It was a full week of back-to-school meetings, setting up my classroom, and planning for kids on Monday. Connecting with my colleagues for the first time in months brought a flood of gratitude for the people and the place where I work. I’m ready to be back, and I’m ready for a fall routine. I return to the grind of the school year where much of my attention and thought is dedicated to my students.

The grind of a school year is real. It is a relentless early morning—a hustle to prepare and then a flood of middle school energy all day. Pre-teens come at you fast, and you gotta be ready for the barrage. The questions! The lingo! The drama! Hopefully…the learning!

Meet the Teacher Night was Thursday. My favorite part, of course, was last year’s students stopping by my room to greet me. A small group of really great kids stopped in to chat, full of smiles and news. Grinning, they told me that my next-door teacher had just welcomed the four of them by pointing through each of them and saying “trouble, trouble, trouble, issue.” Ha, that’s perfectly said.

A group of us—staff, teachers, parents, students, community members—met at the end of the day on Tuesday outside the school district office to pray together for the school year. Ray came too. About 40 people maybe? We made a big circle and took turns praying. I was overwhelmed by the power of it, and when I prayed my prayer aloud, I started crying as I thought of the kids we work with and the complexities of their lives. As I prayed, Ray put his hand on my back in support. When he did this, I remembered that I had cried at this prayer time last year too, but for a different reason, as a small group had gathered around me to pray for Ray and his recent news of cancer.

A year later. It’s been a year since then.

A year of scary moments, not knowing what we faced ahead and imagining the worst.

A year of research and new medical terminology, and Chat-GPT to explain test results.

A year to schedule weekly treatments, labs, and doctor appointments, and to figure out the pharmacy and prescriptions, something we’d never had to do until now.

A year of connection with new and old friends, and the family love on both sides which has stayed so true-blue and constant.

A year of absolute appreciation—grateful for medical science and medical workers, the overwhelming generosity of friends, and a faithful God who is present.

A year of inspiration from a courageous husband who has always dug deep and battled with steady, gritty determination, but even more so now.

You know—something funny about Ray. If you know him, you know he’s pretty chill. But he is also dang competitive. I realized this when we were dating at Whitworth, back in the day. One night, early in our relationship, I went to watch his intramural basketball game. Good girlfriend stuff.

During the game, he and another guy were going at it. For a couple quarters, it grew chippy and heated. Sometime about the 3rd quarter, Ray had enough. He grabbed the ball, chested up on the other guy, and said something like, “Oh yeah? You wanna go?” The other guy chested right back up. The other guy was definitely bigger.

I thought a fist fight was about to break out, and I was floored. I thought, “Who is this guy I’m dating?” They eventually cooled off and all was well, but I saw a new side to him. And his team won the game.

Little did I know at the time, Ray would take this same competitive drive into coaching. Over the 18 years he coached high school basketball, I’d see this same determined guy emerge. His high school basketball coaching record is 404-95. His teams won 80% of their games—that’s a crazy percentage, among the highest for high school coaches in the state of Washington. For this reason, he was inducted into the Washington State Interscholastic Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame in 2022. I was present for every one of the 6 State Championships, and for the other 7 trophies too. He worked with some pretty amazing kids and families during this time. And they also got to witness the other side of the seemingly chill guy—the one who dug deep, hitched up his pants, and battled in the heated moments of a game.

I didn’t know this same trait would be needed now. But it is.

After a stem cell transplant, it is standard to allow the patient time to recover. At the 100 day post-transplant, it is the time to re-stage the cancer with a biopsy and genetic testing.

Ray had a first transplant in March, but there were complications and a week in ICU, so the first transplant was deemed a failure on Day 37. He received a second transplant at the beginning of May. It is from this date that we count our 100 days.

Ray had his 100-day biopsy two weeks ago. Last week at the follow-up appointment, our doctor’s very first words as she opened the door were, “Your biopsy results look very good! There are no myeloma cells showing at all!”

Officially, Ray is “MRD negative.” In blood cancer terms, this means that out of 1 million cells that they examined, no cancer was found anywhere in Ray’s blood. This is the goal after transplant, but not everyone gets it. We are so relieved.

As my Dad texted, “The seemingly eternal ordeal was worth it.”

YES. Thank you, Lord.

We are still waiting for a few of the important genetic tests to return. These tests dictate what treatment will look like next. Ray will definitely go on maintenance treatment for several years, but the genetic results decide how aggressive we must be in this next phase.

Ray’s back to work full-time too. He’s leading the School of Education at Bushnell University, kicking off another school-year with college students, with a little assistant basketball coaching for the women’s team on the side.

He could have had an automatic year of disability following a stem-cell transplant. He considered it, but eventually rejected it for now. This fits. Instead, he’s up for a fight. Going back to work is this chill guy’s way of getting chippy. He is digging deep. He is grabbing the ball and chesting up to cancer and asking, “Oh yeah? You wanna go?”

In a few minutes, I’ll show this to him to help me edit and for his approval. I can promise I already know what he’ll say. It will be something like, “Oh Shawna, that’s too much.” I know, because he’d never say these things about himself.

So I’ll say it.

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Hey all, much love to you. Thank you for clicking and reading. It’s meant a lot to us through this process. I told our friends, Wayne and Holly, a couple nights ago at dinner that I’ve found writing to be cathartic. We had a good laugh about how awful sounding that word is. Like, is cathartic a good thing? It sounds like torture or something. Words are funny. In the moment we laughed about it, but maybe you had to be there. Anyway, as I start the school year, I plan to write something every couple weeks. I’ll keep ya posted.

Oh lovely North Spokane, I haven’t been able to look away. My home of 29 years—a land of pine needles and timber, and a river valley where the basalt of the Columbia Plateau meets the foothills of the Rocky Mountains—has been burning for days.

On Saturday, the fires came fast. Three separate fires started, all on the Northside, but some miles apart. It happened suddenly, and then 60,000 people had to flee in an instant. The order given: GO NOW!

Imagine 60,000 people in a suburban landscape, from established neighborhoods of homes and culdesacs, all seeking safety at once. In the Indian Trail neighborhood, where the Old Trails Fire raged quickly and then moved up the Five Mile plateau, there is really only one major road out. It became a bottleneck.

My friend Glendie told me of a family who had fire all around them, a wall of fire in the field across the street from their home. Their only option was to pull into the Safeway parking lot and pray that the fire would not reach them there. Pray, they did. And then they prayed with the others who had also gathered there.

There are 60,000 stories like this.

It’s Thursday, and and it has been a very long week for my friends in Spokane. They are so tired. Most have not been able to return home—their homes are still under a level 3 evacuation because the fires are not yet contained, and also the embers of burning chemicals still present significant danger. Many do not have a home to return to. An estimated 1,000 structures have burned. Some homes remain under imminent threat of the hungry flames. Several thousand heroic firefighters continue to do all they can to fight.

Every one of my friends can name a family whose home has burned completely. Most of them can name many more. I can too, and my heart hurts. Dear, dear people. I am so sorry.

On Saturday, I was at a beautiful wedding in the Willamette Valley, near where I live now. I received a text from my friend Cathy, in Texas, “Are friends in Spokane safe from the fires? It’s crazy up there.”

I had been distracted by the wedding, but I had seen a little bit before we left the house. There was a social media post of an emergency evacuation from Spike and Dig, an annual outdoor rec volleyball tourney, an event our boys had participated in plenty of times. The bones of pop-up tent canopies and volleyball nets were abandoned, and a wall of black smoke rose behind them. But now, at the wedding reception, I opened my phone to see much more.

And then Kyla, a bridesmaid, got an alarming call from her dad. Their family farm was in danger in different north Spokane fire, this one the Fairview Fire on Peone Prairie. They were under a Level 3 Go Now evacuation. It was a weird mash-up of our two worlds. Kyla’s family are friends from our world in Spokane. In Arizona, Kyla happened to become college best friends with the daughter of our new Oregon family friends. Now, she listened, tears in her eyes, as her dad told her he would not leave, but he would stay there to help save crops and homes. Their home was saved.

The third fire, the Autumn Lane Fire, jumped the Spokane River at Suncrest and is currently attempting to push west into a more populated area. Many people in this area continue to be under the highest evacuation level, including our alma mater, Whitworth University. The fire has burned through the precious Little Spokane River area and the Indian Painted Rocks, near The Spokane House trading fort where my French-Canadian fur-trapping great-great-great-great grandfather began a life-long partnership with my Native American great-great-great-great grandmother.

For purposes of fire command, these three separate fires have now been combined as the Spokane Complex fire. A man is being held under a million dollar bond as the suspect for starting at least one of the fires. Three independent witnesses place him at the scene where the Old Trails fire started. If evidence proves his guilt, it is truly evil. So sick and so sad.

Because of Spokane’s population, it has received the most media attention. But there are many other fires burning outside the Spokane area. One notable one is the Kaiser Canyon Fire, west of Spokane. This one, much of it on the Colville Indian Reservation, has burned 137,000 acres. The town of Nespelem, near where my father-in-law Bob grew up, has gone through its own shock and loss. Another, in North Central Oregon, a combination of fires called the Rowe Creek Complex has burned a heartbreaking 345,000 acres through four counties. There’s another one, the Grasshopper Fire, currently burning in the beautiful forests and ski hills around Mt. Hood. There are plenty more, and where they each are, firefighters and volunteers work long hours to help. Their families are at home, praying. I just read that in the Spokane fires alone, there are support teams from 20 different states.

I woke up early this morning and opened my prayer app, Lectio 365 and my Bible. This app was such a help to me in the dark hospital days this Spring, and then when we finally came home. But honestly, I haven’t opened it in a couple weeks. This morning, I was reminded why I must. When overwhelmed, where can one turn? My tendency is to research for news and information on my own strength, but after days, this becomes exhausting and redundant.

The simple act of stopping, becoming silent, putting my hands out, and listening for God’s voice in scripture—it puts all the worries back in their place. The fresh perspective and truth settles my worried heart. Why must I relearn this all over again? I am so human.

This morning’s Psalm 24 reassured me, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to Him.” The Psalmist goes on to remind us that God is the Lord of Heaven’s armies; he is the King of Glory, strong and mighty, invincible in battle. It also says that when we seek and worship Him, that gates swing open and the King of Glory enters. It doesn’t promise that all will be right in the world, but it does promise His presence in the midst of it.

All I can say is that I know this to be true. In the midst of absolute awful despair, He shows up when we call on Him.

Spokane friends, my heart is yours this week. I am praying for you a lot. I hope that you can find a moment, sit still in your worries and exhaustion, and ask God to meet you there.

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Ray is feeling well! He’s been pushing himself to be very active, and his immune system is looking healthy. He’s back to work full-time in August. Please pray that the daily grind does not over-fatigue him. ♥️ I’ll have an update in mid-August, as we have an upcoming biopsy and “re-staging” process to evaluate how successful the second stem cell boost was in treating the myeloma cells in his blood. In the meantime, he encouraged me to take a trip to see my family in Colorado while he enjoyed a stay-cation with his best friend, Troy.

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“The world sheds, in the energetic way of an open and communal place, its many greetings, as a world should. What quarrel can there be with that? But that the self can interrupt the self—and does—is a darker and more curious matter.”

Mary Oliver, Upstream

Sunday Morning

South Fork, Colorado

Sharleen is inside, tossing breakfast dishes around the kitchen sink, intermittently turning on and off the faucet.

Mom is outside, dragging the hose around the sun-drenched deck, watering Shar’s mountain sage and yarrow and lavender, and even the green weeds that grow at this altitude, allowed by Shar to flourish this dry year. This is easy work for Mom. My favorite thing about her is that she releases all things in life to flourish. At her very core, she believes all things should be free to be, every man and every beast.

Lindsay is sitting at a desk, faithfully laboring over a bit of work data before we go to the mountains later. She solves problems for a living, and she is very wise. I took notes on my phone of the smart things she said on our road trip here, as we solved all the problems of life, of course. She’ll probably laugh at this description, but it’s true. Maybe the best thing she quoted was, “You cannot hold both awe and anxiety together.”

Hummingbirds, ten or more of them, flit past me at such high speed, chittering at once, fighting for territory at the five different sugar feeders that Shar and Curt maintain, along with multiple more bird seed feeders strewn on the scraggly mountain shrubs throughout their lot which sits high on the rocks overlooking their little Colorado town and the Rio Grande River.

I am sitting. The mid-morning sun rises, warming me as I read and write on this fancy wicker white Sunbrella couch. Do I feel guilty and lazy? I do a little. But also no. I need a minute. And they have been so sweet to reassure me, “No, you rest.”

Ok, I will, ha. This is nice.

My mitochondria, as my health coach sister Sharleen would say, are happy.

Later, towards the end of the time here, they all comment on how I sometimes checked out of the conversation and disappeared mentally for a bit at times. I realize they’re right. (They talk a lot.) I am half-extrovert and half-introvert, and also I’m pretty worn out. There’s no guilt handed to me from them, rather it’s simply an honest observation from my sisters and my mom. It’s as if they kindly acknowledge that I needed this get-away. Again, they are right.

Shar is treating us to a girl’s weekend at her house in Colorado. She’s the healthiest person I know, and this is basically a high-end wellness weekend, all planned by her, at very low (free!) cost to us. (She’s available for hire, and I highly recommend her. On her website, she’s sitting on the same wicker white deck couch, lol. Her website link: www.rnextdoor.com)

Her place is a retreat itself—a western home dream—a limestone fireplace and a log beam staircase, high ceilings and natural light, wood floors and perfect-for-the-area rugs, and bookshelves filled with their interests and travels. Curt is a retired Air Force fighter pilot, so my room, the guest room, holds impressive mementos of his service and photos in his F15 getup.

But the heart of it all is their kitchen, which is not large, but quite appointed. It holds all sorts of kitchen gadgets and health food packaging. The two of them create exceptional food—goat milk lattes, herbal iced tea with soda water, hearty soups and salads, roasted chicken and veggies, breakfast eggs and elk sausage with specially ordered sourdough toast. I’m not exaggerating! And they think this is normal. They are probably reading this and wondering what the big deal is. And then they’ll pull out their stash of dark chocolate for dessert.

Yesterday we drove from here to Creede and Lake City. The total mileage is pretty short, not significant, but still, somehow we made it into a 12-hour road trip. In the sincere and wondering words of Curt, “I’ve never known such a short trip to take so long!”

We definitely took it slow, pulling off the road for rugged views and waterfall walks, shopping and pizza in the historical mining town of Creede, and perusing used book sale books on the old wooden porch of the remote Lake City Library. Then sitting on that same porch at a worn picnic table with our chosen books and sharing random literary bits and stories.

