Posted by Joe on his FB 7/31/11

I am really embarrassed by how long it has been since I have written an update about my condition. One of the most important lessons through my illness and recovery has been to make time for friends and family, and it’s crazy how once I started feeling better, I started losing sight of that somewhat. So I wanted to take some time to update everyone, because it’s really been a pretty fantastic summer, all things considered.

We’ve been wearing a rut in the Ohio Turnpike since I got discharged, and especially since I got on the clinical trial. Every two weeks, we make our little trip out there. And every two weeks, Katie and I get to explore a little more about and around Cleveland.

The doctor visits, since Memorial Day, have been non-threatening affairs – they take a little bit of blood, a little bit of pee, we get together and talk about how I’m feeling, and all of us make a guess as to whether I’m on drug or placebo. I honestly don’t know; I am tired as hell most of the time. I have never, ever been a napper – and yet most days I have to sneak a little nap in just to operate at a bare-bones level. I’ve had some acne breakouts, which wouldn’t be news… twenty years ago. So, there are some small signs that could be side effects, but none of the big, bad ones. So I’m either the luckiest son-of-a-gun in the world on the side effects, or I’m not on the drug. But no one knows, and I’m OK with that now. It just is. The trips to Cleveland have been made fun by our little adventures along the way. Katie and I hit up a food truck on the edge of sketchiness on the East Side called Seti’s Polish Boys. It was everything my cousin Dan promised it would be; and I should be embarrassed to have eaten something so sinful just minutes after leaving a hospital. When the kids came with us, we stopped at Huntington Beach with the kids on the hottest day of the year, and they can now OFFICIALLY say they went to the beach over summer vacation!

I’ve been spending my weeks in sort of a little routine. Mondays and Tuesdays I do a lot of work for school. I have one wholly new class this year – an OGT 911 course to help our at-risk kids. It’s a one-quarter class, and will be a condensed version of a class I taught the last few years. That one’s pretty much done; daily lesson plans are complete, playbooks are done, everything’s sent off to Printshop. The other course is much more daunting – a reset of AP GOV. I will be teaching AP GOV through distance learning technology to a class that could involve as many as 50 kids using a brand-new technology, with everything THAT entails. This is the course I am very, very nervous about.

Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays are a lot more fun. The kids are home with me, and we do little ‘Daddy School’ assignments and field trips. We’ve been to the Zoo and made a movie about different species, we did a treasure hunt throughout BG, we went to the Fossil Park in Sylvania and learned about prehistory and geology, we went to Toledo Botanical Garden and BG’s Simpson Park to learn a bit about flowers, and Joey has become a little Scorsese in making movies.

The summer has had a few down moments; the new contract at work included a pay cut and a HUGE increase in medical expenses – not what you need when you have a few appointments a month and twice-weekly blood draws. BGSU also fell through this semester, with not enough courses to go around to adjuncts, so that took a bite out of the budget, too. Add to that a couple photo jobs I was finally ready to shoot that fell through… and things could be better. But I’m not nearly as worried about that as I probably should be, and not as worried as I would have been a year ago, or certainly as worried as I would have been three years ago. But by the same token, if a different district comes a-knockin’ over the next year or so, I’ll be listening very, very, very closely. Very closely. Extremely closely.

Running has been slowly, but steadily, improving. Last night I ran/walked a 5K in under 40 minutes for the first time since surgery. I felt horrible, but IT felt great! I understand full well that I’m not going to see a seven-minute mile again, but it sure feels good to just improve a little bit at a time. My current running routine is a run .15 mile, walk .10 mile, repeat for three miles. I’ll stick with that through this week, and see how the spirit moves me next week. First two miles are pretty easy, but the third mile gets pretty rough on me. I am running in minimalist shoes, and with a dippy smile on my face every step of the way. I may have some pain when I run, but I shit you not when I say that I am happier than ever when I am out there on the pavement or trails. I hope my recovery and running, however long I am able to keep it up, serves to show the power of God, the power of love, in our lives. When I find myself really hurting, I just focus on the love of running, the love of life, and somehow, I make it through. It’s pretty awesome, it’s way more than exercise.

By far the biggest development as it relates to my recovery this summer has been an amazing place in Toledo called The Victory Center. I got clued into this place by my colleague and friend, Pam D. It’s a place for cancer patients and their families to plug into sort of the ‘third leg’ of the stool in cancer care. The medical professionals and your personal spiritual guides are two of the legs, but TVC focuses on something that comes from both of the those places; through meditations, spiritual journeying, reiki, sound therapy, reflexology, and most importantly, a sense of community with those who have been on this journey already.

What’s been really amazing about TVC to me is that it seems to be bringing together a lot of the disparate threads of my experience thus far. When everyone’s telling you the same thing – even if they’re using different words – it’s probably worth listening. The main thing comes down to this: From the beginning, from Fr. Mark, to Kate, to the nurses on the 9th floor at Cleveland Clinic, to the book “Dealing with Cancer” from Cecilia Miller, to the guided imagery guy at TVC, to the meditation counselor, almost everyone comes back to a couple of really simple things to understand, but harder to live out: Cancer is a spiritual illness as well as a physical illness, and we are our own best doctors in dealing with that aspect of it; by visualizing the amazing brightness and power of God, and channeling it to the effected parts of the body. And further, it all comes back to the very first thing Fr. Mark said to me when I was first sick in those last days of March: God is love. The opposite of love is fear. Where there is love, there cannot be fear. There cannot be DISS-ease, or as we commonly say, disease. Filling oneself with love, with that amazing light, is the surest way to help ourselves deal with cancer.

Thank you all again for your friendship and your prayers. I love you all, and your continued friendship remains the clearest evidence of God’s love for us.