CML

Compromised: Immuno-and-Otherwise

~ Georgia Coats ~ 4 Comments

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I got a call the other day from Dr. K, my former hematologist-oncologist of 15 years.  From Michigan.  I don’t know if it’s the weight of the heavy Colorado spring snow on budding branches, or the heaviness of a pandemic that hangs on every soul, but I cherish the check ins that comes my way.

Being officially in the immunocompromised category by chronic leukemia and the immunotherapy treatment for it, I feel privileged to receive random check in calls from caring people wanting to know if I am doing okay during this pandemonium that has taken over the globe.  They want to make sure I am taking extra care of myself.

Emotionally Broadsided

When Dr. K called, I felt emotionally broadsided by the unexpected check in.  I’m sure he has a million things to think about at the main hospital, hit hard with COVID-19, in the heart of Detroit.  But he paused to think of me.  To make sure I was doing okay.

That call confirmed my self-diagnosis.  I am emotionally compromised.  Yup.  Emotions are just below the surface and ready to well up. At. Any. Moment.

Just a fair warning:  If you call to check in and say kind things—I’ll probably cry.  If you stop to tell me your sad or touching news—I’ll probably cry.  It’s possible I might start out laughing at something and end up crying.  Or vice versa. Why limit ourselves to one emotion at a time when we can feel multiple, complex emotions simultaneously?

Mentally Tumbled

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And then there’s my brain. My thoughts tumble around in my head like wet laundry.  The significant intertwined with the curious and bombarded with the mundane and distracted.  Chaotic and scattered.  It’s the opposite of focused.  I’m lacking goals, and trajectory is vague.  So many thoughts circling around in each presented moment.  Yup.  Definitely mentally compromised, too.

“How is Strength my Weakness?”

My favorite part of the movie Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is when the characters discover that they each have specific strengths and weakness within the Jumanji game.  Kevin Hart’s character discovers that strength is actually on his list of Weaknesses.

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I love his question: 

“How is strength my weakness?”

But I also like to flip things around:

What if weakness is actually my strength?

What if tears are my superpower? And grief is a place I’ve grown comfortable with?

What if chronic hope comes from chronic illness?

What if immunocompromised means I’m also immuno-alert?

What if mentally scattered means centered in the present?

What if my limitations are the exact ingredients of sensitive, present, and vulnerable I need now, in the middle of a pandemic?

Broadsided by Grace

If I were to connect with the Designer of my strengths and weaknesses, how would that go?

I imagine it to be similar to The Apostle Paul’s process, being broadsided by grace—grace that came through a conduit of weakness.

Paul pleaded and discussed with the Divine to take away his weakness.

His Designer declared:

My grace is enough; it’s all you need.

My strength comes into its own in your weakness.

And so, the Apostle Paul relinquished himself to be broadsided by grace:

Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride… And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.  (2 Cor. 12:9-10)

Weakness was the Saint’s necessary ingredient for greater sources of grace.

To hear the voice of my Designer…  Not to tell me I am healed or that I am strong. But to hear that at the heart of humanity is weakness, and that on my list of strengths, weakness is at the top.

The weaker I get, the stronger I become.  In my current mentally scattered state, I’m okay to sit in the presence of this paradox.  I’m okay to lavishly love on another grieving soul with my unstoppable tears.  I’m awkwardly eager to hold up my best super girl akimbo pose with my favorite napping blanket flapping cape-like behind me in the wind.

I’m surprisingly okay.  Immuno-okay.  I’m being cautious, and there’s not much to report health wise or otherwise.  So strong in weakness.  So okay with my compromised state (at least in this present moment).

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CHRONIC HOPE #6: The Luxury of Looking Forward

~ Georgia Coats ~ 6 Comments

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

When I was first diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in my 20s I stopped looking too far forward.  Planning for the future felt presumptuous, so I learned to live more fully in the present.

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September 2019 marked 19 years since my cancer diagnosis.

I’ve had the privilege of reflecting back on 2 decades of living alongside a cancer diagnosis while continuously being treated for it.

4 different cancer treatments.

12+ bone marrow biopsies.

2 cutting edge miracle meds.

3 miracle babies. 

3 times achieving medicated remissions.

2 relapses.

1 Master’s Degree.  

Tens of thousands of dollars invested.

This journey is chronic. Chronic struggles. Chronic tears. Chronic persistence. Eventually forging a resilient chronic hope that anchors the soul.

I have learned invaluable life lessons of chronic hope: 

We all have struggles.  We all need help.  We all seek a hope that is bigger than us.

We don’t rise above our struggles alone.

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I can dare to make long-term goals that are bigger than me, because others dared before me.

In 1959 a researcher identified a very specific chromosomal abnormality present in CML patients.  In the 1990s my first miracle medication was developed—a targeted immunotherapy treatment that was revolutionary.  The standard chemotherapy treatments do not discriminate between healthy cells and cancerous ones, thus, leaving the patient with a myriad of miserable toxicities and a bleak prognosis.  But this miracle medication targeted and treated a very specific problem inside of me, on a genetic level.  It was proven more effective, more efficient, and less toxic than standard chemo.