We also explored Lake San Cristobol, a high altitude lake surrounded by rock-ribbed mountains on all sides. We walked its swinging metal bridge and then put our feet in the water at the boat ramp. Later we sat on a nearby cliff at another picnic table, overlooking the north end marsh and scanning for wild animals at early golden hour. I didn’t realize until now that this was an unconscious homage to Dad, who taught us all how to do this from a young age. It came naturally as the sun set to highlight mountain silhouettes and reveal forest fire smoke in the western sky.

The drive home during this golden hour also brings out all of the animals for our own personal Colorado wildlife show. We stop to speak with a peregrine falcon perched on a camping sign, just off our gravel road. He stares us down and turns his head a bit to show off as we throw admiring comments out to him.

A little further down the road, one of us spots a young mule deer with a healthy rack of antlers, again just off the road. And as we pass, we spot another and then another and more. How special to see them all hanging out together!

So we four girls turn the car around to drive by again to check out these boys. We count at least 12 male deer curiously watching our white Subaru creep by, their majestic velvet antlers impressively jutting up and out. This is essentially a boy band hanging out in the man cave together, and it is special.

You don’t usually see this many bucks together in the wild like this. So I looked it up. It’s called a “bachelor group.” Young male deer gather in the summer before the mating season later in the fall. Scientists suggest that deer do this to conserve energy, to eat and rest in safety, and to support each other as their antlers grow and they recover from the previous winter. I realize this is what my sisters and mom are doing for me now. I wonder if the female deer are also gathered together somewhere, supporting, growing, and recovering. We are like them.

And then, a few miles down the road, we spot a mama moose and her twin babies. We turn around again and pull back to admire. Mama is large and imposing, and the two babes twitch their ears to our excited voices but stay close at her side as they forage.

It’s a thrill of ecological diversity among the mountain peaks, long ridge lines, and high altitude green meadows we travel. The valleys and streams of the Continental Divide and the meandering Rio Grande, near its headwaters in Southeastern Colorado, have gifted us today.

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Monday morning.

Yesterday we took our slow and easy Sunday morning at home. And then about noon, we loaded up for our planned hike in the San Juan Mountains. Shar packed an incredible lunch of three different salads, like a fancy deli, so we stopped along Park Creek, sat on rocks, fought off the flies, watched trout hop in the stream, and enjoyed our picnic.

She knew exactly where she was taking us, up Forest Service Road 380, far into the wilderness. She was guided by her OnX navigational app, but also fully competent without it, pointing out peak after peak and telling us about a time she and Curt had hiked or backpacked or rode up a draw around that mountain. She knows and loves this place, and we pick up on it.

About the time we pull up to the trailhead, Colorado summer afternoon clouds roll in. We decide to sit in the Subaru for a while, waiting for a dark cloud of rain and thunder to pass and wondering if we’d missed our chance. Luckily, it did pass. The rain moved on and the thunder clearly faded, leaving the skinny trail just a tad bit wet at ankle level on this mid-summer day.

We put on our gear, divvied out the hiking poles, tightened our laces, and up the mountain we went. The trailhead started us out somewhere above 11,000 feet in elevation. Our summit spot was just above 12,000.

Later, Sharleen cheered for me, “You did a 12,000-er, Shawna!”

Haha, yes. But we started pretty dang high, not at zero. Does it count? These Colorado people cheat.

The hike itself was special. Shar and Lindsay paced the climb slow, out of sweet thought for me and Mom. We stopped so often to admire the myriad wildflower blooms. I’m not overstating when I suggest that there must have been at least 30 different distinct species—wild, random flowers all mixed and painted together. Amazing they were, but also the perfect excuse to stop and catch my breath as we climbed at that elevation. The wildflower breaks were life-savers.

And then, the wildflowers thinned. Before I realized, we found ourselves above the tree line, and now paused just as often to gape at the panoramic view. My Lord, these mountains!

Shar and Lindsay could have lapped me three times on this mountain. My mom probably could’ve too. Shar called this a walk; most normal people would title it a hike. Either way, they were all the sweetest guides.

At the top, near where the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail passes through, we sat on the rocky ground to enjoy this place in the world. Shar again magically pulled out food—apples, nuts, extra water. And she also pulled out her hunting binoculars, peered across the the vast canyon and exclaimed, “ELK!” The animals were so far away that one couldn’t see with naked eye, so we passed around the binoculars and attempted to see what she saw.

After we finished the hike, Shar and Lindsay navigated us down another dirt road and around another mountain to check out Summitville, an old mining area, now abandoned and historical, crumbling vestiges of a once-thriving wooden shack town of 1500 souls. The sign we read told us that it had 14 separate saloons in its heyday. It’s funny that that’s the part of it I remember best.

The highlight of this little side trip, though, was the sheep herd. We rounded a corner of the dirt road and happened upon a lush green valley filled with white sheep. The sheep had happened to be called in for dinner just as we rounded the turn, so we found ourselves surrounded on both sides of the car by 1000 hungry sheep heading in our same direction up the road. It was a sheep highway. We rolled the windows down and exclaimed and giggled as we watched them loudly attempt a single-file line to the place where the cowboy and dogs led them. Such a treat—mountain magic that can scarcely be described.

We were home by dark to an amazing bowl of tortellini sausage vegetable soup which Shar had made earlier. Probably while I was sitting on her white Sunbrella deck couch. She deserves a medal.

I haven’t even talked about the rest of the week: seeing my parents’ new place north of Denver and sitting with them in easy chairs on their back patio; Thai dinner at Lindsay and Brian’s house, near my parents’s new place, where my nephew Cai played the piano and read aloud for us; an open-air jeep trip for mom and me up into Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park (my old Mom, as she climbed into her jeep at 5:30 am: “Let ‘er rip. Never too old!”); Starbucks with Dad and his iconic refillable 1997 Washington State Football cup ($3.25 to refill a Venti drip, which lasts him a couple days!); and the road trip across Colorado with Lindsay and Mom to reach Shar’s house.

________

I could end this here, but I’m making a decision to be vulnerable and honest and to say a little bit more. Here’s the thing: so far this has been all happy sounding, but I don’t want you to think it's all perfect.

I came home from Colorado, and I needed to process a bit. I was surprised by some big feelings.

Life is full of blessings, but sometimes the hard stuff can overshadow our awareness. In the midst of a lot of blessings, there are hard things too. For Ray and I—career changes, moving to a new place during Covid and getting our bearings, parenting decisions and heartbreak, a cancer diagnosis.

We moved to Oregon in the Fall of 2020, when all seemed to be going to hell with smoky forest fires, protests in the streets, and schoolchildren who had to stay home. At that time, my sisters both lived in the state, and this was a factor in us making the move. But within the year, both had moved to Colorado. Man, I’ve been mad about that.

To get to the heart of it, when I think about how my sisters moved away from Oregon, just as we were settling there, I feel abandonment. That’s a pretty big word, and this isn’t fair to them, of course. They both made necessary moves, and it was good. Life must move on. My mama raised me to believe in human flourishing and freedom.

But I felt left behind when I needed them to stay.

Togetherness is hardwired. I wanted togetherness. Especially during Covid.

A person who is dealing with feelings of abandonment can sabotage those same relationships by pulling back and putting up a wall, which only serves to reinforce the feeling of abandonment. It is self-defeating; the fear of abandonment can cause you to ironically abandon others first. This in turn, leads to a messed-up confirmation bias. I’ve done that, and I’m sorry.

Here’s what I’ve realized about myself: I want togetherness, but I’m not always good at togetherness. The last few years, I pulled back instead of engaging.

Telling only the sweet togetherness part of the Colorado story causes me worry that someone will look at it and shame themselves, thinking, “I don’t have that kind of relationship with my family. I’ve been left behind, how unfair.” Please don’t do that. There’s always more to the story behind the scenes.

Togetherness takes intention.

The Covid years were tough on a lot of us. Your story is different than mine, but I know you’ve got one. I suspect collectively we have a crisis of heartbreak after the year 2020. It broke relationships. It divorced community and institutions. It divided sides. It bullied both healthy and unhealthy boundaries. It messed with our kids. It caused death and isolation. We have all had some difficult years.

Back together is a wonderful place to be, isn’t it? And beauty blossoms from the ashes of our stuff. Processing it causes me to consider who I used to be, who I am now, and who I hope to be.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

It’s been so nice to be home. Ray is getting stronger every day, staying active with projects around the house and such. Our last several weeks of lab reports have been encouraging with all of the important numbers—blood counts and electrolytes—reaching a healthy green spot and staying there. Red blood is still the last one to linger low, which causes some anemia. We’re still praying for that one to fully return.

On other fronts, we’re watching a few things. He has had ongoing elbow/arm pain since his humerus surgery last summer. Sometimes it is what he calls “tight” and other times it’s like a 4 on the pain scale. It bothers him, but mostly he’s just lived with it. Whenever he sees the doctor and they ask if he has pain anywhere, he usually mentions it. So when he did this on our first visit back to the Eugene office, they ordered an x-ray.

It’s a walk-in imaging clinic near Bushnell and the U of O. You can go whenever it is convenient. He put it off for about a week and then finally went in. I went with him and it was an efficient quick in-out, in a busy office amidst a sea of humanity.

Results were returned to the medical team at the end of last week. Unbeknownst to us, there was a flurry of conversation between our three doctors—our hotshot surgeon, our hotshot stem cell specialist, and our young, newly established Eugene oncologist (who is definitely on her way to becoming a hotshot).

Apparently the three of them consulted over Ray’s x-ray results because the radiologist reported a little spot on Ray’s arm. A spot is basically a slightly darker shadow which could be an area of tumor concern. This sucky blood cancer, multiple myeloma, is classically known to eat away at bone. The cancer cells produce chemicals which destroy bone and prevent healthy cells to build new bone. When this happens, lytic lesions (fragile holes in the bone) appear on x-ray results. The standard protocol is to monitor this type of thing closely—to watch and see and then decide.

Ray’s same humerus bone snapped in half last year, originally leading us to the discovery of a tumor and then the multiple myeloma diagnosis. His hotshot surgeon removed the tumor, repaired the bone, filled the hole with a cement-like substance, and inserted a long metal plate with 13 screws. It has healed nicely. But now, just above the area of repair, there appears to be a new tiny spot of concern. Ray also has a few spots of concern in his spine that we are keeping an eye on.

On this latest arm report, all was reported stable except for this spot. The exact wording on the report: “subtle lucencies in the proximal diaphysis of the left humerus may be due to multiple myeloma foci…these are more conspicuous compared to prior examination, with a representative structure measuring 8mm.”

We were blissfully unaware of this doctor flurry because we were happily traveling and spending time with family in Grand Coulee, Spokane, and Seattle. A month ago, we were unsure if Ray would be able to make the trip, but he’s recovered so well this month. So it was pure joy to watch him flourish and relish the time with his parents and sister, Vicki, who flew from Missouri with her kids Olivia, Rachel, and Ben.

Throughout our time in the hospital, Vicki, and Ray’s mom, Margrett, communicated with us through a constant text thread with updates and prayers. Vicki was faithful to pray with us each evening, either through a phone call or a thoughtfully detailed text which I would pray with Ray before I left for the night. Their love was a lifeline!

Now, on this trip to Coulee, the sweetest part was just sitting on the patio, chatting, sometimes shallow and sometimes deep, the act of simply being together.

We also got to enjoy Hoopfest, driving to Spokane to watch our oldest son Ryan and his studly & beautiful wife, Kailey, play some 3-on-3 street basketball. They met at a similar tournament in Boise several years ago, but they both grew up near Spokane, so they make it a goal to return to Hoopfest every summer. They both play on two teams, running across the downtown area from court to court. Kailey plays on a team with her sisters and Ryan plays on a team with his buddies. And then they both play together on a co-ed team. It’s impressive, and it’s so fun to watch.

Just as a side-note for those not from Spokane, Hoopfest is the world’s largest 3-on-3 basketball tourney in the world, a spectacle. Every summer on the last weekend in June, the entire downtown area, streets encompassing 40 BLOCKS, are shut down. Magically, brilliantly the streets are transformed overnight into 400 basketball courts—each with a hoop, yellow tape for court markings, a scorer’s table, the whole bit. About 18,000 random men, women, and children show up to play on these courts. The event draws 225,000 fans into the economy of Spokane for one wild weekend. The streets become intense, and our family has Hoopfest lore, for sure. Ray and I were dating in 1994 when I first watched him play in Hoopfest. Then we watched our boys play year after year. It’s crazy to say, but our Hoopfest time spans 32 years.

Anyway, it was extra special to make it to Spokane for a quick afternoon to watch Ryan and Kailey play this year. And to see so many people who are dear to us in the short time we were there.

From Hoopfest, we headed to Seattle to see our youngest son, Josiah. Literally, while we were in the car, racing past Ellensburg (Hi Auntie Merideth and Uncle Ken!), about to head over Snoqualmie Pass and probably lose phone service, Ray received a phone message from Doctor Gile.

It felt ominous, “Hi Ray, I’m calling to talk over your x-ray results. Give me a call when you are available.”

Maybe that sounds more friendly than ominous, but both Ray and I independently thought, “They don’t call unless there is concern.” We’ve learned that over this year, I think.

Ray called back and left a message when we were over the mountains. And then, we were in Seattle, hugging Josiah and our favorite extra kid, Miciah. (Yes, Bible names. These two grew up together and played together on a basketball team with fellow Christian school guys named Abram, Isaac, Benjamin, Chapel, etc…….but I digress.)

This summer, Seattle is wild with international World Cup futbol craziness, and Josiah is having the time of his life, working constantly. He works for the Seattle Mariners, and he also scored a ridiculous opportunity to work for the FIFA World Cup corporation as a fan operations coordinator, which puts him inside the stadium for every World Cup game. Due to his gift of networking, he also has little side jobs with the Seahawks street team, the Sounders mascot team, and the West Seattle DubSea Fish Sticks in-game entertainment (my favorite, look them up). It is such a fortuitous mash-up of Seattle sports for him. The valuable international-ness of the experience, meeting vibrant humans from cultures across this giant world, and recognizing they are the same as him, is most fantastic. He has named it his “side quest summer,” and it has been a pretty fun side quest for Ray and I to enjoy vicariously too.

Anyway (again), Josiah and Miciah took us to the stadium area and Pioneer Square for a tour before heading to that evening’s Mariner game. Lumen Field and T-Mobile park sit right next to each other, looming over Occidental Street with its long stretch of food stands, rehabbed warehouses, beer halls, and pubs. For the summer of soccer games, Lumen Field, has transformed into a more anonymous “Seattle Stadium,” with all signs of Seahawk football covered up for the international TV coverage.

