MERRY CHRISTMAS! MAY YOUR HEARTS BE FILLED WITH ...

With love,
Nate, Tamara, Nick & Maddie Rice

My Friend the Cat

I have always been a cat lady. But at this point in my life I am simply a Balliver lady. As in, Balliver our cat. I love my cat, and I know that makes me a little creepy to some people, but this cat and I have a bond.

Throughout this year, Balliver always seems to know when I am sick. After my first chemo treatment, Nate had to lock Balliver out of our bedroom because all the cat wanted to do was lay on top of me and snuggle and I just couldn't handle it. But by my last treatment I looked forward to getting home to Balliver. I knew I'd lay down in the bed and Balliver would be with me in minutes, right next to my face, purring and rearranging himself again and again to get as close to me as possible.

So it should have been no surprise on Friday that the minute I crawled into my bed (fell, may be a more accurate verb) after surgery, Balliver was immediately by my side. Because Balliver was so intent on getting right on top of me, he was temporarily banned from the room. Later, though, I relented, and he got used to the idea that he would have to be content with "next to" rather than "on top of."

He's a bit like one of those saint bernard dogs, with a sixth sense about these things. His pregdar is even better than mine (just ask Angie) and he just seems to know things. Maybe he's like the Old Testament prophet who stretched out over the boy and brought him back to life ...

Well. Maybe Balliver's not quite that good. But he has become my favorite cat, and that's saying a lot, considering how many I have had. Which is a lot.

Let's see, there was Josie, Cosmo, Baxter, Skye, Molly, Big Kitty, Little Kitty, Sam, Bandit ...

And the irony--oh, the great irony--is that I have been in incredible pain with this surgery. Such terrible pain, I keep repeatedly asking Nate ridiculous questions like: Did they break my sternum? You're sure they didn't dislocate my shoulder? When I know the answer is no.

And why is it ironic? Because if I didn't love that stupid cat so much I would never have climbed onto the porch railing of Harvey and Patricia's house in the middle of the night exactly two years ago and tried to rescue him. The actual root of my pain, you see, is this old injury on the upper right side of my back. I injured it falling off that railing onto concrete when Balliver jumped out of my arms. The other time I injured the same spot is chronicled right here. And since it typically hurts with weather changes, my back hurt before surgery, and since surgery ... it feels worse. (I'm pretty sure surgery didn't do it any favors.)

(Also, I got my bandages removed today. Turns out the doctor cut out all of my old scarring and started from scratch, which explains why this hurts worse than the first surgery and why I thought my sternum had been assaulted.)

All this to say. I'm in pain. And on Saturday I dealt with it and got up and about, and it ended in more pain. So today I took it easy and did lots of laying still, and it's still ending in more pain. Perhaps less pain than yesterday. But ... pain. The kind that makes it hard to breathe and has me taking full doses of Norco.

And, faithful to a fault, Balliver has been here to keep me warm the last three days. So, I'm trying to forget that this current pain issue is pretty much his fault. Well, his fault and cancer's fault. To be fair.

You Know You've Spent Too Much Time at the Hospital When ...

You know the pre-op nurses by name. And they actually remember you.

We had our favorites again. Michael and Lance. Nicest guys in the world. Michael said if we like him so much, we should just ask him out to coffee instead of bothering him at work.

Thankfully, I didn't have much time to get nervous about the surgery. I was fighting some sort of virus all day on Wednesday, then Thursday was spent in panic mode. My thoughts were something along the lines of: Where is the card for Maddie's teacher? Do we still have flannel sheets for Nick's bed? I wonder if Alister McGrath checks his e-mails over the holidays? (It's a freelance thing.) How long will it take Lorenzo to fill my prescriptions? (Yes, I'm on a first name basis with my pharmacist.)

Of course, once I discovered early Thursday evening that we were expected to be at the hospital at 5:15, panic mode went up even more. Would Sam and Michelle really want the kids at 4:45 in the morning? Who could spend the night with them here? (Thankfully, the answer was Sam and Michelle saving the day as usual and taking the kids overnight at their house.)

Then at the hospital Friday morning, I actually fell asleep before surgery. That's how tired and relaxed I was. Michael had to wake me up to put in the I.V.

Surgery went well, was done in two hours, I was wrapped in gauze and the biggest ACE bandage I've ever seen from navel to armpits, and I was sent home, asleep in my own bed before noon. Unfortunately the first pain Rx did not work well and we had to fix that by mid afternoon, as I was feeling like someone took a chainsaw to my sternum, but that has been the only real issue.

What I didn't explain in my previous post, was that we (and by "we" I really mean Nate) hosted our summer staff Christmas party at the house last night (yes, last night). It was planned long before we had a surgery date, people (Brit) were flying in from Colorado, other people (Joel and Shannon) were getting engaged on the way to the party ... there was just no way we could reschedule. And they are all family anyway, so it was fitting that they come upstairs to my recovery bed during the evening to squeeze my hands (no hugs!) and say hello. (I'll have you know, Joel and Shannon, that it was my intention to bake you a heart-shaped cake reading "Dunn & Done," but that was a no-go.) Nate says the party was amazing (it sounded like it, from up here), so I'll take his word for it and I'm glad we didn't cancel.

