waiting associated with Advent, the thing I’m waiting for is not good. I’d just as soon have my lymphoma remain in couch-potato mode as long as possible. Yet, I do also live my life attuned to subtle signs that could develop.

Every three months or so, I go for another scan: a moistened finger held up to test the wind. Today’s the day: another CT scan at Ocean Medical Center.

Unlike the classic prayer of Christians, “Even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come,” I’m very happy to keep on waiting.

December 1, 2009 - The Glad Game

Many people have heard the name “Pollyanna.” Her full name is Pollyanna Whittier, and she’s the title character in a classic series of children’s novels. The first one was published in 1913 by Eleanor H. Porter.

In the grim little New England town where the orphan Pollyanna goes to live with her aunt, she teaches others to play a little game her late father taught her. She calls it “The Glad Game.” It has one simple rule: find something to be happy about in every situation, no matter how dark or desperate.

The game’s origins go back to one particular Christmas. Digging deep in the charity barrel, hoping to find a doll for her present, Pollyanna finds only a pair of crutches. A poor kid without a toy at Christmas? What could be more pathetic than that? Pollyanna’s father teaches her, then, how The Glad Game works: be happy you found the crutches, he tells her, because “we don’t need ‘em!”



The Wikipedia article on Pollyanna gives a few examples of how adept the little waif becomes at playing The Glad Game:

“When Aunt Polly puts her in a stuffy attic room without carpets or pictures, she exults at the beautiful view from the high window; when she tries to ‘punish’ her niece for being late to dinner by sentencing her to a meal of bread and milk in the kitchen with the servant, Nancy, Pollyanna thanks her rapturously because she likes bread and milk, and she likes Nancy.”

Pollyanna becomes an evangelist for The Glad Game, bringing a treacly sweetness to her little town, until further misfortune in her own life forces her to practice what she preaches:

“Eventually, however, even Pollyanna’s robust optimism is put to the test when she is struck down by a motorcar while crossing a street and loses the use of her legs. At first she doesn’t realize the seriousness of her situation, but her spirits plummet when she accidentally overhears an eminent specialist say that she’ll never walk again. After that, she lies in bed, unable to find anything to be glad about. Then the townspeople begin calling at Aunt Polly’s house, eager to let Pollyanna know how much her encouragement has improved their lives; and Pollyanna decides she can still be glad that she has legs. The novel ends with Aunt Polly marrying her former lover Dr. Chilton and Pollyanna being sent to a hospital where she learns to walk again and is able to appreciate the use of her legs far more as a result of being temporarily disabled.”

We cancer survivors hear a lot about the importance of maintaining a positive attitude. In many ways, that advice is but a warmed-over version of Pollyanna’s Glad Game. The problem is, no real person can be as relentless in playing the game as the fictional Pollyanna. Feelings of sadness and dejection sometimes present themselves, and that’s OK. They come with the territory.

If we take the “think positive” advice too seriously, we can end up denying the existence of those negative thoughts – which are only natural, after all. Sure, maintaining a positive attitude is important, but that doesn’t mean we can never give ourselves permission to feel anger, or sadness, or frustration or any of the other negative emotions that come from this kind of protracted struggle.

There’s a lot of emphasis, in some cancer-treatment circles, on mental exercises like meditation and visualization as practical ways of calming the spirit. These practices are of proven usefulness and have their place, but it’s possible to take them too far. Some of the more enthusiastic promoters of these techniques claim they stimulate the immune system, actually unleashing the body’s healing energies – as though they were a treatment modality in themselves. It’s easy to see where such exaggerated claims can lead: to the belief that, unless we devote enough time each day to pulling ourselves up by our own endorphins, we’re giving up altogether.

Dr. Jimmie C. Holland, a psychologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, touches on this in her book, The Human Side of Cancer. She tells of a patient of hers named Jane, who had been successfully treated for breast cancer, but who felt troubled by the fact that she sometimes worried about a relapse. Could her worries in fact be a self-fulfilling prophecy, Jane wondered? This caused her to worry even more. The doctor comments:

“Jane was echoing a refrain I often hear from people with cancer: the notion that feeling sad, scared, upset, or angry is unacceptable and that emotions can somehow make your tumor grow. And the sense that if the person is not in control on the emotional plane all the time, the battle against the disease will be lost. Of course, patients like Jane didn’t come up with this notion on their own. It's everywhere in our culture: in popular books and tabloids on every newsstand, on talk shows, in TV movies.