We were right at the World Cup entrance to Seattle Stadium when Ray got the call-back.

“Oh shoot” is what I think I said, as I had already forgotten, distracted by so much excitement. Ray walked over to a bench and sat to talk with Dr. Gile. With concern, I watched his body language, Josiah and Miciah along with me. But it seemed alright, and when he got off the phone, Ray filled us in, “It’s ok. She wanted to catch me before I saw the report.” He explained that there was something that all three doctors had to talk about, but they agreed they’ll just watch it for now.”

And that was good enough for us. We put it in the back of our head and enjoyed every rest of the time with Josiah and Miciah.

But later, when I got a few quiet moments, I looked at the report. I saw and understood what caused the concern. It’s a reminder that this stinkin’ disease is such a creepy lurker. It’s always just hanging out, waiting to dump more on you. You can’t shake it, through you try. It’s not loud or upfront, but it kind of sits in the corner, and it stares.

Maybe it kind of explains the quiet sense of unease I had while on this trip. The trip was awesome. Ray did great. We were active, through slow. And we put in a lot of steps. It was the most activity since transplant.

But every once in a while, I would think a dark thought like, “Is this the last time we drive this highway together?” or “Next time, will we need a wheelchair to navigate the steps of this stadium?” or “Will we be able to see Hoopfest again next year?”

You think these thoughts; they flash. And then you readjust and return to the privilege you hold in the moment. You stubbornly look fear in the eye and deny it. You choose to be thankful for now. Your attitude and mindset shift back toward gratitude, come what may.

It’s something I suppose everyone who deals with an unknown future, medical or otherwise, can identify with.

We came home on Tuesday, and Ray went back to work on Wednesday, tired but a little happy to return to some semblance of normal. He’ll work only Wednesdays through July, and then be back in person in August and beyond, God-willing. This is what we’ve decided for now, but like everything, we will watch and see.

By the way, Happy Independence Day! Ray is across the room laughing at reels and sending them to me. The current one has AC/DC’s Thunderstruck playing in the background while a wild and crazy Kevin James voice bellows, “I have just three things to say: God bless our troops, God bless America, and gentlemen, START YOUR ENGINES!”

Amen.

Home, Week 1! (Last week)

I am at home, lounging in my rocking patio chair, basking in the 2 pm sunshine which warms my skin. It’s unusually windy, which makes for a lovely bit of sound, rustling through the neighbor’s cottonwood trees. The wind lifts my hair and blows pleasantly across my upturned face. The beeping noise of a backing-up van inside our cul-de-sac doesn’t even bother me.

Ray is asleep upstairs, an afternoon nap which he surprisingly has not needed the past few days. His exhaustion comes and goes in hesitant waves. A burst of energy here or a bout of fatigue there, unpredictable, but routine.

We had an awesome doctor appointment this week. Can you believe I just said that?! It was our first appointment back in the Eugene office. First, a 7:30 am lab draw, and then an 8:15 am meeting with Dr. Gile, who has been on this journey with us since last fall. We hadn’t seen her since March, however, because of the three-month stem cell transplant marathon at OHSU in Portland.

She walked into the room, sat down on her chair, and just looked at us for a moment. I hadn’t imagined that I would feel emotional today, and wasn’t feeling emotional all the way up to that point.

But in that moment she looked into our eyes with such compassion, slightly nodded her head, and made a simple statement, “You’ve had quite a time. I’m so sorry.”

My heart quickened and quick tears began. Such compassion will do that to you.

Then she said, “Well, I’ve never quite heard of it going this way. This was a rare event.”

We nodded with a rough laughs, “Yeah, that’s what they told us in Portland too.”

After the initial conversation, we took time to look over that morning’s lab results and discuss the next steps of treatment and care. Here’s the awesome part: his labs looked good! So much is in the green/healthy range! You don’t need to know the actual numbers, but I’ll give you a few anyway, especially since some of you have been praying specifically for this.

His neutrophils are at 4900! The healthy range is somewhere between 1500 - 8000. There was a long time in the hospital when they were stuck at zero, nil, not detectable. So it is the sweetest relief to witness his immune system cell fighters return to their homes in the bone marrow and begin to multiply.

His platelets were up to 85. The healthy range is somewhere between 150 - 400. They had been at 50 when we left Portland a week ago, and below 10 for much of the time in the hospital. Our doctors had to wrestle with insurance a little in order for Ray to receive n-plate, a weekly platelet growth shot. Thankfully, it appears to be paying off.

His white blood count was in the healthy range for the first time since early April, but his red blood and hemoglobin were still low. This is causing Ray some fatigue and dizziness, and also throws his skin color pale. But they tell us that the red blood and hemoglobin are last to rebound after stem cell transplant. This is typical. They will continue to watch and monitor this, along with all the other things like vitals and electrolytes.

Thank you for your healing work in Ray’s body, Lord! Keep working!

During this time of healing and allowing his immune system and bone marrow to reboot, the goal is to keep Ray’s body stable and balanced. After a stem cell transplant, Day 100 is the critical date when doctors re-stage the cancer condition. For Ray, this will happen in August, as it is based off of the date that he received his second transplant (after the first one failed). It is an important milestone as he will have alllll the testing again to assess the amount of residual myeloma cells which remain in his blood and bone marrow. The goal is MRD-Negative. This would mean that there is no minimal residual disease showing. That would mean that the stinking beast of multiple myeloma has gone to sleep, and you pray that it goes to sleep for a long time. At that point, the patient takes light maintenance drugs and returns to regular life.

Home, Week 2 (Today)

Today actually marks two weeks at home already. After ten weeks in Portland, we were given the green light to get out of there. That’s six weeks longer than we planned to stay.

So today, we celebrate exactly three months of our life which was unexpected, awful, and also so special that I’m not sure I’ll ever be the same.

It’s actually weird after a time like that to come home to your same little life. It’s taken a couple weeks for us to mentally adjust. We’re not the same. But, conversely, life as we left it has not really changed.

That said, returning to the same little life has been restful. My quick journal notes from one day last week read, “Home. Peaceful. Quiet time. Birds and squirrels. Walk with Ray at Cox Butte. Garage sale. Flower pots and hose off patio. Bookshelf organizing. Sweet package from Ryan and Kailey. (♥️ aw, they’ve been so sweet with their check-ins) Ray’s energy good. Tired at the end of the day.”

We had another encouraging doctor appointment in Eugene yesterday. This week, all weekly monitoring care has been officially transferred back here. We had originally planned for weekly trips to Portland, so this is great news.

Ray’s platelets were up to 325 yesterday! His red blood is still too low. I would be grateful if you prayed for his red blood and hemoglobin count to begin rising and return back into the healthy range.

I read in my Streams in the Desert devotional this morning, “Difficulty challenges energy and perseverance. It calls into activity the strongest qualities of the soul.” I think this nails why I’m not sure if I’ll ever be the same.

Right before we were released to come home for good, I was confused by my thoughts. Though I had been longing for home, longing to be free of the hospital, there was strangely a part of me that was not looking forward to leaving. It seemed a counter-intuitive turn of events in my mind, and I asked the Lord about it.

In mulling it over, I realized that our time in Portland, as awful as it was, was far more precious than I’d given credit. Pulled away from the everyday hum-drum responsibilities at home, and fully engulfed in worry for my husband, I had sought God more desperately than ever before. He answered me with such amazing depth and richness. Practicing His presence in this place of stormy desperation became something I dared not lose.

I heard Ray also express this in several conversations with friends who each asked some variation of “What have you learned through this?” Each time, Ray paused, took an extra breath, and then explained how close God has been. What could he do stuck in his hospital room but cry out? He explained that most early mornings, after being awoken early by a nurse, he would turn on worship and seek God in a way that became so personal. This was his antidote for the worry and fear that invaded.

Why do I share something so personal? I guess it is an invitation to you. I read somewhere this question, “How do I get to participate in the work of heaven today?” And maybe this is sacrilegious or theologically questionable, but I think heaven is not a distant place, necessarily. In relationship with Jesus, it is a present place, here and now. And the presence is Jesus himself. Heaven is life in Jesus’s presence—here and later. Now and then. I think this is what Jesus meant in Matthew 5 when he said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

If you find yourself in a needy place today, and don’t we all from time to time, be reassured. This is a precious place. This is your tiniest little mustard seed. In Matthew 13, Jesus told a parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Through it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

And so we pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Amen.

“As I enter prayer now, I pause to be still; to breathe slowly, to recenter my scattered senses on the presence of God.”

These have been the first words of every morning of my Lectio 365 app, an audio prayer guide which has absolutely been my friend during this hospital time in Portland. The daily devotionals are spoken by various ethnic voices, with the gorgeous diversity of their voices reminding me that I am not just a citizen of one place. Rather, I am one part of a world-wide kingdom of Christian believers on earth.

Please read those quoted words above again, this time slowly and aloud to yourself. Don’t they just accomplish the goal of re-centering and placing all the scattered stresses of the day upon the all-consuming, faithful presence of God?

I have to be real. This whole experience with Ray’s health journey has very much challenged my understanding of prayer. How does prayer work? Wait. Even back up from there…does prayer even work? There have been times I have doubted.

Honestly, this was a crisis of faith.

My thoughts ran wildly…

“If there is a vast army of prayer warriors out there, friends and family praying earnestly for my husband, then why are we still stuck in the hospital?”

“As I sit with him in ICU, why am I still terrified?”

“Why am I seeing very little change? Why the delay?”

“Can’t you just do it now, Lord?”

Also, “if God has such good plans for us, how can death be a thing?”

And also, “God, this is embarrassing. I don’t want to go back and tell everyone he is not doing well. What kind of witness is this?”

Yes, I have absolutely doubted prayer. I’m just being honest here; please don’t judge me.

It does reassure me that these same kinds of questions were asked by a bunch of different characters throughout the Bible. This isn’t new.

On the other side of it, maybe I see it now with more clarity. Here are some things I’ve realized anew about personal prayer…

• Prayer is honest. Prayer is not faith. Before I get to the faith part, I must be free to feel and express every human emotion. God can handle my human emotion. He’ll listen. In fact, he created me with this very intent—I am created with a full range of feelings. Faith comes as a result of prayer, but that happens later. We cannot begin prayer by gritting up some faith. We begin by being honest. It is harder than it sounds because we’re all so used to putting on for those around us.

• Prayer is more about becoming rather than getting. If I am focused on getting what I want out of prayer, I’ve missed the best part of prayer. Communication with God shapes who I am becoming—my very being in relation to Him. Prayer re-centers me and fixes my perspective so that I can reflect the depth and character of Jesus Christ, rather than the shallow, shortsightedness of myself.

• Prayer is surrender. This one hurts. But man, it is so sweet. There is Biblical evidence that human prayer can change God’s mind (and that’s super cool), but prayer is really more about changing my mind. In prayer, I am brought into a place of aligning myself with what God is already doing. It’s submission so that I can participate. I think to an unbeliever, this must sound awful. But it’s truly awesome.

I am grateful for the doubt. It has brought me full-circle.

There is plenty more on prayer, I know. Plenty of people smarter than me have tackled the subject. There is also something more to be said for prayer being communal and corporate; a mysterious joining of hearts which occurs when we pray together or for each other. That’s what so many of you have done for Ray and I while we’ve been in Portland. We have felt it. Thank you.

Well hello little computer. I’ve haven’t seen you for a while, lugging you around but not having the heart to open and type. There’s been plenty to say. And yes, I’ve taken plenty of notes in my journal. But formally typing? Nope, I’ve avoided it.

I’m not completely sure why I haven’t felt like typing updates. I’ve also been pretty lame at texting people back or commenting on social media. Possibly because I’m weary, because that is true. Possibly because I’m overwhelmed with too much to say or don’t feel too creative right now, because that is also true. But mostly, I think it’s just because I’ve been enjoying my husband.

There is so much to be grateful for!

These two weeks out of the hospital have been precious. We’re still in Portland—we’re not quite home yet. But we are together, on our own time, not dictated by hospital interruptions. And we feel hope. That’s big.

I’ll back up just a bit. After 53 days of being in the hospital, Ray was released. It happened fast. The medical team mentioned it as a developing possibility one morning, and by that afternoon, it was decided. One of our hard-working PAs and our faithful social worker burst into our room, oddly excited. Ray had just woken from a nap, so he was slow to comprehend. Our PA announced, “Well, are you ready to get out of here?! I’m so happy to be the one who gets to tell you. We are going to discharge you tomorrow!”

So tomorrow became the day of “lasts” for all the things I had previously begrudged. The last morning to leave my hotel, to drive to the hospital, to say good morning to my favorite parking attendant. The last time I washed my hands at entry, signed in with the floor receptionist and retrieved a visitor sticker. Man, even the last ride on the elevators.

In earlier writing, I had wondered, doubted actually, if maybe these days would become sentimental. And now they are.

I am grateful.

On a side note, during the latter days of hospital time, my Apple Maps began mapping me “to work” at the hospital each morning. I thought this was funny. I guess it figured I’d been here for two months, so I must have gotten a new job.

It was surreal to load up Ray and his hospital stuff and drive away. We were quiet in the car. It seems we would be hooting and hollering, but we were too tired, and also didn’t want to jinx it, I think. We were protecting our hearts, knowing that he is still very sick and we were still in the woods, not yet out completely.

And here we are, nearly two treasured weeks later. As part of the discharge plan, we were given a room at the Rood Family Pavilion, an absolute blessing. The Rood is an 11-story building in the South Waterfront area of Portland. It sits below Hospital Hill and right across the street from the two OHSU waterfront hospital buildings, where Ray goes every couple days for his check-up appointments. The top four floors of the Rood house contain two floors for Ronald McDonald House families and two floors for adult patients. Our room on the 11th floor feels like a hotel room, and we have a pretty cool view out toward the city.

We stayed at the Rood for a short time right before Ray went into the hospital. It’s not home, but it feels like home. There were dark moments while in the hospital when we weren’t positive we would make it back to the Rood. On our daily walks to the Tram Terrace, we would longingly stare at this building below, knowing that the waterfront and its walking path were just down there beyond our reach.

I am grateful.

Ray is getting stronger every day. The last several appointments with the medical team have been encouraging. Ray’s lab results are trending in a positive direction. I hear relief in the voices of the doctors as they look over these labs, “I’m so hopeful! This looks good!” It clarifies for me the consternation and worry they have also felt over Ray’s long journey.