Now I'm just recovering. Feeling better today than yesterday, getting up and around like the doctor told me too. Sometimes going back to bed (as I didn't really sleep last night--but I'll save that story for another post). Hopefully things will continue this way. Thanks for your prayers! And thanks to Steph and Brian for having the Merry Maids make our house beautiful on Thursday! Thanks to Sam and Michelle and also Diana and Dempsey for helping us with the kids! I appreciate you guys so much. -Tam

Scaffolding Ahead

I know a lot about reconstructions. See, my family (family of origin, that is) had this terrible luck when it came to sightseeing. It seemed we always hit major world landmarks (Big Ben, for example) when they were under scaffolding for reconstruction. Little face lifts. Patching things up here and there.

Tomorrow I'll go in for reconstruction. We have to be at the hospital at 5:15 a.m., and surgery is scheduled for 7:15. (Let's hope the doctor is more awake at that hour than we are.)

Instead of scaffolding, I'll have these strange tissue expanders with a magnetic "hatch," if you will, that will help the doctor find the right spot every week and insert a little more saline each time. It's sort of like internal scaffolding. Temporary and not all that good looking, but they'll help get the job done.

It's the first of four reconstruction procedures I'll be having over the next six to 12 months. Tomorrow I'll be under for about two to three hours and will have two- to three-inch incisions on each side (reopening the outer end of the mastectomy scars). They'll put in the tissue expanders, bandage me up and send me home the same day if all goes smoothly.

From here on out it will be an almost constant project. Every week I'll go in for injections until the desired size is achieved. Then, just for good measure, they'll expand me even further so that I will eventually have a more natural look when it's time to swap these out for actual implants. So forgive me if you see me around March and I look ... well, ridiculous.

It's okay. Just remember I've got some major scaffolding going on.

PS I have no idea what the structure is under scaffolding in the above photo.

The Year of Living Precariously

Just when we believed that we had all the surprises of 2008 under our belt, our lives took yet another unplanned turn.

I've been absent from the blog--busy trying to be healthy again, working out, trying to function normally, and this week I planned on going back to work at the magazine. However, instead of going back to work, I was laid off from the job I've had for almost six years.

A lot of people have asked me if it's legal to lay someone off who has been out on disability, and as far as I can tell the answer is pretty much yes, if you are eliminating their position because of a budget crisis. Unlike most of the other half a million Americans who will also lose their jobs this month, I have been told some freelance work will come my way. Thus I will be leaving the magazine the way I came into it, as a writer/editor for hire, never knowing when paychecks will be lean and when they will be plenty.

This is a really scary position to be in, but it's the reality of our economy and the reality of a downward spiral my career at the magazine was on. I watched it happen and should have bailed out months ago on my own terms.

Over the last year God has continually handed a question to me through the circumstances of my life: Do you trust me? The answer is that sometimes I do and the trust comes easily and sometimes, like right now, I strain and twist, reaching into the cluttered closet of my soul and I just can't seem to find it.

But it's now that the experience of the past year--the past six years, really--settles itself in front of me in ways I can't ignore. There is always a path. There is always an answer. Eventually. Thus, I know I can't give up. I have to chose to trust, even though what I'd like to do most is lay on the couch and wallow in the self pity that comes from discovering you are disposable.

While teaching on a retreat in the fall and while speaking at Forest Home last month, I talked about Legos, about how when we were little we all played with Legos and what did we build with the Legos? Lego towers. We built them using our favorite pieces and tried to build them tall and colorful--my favorite pieces were always those rare clear ones and the rounded ones. But the problem with a Lego tower is that inevitably the minute you get everything just how you like it, someone will knock it down, which is why I have found that life is a lot like a Lego tower.

Sometimes the tower is knocked a little and the repair is easy, other times it gets knocked to the ground. Pieces might get stepped on and broken (or surgically removed). And when we see our broken tower before us it's hard not to panic. Because all we want in that moment is for the tower to be just like it was before, but it isn't going to happen. It may get built again, but it will never look the same. When God's hand is on your life, you will always be in the process of transformation.

But we have to keep building, living in the mystery of not knowing how it will turn out, and the fact of the matter is, it might get knocked down again. Nancy Guthrie says in Holding on to Hope:

"Our task is not to decipher exactly how all of life's pieces fit and what they all mean, but to remain faithful and obedient to God, who knows all mysteries. That is the kind of faith that is pleasing to God--a faith that is determined to trust him when he has not answered all the questions."

Which means that I will keep building, using the pieces I've been given (whether they are the cool round ones or the plain blue squares) and will try to be at peace with the mystery of the unfinished product. My life, like my body, is in a state of reconstruction, and the upside--there is one, believe it or not--is that I just might like the finished product more than I thought I would.

(PS That picture up there on the right. That is some vintage Media Cue for you, my Outreach fans. A department that no longer exists in a magazine I once worked for.)