For most patients, cancer is the most difficult and frightening experience they have ever encountered. All this hype claiming that if you don’t have a positive attitude and that if you get depressed you are making your tumor grow faster invalidates people’s natural and understandable reactions to a threat to their lives. That’s what I mean by the tyranny of positive thinking.”

Sometimes we just don’t feel like playing The Glad Game. Sometimes, we shouldn’t have to.

November 28, 2009 - Passing the 500 Milestone

Yesterday, as I posted my most recent blog entry, I passed a milestone. It was my 500th blog entry.

It’s hard to believe. In the 4 years or so since I’ve been writing this blog, chronicling my experience as a cancer survivor, I’ve somehow found that much to say.

Early on, the blog was all about giving a blow-by-blow account of my medical treatments. Later, as I went into, then out of, remission, then entered the extended period of watchful waiting I’m presently in, I’ve had less to share about my medical condition. That’s a good thing, because no news is good news. I’ve naturally moved over into commenting on some other topics I now look on differently because I’m a cancer survivor – particularly the healthcare-funding debate in this country, and general survivorship issues.

I’d like to thank you, my readers, for hanging in there with me through all this. I plan to continue posting here as long as folks are finding the blog helpful to their own life journeys. Please do use the “Comments” feature to let me know what you’re thinking about my postings. I’m still getting 50-60 visitors a day, so I figure I must still be addressing some real needs.

Grace and peace and life abundant to all.

Carl

November 27, 2009 - Thanksgiving Flu

“Flu-like symp- toms.” That’s what I’ve got – as is only appro- priate, since what I’ve got does, in fact, seem to be the flu.

I was down and out all day yesterday, Thanksgiving Day. We had a houseful of friends and relatives, but I remained sequestered upstairs, in our bedroom, tracing with my shuffling feet a well-beaten path to the bathroom.

I’d thought I might don a breathing mask and venture downstairs briefly to greet our guests (the mask would have been for their protection, not mine). I didn’t feel up to even that.

“Flu-like symptoms” is how doctors often describe the side-effects of chemotherapy. I realize, now, how apropos that is. The queasiness, the weakness, the muscle aches – it’s all come back to me. It’s like I was right in the middle of chemo again (except for the hair loss, of course, and the metallic taste in the back of my mouth).

Since concluding my chemo in May of 2006, I’ve been pretty healthy. I’ve been lucky enough to avoid the flu for quite a number of years. This year, I got an H1N1 vaccination (the lymphoma qualifies me for the high-risk group), but I procrastinated on getting the seasonal flu vaccination. By the time I got serious about it, the vaccine was no longer available. Maybe what I’ve got now is the seasonal flu, or maybe it’s H1N1 despite the vaccination, but it really doesn’t matter. It’s the flu, and that’s all I need to know.

I suppose that, in describing chemo side-effects as similar to flu symptoms, the doctors are trying to put patients at ease. Most everyone’s had the flu at one time or another, and most everyone gets over it. I’d quite forgotten, though, how nasty the flu can be.

I’m on about Day 3 at the moment, so I’m sure I’ll be feeling better in another couple days. It’s been a little blast from the past, taking me back to my chemo days, and that’s just a little unnerving.

This, too, shall pass.

October 31, 2009 - A Scary Thought for Halloween

Here’s a scary thought for Halloween: We’ve all got cancer.

Read this creepy little item, from an October 26th New York Times article:

“Cancer cells and precancerous cells are so common that nearly everyone by middle age or old age is riddled with them, said Thea Tlsty, a professor of pathology at the University of California, San Francisco. That was discovered in autopsy studies of people who died of other causes, with no idea that they had cancer cells or precancerous cells. They did not have large tumors or symptoms of cancer. ‘The really interesting question,’ Dr. Tlsty said, ‘is not so much why do we get cancer as why don’t we get cancer?’”