Just an FYI as to how these appointments at the transplant infusion unit go…there is a pattern. They are exceptionally long appointments. It is usually about 3-4 hours before we walk out of there. As soon as we arrive, they take his blood. Multiple vials for multiple things are sent to the lab for quick processing. Then the nurse does a full assessment, asking all the awkward questions. Then we have a long meeting with the doctor to look over the just returned lab results. Then it is decided if he needs any transfusion of blood or infusion of electrolytes. Then he sits in the chair for several hours to receive by IV whatever he needs. The care and time they give here is truly remarkable.

I am grateful.

You all have been so faithful in praying for his neutrophils, the soldier cells that help to reboot the immune system after a stem cell transplant. Thank you. There was a scary long time of waiting for these to return. For too long, they stayed at nearly zero. Well, guess what? They are back! Engraftment has happened. The stem cell boost worked. This is a relief after the failure of the first transplant.

I am grateful!

At tomorrow’s appointment, we will find out if Ray’s numbers are strong enough to go home. In order for this to happen, his platelet (low platelets cause bruising and bleeding) numbers have to be at a level safe enough to surgically remove his chest triport before we leave. This is tentatively scheduled for Friday. As always, I am grateful for your prayers. ❤️

I hope you have time to watch this quick, incredible video of blessing by poet Joshua Luke Smith. There is so much here to speak to wherever it finds you today. Life is funny. It’s a good reminder that “this is the main event!”

Joshua Luke Smith "The Blessing"

May 13, 2026

I am not sure how I can keep doing this. The same cheap motel room, the same suitcase with the same clothes I packed seven weeks ago. Also, I’m out of deodorant.

At least I am settled into one place now, and not moving back and forth. In April, I packed up and moved between The Cozy Cottage and the motel five times. The Cozy Cottage never expected me to be here this long, so it was booked. But then my lovable landlord, Lorrie, would text me when it opened up for a few days here and there. It was sweeter, cheaper, and closer, so I always said yes.

Now I’ve decided to stay in one place. And really, this little motel in a safe neighborhood by Providence Park has been a blessing too. Well, except for that car bomber at the Multnomah Athletic Club a couple weeks ago. It made national news. But besides that…we’re good.

I pretty much have the same morning routine—wake up, make coffee, brace myself to open MyChart to check Ray’s overnight labs, praying and hoping to see some progress but then seeing very little lately. Then turning to my Bible and my devotional app and worship music for sustenance. And then my journal for knowing how I’m feeling about it all. Then hustling to the hospital to catch the doctor team doing their rounds to Ray’s room, interpreting for me the same labs I’ve already studied.

I also have the same day routine—same parking garage, same hello to my friend Cheryl, the parking attendant (who gave me a cookie the other day and has seen 300 concerts at the Moda Center, where she works her other job), ride the same two elevators (sometimes catching short personal stories from other exhausted caregivers), put the mask on, scrub the hands, say hello to the receptionist and the charge nurse on duty, enter the same hospital room with a bright smile for my poor husband (I truly am happy to see him), same walks with Ray in the same hallway, smile and stop to chat with our favorite nurses (“Yes, we’re still here, can you believe it?!”), same stop in the lounge to look at the Portland view, the cars below, and to play Wordle, then Connections, then Spelling Bee and beat Ray if I’m lucky, same hello to our sweet cleaning lady (who moved here from Burma in 2019 with her Burmese husband who worked for the U.S. Embassy there for 20 years), then back to the room to watch something or color something. We’ve gotten pretty good at the daily Showcase Showdown, and I’m convinced that The Price is Right is the happiest show on earth, which is so perfect when you are stuck in a hospital room.

It feels like we should be more productive with all this time, but we’re not.

When we first got here, I thought this all sounded not too bad. Maybe someday, these days will seem sweet and nostalgic. I’m not sick of Ray; I can’t believe he’s not sick of me. But right now, it’s getting old.

And there is the same evening routine—back from our walk to the Tram Terrace (thank God for this!), shift change at 7 pm, a sincere thank you to our day nurse, an “I’m assessing you as much as you’re assessing my husband” to our night nurse, leave the hospital around 8 pm, arrive back at the hotel around 8:15 or maybe just a little later if I take a more scenic drive through Portland streets (it’s a beautiful city—actually not as bad here as some people think, except for the car bomber), eat something, wash face/brush teeth, and fall into bed.

And I remind myself: Ray doesn’t even to get to do these routine things. His routine is so much smaller than mine, the one I am whining about.

Can we keep going, Lord?

How long will you keep us waiting, Lord?

How long will you keep us waiting!?

What the heck?

This morning there were quick, frustrated tears in my hotel room bed.

There was little movement in his numbers today. We’re on Day +8, post-stem cell boost. And now I am getting scared, if you’ll allow me to be honest.

Four mornings ago, on Mother’s Day, we had the first little hint of neutrophils show their baby faces. After days and days of registering “no value,” it was a relief to see them. But then Monday, Tuesday, and today, the neutrophils have remained about the same. We are looking for growth! Come on, growth! We need 500 for 3 days in a row to get out of here. We’re sitting at about 100, give or take.

How long, Lord?

I know I’m not alone in asking this question. How long, Lord? It’s been queried throughout the ages. Perhaps you’ve asked the same exact question, albeit in a completely different context that is your life, not mine.

And so I look up the Psalm that holds that same question.

I read this:

Psalm 13, A Lament

(mildly paraphrased by me)

How long, O Lord?

Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I take counsel in my soul?

And have sorrow in my heart all the day?

How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;

Light up my eyes

Lest I sleep the sleep of death,

Lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him.”

Lest my foes rejoice because I am shook.

BUT (I do a 180-turn, an attitude adjustment)

I have trusted in your steadfast love;

My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me.

______________

Did you know that there are more psalms of lament than any other kind? The Psalmists were honest. And they complained and cried out. And God still published it.

There seems to be a pattern to these laments:

a complaint,

a cry for help,

and a reminder to one’s soul to praise.

This is God’s response to a hurting human heart. He doesn’t roll his eyes. He doesn’t turn his face away in disgust for our lack of faith. He doesn’t say, “That’s dumb.”

Instead God shows up, listens to my honest complaint and hears my desperate cry. Then in His mercy, he causes me to recall his goodness. He reminds me of how he’s shown up for me in the past. And again, I trust. Because He has proven to be trustworthy.

There is a principle to build on here. Once I have lamented, cried out, and seen God show up for me, I have now experienced Him to be faithful.

Maybe He didn’t do it the way I would’ve done it. I mean, He’s God—I’ll give Him that. But He showed up all the same. He is faithful. And I can trust him to do it again the next time. I think this is how faith is built.

I can tell you now from personal experience (lol) that waiting, any kind of waiting, but especially agonized waiting, is one of God’s most important lesson plans. The learning objective is to shape us and to build our faith as we watch Him work. In this agonized waiting, one must come to the end of her own strength and throw herself into wholly relying on God. Because there remains no other place to go.

My Dad sent me 2 Corinthians 4 to encourage me today, and it worked.

Second Corinthians 4: 7-10, 16

Forgive my paraphrase:

But we have been given this precious treasure (the glory of God!)

In this fragile jar of clay (our human bodies),

(Who is worthy to contain God’s light and glory?!)

To show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.

We are hard-pressed on every side,

But we are not crushed.

We are perplexed,

But we are not in despair.

We are persecuted,

But we are not abandoned.

We are struck down,

But we are not destroyed.

We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus

So that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our bodies.

Therefore we do not lose heart.

________

I’m just out here trying to remind myself of this.

_______

Before I start, I need to tell you again—THANK YOU for your encouraging texts, memes, prayers, messages, songs, emails, notes, letters, packages, checks. My goodness, you all have helped us through this. The past few days, I’ve fallen behind in answering. I’m sorry about that. There have been some days that I just didn’t have it in me to reply. Please know that every text and message mean so much to us.

_______________

Quick Update: Ray is going to be given a “stem cell boost.” It is basically a second transplant of his own blood, this time without the strong chemo. It will require us to stay in Portland for another month. We are currently waiting for insurance to approve this second procedure. We’re praying for a quick answer, but doctors tell us it could be into later this week before we can move forward. So for now, we are waiting.

_______________

When we first arrived for our month-long stay in Portland, the mid-March trees were bare. The expected month has come and gone. We are coming up on 6 weeks and counting. Now, the western trees around Oregon Health & Science University Hospital have bloomed, green and lush. Our window views have changed. These early May trees are different.

Mom is here, (which is awesome-there is nobody like my mama. Thanks to Linds and Shar who made it happen.) and we wandered through the International Rose Garden inside Washington Park yesterday. Lucas and I did the same three Sundays ago. Even in the three week span, the sea of rose bushes has swelled. With Lucas, the roses were mostly twigs, with little sprouts beginning to appear. Incredibly, with Mom, the bushes have sent out tall stalks of red new growth, and some bushes have even begun their blossom. In another few weeks, Portland will celebrate this garden with its annual Grand Floral Starlight Parade & Rose Festival.

And the Rhodies right now, whew! Those have also suddenly appeared, giant colorful blooms on Oregon old-growth throughout the streets and gardens around the hospital.

All this life is springing up. But we are languishing. This morning Ray received a text reminder from our Eugene doctor’s office, an upcoming scheduled appointment. We were expected to be home by now. But Ray had to call and cancel, and that hurt.

So here’s the basic situation. I’ll back up a bit. Ray has a bone cancer called Multiple Myeloma, a kind-of cousin to Leukemia. It is a blood cancer which is managed but not cured. Many people are now living years with it, thanks to modern medical advances. One of the ways it is managed is to have an Autologous Stem Cell Transplant. This process has been perfected over the years, and it has a strong track record for patients with MM.

After a lot of research, consideration, and prayer, Ray and I decided together to move forward with this treatment. Ray received half of his own conditioned stem cells back into his body at the end of March.

According to protocol, the other half of his collected stem cells were saved, frozen indefinitely, in case they were needed for later. We never expected to need this second dose of cells so soon. Doctors didn’t either. Now we desperately need them. They are about to be unfrozen and transplanted into Ray’s body, for what doctors call a stem cell boost. It is basically a 2nd transplant, but thankfully this time, he won’t have to endure the awful chemo which makes one so sick.

It will still take about 2-3 weeks in the hospital for engraftment to take place. Engraftment is when the newly transplanted blood cells travel back to the bone marrow to find their homes, settle, and then begin to multiply. I like to give the picture of little soldiers marching and being sent out to do their job. Some of our doctors like to use the picture of a start-up factory. This is the rebuilding of the immune system.

We are going to be waiting, praying, watching for this system re-boot. But even before that happens, we are waiting. We have been waiting for a week for insurance to approve the stem cell boost. First, a bone marrow biopsy had to be taken to prove to insurance that this boost is necessary. They rushed the biopsy results, but it still took 48 hours for the preliminary results. And now, we wait for insurance to make their decision. And of course, there is a weekend in between the business days. They tell us it most likely will be mid-week before this boost is approved.

Ray is stuck in the hospital. These days feel like Groundhog Day. We begged to be released to go home for the week wait, but Ray’s immune system is so dangerously low, doctors firmly told us that we could not go home. So, we wait.

We are grateful that the medical staff has broken the rules and allowed Ray to walk to the outdoor Tram Terrace once a day. It is dangerous for him to even go there, all-N95 masked up and promising to touch nothing. But in his case, the mental benefits outweigh the risks. We go at quiet times of the day. He insists on walking and pushing his own wheelchair. And this has been good medicine, to sit outside, counting cars on the freeway below and picking out airplanes in the sky above.

We’ve been told by the head honcho that Ray’s case is a rare one. According to him, Ray is in the 1%. This type of situation “only happens every 2-3 years.” His partner doctor confirmed this saying, “I’ve been here six years, and this is the second time I’ve seen it.” So, I’m not sure why we found ourselves here, and doctors can’t really explain it either. But here we are.

Our collective best guess, and lab results back this up, is that there was a collision of good and bad. Just as Ray’s immune system was beginning to reboot, just as his little white blood cell neutrophil army was beginning to settle and multiply, there was a storm inside Ray’s body which interrupted their gathering. As the little squad of soldiers was about to blossom into a battalion, the storm of complications wiped them out.

The things that Ray’s body had to battle when he went to ICU—his kidney failure, his heart afib, his struggling liver—it was all just too much for Ray’s baby immune system to fight. Ray’s neutrophils did show up, and made some progress—from zero to 100, to 200, to 600, and to 1000 for two days in a row. But then they stalled. And then they fell. For the past week, he has been back to zero.

Ray has always been a grinder. He values hard work. He’ll work the long hours, and he’ll get the job done. He’ll macgyver it. He’ll figure it out.

But right now, grinding will get us nothing. The most active thing we can do is wait. We are learning to wait. Waiting is not waste, but it feels as if it is, if I’m honest.

Must waiting and worry walk hand in hand? I have to admit, right now, for me, they do. Fear, anxiety, doubt gallop in, like dark riders, uninvited and unannounced. And because of crisis, I am vulnerable. The uncertainty, the whispered what-ifs make me vulnerable. It isn’t just annoying, it is ruthless.

I ask myself:

Am I in flight?

Am I in fight?

Am I in freeze?

Maybe.

But I choose a different F-word. I choose faith.

Faith is hard. What kind of faith is easy? That is not faith. Faith may be simple, but it surely is not easy. If faith is the assurance of things not seen, I have very little faith today. I cannot see it. How can I trust in the unseen while I’m in the midst of the biggest challenge of my life?

I’ve been around religion all my life. I know what the easy answers are. I’ve heard the cliches.

But here is the most comforting thing: God has promised his presence. “I am with you” is a repeating theme throughout the Bible. He has proven this to be true. I mean, just so many times. His mercies truly are new every day. I can trust that. I can wait and watch with that. It is so much. It is enough.

I do know that God holds my hand through this. I know He holds Ray’s. This is proven.

I have escaped away for a few minutes to the Starbucks at Dornbecker Children’s Hospital. It is lively and busy, with laughter and whimsical art, papier-mâché birds hanging from the ceiling, and iron animals marching across the top of windows. There is a guy with a guitar and an amp jamming. The sign next to him says “Joy Music,” and it does feel joyful. A little girl goes up to him and asks if he can play any Frozen songs, and he busts out a snappy version of “Let It Go.” She is thrilled and stands there too close, chatting with him, even if it’s clear that he doesn’t want to chat.

I consider sending Ray a quick video but then think, “Will this torture him?” and decide it might. He is still locked up on his floor, able to take walks only down his air-pressure-protected hallway.

