Why am I writing this blog?

Euclid (Cleveland), Ohio, United States
Here I share the amazing spiritual journey I began on July 19, 2007. I received the diagnosis of a golf-ball-sized tumor on top of the left parietal lobe (motor functions) of my brain. I had severe symptoms all up and down the right side of my body and had received an MRI scan of my brain. In August 2007, I learned that my diagnosis was a Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM). This is a common form of fast-growing brain cancer with a challenging prognosis. That's the external story about that moment in time. In the spiritual world I found (actually more like it found me) what I came to call the Fact-Based Spirit-Guided Path, and I began an amazing journey. After October of 2008, I lost the use of my right arm, and in early 2009, my cognitive abilities were struggling, and treatment options ended. My wife, Susanne, then began doing most of the blog postings, with my review and input whenever possible. I continued to apply the Fact-Based Spirit-Guided Path as the adventure continued. My soul then flew to the Kingdom of God on July 1, 2009. Thanks for your interest in my journey. Craig

Susanne's Perspective

During this entire journey, my wife, Susanne, had an entirely different kind of experience. Initially she added comments to some of my posts describing her experience of the moments I discussed and offerred perspectives on our relationship. In the latter stage of this journey, she is writing the blog, as I am no longer able to do so. I am truly delighted that she is doing so. Susanne and I work together as marriage educators/relationship coaches and she has written many books on preparing for and strengthening marriages so you can count on her comments to be insightful and poignant.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Week 3 of Second Phase of Treatment: January 13 to 19

Much of the week was involved with the infection near the incision. I completed a 10-day course of oral antibiotics (Keflex) on Tuesday and saw the neurosurgeon again on Wednesday. This time he was able to observe significant discharge, as the Keflex treatment was not successful. He instructed us to flush the wound twice a day with hydrogen peroxide, apply a topical antibiotic, and leave it open to the air when I’m not wearing a hat. We found that the Bacitracin ointment he suggested seemed to make the wound worse, so we have been applying a natural antibiotic (Colloidal Silver) instead, which seems to work a little better. We will see him again next Wednesday. He has mentioned postponing chemotherapy and possibly doing surgery to remove the infection (obviously this is a very undesirable option to me!) I still have a fair amount of fatigue, so I nap for a couple of hours every afternoon. As Susanne is trying to get lots of healthy foods into me, I’m finding some combinations just don’t taste good anymore. I’m not really able to articulate exactly what foods those are until I taste them, so deciding what to cook has been kind of frustrating for her. Other notable events of the week:

  • Being able to now drive myself to work and elsewhere has been wonderful!!
  • My daughter, Michelle, drove up from the Dayton area (about 3-hours away) to bring a friend to Cleveland for medical treatment. We had lunch with them and my son, David, and his family. It was a quick visit but fun.
  • We attended the monthly Spirituality Group at the Gathering Place. We find these sessions to be very nourishing/nurturing. The leader of the group offered us copies of this prayer attributed to Julian of Norwich: All shall be well and All shall be well and All manner of things shall be well.
  • I had lunch with David again. We are trying to schedule getting together as often as we can, which is wonderful. He pronounced my pick of Beach Club Bistro as a “quality” place. He’s worked at a number of high-end restaurants, so he’s got discriminating taste!
  • I made major progress on getting ready to file our income tax return by getting all of the business income/expenses analyzed and summarized so that they can be entered into the Tax Organizer document our accountant supplies us with. This is generally the most complex portion of the preparation work. If I can get the personal portion done next weekend, then I’ll be ready to finish up getting ready for the accountant.
Posted by at

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The rest of the story…

There’s not much for me to add this week. I’m frustrated at making so little progress on Craig’s infected scalp, of course! I also participated in a teleseminar that is helping us to look at an additional business model for selling our books. It involves selling books to corporations to use for employees or marketing. So, I’ll be in training to learn how to do that for the next few weeks.

January 26, 2008 at 6:05 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)