Greg Hewlett passed away on January 17th after nearly eight years of battling colon cancer. While we grieve his loss, we are comforted to know that he is with his Lord.
If you would like to leave your thoughts on Greg, please see this thread.
If you would like to make a charitable donation in Greg's honor, please see this thread.
The Struggle Has Ended
Monday, October 13, 2003
Cool Hand Luke
Well, I'm back on the chemo track. In fact, I'm taking it as I write...
I'm in a private mini hospital room with Christine - they use these rooms to administer outpatient chemo. They've hooked me up and the chemo is just beginning. Soon, I'll feel sick, but right now I'm feeling fine. In fact, I�ve been feeling steadily stronger day by day.
Last week, I spent a lot of time resting in between eating and trying to keep up with work. While watching TV, I caught a favorite old movie of mine, Cool Hand Luke. It has a classic scene that I find fascinating. Paul Newman plays Luke, who is sent to a low-security prison for sawing the tops off parking meters. Shortly after arriving, out on the grounds of the prison, Luke gets caught in a boxing-style fight with Dragline, the local prison bully. It is not much of a contest. With the other prisoners gathered around in a circle watching, Dragline hits Luke again and again without much resistance. The pounding continues to the point where every blow causes Luke to fall to the ground. Again and again he is knocked down, yet he always manages to stand up again, against the advice of the sympathizing observers and even Dragline. �Stay down, you�re beat,� utters Dragline. �You�re gonna have to kill me�, Luke replies. The remarkable outcome is that Luke has such an iron will that the bully finally just walks away. While the technical "loser", Luke comes away the psychological winner.
Later, Luke wins with a bad hand in a poker game and Dragline says it was just like the fight. "He kept comin' back at me with nothin'." Luke's response results in his new nickname, "Yeah, well sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand."
I think fighting cancer is a lot like that fight scene. The cancer-chemo bully hits you every time you get enough energy to stand up. Again and again this continues. Here I am just getting to my feet after the surgery and I'm about to get hit by the bully again. The goal of the process is to be like Luke - keep getting up until the bully gives up, even if you got nothin'.
I'm in a private mini hospital room with Christine - they use these rooms to administer outpatient chemo. They've hooked me up and the chemo is just beginning. Soon, I'll feel sick, but right now I'm feeling fine. In fact, I�ve been feeling steadily stronger day by day.
Last week, I spent a lot of time resting in between eating and trying to keep up with work. While watching TV, I caught a favorite old movie of mine, Cool Hand Luke. It has a classic scene that I find fascinating. Paul Newman plays Luke, who is sent to a low-security prison for sawing the tops off parking meters. Shortly after arriving, out on the grounds of the prison, Luke gets caught in a boxing-style fight with Dragline, the local prison bully. It is not much of a contest. With the other prisoners gathered around in a circle watching, Dragline hits Luke again and again without much resistance. The pounding continues to the point where every blow causes Luke to fall to the ground. Again and again he is knocked down, yet he always manages to stand up again, against the advice of the sympathizing observers and even Dragline. �Stay down, you�re beat,� utters Dragline. �You�re gonna have to kill me�, Luke replies. The remarkable outcome is that Luke has such an iron will that the bully finally just walks away. While the technical "loser", Luke comes away the psychological winner.
Later, Luke wins with a bad hand in a poker game and Dragline says it was just like the fight. "He kept comin' back at me with nothin'." Luke's response results in his new nickname, "Yeah, well sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand."
I think fighting cancer is a lot like that fight scene. The cancer-chemo bully hits you every time you get enough energy to stand up. Again and again this continues. Here I am just getting to my feet after the surgery and I'm about to get hit by the bully again. The goal of the process is to be like Luke - keep getting up until the bully gives up, even if you got nothin'.
Monday, October 6, 2003
Date for restarting chemo
I met with Dr. Hoff this afternoon. He thinks I have recovered well and decided I am ready to begin chemo again on Monday (9/13). It will be the same 21-day cycle as I did before, with the IV chemo (irinotecan) on day 1 and the oral chemo (xeloda) twice daily for days 1-14. This cycle will continue as long as the chemo is continuing to shrink the liver tumor. At the point when it seems to be no longer shrinking, we'll do the liver surgery.