I am grateful to see him up and walking, even with a walker. It was only a few days ago that he was delirious, mumbling of wild dreams, and attached to an ICU bed with a new emergency neck port hooked up to a Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy machine (C.R.R.T.) machine for his failing kidneys, his heart also thrown into a-fib, a chaotic, irregular heartbeat, his whole body puffy like a tree trunk because it refused to filter fluids and waste like it is supposed to.

When this whole process started, I really assumed we’d have a lot of boring days, just sitting around with plenty of time to catch up on writing thank you notes. Honestly, that’s how it was presented to us, even in all of our research and reading— “you’ll be sick, but you’ll get through it.” So I packed a bin of random activities that might entertain us, some given by my co-workers and students—card games, word puzzles, Sudoko, coloring books, and the like. In reality, we haven’t used it until now.

In the beginning, we were getting used to all the random interruptions that happen in a hospital room, getting vitals or giving meds or drawing blood labs by nurses, assisted with a shower by the CNA, meeting with the doctor crews on their rounds, visits from the nutritionist or the social worker or the cleaning crew. These hospital days had an unpredictable pace, with plenty of random interruptions. In between the interruptions, we would sneak in texts to people or maybe 20 minutes of a movie. And Ray dozed a lot, assisted by some good drugs.

But then complications came, and with it, so many more interruptions, tests, people, room changes, emotions. Apparently, we’ve now found ourselves in the 5% of stem cell transplant patients who have very serious multiple organ complications. The image of a roller coaster is very fitting, but surely there must be another image? A violent sea of sudden changes? A mighty tide that rolls in and out? A hairy airplane ride with constant turbulence? Sorry, maybe now I’m just being dramatic.

But yesterday was boring—a good, boring day. And a good boring day means that Ray is stable.

By 2:15 pm yesterday we: took a shower, took a walk, sat in the lounge chairs and watched the Tram outside the window, answered a few texts, colored a picture of some random National Park, made some beaded key chains (it is art day in the family room on Wednesdays), thoroughly enjoyed The Price is Right and laughing at ourselves because of it, watched parts of the day Mariners game (Josiah is the Mariner Moose now!—don’t tell anyone that I told you), parts of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Point Break, and Ocean’s Eleven. I think Forrest Gump is on next. “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.”

I guess I will try to give more details of this past week. I’m unsure how or what to say, but I will just try to go in sequence.

In my head, I’ve ordered the weeks we’ve been here by this:

Week One: Checked into 14K, the 14th floor of the Kohler Pavilion building. For a long time, many years, this floor has housed the Knight Cancer Institute for Bone Marrow Transplant. Our experience there for the first week of Ray’s care was superb. It was a well-oiled machine. The processes and procedures were smooth and settled. The staff was comfortable in their skin, and safe. I was so impressed.

Week Two: The second week Ray was here, he was moved to a brand-new building called the Vista Pavilion building. Ray’s entire 14K floor, plus the 13K floor, were moved in a massive, coordinated operation on Tuesday, April 7th. We had been told this would happen during our time here, so it was expected. What we didn’t realize was how much it would disrupt the well-oiled machine.

I’ll pause for a moment and give you some details about the move, because administratively, you might be interested. Can you imagine planning to move two full floors of acute care cancer patients? For the week leading up, the nursing staff was all a-twitter (is that a word?) about the upcoming day. They hadn’t been told how it would happen, but they did know that throughout the hospital, all OHSU workers were invited to help with the move that day. There was going to be a well-paid army to help us move to our new room.

And they did. At the appointed time, a wheelchair arrived for Ray. One person pushed him. Another person pushed a cart with his packed-up personal belongings. And then his assigned registered nurse accompanied him. I followed. We made a little parade from his old room, onto an elevator, over the glass-enclosed sky walk, down the back hallways, and directly to his brand-new room. Because of his absolute basement level immune system, he wore an N95 mask. We all wore masks as well. There are reasons for this; bone marrow transplant patients have been stripped of their immune system. They have nothing in them to fight the world’s germs.

I will refrain from giving more details or my opinion about the move. The basic truth is that the move caused incredible stress on the staff. They worked very hard, but also had to work with a number of new faces hired for the new building. There were multiple challenges during this first week of transition.

Back to Ray. Ray was already fevering when the move happened. He had picked up an infection before the move, and medical staff was helping him to fight it. He had also developed a rash and other signs for something that is rare, but can happen during transplant, called Engraftment Syndrome. In our minds though, we were still looking forward to release from the hospital sometime early the next week. Our original release date was tentatively set for Tuesday, April 14th. That would have been average for the average stem cell transplant patient.

However, on Sunday, April 12th, Ray’s kidneys started showing serious signs of stress. We saw a stream of specialists and tests that day. There was talk of possible dialysis if things didn’t improve.

That night, Ray’s brain started to play tricks on him. He didn’t sound right, so I stayed the night in the room. In the middle of the night, maybe about 2 am, a heroic break nurse noted that Ray’s heart rate was jumping irregularly all over the place. He had no history of atrial fibrillation (afib), but this is what was taking place. She called the OHSU rapid response team. I watched as a storm of red vested workers hustled in and took over care for the rest of the shift and into the next morning. A whole crew rallied bedside and monitored him. Multiple doctors were called in, and gave orders. In tears, I had to sign a consent for Ray to be moved to ICU that morning. Ray does not remember this night, or the next two days or so.

And so: Week Three is ICU week.

Maybe at some point, Ray and I will talk about the tricks his mind played with him while his body was struggling. Spiritually, there was some major battle going on. For now, I’ll stick with some basics about the physical battle.

In ICU, his body was battling 5 major things: kidney failure, heart afib, possible liver damage, brain swelling & hallucinations, and an immune system which was still basically stripped and null.

The ICU staff was incredible. It took about two days to get Ray back to a stable place. His afib stopped. His liver scan came back “unremarkable,” which is good. His right mind returned. His immune system started multiplying neutrophils. The major holdout were his kidneys. He received about 24 hours of slow, continuous, life-saving dialysis and then another hemodialysis (filters the blood of toxins and waste) while he was in ICU.

I must add here that Ray’s mom, Margrett, was incredible during this time too. She dropped everything and came the day he was sent to ICU, driven here (and back home) by the wonderful Ron and Georgia. She stayed the week, and I am convinced that her presence, her foot & leg rubs, and her words for her son to “press on” kept Ray here with us. She also bolstered my spirits, prayed with me, and made me take breaks and rests. Never underestimate the importance of showing up for someone—it makes a huge difference!

When most of these things were resolved a few days later, his status was changed from ICU to Intermediate Care. However, there was no room for him back on his bone marrow unit! So he had to wait a couple days in limbo, which really felt like a cruel prison to him. It made him quiet for a couple days, and I knew he was digging deep.

Week 4: Here we are. He is happy to be back to one of the new rooms in the Vista Pavilion, this time on the other side of the unit. It’s clear to us that the challenges of the floor move and transition from that first week have been ironed out here. I suppose getting out of the prison of ICU also makes us grateful to be back too.

His barriers to release right now are his kidneys and his recovering immune system. He’s had one hemodialysis here in his room. We are praying it is his last. The past few days, they have not called for another one, but they are still watching him closely for full recovery of kidney function. They won’t let him go until this is resolved. Please pray that his kidney damage clearly and quickly resolves.

In the meantime, we are now in boring days, and that’s fine with us.

Psalm 94: 17-19

Unless the Lord had helped me, I would have settled in the silence of the grave.

I cried out, “I am slipping!” but your unfailing love, oh Lord, supported me.

When doubts filled my mind, your comfort gave me renewed hope and cheer.

No amount of lotion can rescue my hands from their extreme dryness. Looking down at my typing fingers, I can see that they’ve become dry and flaky. Nice. This is not going away anytime soon; I have become VERY good friends with the hand washing station just inside the restricted sliding double-doors of the Knight Cancer Institute Bone Marrow Transplant Unit.

But come on, what business do I have worrying about dry hands? At least I can come and go. On the other hand, Ray is locked in isolation, miserable and nauseous. There is very little interaction with the outside world for him right now. Extreme precautions are taken to ensure that germs do not live here. The doors of each patient room stay closed, the air system is specially sealed by pressure. He can walk the hallway if he’s up to it, but he has to strap on his N95 mask to do so.

There is a little routine to do each time I arrive here. I step off the elevator, onto the 14th floor of the Kohler Building, where there is hand sanitizer and a box of masks. After teaching for two (freakin’) years in a stupid mask, this is, at first, covid-trauma inducing. But for the sake of your loved one, you get over it quickly.

With a sanitized finger, I push the entry button and tell the lady at the desk who I am. When I’ve proven through the camera that I’m Ray’s wife, a beeper beeps, and two solid glass doors slide open. I’m very special; they don’t just let anyone come through these guarded doors.

Then I button though another double door, and I find myself at the hand-washing counter. Here I must soap up and wash my hands for 60 seconds, so I usually scrub and sing my ABCs or Jesus Loves Me. When Ryan visited, he chose to bless us with The Bee Gees, singing “Ah, ha, ha, ha, staying alive.”

After I’m dry, I walk down the nurses station, sign in, turn left, then right, and eventually arrive at room #27. I knock lightly, open the door into the special positive pressure room and peek to see how Ray’s doing, all cuddled up in his bed, usually, but sometimes in the small hospital-ish recliner.

On purpose and because I love him, I’m not going to talk about Ray too much during this time. The doctor notes in Ray’s MyChart state this: “anticipate 2-3 week hospitalization” and the “barriers to discharge” are “pending clinical course.” I may be wrong, but I take this to mean, “He is going to be sick. This is expected and normal, and when it completes its course, we’ll let him out of here.”

Ray’s room is on the hill side of the building. I was hoping for the mountain side of the building, where the view of Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens on clear days is unbelievable, and sometimes you even get a peek of Mt. Adams. But Ray’s room looks the opposite way, out toward all the hospital activity, 14 floors down, and up the hill to where I’ve rented my “cozy cottage.”

Through the hospital’s housing coordinator, I was connected to a very sweet lady who only rents out her little attached unit to the spouses of those who are receiving cancer treatments at OSHU. Over 20 years ago, her own mom received an early, dangerous, and successful bone marrow transplant at Stanford. She understands the process and is very flexible with dates and cancellations, a god-send in a tentative medical situation. She and her husband built a couple little ADUs next to their home up the hill from the hospital. She calls mine “the cozy cottage.” Leading up to the check-in time, Ray and I actually laughed about how many times she used the adjective cozy. The joke’s on us—it turns out that is IS cozy and I love it.

And of course, guess what the WIFI password is? Yep. cozycottage.

Anyway, the cool thing about Ray’s room being on the hill side of the hospital is that he literally looks out the window up to the area where the cozy cottage sits. And from the cozy cottage, which is not really a cottage at all, but actually an upstairs unit, I can look down toward the hospital. We can’t really see each other—it’s too far—but still, its something. He can kind of see me when I am walking down the hill in the morning. He can see me more when I am walking back up that steep hill, as it takes me twice as long. Ha.

There are so many great views around here. I take photos often. Below I’ll post a few more pics of views from 14K. We’ve had some really beautiful, clear, sunny days here. For some reason, I forgot to take photos on those days!

This covers week one—Day 0 through Day +8. We knew coming in that we would be here for the unique timing of the move from 14K to the brand-new Vista Building on Day +8. As I finish this up, we’re now fully moved. I’ll talk about the move to the Vista Building in another post.

I’ve decided we need a new word. I’ve been using the word “process” for what we’re going through. Process doesn’t cut it. I knew we were in for a ride; they fair warned us. But the ride we’ve been on these last 11 days is something else.

When the boys were young, my parents purchased season tickets for us at Silverwood Theme Park for a full summer. We lived about 35 minutes away by Honda minivan, and let me tell you, we got our money’s worth out of those tickets. By the end of the summer, we all needed chiropractic appointments.

The boys were at the perfect age to love the huge roller coasters. There’s Corkscrew and Timber Terror and Tremors. And that summer, the park also planned to open Aftershock for the first time.

The previous winter, Silverwood had held a naming contest for their newest roller coaster. The boys had brainstormed like boys do, by jumping around the house and tossing out possible names to each other like a ping pong ball. And then Ryan entered the contest and actually earned second place for his suggested name—The StingRay. Because of this, anticipation was high for our first ride on the coaster.

Aftershock was a new thrilling addition to Roller Coaster Alley at Silverwood. The theme park’s own website describes it this way, “This metal monster dominates the skies over Silverwood. At 191 feet, this beast is really two thrills in one because not only does it take you forwards through a cobra roll and inverted loop, but backwards as well!”1 At speeds up to 65 miles an hour, you blast around a metal loop, and then it pulls you up a high tower and suspends you there for a brief, terrifying moment. THEN, as you’re suspended upside down at the top of the tower, with legs hanging free, you hear some lever click and release you. You drop and roller through the whole loop again at the same speed. Backwards! It literally takes you for a loop. And then back again.

So. That’s how this week in the hospital has felt. We’re no longer in a “process.”

We’re on Aftershock.

When the day finally arrived, we pulled into to the vast parking lot and we could clearly see this monster coaster, blue and green towers rising to the sky. The boys chattered excitedly from the minivan. The gates opened, and we rushed to the line for Aftershock, hustling through the park and past all the other fun rides to find ourselves looking up at this sky scraper roller coaster with mouths wide open.

And we chickened out. I don’t remember exactly when we finally summoned up our courage to actually ride it. I think it was later that day. But eventually, we did ride it. The ride was a thrill and a horror. When it came to its end, we unbuckled and tumbled from our seats, stunned and stumbling to the exit, glad to be off but also glad for the ride.

Today is Day +10. We should be nearing the end of the basement period of the stem cell transplant timeline. However, Ray has spiked a persistent fever the past 36 hours. The medical team is monitoring it closely. They’ve done the fever protocol. They’ve taken cultures. They suspected bacteria in Ray’s gut somewhere, and now the tests have proven them correct. They reassure me that this is par for the course, that it is normal, that it is rare for a transplant patient NOT to have a fever somewhere along the process. But it is still very hard for me to sit here and watch my husband endure this.

Out of respect for Ray, I’ve already decided that I’m not sharing specific personal details about what his body is going through. But I can confirm that he is going through all of it. I can confirm that he is miserable sick.

I was hoping to arrive at Day +10 to witness some uptick in Ray’s numbers. I was hoping by now to see a sign that he was beginning to climb out of this chasm he’s been in. The fever sets us back a few days.

The ride has to end at some point, right?

Ray is already 7 days post-transplant. He is doing ok, right about where he is expected to be. The truth is that he is miserable, but still, but that is exactly where they told us he would be. Thankfully, there have been no complications.