It changed the world for people like me.

 

Reflecting back is essential for moving forward.

Now, with 3 growing kids, a specialized degree as a language and culture learning coach, and a healthy body in medicated remission, I dare to look forward.

There are so many people along the way who have given of themselves for me to be in this privileged place.

Like the doctor who created my miracle med after building on a researcher’s breakthrough 30 years earlier, what offerings can I bring that just might change the quality of life for a single soul?

These words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. both scare and inspire me:

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”  MLK, Jr.

As a language learning coach, I love to champion individuals towards greater possibilities in their lives.  But MLK Jr.’s words challenge me further forward.  How can I rise above my personal cancer and be a part of treating malignancies that face all humanity?

While Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s impact on society was profound, maybe he started with small offerings and a few champions in his life.  I can do that!  I can spend precious life energy trying to figure out my present and future impact, courageously taking small steps forward.

“If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.”  MLK, Jr.

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Thank you, dear people in my life, who have championed me along the way to fight my battles with cancer—my devoted Greek-immigrant family, my loving husband in sickness and in health, my life-giving friends, my empathetic professors and generous neighbors.

Thank you, doctors and researchers, for devoting your lives and your minds to profoundly changing my prognosis and my quality of life.

Thank you, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for your wisdom and impact on the world, and for encouraging me to bravely take baby steps far beyond my personal cancer.

Thank you, readers, for allowing me to reflect back and dare into the future on this journey of chronic hope.

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This article was published in a series of articles for the Yemeni American News, October, 2019:

Georgia Coats is a Language & Culture Learning Coach, freelance writer, educator, wife, and mother of three who is passionate about healthy mind-body-spirit living.  Chronic Hope is Georgia’s collection of stories, lessons, and life adventures of living alongside chronic leukemia, cancer of the white blood cells, for two decades.  She often shares what’s on her mind at: www.onmymindbygeorgia.wordpress.com

CHRONIC HOPE #4: A Potential Risk of Fighting Cancer

~ Georgia Coats ~ 5 Comments

“How dare you be so irresponsible with your wife’s health?  Don’t you understand the risks you’re putting her through by getting her pregnant in her condition?”

I watched my husband’s face change from shock to anger as the nurse unleashed her stern lecture on him.

Five years into marriage and four years into my cancer diagnosis, I was nearing my 30th birthday.  We had given up on making long-term life goals.  I let go of the dream of living abroad for language and cultural studies, and I quit graduate school.

But the dream of being a mom got stronger.

My super-effective miracle medication for chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) extended both my quality and quantity of life.  Aside from 3-month check ups, an annual bone marrow biopsy, and my daily meds, I lived a normal life.  But normal life made me hope for normal things, like a family of my own.

Truth: In this world we all face struggles.

My doctor was STUBBORNLY clear: pregnancy was out of the question.  It was too risky to subject a fetus to the potentially hazardous effects of my miracle meds. And it was too risky for me to go off my miracle meds for any reason.

After multiple heart-wrenching conversations, desperate prayers, and seeking counsel from others who had faced life’s storms and held on to hope, my husband and I felt like it was risky NOT to start a family.

Two significant things happened:

  1. We learned that we must calculate our risk and take the first step into the storm; and expect God’s reassuring presence to show up along the way.
  2. My stubborn doctor left. His replacement was willing to treat me as a whole person, instead of just treating my disease.  We needed someone to champion for the fullness of life.

Hope is a function of struggle. 

“Hope is a function of struggle,” affirms Brené Brown, author of Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent & Lead.

Eighteen months of chemotherapy injections were considered “safe” for growing three wondrous new lives, but they left me feverish and weak.  As I lay limp on the couch, I regularly recalculated our risk.

Giving up a safe miserable life without big dreams, for the opportunity to cultivate new life, changed something in me forever.  Ultimately, wherever beauty and life-giving possibilities exist, they are worth the pursuit.

Brené Brown reminds us that, “the willingness to show up changes us. It makes us a little braver each time.” 

My desire to be a mom dared me to set 9-month goals.  Three times. That led me to reconsider the daunting goal of graduate school to become a Language and Culture Learning Coach—this time as a non-traditional, cancer-fighting, mother of three.

Chronic struggles forged profound hope that pushed me higher and deeper in mind, body, and spiritual potential. And, in setting an example for my miracle children to live courageous lives.

The ongoing challenge is to keep hands open while living courageously—to never close in on the great gifts of life we’ve been given. I’ve been given 20 years to cultivate chronic hope. IMG_4212I find myself in a privileged place to champion others.  My heart is for those who face war, leave home, and migrate across cultural and linguistic barriers in search of the fullness of what life can be.  To these souls I hold out small offerings with open hands.

What are your dreams, forged in struggle?