Friday, October 3, 2003
Poop
My life seems to revolve around the issue of poop lately. The doctors and nurses are all quite interested in it. They anticipate it, analyze it, measure it, time it, and are even willing to clean up accidents with it. At first I was even embarrassed to speak of it with them. I have now become somewhat desensitized to the existence of poop. Yet I still have concluded that dealing with poop is near the bottom of human existence.
As a Christian, I naturally ask if Scripture has anything to say about poop. Some might laugh at such a thought, but remarkably the Bible does address the topic. While the majority of clean-cut Christians would not mention such topics, the Bible indeed deals at this level of reality without such avoidance.
Of the many places where the Bible addresses the topic of poop, one particularly interesting place is in the New Testament book of Philipians, where Paul writes,
What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish [may be trans. "poop"], that I may gain Christ� I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings�
I really admire the Apostle Paul. He likes to tell things how they are. Direct. No candy-coating. I think he came from Philadelphia. The word that he uses here is only found in this verse in the whole of the New Testament. It is likely an expletive, but is rendered by the euphemistic �dung� or �rubbish� in English translations. Paul says, in effect, �Look, everything I have in life I consider to be at the level of poop compared with knowing Christ and his resurrection.� He puts it on the line. Life ain�t worth poop without knowing Christ and his resurrection. The more I personally have to deal with poop, the more clearly I understand this passage - an unexpected advantage to having colon cancer.
When the church has strayed from its fundamental elements -- Christ and his resurrection -- it has by definition ceased being the church. Sometimes it has become oppressive, sometimes it gets caught up in endless political battles, and sometimes it has become simply a bland institution of nothingness with marshmallow smiles pasted on the faces of its members.
It has become commonplace in segments of mainstream Protestantism and elsewhere to push aside the person of Christ and particularly the event of his resurrection. Now, mind you, such leaders are usually careful enough not to outright deny it. But they will at least discount it as irrelevant in practice. As long as you find community, as long as your kids have a place to learn right from wrong, as long as you have a support structure to help you through suffering, as long as you are nice to everybody and they are nice to you, as long as you have faith (no matter who or what it is in), then the church is considered a good thing. It doesn�t matter whether or not God revealed himself in Christ or whether or not he raised him from the dead. I like to imagine Paul�s response to such lines of thinking. I think it is safe to make an educated guess as to what he might say: �that�s a bunch of poop�. It may be appealing to the masses, but it is not historic Christianity. Call it �religion� if you want. Call it �country club living� if you want. Call it �hypocrisy� if you want. But don�t call it authentic Christianity.
As I continue to have areas of my life stripped away during this time of suffering, I am afforded the opportunity to observe my life more clearly. Things around me become less and less important in the final perspective: my dreams, my finances, my career, the consumer goods I�ve collected, my house, my reputation. Most all that is left is the reality of my Creator and his revelation to humankind in the person of Jesus. Aside from this, I have concluded that my life has little meaning. Aside from Christ, my life really is a pile of poop.
As a Christian, I naturally ask if Scripture has anything to say about poop. Some might laugh at such a thought, but remarkably the Bible does address the topic. While the majority of clean-cut Christians would not mention such topics, the Bible indeed deals at this level of reality without such avoidance.
Of the many places where the Bible addresses the topic of poop, one particularly interesting place is in the New Testament book of Philipians, where Paul writes,
What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish [may be trans. "poop"], that I may gain Christ� I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings�
I really admire the Apostle Paul. He likes to tell things how they are. Direct. No candy-coating. I think he came from Philadelphia. The word that he uses here is only found in this verse in the whole of the New Testament. It is likely an expletive, but is rendered by the euphemistic �dung� or �rubbish� in English translations. Paul says, in effect, �Look, everything I have in life I consider to be at the level of poop compared with knowing Christ and his resurrection.� He puts it on the line. Life ain�t worth poop without knowing Christ and his resurrection. The more I personally have to deal with poop, the more clearly I understand this passage - an unexpected advantage to having colon cancer.