When we first admitted to the hospital last Sunday, the doctor wrote a reverse plot graph on our little white board. Instead of a mountain, it is a chasm. The line starts high, dips down like a roller coaster drop, stays there along the bottom, straight for a bit, and then begins a gradual climb back up to the other side.

Next, she placed days on the graph. Day 0 is at the start, the top. Days +1 through +4 lead downward. Along the bottom of the chasm lie the days of Day +5 through Day +10. When you hit bottom, it is the critical time. Around Day +11, things typically start to turn upward and out of the chasm. The average day of release is Day +15.

Last Monday was Ray’s Day 0. On that day, Ray received his blood back into his body. It was a hopeful day; it feels like this should be all good from here. But it’s not, because you have to go into a week of feeling extra crummy and watching your blood counts fall.

We’re in the chasm right now. Today is Ray’s Day +7. The doctors were just here, and it is remarkable how many markers they are monitoring. We are especially watching for his neutrophils (a type of white blood cell) to begin climbing again. Neutrophils are the frontline soldiers, the little heroes that show up first to fight infection. Ray’s blood work shows that he has absolutely zero neutrophils today. They have successfully poisoned and depleted Ray’s body of any immune system. Now begins the enterprise of rebuilding. If I’m reading it correctly, a healthy body produces around 100 billion neutrophils daily. That’s crazy.

In a Facebook comment last week, my friend Katie made an insightful connection between Holy Week and Ray’s time in the hospital. That comment gripped me, and throughout the last week, I have seen the parallels. I’m not sure if I have the mental fortitude right now to explain the depth of the significance.

But I do know that yesterday was Easter. It is the day that we are once again reminded of God’s deep love for all of humanity and His ridiculous invitation for us to be in fellowship with Him. It is the day that Christians celebrate as the most defining event in our faith—the resurrection of Jesus Christ after a brutal crucifixion and three dark days inside a tomb. Jesus went willingly to the cross and shed his blood for us so that we would have a new way to God. Jesus was intimately aware of suffering.

As he took his last breath, he pushed out a whisper, “It is finished.”

Oh, the riches of His grace.

We’re back in Portland, settling in for the month. Now that we’re finally here, I’m feeling a little numb. So many things have led us to this moment. And the reality of it all just hits.

Thursday, early, we packed up our gold Honda Accord with all the things we thought we would need for the month. How do you pack when you’re leaving home for a month? What do you pack for a whole month? We did our best and rolled out of town about 7:30 am.

About 10 minutes from home is the cute riverfront farm town of Harrisburg, where I teach. You have to drive through it to get to I-5, and anytime we do, I say aloud, “Helloooo, Harrisburg.” I don’t know why I do that, I just always do. A lot of people I really like live here. But this time I said aloud, “Goodbyyye, Harrisburg.” I didn’t really realize the significance until it came out of my mouth. The subconscious goodbye to home is what I’ve been feeling.

And yet, I love a good adventure. And so, since Ray was driving, I was in charge of the playlist, or “the aux” as the boys used to say before we were cool enough for Bluetooth. For some reason, I was feeling some Kanye, so we passed the miles between Brownsville and Wilsonville with the entire Jesus is King album. That’s a banger, ya’ll.

I texted the boys a quick video of us driving to “God Is” and breezily wrote something like, “On our way to Portland! Jesus and Kanye are with us.” Josiah told me later that he read it out loud to his college friends and they thought it was hilarious.

I said to him, “It’s a bummer that Kanye is so messed up. That’s a great album.”

Josiah replied, “Yeah, but that’s the point. We’re all messed up.” Whoa, son. Preach.

And then, no joke, Ray and I switched from Kanye to John Denver radio. “Country Road, Take Me Home” ushered us into the urban jungle of Portland.

We only had one appointment on this day, scheduled for 10 am. We weren’t entirely sure what it was, but in this rigorously monitored and directed process of stem cell transplant, you just kind of surrender to all the things they schedule for you. This process is a machine. It’s a tightly choreographed dance, like The Nutcracker, one that the professionals have perfected over the years. They have this thing locked in. It’s impressive, actually. And so at some point, you give in and go for the ride.

Well, this particular appointment was just a 5-minute Covid test, an invasive swab in Ray’s nostril. That’s it. It’s so strange to us that they scheduled this one short appointment today. We could’ve had one more day at home. At our appointment for labs the next afternoon, we are told, “Oh, they could have done that Covid test today. I’m surprised you had to come a day early for that.”

But wait. I think God knew exactly what he was doing. My parents happened to also be in the Portland area on this very Thursday. They had driven from their home in Windsor, Colorado to our childhood home in Longview, Washington for the memorial service for a dear friend, Patty Nelson. And really, this was the one and only day we could have seen them. My mom was very concerned about passing germs to us, and we were careful. But I was not going to not see them! We were able to meet them at my wonderful Auntie Diane’s home to hang out for several hours. I hate that my parents live so far away from me, and this was God’s little gift, I’m sure of it. When I am with them, no matter where, it feels like home.

The next day, Friday, also held just one afternoon appointment. There was plenty of down time on the schedule, so Ray and I tried to make it feel like maybe we were just on vacation. We took a morning drive through Washington Park, which was way bigger than we expected. Our plan was just to walk through the (free) famous rose garden, but then we saw the crowd of people at the Japanese gardens and realized, “Cherry blossoms!” But then we decided against it—is it worth $22.50 a person to get in?! But that whole bit must have warmed us up, because when we came around the corner and saw the Oregon Zoo, we decided to go for it. Ray’s words: “We’re here. When will we be back?”

We are supposed to avoid crowds right now, but we figured that walking around outside at the zoo was perfect. Ironically, it happened to be the busiest day of the year at the zoo—the Friday morning of spring break, and it was a gorgeous morning. All the moms and dads took this day off from work. But it was fine with us, though Ray stayed about 20 feet back from the window crowds, and honestly, watching some of the kids’ reactions to animals at the zoo is as entertaining as watching the animals. The action on the monkey bar playground outside the monkey exhibit is the perfect example.

We made it back in time for the one afternoon appointment—final lab testing (labs look good!) and a final clearance with all sorts of awkward questions about Ray’s body. We realized, about halfway through the questions, that this is an inquiry into the places of possible infection throughout Ray’s system, internal and external. Is he fighting a rash anywhere? Does he have any open wounds? Has he had a fever? How is his broken (but fixed) arm healing? I remember the exact statement from the doctor, “I am going to kill your immune system. I need to know where infection might happen.” Aha. And ugh.

We leave this appointment with clear directions that from this point on we are to be very careful around any possible germs. We are not to be in crowded environments. We should avoid public places. We should avoid public restrooms. We are to mask up. We are to wipe down surfaces. We are to wash our hands a lot. Saturday and Sunday the nasty chemo happens. This is the stripping away of Ray’s current immune system. The chemo stuff is outpatient. Then Ray will be admitted to the hospital on Sunday evening, and it will be our new home.

Monday is Ray’s Day 0. It is the day when he receives his own treated stem cells back into his body to reset his immune system. From that day, our medical team counts on the days to keep track—Day +1, Day+2, and so on. It is during this next week when Ray will feel quite sick from the combination of chemo and transplant.

The next several weeks are crucial, as Ray’s body is under some major construction. This is called engraftment because the transplanted cells begin their journey back to the bone marrow, find the right place to implant themselves, and begin to divide and conquer. Once back inside the bone marrow, the stem cells will divide, proliferate, and mature to produce new, stronger, healthier blood cells—white cells, red cells, and platelets. It’s a complete system reboot.

It is truly amazing to me that even the smallest of cells have the instinct to find their home. This is literally called “homing” by the medical experts because the cells innately know how to return to their home niches back inside the bone. What a miracle. It reminds me of Psalm 139, but in a new way.

Psalm 139: 13-14

For You formed my inward parts;
You knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are Your works;
my soul knows it very well.

And speaking of knitting together, this provides a transition to another story I wanted to share. It’s a visual example of the love and support we’ve felt from so many of you.

A few mornings ago, Ray and I found a UPS package on our porch. The return address said Dinah Underwood. I remembered that I had exchanged a few texts with Dinah last week when she had asked for our address.

How do I explain how dear Dinah and Ken are? You know those long relationships which weave in and out of your life? This is one of them. Ray and Dinah went to school together; she was a cheerleader cheering his high school basketball games. And then our kids, Ryan and Sarah, were in Mrs. Bauerle’s kindergarten class together. And then they graduated together in 2017. In between, Lucas was in theater with Hannah and Sarah. And we even went to church together, co-leading a small group at North Church, which they faithfully continued after we stepped out.

This box on our porch was a decent size, kind of your average Amazon box, and it was packed tight. When Ray opened it, out tumbled a gorgeous, giant-sized quilt, rectangle pieces stitched together like a puzzle to create this incredible tapestry of colors and fabrics. It is a love tablet, telling a story.

On the reverse side, Dinah had added a manly, muted blue, minky-soft kind of fabric, bonded to the quilted side by a meandering line of thread throughout the blanket. This masterpiece had clearly taken hours of Dinah’s life.

Dinah also included 3-page note inside the box, but we didn’t see it because I was already picking up the phone to call her. So I got the full story as we chatted. She had me in tears with her story, and then again when I read the beautifully-written note. We didn’t know it, but Dinah has had her own hard health road for the past several years, one that has stolen who she was. And in the midst of it, time for quilting has returned. Now she’s also carefully piecing her own self back together. She has taken something really difficult, the loss of many things, and she is making beautiful out of it. Here she was blessing us, like a high school cheerleader all over again.

I’ve said it to several people lately: the best thing to come out of this awfulness is the connection and re-connection to people we’ve loved throughout the seasons and places of our lives. You know, life just kind of moves on, doesn’t it? Lovely people come and go. I’m not the greatest at staying connected. I’m the type of person who writes thank you notes and then forgets to actually send them. My follow-through stinks. But man, so many of you are really good at it. And you’ve blessed us.

T.S Eliot wrote, “Home is where one starts from.” And I like that. Of course home is a fixed place, a cultural connection to one’s origin. But can we also make home elsewhere? Can home transcend a fixed place? Can home follow us? It seems to me that home is possibly also about people and feelings and memories, collected along the way.

The minky quilt has made the trip to Portland with us. And when Ray checks into the hospital Sunday evening, it will help a small room feel like home.

It seems fitting that this week is called mobilization week. The actual transplant isn’t for another 2 weeks, but there’s so much to do leading up to it. This is the week where Ray’s stem cells are harvested, conditioned, and frozen. We’ll be back and forth between home and Portland several times this week. I find it to be therapeutic to take notes and keep my mind busy on these days. I’m not really sure if it’s interesting to anyone besides myself, so I am grateful you’re here to share it with. Thanks for reading and thanks for praying. ♥️

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At the intersection of Bond Avenue and Whitaker Street in the Portland waterfront area, there’s a lot of mobilizing going on. Whitaker Street divides the OHSU waterfront medical tower #1 from the OHSU waterfront medical tower #2. All day long, crowds of workers and patients cross the street between the two towers. Each building is about 14 stories, organized into layers of medical offices and labs. Along the street level entrance are two busy patient drop off lanes where constant cars pull in and pull out.

There’s more city mobilizing right around the corner. Just a block north, the Sky Tram loads and carries bunches of people west to the top of the hill every 10 minutes. The Portland Streetcar runs along Bond Avenue, connecting to the Max Light Rail somewhere down around Portland State University. To the east a couple blocks the Ross Island Bridge crosses the Willamette River, just a few miles from where it will pour itself into the mighty Columbia River. Around here somewhere, you can even grab a Biketown e-bike and take a fun loop trip which crosses all 12 major bridges in Portland. I know because our best Seattle buds, Troy and Bonnie, had the brilliant idea to meet us here and do it a couple years ago. I’m so glad they did.

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Thursday, March 12th. And so the week of our mobilization begins. We drive to Portland to have a final consent appointment with Dr. Chen today. He goes over all of Ray’s recent testing results, and we sign some papers. His nurse also spends about an hour with us, explaining the details of this week—how Ray will inject himself at home over the next three days with a medicine that will make him feel sick, how we’ll come back Monday for a surgical procedure to have his central line port placed, how we’ll sit for 5 hours on Tuesday and maybe Wednesday as they harvest blood cells out of his body.

Also on this day, we make a stop at the hospital pharmacy. We wait in a long line and make jokes with each other about the random interesting medical devices for sale on the shelf next to us. When we get to the counter, Ray gives his name and birth date (side note: oh my gosh, they ask for name and birth date everywhere we go. I know this is to protect us, but I can give Ray’s full name and birth date in my sleep even if you ask me while I’m snoring). At the counter, the guy kinda whispers, “It looks like there is a copay price of $4301.02 on this?” Ray replies, “Are you serious?” The guy, “Well, let me go check with the pharmacist.” He turns and the pharmacist says in a loud voice and with a flippant hand, “Just run it through. It should zero out.” And whew. It does.
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Friday, March 14th to Sunday, March 16th. For the past three days at home, Ray has dutifully injected four needles into his own belly each morning. This was the $4300 pharmacy bill, a whole big bag of 12 boxes of meds, a whole sharps trash container of our very own, and some alcohol wipes. Ray proudly carried the shopping-looking bag out of there, proclaiming, “I’m imagining this is a Nordstrom bag and I just spent $4300.” Ha, something he will never ever do in his lifetime.

The 12 vials are full of a medicine which will allow his body to release his stem cells more easily. Essentially, our doctor told us, we are tricking his body into thinking it has an infection, and thus his white blood cell count goes up. This causes the troops of cell armies to rally and move into place for a fight. The cell-troops are mobilizing. And Ray feels crappy for a couple days, so I guess it’s working. He winces often as his bones are in pain. He feels weak and tired, but he’s doing such a good job of keeping his spirits up. He’s surely not partying for St. Patty’s Day weekend like the students at the U of O, but we’re too old for that anyway. We meet our friends Josh & Sarah for coffee in Eugene instead.

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Sunday night, March 15th. A few days later, we are back to Portland, pulling into the city about the time the sun goes down and the tall buildings light up. We are so grateful for the opportunity to check in to the Rood Family Pavilion, a boxy and wonderful building across the street from tomorrow’s appointments. We’re here for a couple days while Ray receives his port and donates his own blood cells to himself. He’ll sit for 5 hours Tuesday, hooked up to something, I’m not sure what they call it, which will draw out stem cells. Hopefully his body releases enough on the first day. If we don’t collect enough, we’ll stay one more night and come back on Wednesday. Something interesting Dr. Chen told us last week: they’ll save and store enough for a 2nd transplant if he needs it later. My thought: where and how and for how long do they store everybody’s cells?!

