Riding The Wave – Multiple Myeloma

The Chinese character for "crisis". One means "danger" and the other means "opportunity."

“You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.” – Brian Tracy

Needing or asking for help from others often pushes us way outside our comfort zone. We are the ones who reach out to help others and now we find ourselves desperately trying to migrate our way through a cancer diagnosis and fear we may have never experienced before. Often when this happens it is added on the top of our already full lives. It gets plopped right on top of the heap and dwarfs all that we have that makes us who we are. We push and push to lift it off while at the same time keeping all our plates spinning in the air teetering with the slightest movement that impinges on that delicate balance. It takes us a while to figure out that all that is absurdly ridiculous. And often even longer to ask for help or to be willing to accept it. The time it takes us to figure this out is an interesting one.

“Life is what happens to you
While you’re busy making other plans.”
John Lennon
Beautiful Boy

When Dave got sick and we had 3,000 miles separating our lives from the old to the new, it felt more like a crisis than an opportunity, I’m certain of that as I venture back into my memories. We were coming off of a very, very difficult decade. I felt like I had hit my stride as a 42 year old. I felt great. I loved my life. Things seemed reasonably good. Then BAM! My mom contracted the last of her five cancers and we knew quickly it was the end of the line for her. I began to peel off so many of my responsibilities to allow myself to care for her properly and take care of my family. All the other stuff that wasn’t directly related to that simply had to go. It took me a while to figure it out and I struggled with it. I didn’t want to give up something that I wanted to be there when it was all over. I began to let the wrong things go. My health and well being. My ability to interact with my children in meaningful ways for some duration. After my mother died, my life had dwindle down to almost nothing. I was sitting on the couch day after day like a blob with little strength to move in any meaningful ways.

Then Dave lost his coveted job in the Telecom industry along with thousands of other talented, smart telecom engineers. The whole industry tanked without warning. Everyone was gaping and wondering what in the world just happened? Our son had just started at a private high school in DC. We had the big house, obligations. It was frightening. The industry not only tanked, it disappeared. It took Dave a while to figure out it wasn’t coming back and he began to re-invent himself. He’s amazing. He told me I had to get a job. I didn’t want to. I barely brushed my hair anymore, a job? Eh gads! I liked working around my life, my family. I always worked, but it was the traditional 2nd income to buy the kids clothes and a few things for me like gym membership and things like that. It gave me a sense of independence but I didn’t exactly contribute to the major bills. Back to the corporate world after 20 years was not even on my radar. He found me a job before he found one for him. It was hilarious really. I ended up working at The University of Maryland and very quickly, I loved it. It got our health insurance and our children were able to attend there with full tuition remission as children of a staff member. It freed Dave to run around for 6 years and do consulting work, which eventually parlayed into the job he has now. But during that time, our son faltered, our marriage became incredibly strained. My sister and her son were floundering after the death of my mother. It was one crisis after the other. I felt like a fish in a very tiny fish bowl with someone trying to shoot me. I was exhausted. I began to reach out and get help. Help for my son, help for Dave and I and our family. Stepping back from being sucked into my sister’s destructive vortex. (She’s doing great now!)

Things finally started to look up when Dave got his job here. We were coming through the storm. I had managed to put together a really great group of helpers that assisted me in gaining better balance and solving our problems, while allowing everyone else to solve theirs and make their own choices, good or bad. It was hard, but liberating. However, it was still a source of stress. I just kept picking away at it and rejoicing in every positive thing no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. I learned to stop worrying about stuff that could possibly happen and began to replace it with what I knew was totally possible. I began to encourage everyone in my life, my sister, my son, my husband, to do their best, make good decisions. I believed in them, they could do it. Bit by bit my own self help and that of others I trusted and admired began to take hold. It was still tenuous, but it was most definitely moving in the right direction. I also decided that I was no longer going to sacrifice myself or my sanity for everyone else. I was still there for them, but instead of doing everything for them or trying to keep everything glued together, I simply learned to listen, encourage, direct, but I stopped doing it for them. I would help them do it for themselves. Very akin to “enabling” analogies when dealing with someone who is an alcoholic.