When the church has strayed from its fundamental elements -- Christ and his resurrection -- it has by definition ceased being the church. Sometimes it has become oppressive, sometimes it gets caught up in endless political battles, and sometimes it has become simply a bland institution of nothingness with marshmallow smiles pasted on the faces of its members.
It has become commonplace in segments of mainstream Protestantism and elsewhere to push aside the person of Christ and particularly the event of his resurrection. Now, mind you, such leaders are usually careful enough not to outright deny it. But they will at least discount it as irrelevant in practice. As long as you find community, as long as your kids have a place to learn right from wrong, as long as you have a support structure to help you through suffering, as long as you are nice to everybody and they are nice to you, as long as you have faith (no matter who or what it is in), then the church is considered a good thing. It doesn�t matter whether or not God revealed himself in Christ or whether or not he raised him from the dead. I like to imagine Paul�s response to such lines of thinking. I think it is safe to make an educated guess as to what he might say: �that�s a bunch of poop�. It may be appealing to the masses, but it is not historic Christianity. Call it �religion� if you want. Call it �country club living� if you want. Call it �hypocrisy� if you want. But don�t call it authentic Christianity.
As I continue to have areas of my life stripped away during this time of suffering, I am afforded the opportunity to observe my life more clearly. Things around me become less and less important in the final perspective: my dreams, my finances, my career, the consumer goods I�ve collected, my house, my reputation. Most all that is left is the reality of my Creator and his revelation to humankind in the person of Jesus. Aside from this, I have concluded that my life has little meaning. Aside from Christ, my life really is a pile of poop.
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Visitor Pics
Here are a couple of photos at the Rasmussen's home...
Araceli and her boys visited us at the Rasmussens a couple days before surgery. The boys are Marco, Tomas, and Mattias, left to right.
Charles Burck took his parents, Julie (my sister) and Michael, to come visit us shortly after I was released. Here's me with my nephew fighting over the remote control.
Araceli and her boys visited us at the Rasmussens a couple days before surgery. The boys are Marco, Tomas, and Mattias, left to right.
Charles Burck took his parents, Julie (my sister) and Michael, to come visit us shortly after I was released. Here's me with my nephew fighting over the remote control.
Monday, September 29, 2003
Infection; under control
Yesterday, Christine was feeling poorly again, so she stayed home while I left with Pete and Sally to go to church. On the way, I noticed more pain than usual and the leaking of my belly wound. So instead of church, we headed over to the Temple of MDACC to check out their magazine selection in the waiting room. The on-call surgeon investigated the problem and determined it was an infection. He decided to remove four staples and probe around to see if the infection went deep. I wanted to hit him, but he was such a nice fellow. Thankfully, the infection was superficial - limited to skin and fat layers - so he cleaned it up, showed Sally how to dress it and sent us on our way. I was shocked they would just let me go with an open wound, but they acted like it was no big deal. The wound reminds me of Matthew Brady photos from the Civil War. I don't even want to look at it, not to mention having trouble leaning forward to clean it. Christine has a difficult time looking at it, as well. So Sally has risen to the occasion, drawing on her nursing background, and is lovingly redressing it twice daily according the surgeon's instructions.
Just a hiccup... we're rolling once again.
Just a hiccup... we're rolling once again.
Friday, September 26, 2003
Out again on parole
I'm being released today. They held me here for the last day or two due to problems eating due to nausea and cramping. These symptoms have cleared up dramatically in the past 24 hours since they took me off I.V. pain meds. I think these problems were side effects of the medications. Every solution seems to have an associated side effect - you can only really get better when you escape, which is what I'm doing today. We're headed back soon to Conroe to stay with the Rasmussens.
Pathology reported some good news and not so good news. The good news is that the primary tumor they took out was only 20% viable - it had been nearly obliterated by those few rounds of chemo. Viability has to do with what percentage of cancerous cells are alive and kicking. The bad news was that some of the lymph nodes surrounding the tumor were cancerous. But we had suspected that was the case as this type of tumor goes first to lymph nodes, then to the liver. For good measure, he took out all the surrounding nodes.
In my estimation, this week went very well. Another difficult step successfully taken. Thank you, Lord.
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
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