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Monday, March 16th. Now it’s Monday morning. It is quieter on the corner of Bond and Whitaker at 7:15 am than it was last Thursday afternoon. We’ve crossed the street from the Rood to the waterfront tower #2 for our first appointment.

But still, there’s plenty of activity inside. It’s such a conglomerate of interesting people; healthy and sick are all intertwined and walking amongst us. Many are in masks, but many are not. Quite a few hold a book in their hands, as if they know this will be a hurry-up-and-wait kind of day, like the airport, but different. There are older couples pointing in this or that direction, navigating the myriad signs and the elevators. There are also couples who look like sisters or brothers or partners or parents. I spy the cutest 80-year old white haired sister-twins. They must be twins-same size, same look, same walk. There are also healthier looking younger couples, but then some with one more obviously sick partner. I watch one such 30s couple. She is holding onto his skinny arm as he is hunched and shuffling. He is wearing red sweats that are two sizes too big for him, and I wonder. What is their story?

How many stories walk past me in this place? It is strangely comforting to know that we are surrounded by people who also fight. They are each partnered with someone who loves them, something that becomes so critical and precious when walking through darkness. These are my people for now, these people who have also had a hard year.

As I write this note on Monday morning, I am sitting by myself in a light-filled cafeteria, waiting for Ray to come out of the surgical procedure, the trifusion port which will assist him with all the upcoming treatments. And Brandon Lake’s song, “Gratitude” fills my headphones. I close my eyes and join him in worship.

“Come on my soul, don’t you get shy on me, lift up your song, you’ve got a lion inside of those lungs, get up and praise the Lord. Heyyyyy-eyyyyy-eyyyy.” He whines, “Praise the Lord” in a haunting, I-need-you kind of cry , and it resonates. “So I throw up my hands, praise you again and again. ‘Cause all that I have is a hallelujah.” This moment of surrender gives me rest as I wait for Ray to come out of surgery.

He comes out of the procedure just fine. Now he has a port installed near his collarbone. It has three lines coming out of it, and he is calling it his triple nipple.

The rest of the day is long, with three more visits back and forth from our room at the Rood to tower #2. One for an hour-long training with a pharmacist about the nasty chemo Ray will receive next week (good thing we were given notes because “chew ice chips during it so that you don’t get mouth sores” is all I remember). Another for an additional blood draw because his phosphorus number from his morning labs came back wonky, and they want to retest it (it was fine). And finally, at 5:30, back one more time to the infusion floor where they inject more drugs into his belly. Apparently, this drug is the one that now opens the gates for those rallied cell-troops. Tomorrow morning, he’ll be hooked up for 5 hours to harvest those cells, and we want the gates wide open for them to march. I have to say, all these drugs is still really hard for me. A year ago, I would’ve been so against this. The internal conflict still catches my breath at times.

I admire Ray so much on this day. Today exhibited all his best qualities—he’s steady, he’s kind, he’s persistent, he’s resilient, he’s funny. That reminds me: somewhere in conversation this morning, our admitting nurse referred to the Stem Cell Transplant as a BMT. Because it is also called a Bone Marrow Transplant. But Ray didn’t get it at first and he said, “A BMT?” And she clarified, “A bone marrow transplant.” And Ray said, “Oh shoot, I thought you were talking about my favorite Subway sandwich, the Italian BMT.” Haha.

And now we’re tired, and we’re crawling into bed at 8:00 pm.

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Tuesday, March 17th, Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Top o’the mornin’ to ya. I forgot to wear green this morning! My backpack is green, does that count?

We’re up early, and we walk the block to the Tram. It’s so pretty this morning—the sun is rising above Mt. Hood and the neighborhood birds are going at it. There’s even a few cherry blossoms trying to peak their little buds out. We have an 8 am appointment on The Hill. It’s harvest day in the Apheresis department.

There is good news: the cell-troops are a-marching on this fine St. Patty’s Day. They march through the open gates, and we gather enough. Thank the Lord, we’re going home for a week. But first, we have to stop at the pharmacy again.

When I first told my students that Ray had cancer, I didn’t plan it well. It was way back in September, about three weeks into the school year.

I had just mentioned to my kids that I would be gone for a half-day tomorrow. And as I laid down my sub expectations for them, one of my very smart boys who tends to need an answer for everything piped up, “What are you doing for just a half-day?” Some teachers would see this as impertinence, but I appreciate his curiosity, and I like to give him honest answers. Maybe this is why I answered as I did. Or maybe I was hurting and worried about how I was going to manage the burden of treatments and lesson plans throughout this school year. And it just slipped out, honestly, “Well, he has cancer and he has his first treatment tomorrow.”

Oh, their reaction. Their faces and their open mouths. They all processed what they knew of cancer. And then a tumbling of words from all of them—warm concern and alarm. The quote I took in first was from a boy who has grown so much this year and become one of my favorites. In all his sweet insightful wisdom, he lisped loudly, “But Mrs. Ricks! (imagine R-sound as a W-sound here) You’re always so happy! How can your husband have cancer?!”

And so. My lesson plans were laid aside. I took questions and gave answers. I gave them time to tell some of their stories, because this is how a kid processes. And weirdly, it was a holy moment. We talked about how beautiful life is and how hard things happen to all of us and how we each have a choice of how to respond. These kids know hard things. Their hard things might not be like my hard thing. Does it matter? They got the message, and we bonded in this meeting of the hearts.

But then the news was out there. And so I shared it honestly with the rest of my classes that day, inviting the kids into my story, though I had not planned it that way.

And now it’s already March. This particular class of 60 6th graders, the class of 2032, will go down as one of my favorites.

Yesterday was my last day of this school year. As of today, I am officially on family leave for the rest of the year. It’s so weird to say that. But I feel like I can breathe better today. It’s been a full-on sprint to get here—planning the rest of the year for the long-term sub (who is amazing, which gives me great peace) and tidying up my classroom messes and chasing down kids for missing assignments and pushing kids to complete ongoing essays and projects. Now I can give my full attention to all the details of Ray’s upcoming stem cell transplant, as we go back and forth to Portland three times over the next week. Now I can finish figuring out insurance and complete the needed leave paperwork and finalize plans for our long stay in Portland, which starts at the end of the month. Now I can catch up with my text messages and thank you cards and Facebook messages. (Now I can clean my house.)

But first, can I tell you a little about yesterday? I haven’t even written in my journal about this yet. I was planning to give some quiet hugs and dip out on my last day. I knew the kids were up to a little something—over the past week, they’ve asked me random questions like, “Mrs. Ricks, what’s your favorite color?” or “Mrs. Ricks, what’s your favorite flower?” or “Mrs. Ricks, what’s your favorite animal?” But honestly, I just thought they were making me a card or something. Knowing now what they were planning, they were SO STEALTH. My two amazing colleagues—we’re a team of 3 in 6th grade—planned an elaborate coordinated surprise sneak attack and PUT THE FEAR OF GOD AND PEER PRESSURE in them should they be the one to spoil the surprise. It really is quite impressive for a group of 60 middle schoolers to keep a secret.

They arrived in my classroom with an array of gifts—notes and flowers and stuffies and puzzles and wonderful things. They piled them on my table in front of me. So many sweet hugs and words. A wonderful way to start a day.

About 5 minutes in to 1st period, Mrs. Foley arrived at my door and announced, “I need to take your class over to my room for a minute.” And they all went happily, knowing. The student I was having a quick conversation with at my desk stayed and we finished our conversation. (Was this also planned by my colleagues? I don’t even know—I’ll have to ask them.) Then I walked over to Mrs. Foley’s room to see what was up. When I stuck my head in the dark doorway, a classroom of 60 excited kid faces hollered, “SURPRISE!!” It was the good kind of shock. They gathered around me and hugged me and oh, everyone should feel such love. There were piles of goodies and fruit on the tables, each brought thoughtfully by the kids and their parents. Another colleague had prepared hot chocolate in a crock pot, and the kids were pumped up about this. After all the hugs and sweet things, they directed my attention to posters the 7th and 8th graders had signed. And then the very best Google slides show ever produced—each kid had designed their own slide with a note to me (“I hope your huzz gets better”). So many in the shades of my favorite color green, with a variety of my favorite flowers, because I couldn’t decide. And so many different memes and images of my favorite animal, the cow. Go ahead, laugh. My grandparents lived in Tillamook.

But their one little slide was a perfect time capsule of each of their 6th grade selves—these little people we come to know so well through the school year. These little people arrive as 5th grade children but launch as 7th grade young adults. These little people who we watch grow from ragamuffins into fine, upstanding seniors. We get to witness this whole circle of life process—it’s why we teach.

Yesterday was a gift, and I am grateful. We’re off to Portland again today, but my heart is all filled up.

Today is a quintessential Oregon winter day—dreary. It is foggy and rainy for the two hour trip north, big giant drops on our windshield, with little pieces of ice inside. The cloudy sky is a muttering dirty color, not white, but grey and grouchy. The stupidly planned two lanes of the I-5 freeway feel constricted and tight as the semis and trailer trucks cast puddles of water.

We are on a weekday trip to the hospital in Portland. The Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) complex sits high on a hill above the city of Portland. The pothole roads that lead up the hill make no sense, curving through the Marquam Hill neighborhood and past portlandy forest parks. It takes a good 8 minutes to get up the hill this way, and it makes me wonder grimly, “How many people die on the way up to the emergency room?” It seems a counter-intuitive trek.

I guess you can tell what kind of mood I am in this morning.

When you get to the top of hospital hill, it is WILD how massive this place is. One could get lost for days in the curving roads and the paved paradise parking lots and the ton of towering buildings that are also here. This is a college campus and an emergency room and a children’s hospital and a specialist hospital all wrapped into one. An army of people in scrubs scurry through the labyrinth hallways. I wonder how many people work here every day? I wonder how many patients arrive here every day? I wonder how many get lost?

We make it to the Hatfield Building, floor 11. Another trek that felt dumb: they funnel immunocompromised people through the emergency room in order to get to the testing floors above. Maybe we did it wrong?

Side note: the building is named after Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield who accomplished much for the state during his lifetime. But the best part of his story is that his mom went back to school when he was 5 years old, and became a junior high school teacher. Yay for strong women.

Ray has an electrocardiogram (EKG) first, with a friendly and awkward male tech. “Go ahead and take off your top,” says the tech. “Oh, not my bottoms?” Ray dad-jokes. We laugh. The procedure is quick. And then he winces as the EKG stickers come off his hairy GenX chest.

An echocardiogram (echo) is next. A different room and a different tech, this time a no-nonsense young female. It’s basically an ultrasound, but there’s no fun baby dancing in his belly. The detector thing is up higher than that, checking all the corners, chambers and valves of his sweet heart. The tech bosses Ray around, “Breathe in, hold it. Breathe out. Ok, breathe normal.” In the still room, the keyboard hollers a click with each still image taken. At one point, the bed is raised, causing a high-pitched groaning sound. “It’s protesting today,” declares the tech. I offer my contribution, “Don’t take it personally, honey.” I giggle. Ray doesn’t really. This procedure is long, maybe 45 minutes. It must feel exhausting to Ray, following all the little commands and clicks of the tech.

We’re done on this floor so we head back out to the elevators to head to the 14th floor for apheresis consult. And we get lost. It takes a few minutes of wandering together, a little annoyed, before we right the ship and find our way.

On the 14th floor of the Hatfield, we wait. When it’s time to consult, Ray hears that he’ll be getting a central line port for the apheresis portion of the procedure in a few weeks. That’s the first part of the stem cell transplant, where they collect his blood cells out of him for 5 hours a day, for a couple days in a row. It will be our first overnight stay in Portland for this outpatient procedure in mid-March.

The three days previous to the apheresis, he will administer his own daily injection shot at home to prepare his body to release these cells. The apheresis is the process of collecting his blood cells in order to condition and freeze them before Ray receives them back a week or so later. In between, he’ll have a high dose of chemo to kill the remaining bad myeloma cells.

The apheresis can happen through both of the arm veins as well. The draw is taken out of one arm through an IV and then replaced through a matching IV on the other side.

But the port will work better for Ray. He’s always had frustrating arm veins to find, and also had surgery on his humerus tumor 6 months ago. The port will have three holes: one for in and one for out and one for the medicines like the chemo, I think. I could be wrong.

After the consult, we work our way back down the labyrinth hallways again, this time to find the aerial tram. And wow, the tram is by far the coolest part of the day. It sits on the edge of hospital hill, connected to the Kohler Pavillion where Ray will recover for at least a couple weeks. The bone marrow unit is on the 14th floor, which is nicknamed 14k. I like that for some reason; it reminds me of gold and diamonds.

Anyway, the tram is a 5-minute ride, connecting the hospital hill to “the waterfront,” a whole other collection of important medical buildings. You can drive your car from here to there, but it takes 15 minutes or so, depending on Portland traffic.

If you get the chance to ride the tram in Portland, do it. It feels epic. It offers a pretty sweet view of Portland, though the truly downtown area is around the corner and just out of reach. The Cascade Mountains are in the distance, but on this gloomy day, the mountains were not out.

Ray’s next appointment is a consult and blood draw at the Knight Cancer Institute inside the Building for Health and Healing on the waterfront. I like that name too; it sounds expensive and helpful. Thank you Phil Knight.

At the blood draw, a young trendy-looking guy collects 16 little vials of blood. Some of this is routine blood work, while some of it includes interesting tests I haven’t seen before. Later, looking at his MyChart, I realize it is about how Ray’s blood will respond to transfusion. I think, but again, I could be wrong, it will inform both the transplant process, plus the decisions made in case of an emergency. For example, k-antigen negative people shouldn’t be transfused with k-antigen positive blood.

Again, I am blown away by the times we live in. Our last tech tells us that this is how George Washington died: extreme blood-letting, though he assures us that 16 mini vials won’t hurt Ray today. It was thought that draining blood from a patient could really help. But ultimately, 50% of Washington’s blood was drained from him, and this became unsustainable. I haven’t fact checked this, but if true, he was just a mere 250 years too early. And maybe even the lessons learned from his death weirdly impacts Ray’s current fight.

The study of modern medicine is magnificent. Magnificent is the work of those who do the work, from researchers like my sisters and my daughter-in-law to the practitioners who serve others within the vast medical system. Equally incredible is the splendor of the human body and the evidence I witness for an intelligent Creator, revealed through patterns and designs and complexity. How great is our God.

Despite today’s weather, my mood has changed from dreary to grateful.