A thought along these same lines is this one, that I read in a National Geographic article some time ago, and that’s bugged me ever since (in more ways than one). Our bodies are also riddled with microscopic animal hitchhikers: lice, dust mites and the like.

They feed off things like our discarded skin cells. They’re so tiny, we’re unaware of their presence. They cause us no trouble we’re aware of. But they’re here. Our bodies are their home.

Not only that, our digestive systems mightily depend upon bacteria, who make their home in the human gut. Millions upon millions of these microorganisms come into life, grow to maturity and die, sustained by the same foods that sustain us. Many of these bacteria actually help us, because they scarf down food substances we can’t digest, and excrete them in forms that we can. (Mmm, mmm, good!) One of the reasons doctors are so wary of over-prescribing antibiotics these days is that these nuclear weapons of the subatomic world indiscriminately blast out all kinds of bacteria, the beneficial as well as the harmful. Here’s a picture of lactobacillus acidophilus, which is one of the good guys:

Our awareness of our own bodies is pretty much limited to the macro level, the things our own senses can take in. When doctors take on a foe like cancer, they have to contend on the microscopic level. Cancer cells have to number in the millions before they even show up on most tests and scans. To form themselves into an actual tumor, something like an enlarged lymph node that can be felt or seen without special techniques or equipment, there have to be a great many more of them than that.

On Halloween, or any other time, it’s not so much the things that go bump in the night we ought to be scared of. It’s the things that silently swish by, submerged within the salty, microscopic sea in which our cells swim, that can cause lasting harm.

There’s some good news arising out of that infinitesimally tiny perspective, though. According to the same Times article, some cancer researchers are changing the way they look at the disease. Once upon a time, they viewed cancer’s progress as inexorably linear: once it appears anywhere, it can only grow larger. The only questions for the doctors, following that way of thinking, are “How fast?” “In what direction?” and “How can we stop it?”

Now, it turns out, a lot of cancers don’t grow much at all. Some even grow for a time, then reverse course and disappear into oblivion. Summarizing the views of Dr. Barnett Kramer of the National Institutes of Health, the Times article goes on to explain:

“The image was ‘an arrow that moved in one direction.’ But now, he added, it is becoming increasingly clear that cancers require more than mutations to progress. They need the cooperation of surrounding cells and even, he said, ‘the whole organism, the person,’ whose immune system or hormone levels, for example, can squelch or fuel a tumor. Cancer, Dr. Kramer said, is a dynamic process.”

There are many ways in which my cancer is like that. The indolent lymphoma I have is just hanging around for now, doing not much of anything. We’re watching it, and we’re waiting.

Hope we wait a long time.

Now, here's a little Halloween fun:

October 19, 2009 - The Gloves Are Off

Today, following a Facebook link, I come across this video of the President speaking on health care reform. The gloves are off. “No drama” Obama is stepping up at last, to identify the heart of the problem with our health-care funding system. It’s the insurance companies:



The insurance companies are richer than rich. They’re powerful. They channel huge amounts of lobbying money and campaign contributions to Capitol Hill.

There’s one thing they can’t change or influence, though. As the President says in this message, a large majority of the American people is in favor of change, and elected him in order to bring it about.

The coming weeks and months will tell whether America is still a democracy, or whether it has become a plutocracy – a system in which money talks so loudly that even our democratically-elected representatives dance to its command.

Keep at it, Mr. President. A great many of us out here are behind you all the way.

October 15, 2009 - Thanks to Those Lighting the Night

A big "thank you" to all who are participating in Light the Night Walks tonight, and on other nights this Fall, in many different places! The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society sponsors these walks, which raise money for medical research and patient support programs.

It's a great organization - as is the Lymphoma Research Foundation, which has a more specialized mission focusing on lymphoma alone.

Here's a news report in which Saturday Night Live veteran Tina Fey speaks of her support for the cause:

October 3, 2009 - Imagine a World Without Cancer

There are lots of things that divide us in this world: language, culture, ideology, nationalism, religion. One thing in which we are absolutely united – or ought to be – is in facing the threat of cancer.

Cancer knows no national boundaries, no economic class, no cultural barrier. It’s an equal-opportunity threat. Grasp that reality, and somehow all those other rifts within the human community seem a little less important.

Cancer, as this little video points out, is the common enemy: