August 2, 2005

We are home! We arrived here on Thursday, July 18^th, full of relief and joy but we did not return to the home we had left behind in February.

 

Our dog, Phoebe, had died on July 16^th not quite the day we returned home but close enough to be significant. You see, here’s something that most of you don’t know (although the story has filtered down through the rumor mill in Nashville almost to become the stuff that legends are made of).  When we arrived in Seattle, way back in February, the first day in the apartment, I got up ready to face the next 5 months of Janice’s treatment and as was my habit, checked my trusty Treo 650 (cell phone and email, you know). The first message was from Andrea, the friend staying in our house.

 

“Jim, call me, please.” Next I checked my voice mail and there is a message from Amy in my office.

“Jim, this is Amy, please call me…and make sure Janice isn’t around when you do.” Not a good sign, I say to myself. Since Janice’s body is still on Nashville time she is up roaming the apartment getting settled for our long winter stay. So I step outside on the foot wide balcony and dial Amy.
“Jim, Bill is dead,” Amy’s panicked voice says. Bill is one of our two indulged cats.
“You’re kidding.” I reply.
“Wouldn’t joke about this.” Amy responds.
”How?” I asked (now becoming cryptic because Janice is within ear shot)
“We don’t know. All we know is that Bill somehow got outside last night and this morning we found him stiff and dead in the driveway. Andrea has already buried him out in the woods.”
”Crap.”  

Bill had been a part of our family for about 5 years. Elliott selected him from the pound when we shopped for a replacement for Pouncer, our other cat, the one we thought had wondered off into the woods and bought the farm. Of course the day we brought Bill home, Pouncer re-appeared. 

 

Even though Elliott chose Bill, he was always Janice’s cat.  He sat on her desk when she wrote her books, followed her into the bathroom and well, took his cue from her to use the cat box. He always answered with a little “hmm?” when she called his name. When Janice got sick, Bill started sleeping on her chest and would pat her face at night as if to say, “I know, all isn’t well, but you will be ok.”

 

Now, with us barely off the plane in Seattle, Bill was dead. I hung up the phone and pretended that all was ok. Stress was deep enough. So now, fast forward…48 hours before we go home, Phoebe is dead. True it was about time, she was 14 years old, deaf, probably blind, a very feeble but sweet Cocker Spaniel.  Like Bill, she had gone outside; like Bill she died there. She was found lying in the shade of our front porch where she always slept during the hot summer months. Elliott called from Boston the day Phoebe died and emotionally expressed this irony: Phoebe (whom we had know for several months was very sick and on her last leg) had fought to live until some part of her family finally was home and she prevailed. Taylor arrived home 3 days before us and Phoebe had the connection to the family she needed. Finally, in the right company, she felt she could die.

 

I didn’t make the same mistake with Janice about Phoebe that I had with Bill.  Under the recommendation of several friends, I put off telling Janice about Bill. She was beginning a long and rigorous ordeal and didn’t need to think things were falling apart at home while she was in Seattle. Well, as most of you know, the “time to tell” never got better. Every time I came home to Nashville, I was asked,” Have you told her about the cat yet?” The longer I waited the worse the timing seemed. Finally, on a day she was leaving the hospital after her bout of pneumonia, happy with the news that she could start planning to go home, with her spirits up, I blurted out, “I have something to tell you.”

“What is it?” she asked
“Bill died.”
“When?”
“The day we left Nashville”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked
“All your friends told me it wasn’t good timing.” I passed the blame
“You should have told me.”
“Sorry” I said.

She got a bit weepy, and then seemed ok. So when Taylor called me with the news about Phoebe, I immediately called Janice, and said, “Taylor just called from the house…Phoebe died.” Had I been with her instead of on the phone, I briefly imagined putting Janice in a line up of other patents and saying, “All those who have a pet dog at home, please take one step forward…Janice, not so fast.” It is probably a good thing I was in Denver.

That was it. After a few silent, emotional moments, our conversation moved on.

“Guess what the doctor told me today,” she said.
“What?” 
“My blood type has changed.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, isn’t that strange, I never knew it was even a possibility.”
“What’s it changing to?”  I asked.

“Well it was A+, my donor was B+, right now my blood serum is AB and my red blood cells are B+.”

One more surprise, in the midst of two years of surprises.

Here’s how my simple lay mind sees the process: This whole unrelated donor thing has allowed the donor’s primitive cells (“primitive” ones are responsible for producing the red, white, plasma cells and other things in the blood) to claim ownership of Janice’s marrow. Then like a no nonsense landlord they evict the old destructive occupants, move in, and begin fixing things up.

 
So, Janice, who was born A+ , was infused with the donors B+ cells and after three plus months of inhabiting her system, B+ has successfully evicted her sick cells. Since the transaction was successful, Janice’s old cells didn’t stand a chance. Gone, poof, out-a-here, “Hasta la vista baby!”  And, oh yeah, with them…the cancer.

 

 

I must admit that the spiritual metaphor did not escape me; I find it absolutely fascinating that principles that apply to our spiritual life are principles demonstrated by the natural order of life.

 

The whole process has given me a new appreciation for that aged hymn that asks,

 

“What can wash away my sin?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

What can make me whole again?

Nothing but the blood…”

 

You’ve got it.

 

Six months ago we watched a donor’s cell, life saving blood cells, literally swim into Janice’s body, I mean to tell you that what had till then seemed to me a dull, 19^th century theology, was instantly contemporary, brilliant, and vital. A transfusion brings hope and unavoidable change. Slowly but surely, Janice’s faulty A+ was replaced with healthy B+.

 

“What can make me whole again?”

 

Nothing but this blood.

By now you must have guessed that I’m thinking entirely new thoughts about what it means to be “infused” with the presence of Christ. It’s a drastic exchange, this taking on, this dripping in, of his nature, it will surely, necessarily, change us.
           

“Oh precious is the flow,

That makes me white as snow,

No other fount I know,

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

 

This is life and death stuff and it is no more casually done than the transplant Janice received. When Christ truly enters our lives, slowly but surely the old is overtaken by the new; the battle rages as the “new” moves through the body, confronting and conquering the old. So persistently does this process occur over time that eventually, just as Janice does, we live only by the new; the new alone. It’s with a new kind of voice we Chaffees offer up when we sing about ‘blood.’

 

Now as I close, the update since we have been home is this: Janice is doing well. There is much truth to the belief that healing occurs best at home in ones, own bed, own kitchen, with one’s husband’s great cooking (ok that may be a little much). Janice is re-plugged into Vanderbilt. On our first day back, a lot of the clinic staff ran up to hug her; they all said she looked better than they had expected as most had followed her pilgrimage west on her website. Doctor Greer, who has always been wonderful but not necessarily overly touchy-feely, hugged Janice told he she looked wonderful, looked her in the face and said, “You are a miracle.”

And a miracle she is…a miracle that is a result of a powerful God who does in fact love her, and has watched out for her over these long months. A miracle thanks to the prayers of literally thousands of people around the world. A miracle carried through the brilliant minds and loving hearts of hundreds of great medical personnel.

What’s next?  This: She continues on the path our friends at Seattle Cancer Center have set for her; the one our great team at Vanderbilt maintains. She continues to taper off pills over the next 6 to 8 months, we watch for viruses, infection and the dreaded GVH (graft vs. host disease). She continues to let her immune system strengthen until she can fight everything out there trying to infect her. We continue to pray that when we return to Seattle in March for her one year checkup, she will still be cancer free. Then, we take it year by year, month by month, day by day…which is how we should all live our lives anyway, savoring each moment with our loved ones, trying to pay attention to the little things in life that really matter while big stuff grabs our energies, and seeing the presence of God in everything involved in this day to day sacrament we call life.

Hopefully the next update will come from my beloved and energized wife. Until then,

Blessings,

Jim

 

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