Our sweet old pup, Ellie, died last night. The dog who raised my boys. I’m still in shock. It came fast. She had been fading these past few months, moving more slowly and eating less, but she was still her active and busy self almost to the end. Lucas and I took her for a great walk just last week. But this weekend, her breathing became labored. The pace of her breaths increased and she stretched her neck in a way that made it clear she was searching for more air. Google says this can be a sign of congestive heart failure. She peered at us with sad eyes, like she knew.

But we didn’t even have time to get her to a vet to really know. I was going to take her Monday. Early Monday morning, about 3:00 am, I got up with her and cuddled with her. Maybe I should have taken her to an emergency vet, right then. But then I fell back asleep on the couch. I woke when Ray came down and said, “How is Ellie?” and then “Where is Ellie?” She was nowhere. It was a moment of panic. Then we found her. She had gone to hide behind a living room chair, and tucked herself tightly against the wall and the floor. She was no longer breathing. I looked at Ray in confusion, and then I started to cry.

We woke Lucas. Lucas and Ellie were tight, like therapy.

But then I did not really have time to deal with it. Ray said he would take care of her body. I had to get up and go to school. Tuesday was already a sub day for me, as Ray and I are heading up to Portland for OHSU testing. He’ll have an echocardiogram, an aphersis, and blood work today to prepare for his upcoming stem cell transplant.

Honestly, it’s a picture of my last several weeks. I am functioning, but I am not really dealing. I am going through my days the best I can, but I still have a lot to say about the generosity of friends and family over these past several weeks, and I haven’t been able to say it yet. It’s overwhelmed me.

Some grieving did come last night. When I got home from work, there was no Ellie to greet me at the window. I stood in the doorway for a minute, to take it in. A few minutes later, a delivery person knocked on the door. There was no Ellie to bark at her. And then when I was cutting chicken for dinner, there was no Ellie at my feet to share a little piece with. She wasn’t there after dinner either, when I wanted to invite her to cuddle with me on the couch. There was an empty space on the pantry floor where her food and water once lived. And then, before bed, she wasn’t there to let out the back door one more time for the night.

You don’t really realize all these things are happening throughout the day. Until they’re gone. I’ll miss my friend, Ellie.

If you are walking out of the double sliding doors at the Willamette Valley Cancer Institute building on Country Club Road in Eugene, Oregon, you’ll pass a large, brass bell on a stand. You can’t miss it. The stand is wooden. The bell is attached at the top. The bell sits about chest high, and it has a rope, clearly inviting one to give it a tug. It is, of course, a cancer bell, the kind we celebrate with when our loved one has completed treatment.

Oh my, every time I pass this bell, I have the urge to give it a strong pull. It just sits there, lonely and beckoning.

Remember, I teach middle school. Pulling that bell is just exactly the kind of age-appropriate rebellious activity that happens daily in middle school. Don’t judge me for giving that kind of activity a voice; I just know my clients.

However, when I am at the cancer institute, I am an adult. And so, I gather my self-control. I walk on by.

But one time on my way out, I walked behind a cute older couple, maybe they were in their late 70s. They were walking slowly, so I slowed down too. As we passed by the bell, to my surprise, the dude did what I always want to do: he gave that rope a big tug! He just reached over, tugged it, and kept on walking, with little pause. The sound reverberated across the quiet lobby and out into the front courtyard, announcing good news. Clang, clang!

His wife whirled around and exclaimed, “Honey!”

His reply: “Well, I’m just celebrating that I had my treatment today!”

She shook her head and giggled at him as they walked on.

Buddy, I get that. I smiled at him in complete understanding. Good for him.

And he’s on to something. The idea of a cancer bell originated 1996 to celebrate the end of one’s treatment, this remains so important. However, unfortunately not all cancers have a clear end. This is particularly true for Ray’s form of blood cancer, Multiple Myeloma. The many of us who are walking through any type of cancer treatment, whether patient or caregiver, need an opportunity to celebrate moments. This fight is long and hard.

According to Cheralyn Leeby Ph.D., LMFT, the use of the cancer bell in medical centers has actually evolved to be more inclusive—highlighting a positive scan or completing a treatment, or something else that has caused joy. “Some centers now offer more inclusive ways for patients to honor personal milestones on the cancer journey…there is no longer a singular definition of success or completion.” Nurses encourage patients (or their wives) to choose their own moments to celebrate.

Yes. I like this. Ray is one month from ringing his first bell. If you know Ray, he’ll be the opposite of the old guy I walked behind. You know that he will not want to make a racket. But to heck with that. Ray’s wife is gonna make him ring it.

Ray’s last round of induction treatment started yesterday. He is on the 6th and final month of weekly DRVd injections and pills. He’s done so well, but it’s also kicked his butt. He’s tired. His immune system is low. The start of the semester was a few weeks ago, and sure enough, he caught a bad cold/flu. It settled down in his chest and scared us for a while. Prayers from loved ones and our awesome church prayer chain helped to push him through it. Thank you.

There have been other wins/losses too. His coworkers, students, and players have been so understanding. He continues to work full-time, but he’s had to cut back his coaching involvement with the Bushnell University women’s basketball team this season. This weekend, we were bummed to opt out of our favorite road trip of the season to Seattle (against our youngest son Josiah’s school, Northwest University, where his girlfriend Breanna is on the team. Our oldest, Ryan, also attended and played basketball at NU). Josiah has been working with the Seattle Mariners and the Seattle Seahawks this year. This weekend he’ll dress up as Humpy the Salmon for the Mariners Fan Fest celebration at the park. (I’m not supposed to tell people, but sometimes I can’t help it.) We’re sad miss it, but are so grateful for the unique and timely joy that has come from witnessing him be part of the winning seasons of both teams. It’s been a gift.

Ray actually looks forward to his treatment day on Fridays because he takes 10 steroid pills which give him back his old energy for a few days. Saturday mornings are a flurry of activity for him, completing tasks he needs the energy for. But surely, the Sunday afternoon crash comes and he again finds himself fighting sleep in his easy chair.

There continues to be great news each month as his blood tests return. His kappa/lambada light chain ratios have lowered, as has his M-spike protein. You don’t need to know what those are, just that everything is out of the abnormal range.

His lab numbers are just where the doctor wants them before he heads into his month of tests, assuring his body is ready for an autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT) at the end of March. The transplant process requires us to be at OHSU Portland for at least a month, in April. During this transplant, Ray’s own blood cells will be collected, treated, and stored. He will be administered very high dose chemotherapy, and then his own blood cells will be returned to his body. He will be very sick at first, with a brand-new immune system which needs several months of isolation to become strong again.

Rest assured, when we leave OSHU Portland, Ray’s wife will find the cancer bell. He’ll ring it.

Leeby, Cheralynn. “The Psychology of the Cancer Bell.” Psychology Today, 30 July 2025, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/consciously-creating-your-soul-life/202507/the-psychology-of-the-cancer-bell.

Another weekend trip. This time Ray and I are driving through a portion of what they call the Coulee Corridor, a national scenic byway in the middle of Washington State. It’s our version of “over the river and through the woods,” as we are on our way to grandpa and grandma’s house in Coulee Dam.

A coulee is a landform with steep cliffs and a long valley, essentially a rocky ravine which was carved out by force of water. The entire Coulee Corridor runs north to south for an impressive total of 150 miles, from Omak to Moses Lake. On this drive, you find yourself on a road which runs through the bottom of the ravine and along a series of glistening lakes. A natural trough with Grand Canyon-esque cliffs and ridiculous rock boulders, it is one of the best places on planet earth to see the geology of ancient ice ages. In the words of my cousin Katie who explores it frequently with her adventurous kids, “We are globally distinctive here. No where else like it in the world—literally.”

Geology tells us that long ago, this understated and underrated corridor was formed by volcanoes, lava, and fire. Layers upon layers of rock, hundreds of feet thick, crushed and then settled. Then came glacial ice fields, amassed atop the rock, naturally constructing deep ice dams and behind them, icy lakes. The largest prehistoric lake, Glacial Lake Missoula, covered much of what we call western Montana today. As temperatures rose, the ice dams would splinter, causing rushing mega-floods to release the water’s wrath across North Idaho to the Columbia Plateau of Washington State, eventually flowing down the Columbia Gorge to the sea. And thus, when the Ice Age was over and the glacial water had drained down the Columbia Gorge to the Pacific Ocean, the Coulee Corridor of central Washington State was left behind, a magnificent network of canyons, rock channels, potholes, and little lakes. Catastrophic floods created a glorious place for us to enjoy today.

In 1912, a delegation of random scientists and dignitaries traveled to this area for geologic exploration. It was a wild 50-day coast-to-coast train trip, conceived by a Harvard professor who called it The Transcontinental Excursion. At the Almira train station, they were met by a caravan of cars, Model Ts and the like, driven by local farmers who would lead them deep into the coulee, meeting up again with the train in Coulee City. (It must have been quite a feat to gather up this collection of cars near Almira, Washington during 1912. And wow, the travel for these dignitaries on these dusty wagon switchbacks was a present-day equivalent of a thrilling pink jeep tour in Sedona.) The delegation was awed by the area. They commented on the need for irrigation, plus noted a natural spot perfect for a man-made dam. This idea was lightly discussed among U.S. leaders at the time. But then for years, the grand coulee would just sit there.

Sit there, that is, until just the right time in history.

In the time between WWI and WWII, the US decided that this very coulee was perfect for a modern dam, one that would generate enough electricity to light and power a nation. Work began in 1933, and the construction is a whole story in itself. By 1941, the Grand Coulee Dam would successfully send its first electricity to Seattle to produce aluminum and to assemble airplanes and ships. The dam powered 8 western States during WWII.

The dam would also irrigate the entire Columbia Basin, causing sandy soils to bloom into an agricultural mecca. In the 1950s, the irrigation allowed my mother-in-law’s young parents and eight children to scratch the dry scablands of the Tri-Cities area into a thriving farming plot. She is the one who has taught me the idea of becoming “better, not bitter,” something she declares in the face of adversity, those times when life throws you around. The Columbia Basin Project reclaimed Central Washington for food production, constructing about 330 miles of primary canals which ran from Grand Coulee Dam to Pasco. Water for the farm offered their livelihood. My mother-in-law tells me about the significant amount of human labor it required of them. Their water was drawn from the canal by heavy metal pipe, filling two big ponds on the farm. From there, 12 long pipelines lay throughout the property, with 20 pipes per line. Dad and the kids moved and changed the pipes many times throughout each day, sliding the hook in and laying it back down, systematically soaking the modest plot of alfalfa hay which was cut four times a year. During the summer months, the water hydrated all day long, with only short breaks to move the pipes. The water also allowed them a “truck patch,” a plot of five acres which the kids could sell as surplus by the roadside. The truck patch nurtured garden produce such as corn, watermelon, cantaloupe, tomatoes, and more. Families throughout the Columbia Basin were sustained in this way, building rich heritage and bravely becoming better as they grew, despite the incredibly difficult labor it required.

Except, with progress, there is usually more to consider, always another side to the story. Was this truly progress? Maybe the project should have sat for longer, so that we could do it right. Instead, we broke relationships. What about the natives of the area? What about the salmon? The indigenous people who had lived here for thousands of years were disregarded in the name of progress. What should have been a partnership with the local tribes of the coulee turned into a greedy grab. It was as if history repeats itself, and the land was ravaged again. What the ancient Ice Age floods did to the land of the coulee—crushing, constructing, and splintering—the United States did the exactly same to the original people of this land. The Grand Coulee Dam saved the U.S. during WWII, but it also served as a disaster to the precious people who lived there. My father-in-law grew up on the reservation side of the dam and can tell many stories of the devastating impact. Incredibly, it was not until a 1994 settlement with the Confederated Tribes of the Colville reservation that the 12 original bands received a compensation for the loss of their land and their salmon fishing grounds. The tribe has responded with initiatives which successfully restore species, habitats, and culture.

On our weekend trip, I’ve been thinking about all of this. How does it apply to my own life? How are humans formed and reformed and transformed, like this land? How do we change and hold up and persist without becoming bitter?

Nature often undergoes heavy processing, natural or otherwise. It is a manufacturing feat which forms, reforms, and transforms. It has been said that soil is rock, plus heat, or crushing glacier. Steel is iron, plus fire. Diamond is carbon, crystallized by high heat and pressure, discovered and dug by blasting deep pits. Fine linen comes from flax—breaking, rippling, scraping, combing, spinning, weaving, bleaching.

This is life too, isn’t it? At just the right time in our own lives, over and over again, we also experience process and change. Maybe it occurs after years of fallow and dry places forged by fire and ice and sweat and struggle, even long-suffering. Maybe the pressure or the pain is forced upon us. Or maybe we have some power over it. Either way, how do we respond? How do we grow better, not bitter?

Second Corinthians 4:8-12 gives us a piece of the picture, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.” Life is always at work within us.

In middle school, I am currently reading Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt with my 6th graders. In the story, Mr. Tuck tells 10-year-old Winnie, “[Life’s] a wheel, Winnie. Everything's a wheel, turning and turning, never stopping. The frogs is part of it, and the bugs, and the fish, and the wood thrush, too. And people. But never the same ones. Always coming in new, always growing and changing, and always moving on. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's the way it is.” But the Tuck family is off the wheel of life, inadvertently drinking water from a secret spring, and now stuck at the same age for 78 years. Though it seems wonderful to live forever, Mr. Tuck is devastated by it, and he wishes they had never found the spring. He attempts to explain to Winnie why she must not drink the water. “Living's heavy work, but off to one side, the way we are, it's useless, too. It don't make sense. If I knowed how to climb back on the wheel, I'd do it in a minute. You can't have living without dying. So you can't call it living, what we got. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road.”

You can’t have living without dying, whew. At this point in the story, the kids and I have a valuable discussion about the blessing of a full life. Sixth graders always offer the most amazing thoughts. This year’s conversation hit me different in light of Ray’s cancer diagnosis.

With this in mind, Second Corinthians 4: 16-18 continues, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Life is always at work within us. What was once formed into channels of pressed rock can transform into lush lakes. Wells of deep, broken coulee within us are prepared for such times as this. What once lie fallow can come alive again, or even come to life for the first time. How will I embrace this process of transformation and restoration? What if I allow it to make me into the likeness of Jesus? What if, instead of fighting it, I allow it to change me for better, not bitter?

_________________

An end note:

Just as I was finishing writing this piece, Ray showed me a news alert about a ridiculous boulder and landslide in the Coulee Corridor, along the same road we just traveled. My first thought was, “That MUST be AI.” But this rarity actually happened just this weekend. Yesterday, WSDOT avalanche crews cleared it with an explosion of dynamite. I’m not sure what the real-life application could be here, but maybe someone can tell me in the comments. Check it out!