processing......

I am trying to process how one such as I land in such precarious places: my oncologist - the one who is like the only author and finisher of my treatment plan is still in Poland. Like a million miles away Poland. My new medical-BFF-trial-nurse-scheduler-Julie, had emergency surgery of some secretive sort over a week ago. I mean I would send her a card, but I don't even know her last name. She has slipped over the edge of the known world.

Much time has been spent my last two trips to OSU merely trying to find someone, SOMEONE, to mix up my skulls-and-bones drug cocktail, or - as was the case last Wednesday - NOT mix it.

I am in no-mans land.

I missed my last treatment because my blood - my very own blood that I thought to have taken such very good care of - flips me off, ties some lunch on a hobo stick and starts to trot on down the road......

I am somewhere between Odysseus ending up in the cave of the one-eyed Cyclops and the Sirons. (don't worry, the Sirons would not entice me all that much right now...) I feel like I am riding a flatboat down the bloody Ohio River heading to settle in Ken-tuk-ee, with a hundred set of Shawnee eyes stealthily watching from the cliffs overhead, planning my tortuous demise. I am Pa Ingalls unable to get to the house from the barn in a horrible blizzard because the rope they so thoughtfully tied the night before came undone.

I am in the middle of Los Angeles without a GPS. I am on the Amazon River without a guide. I am tiptoeing by an al Qaeda terrorist camp, whistling in the dark.

Don't you see the iceberg up ahead Captain Edward Smith????

Lots of good folks are praying and praying and lifting me up before the throne continually, but this day, in this situation, I just feel so alone.

Tell me Alice, which way is out? It is so easy to slide down the medical-rabbit-hole and lose one's way. On each side I look, it is dark and calamitous and I am not sure which foot to put out first.

I don't know which path leads to the best medical help. The door that seemed correct and helpful is now just banging in the wind. I think the Cheshire Cat is purring...

I don't do cancer every day. And even though I have had a total of maybe 13.25 hours of education on my type of cancer now, I feel like I know even less.

I am in the very hands of God. The only ones around me are the ones that are praying, and I cannot trust in anything other than the hand of God.

One of the Rabbis I listen to tells a story and it goes something like this: A Rabbi has left his students after dark and takes a wrong turn heading home. Not noticing where he is while deep in thought he hears someone ahead commanding him to stop. The loud voice, obviously a Roman soldier, yells "Jew! Tell me who are you and where are you going!?"

The Rabbi answers back "tell me, how much do they pay you for your work?" and the soldier somewhat sarcastically answers "3 denarii a week".

The Rabbi answers "if you will come work for me and ask me those two questions each morning I will pay you double your wages"......

I am lost. I am now somewhat medically alone for what I realize are really important weeks in my treatment.

So I guess I better know now who I am and where I am going.....This kind of makes me shiver.

If my foot had not been on the rock, it would have slipped. If I did not believe that there was a "Most High", I would be dashed in the deepest pit. If I did not remember Joseph, and David, and Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and John the Baptist and the focus of my study this past year - Moses - I would not know to Whom to pray, to Whom to turn, to Whom catches me when the captain is not on the lookout for the icebergs.

Trust me, I so do not feel like "super-Christian" here. I shiver and I quake probably far more than I should.

But God is bringing me down to this one very, very important point - I am in His hands. And it doesn't matter if I can see the path, I just need to know who I am and where I am going.