I was nearly eight hours into my first day of your Clinical Trial. But it felt more like three or four days. Time at MD Anderson always expanded. Don't you think? It's like we're split between two realities -- Virginia and MD Anderson. In Virginia, sometimes we forgot the cancer. Here, at the hospital going through another treatment, you couldn't. Maybe it's because we were always waiting for an answer. And the stakes were always so high. I don't know. But all we had to do was look around us, here in the hospital, to know -- we weren't that special.
I was cold, like always. This time I dressed in layers and had my leather jacket. The room was dim because your head hurt a little. Even then, you offered to turn on the lights so I wouldn't be bored. You didn't have to worry. I had a zeal of zebras disguised as an iPod, a Kindle, and a NetBook.
In between hourly vitals and blood draws every two or three hours, you'd doze off or ask what time it was so you could eat. Then you'd talk about all the food you wanted to try in Houston. Every once in awhile you'd start a text rampage with your Wegmans posse or Katie or your friends from George Mason. You didn't watch TV because they didn't have the Food Channel or the History Channel. So what was the point?
It was nearly five and you were dozing off again, so I walked the Sky Bridge. Partly for a change of scenery but mostly out of guilt because I couldn't do P90X. I didn't want to get fat. For lunch alone, I ate both of our jalapeno corn muffins and a three vegetable special. I figured that was nearly 1000 calories if you counted all the Dentyne. Besides, walking and burning calories was at least one thing I could control.
I "relistened" to Bruce Lipton's Biology of Belief on my iPod. Plus I mastered the obstacle course of doctors, patients, and crazy cart drivers who honked to clear a path.
Remember the book? Remember how much we talked about beliefs, the law of attraction, the The Secret, and all the connections between your thoughts and cells. But we stopped a few weeks ago. Or maybe I did.
I thought that you'd think, that I thought the cancer coming back was your fault. But I didn't. Mostly I didn't want any of my doubts to cloud your beliefs because I was scared. The only thing that mattered was how you felt and what you believed. Not what I thought or believed.
The more I listened to the Wisdom of Cells and the more I walked, the more I wanted to ask what you thought. And come clean about what I thought. This morning, I could have mentioned it. You asked, "What are you reading? Is it good?"
I lied and said I was reading a book on measuring the value of information technology and droned on about it long enough to make you close your eyes. Really, I was bouncing between two books on my Kindle. One was The Energy of Belief – Psychology's Power Tools to Focus Intention and Release Blocking Beliefs, by a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and PHD. The other was The Human Antenna: Reading the Language of the Universe in the Songs of Our Cells. I didn't say because I was a big fat chicken.
I wanted to tell you just because we don't know how to measure or monitor the role that thoughts and beliefs play in our lives, with all the scientific data, doesn't make it any less valid. It only means, we haven't figured out how to measure it -- yet.
About the time I got comfortable with my logic, you called asking for something good to eat -- whatever that was. I brought you some pudding. I teased you about dressing up like Chewbacca at Wegmans for Halloween and getting fake fur in the dough. But we didn't talk about what I was really thinking.
I was chicken. A big fat chicken.
I was cold, like always. This time I dressed in layers and had my leather jacket. The room was dim because your head hurt a little. Even then, you offered to turn on the lights so I wouldn't be bored. You didn't have to worry. I had a zeal of zebras disguised as an iPod, a Kindle, and a NetBook.
In between hourly vitals and blood draws every two or three hours, you'd doze off or ask what time it was so you could eat. Then you'd talk about all the food you wanted to try in Houston. Every once in awhile you'd start a text rampage with your Wegmans posse or Katie or your friends from George Mason. You didn't watch TV because they didn't have the Food Channel or the History Channel. So what was the point?
It was nearly five and you were dozing off again, so I walked the Sky Bridge. Partly for a change of scenery but mostly out of guilt because I couldn't do P90X. I didn't want to get fat. For lunch alone, I ate both of our jalapeno corn muffins and a three vegetable special. I figured that was nearly 1000 calories if you counted all the Dentyne. Besides, walking and burning calories was at least one thing I could control.
I "relistened" to Bruce Lipton's Biology of Belief on my iPod. Plus I mastered the obstacle course of doctors, patients, and crazy cart drivers who honked to clear a path.
Remember the book? Remember how much we talked about beliefs, the law of attraction, the The Secret, and all the connections between your thoughts and cells. But we stopped a few weeks ago. Or maybe I did.
I thought that you'd think, that I thought the cancer coming back was your fault. But I didn't. Mostly I didn't want any of my doubts to cloud your beliefs because I was scared. The only thing that mattered was how you felt and what you believed. Not what I thought or believed.
The more I listened to the Wisdom of Cells and the more I walked, the more I wanted to ask what you thought. And come clean about what I thought. This morning, I could have mentioned it. You asked, "What are you reading? Is it good?"
I lied and said I was reading a book on measuring the value of information technology and droned on about it long enough to make you close your eyes. Really, I was bouncing between two books on my Kindle. One was The Energy of Belief – Psychology's Power Tools to Focus Intention and Release Blocking Beliefs, by a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and PHD. The other was The Human Antenna: Reading the Language of the Universe in the Songs of Our Cells. I didn't say because I was a big fat chicken.
I wanted to tell you just because we don't know how to measure or monitor the role that thoughts and beliefs play in our lives, with all the scientific data, doesn't make it any less valid. It only means, we haven't figured out how to measure it -- yet.
About the time I got comfortable with my logic, you called asking for something good to eat -- whatever that was. I brought you some pudding. I teased you about dressing up like Chewbacca at Wegmans for Halloween and getting fake fur in the dough. But we didn't talk about what I was really thinking.
I was chicken. A big fat chicken.
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