Then Dave got the job offer and after much difficulty in the decision he accepted it. Again, I called in the troops. Dave doesn’t like change. He hates to move. He was all caught up in “things”. He had four potential job opportunities but this one had real stability and utilized his talents in a way the others did not. He was hedging. In my head I was “SCREAMING!” So I ordered up a neighborhood cocktail party, which we did often. But in the invitation I informed our friends that I needed their help. Their help to convince Dave to accept the job, despite that they knew it meant they would lose us as neighbors. Dave respected them. They were all highly successful. They had suffered through our trials and tribulations with awe and amazement. They were up for the task. It was hilarious, now that I look back on it. I often say, “It takes a village to be married to my husband!” He comes from a blue collar family that worked hard at the same job and in the same house for over 30 years. Always suspicious of change. Never taking chances or risks. Staying firmly in a small comfort zone. Granted Dave’s comfort zone was a bit bigger, but the old ideas were firmly cemented in his psyche. I, on the other hand, being a military brat, whose father flew the SR-71 on recon missions during the cold war, was an adventurer at heart who loved change and risk. It pumped me up! It kept me from being bored. I was not the person to have this conversation with Dave. He needed others who were successful and cautious to help him sort it through.

“A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.” – Henrik Ibsen

Over the years I realize now, I have always done this. I will reach out to someone with the right authority to talk to my children, a friend, my husband. An external point of view. I hadn’t realized that I did indeed ask for help and that it worked well for me. But when Dave got sick, it was different. It wasn’t a sit down offering guidance. It was hard work. Jobs, tasks, time away from their lives to help me with mine. It was a bit harder. But I quickly surrendered to it and found that I was rich beyond measure in those I had gathered up in my journey of life who were offering and willing to do whatever they could.

• The trick was to allow them.

• The other trick is to ask the right people to do the right jobs.

• And finally, to let them do it, not my way, but theirs.

Imagine having friends come into your house and say, “I’m here, I have two hours, what do you want me to pack.” And actually setting them in your closet, your kitchen, your garage, basement and saying, “Here.” I couldn’t do it on my own, and Dave wasn’t there to help me. Twenty seven years of stuff that wasn’t going to be gone through like it should for a big move simply had to get packed up. Knowing I wouldn’t know where things were because I hadn’t packed them. I was selling furniture on Craig’s List. Trying to decide what I could leave and what I could take. Having nanoseconds to get over whatever attachment I might have. While at the same time, calling Dave every day to see how he was getting along with his treatment.

Moving to our new home and allowing my in-laws to unpack us, put my kitchen together, organize boxes into the garage and the bedrooms, while I worked long distance to train my replacement at the University on east coast time while I was on west coast time. It was daunting. Meeting my new neighbors and introducing myself. Gauging quickly how much I could tell them and asking them for their help. I laugh now and tell people, “Imagine… Hello, I’m Lori, I just moved here from the east coast. My husband has cancer, we have to go to Arkansas for stem cell transplants, can you mow my lawn and take my dog?” And you know what? They were amazing. They mowed my lawn, picked up the crap in the driveway and at the front door people leave, took Kip for me, put out our trash cans every Sunday so that people would think we were home. They all took a small job and coordinated it amongst themselves to get done. When I would get home from one of our many trips to Arkansas, my refrigerator would have meals and casseroles, milk, eggs. It makes me cry to think of it now. But you know what? It’s what I would have done for them. It was surreal to be on the receiving end of such care. I realized that it was my reward for all the years of help I had given others and that the gracious and wonderful thing to do was to accept it, thank them and be grateful. I did, I was, and I still am.

“Nobody can do everything, but everyone can do something.” – Author Unknown

So here is my challenge to you… Figure out what you can hand off. Not only do I want you to ALLOW the help, I want you to ask for it. I have discovered that it’s EASY to help others. It is much more challenging to accept and ask for help. So push outside your comfort zone. Think of your friends and family. Don’t overburden them, but ask them to help you with stuff that you know they are really good at. Utilize their skills. Go for it!  

Indeed this blog was started twofold: 1) to help me heal and 2) to help others. It was what I could do to give back as gratitude for all those who did even the smallest thing to help us on our journey. Strangers, friends, family, all of them. And in the likely event I have not thanked you personally, THANK YOU! Each and everyone!

The opportunity that came out of all of this is that Dave and I were able to reassess our lives, not just as individuals, but as a couple.  It brought us closer together and a happiness we had not experienced since we were dating. Life had really overtaken us, as it often does. When Dave told folks he was taking his life back. I suggested we didn’t have to take it all back! 

Tags: allowing, asking, help