Curve Balls

In some darkened field, late at night while we sleep, Life is out there winding up to throw curve balls. Some have landed close to home. Some of those curve balls are hitting and hurting dear friends, family members and clients.

If you find the field, will you please reason with Life for me, and tell it we’ve had quite enough of the curve ball routines, and we request only easy walks for the next little while? Maybe even let us steal some bases and score home runs?

Thank you sincerely.

Meanwhile, in the wake of curve balls, all we can do is love ‘em up - those whom we hold dear to our hearts - while they’re still here.

Got a call today from a friend’s friend whose nephew has some rare sarcastic sarcoma-something-or-other. I told her, I’m not a doctor, I’m not a nutritionist, but I’d be happy to listen to his mama and encourage her to find ways to love him up in the best way she can muster that makes sense to her right now. 

The doctors want him to take in as many calories as he can - even empty calories. All the mamas I know want to be sure calories count - that the nutritional goods are in those energy units. Sugar feeds cancer, we now know, so, why would the doc say, “even empty calories - like ice cream, cookies, and sodas - are OK?”

Where and when did the disconnect happen between the science and art of medicine?

Can the docs read that this mama is ready to provide nutritional calories for her beloved twenty year old baby? Can’t they tell that she wants to do the very best she can for him?

Green juices made with real, fresh, organic produce offer micronutrients. Chlorophyl is a tonic to cells fatigued by chemo, but that same chemo therapy that may kill cancer cells also tanks a person’s immunity, so all those greens must be sanitized. The only way I’ve done that is by soaking the fresh greens, fruits and berries in a dilution of ten drops of grapefruit seed extract to a gallon of water for ten minutes, and then rinsing them with clear pure water.

There is some debate about pulverizing veggies in a high-speed blender (like Vita Mix) versus slow juicing which extracts the juice from the vegetable matter leaving behind the pulp. Each method has benefits and drawbacks as far as I can tell. Fiber is good. (The blender-made concoction.) More micronutrients per ounce in juice made in a juicer are also good. Perhaps having both options part of each week is best?

The point is, the curve balls make us dance - FAST! We try our best to figure out the most efficient moves to improve health or mood or living circumstances for those whom we love. Along the way, we learn a lot about how healing works, or doesn’t. I’m finding that, as I age, I’m more familiar with territory that used to be unknown. The first time I sat with a dying person, I was sixteen. I learned a lot. With each successive failure of Life to stick around in the body of someone I loved, I learned more. I learned about the futility of raging “... at the dying of the light.” (Dylan Thomas) 

I learned about the importance of meeting people where they are - even if their choices may be different from what I would choose. 

A friend who chose to go the organic juicing path, while eschewing any interventions from Western Medicine’s arsenal, died a painful death of breast cancer, but she was in charge and felt good about her choices.

A cousin who relied exclusively on Western Medicine’s finest  wisdom died of ovarian cancer at home with her hair and nails done and lying on the pink candy-striped sheets of her choosing.

Bottom line is: Death, like birth, is an individual affair. The choices available for those final months, days and hours are infinite.  Music? Morphine? Massage? Anything that makes sense to the dying and her/his family and friends is fair.

I just wish Life weren’t so skilled at the curve-ball routine. 

We don’t want a repeat performance of our “death of the month club,” for which we inadvertently signed up in 1989-1991. Within eighteen months, we lost thirteen people we loved and counted upon. It was bizarre, macabre, and difficult to catch our breath in between losses - which included both my husband’s parents, both my grandparents and step-father, friends from the AIDS epidemic, colleagues, co-workers, and the gardener of twelve years... oh, and our beloved fifteen year old dog “Fairfax.”

If you should happen to find that darkened field and come upon Life doing it’s warm-up routine to lob some more curve balls, won’t you please tell Life, “We’ve had enough death for this season. Cease and desist!"

Thank you!