Who are your champions?

What are the little offerings in your hands?

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This article was published in a series of articles for the Yemeni American News, August, 2019:

Georgia Coats is a Language & Culture Learning Coach, freelance writer, educator, wife, and mother of three who is passionate about healthy mind-body-spirit living.  Chronic Hope is Georgia’s collection of stories, lessons, and life adventures of living alongside chronic leukemia, cancer of the white blood cells, for two decades.  She often shares what’s on her mind at: www.onmymindbygeorgia.wordpress.com

 

BEAUTY IN THE PATTERNS

~ Georgia Coats ~ 8 Comments

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Tears streamed from the corners of my eyes and dripped boldly onto the sterile paper that covered the examination table.   As I lay in fetal position whispering a desperate prayer, I could feel the numbed pressure and intense inner pain of the thick metal needle probing deep into my hipbone.  I had stopped counting bone marrow biopsies after a dozen. They had become routine over the years of chronic leukemia treatments. With a thick layer of gauze under an over-sized Band-Aid, the doctor patched up my tiny yet deep bone wound and sent me on my way.

My husband hugged me tight, handed me my coat, and ushered me out the door.  I still had time to make it to my absolutely favorite graduate Spanish linguistics class.  Being an already awkward, over-achieving, non-traditional grad student, I decided limping in late with tearstains and a bandaged backside was still worth it.  I slipped into my front row seat and began to copiously copy the tree diagrams sprawled all over the whiteboards in the room. Syntax. I couldn’t decide if I loved syntax or morphology more.  Good thing I didn’t have to choose—I just love the one I’m with.

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My profesora gave me a sympathetic look and proceeded with her lecture. Compassionately, she had offered that I could take an Incomplete for her class if I needed to during this uncertain time of changing leukemia treatments.  That was unthinkable.  It wasn’t that I needed to “stay busy” during a difficult time, it’s that I needed to be part of something meaningful.

Who knew that la lingüística could provide such purpose?

Within the field of linguistics, the goal is to discover patterns in language.  Once the patterns are discovered, linguists search out evidence found in natural speech to describe the rules and identify the boundaries of such defined patterns.  I find comfort in the certainty of patterns that allow us to explore deep mysteries of minds and cultures.

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Did you know that there are universal principles found in all the world’s languages that set human language apart from animal communication?  This is where geeky meets inspirational.

According to my favorite textbook, Introducción a la lingüística hispánica, creativity in a linguistic sense is the ability to take a finite number of items (a set of sounds, letters, morphemes, or words) and to produce an utterance that has never been said before.  We have the power to create.  This creativity allows us to make friend a verb, and to invent novel combinations like un-Google-able and stay-cation.

Prevarication reflects our human ability to fabricate, that is, both to deceive and imagine other possible worlds.

Recursion is how we use a finite number of language structures and patterns to produce infinite possibilities:

This is the house that Jack built.  This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.  This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.  This is the cat that killed the rat that…

Patterns help our finite human minds fathom infinity.  

We can ponder impossible things.  We can process the past and hope for the future.  Our language capacity allows us to imagine, to weave together a story—whether it is to fabricate a brilliant excuse or invent a fantastical new dimension.

Patterns are discernable and predictable structures that repeat and could potentially go on forever.  They are God’s eternal fingerprint on our temporal world. He set eternity in our hearts and gave us the tools to process and express His everlasting essence.  He has wired us to marvel at divine mystery and to comprehend great and unsearchable things.

In the midst of life’s unknowns, I have learned to cry out to the One who knows me.  To seek the One who penetrates marrow and searches souls. To search for His beauty in patterns.  And not just in language. God has scattered discernable patterns all over this world for us to discover and describe and fathom and imagine.

Meal:

Maybe you have Taco Tuesday.  We have omelets on Fridays.  Embrace the rhythm of routine, but pause to savor it.  Make your favorite omelet, but tweak the ingredients just enough to stir your culinary imagination.  Add smoked Gouda or sundried tomatoes. Top with sautéed mushrooms and onions. Try a side of roasted sweet potatoes drizzled with olive oil.

Song:

I love patterns in music—both the tune and the lyrics.  With hands opened towards heaven, listen, notice, and discover; surrender to His design.

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Prayer:

Lord, you are infinitely loving.  You set eternity in our hearts that we may comprehend unsearchable things.  I call out to you today. Reveal yourself to me through the patterns in this world.  Transform me out of the rut of life-depleting routine and into the unforced rhythm of your grace.  Thank you, Jesus.

Time:

Take time to play with words and play on words.  Marvel at the morphemes that make un-fathom-able possible.  Listen closely to the whispered words God has for you. Try to keep track of unsearchable things.  Get lost in a pattern and imagine new possible worlds. Share a good word from His Word with a friend. Screen Shot 2019-03-18 at 10.29.52 AMhttps://www.thecommonyear.com/blog/2019/3/16/beauty-in-the-patterns-georgia-coats