Fundraising Countdown

The support and fundraising that has happened on my behalf has touched my heart and has made alternative cancer treatment a possibility for me. Donations continue to be my primary funding for healthy food, supplements, living expenses and medical bills. If you feel moved to give to my Health and Wellness Fund, please follow the Paypal "Donate" button below. To avoid Paypal's 3% fee, checks or cash can be sent to Zachariah Walker, 1003 Chipeta Ave, Grand Junction, CO 81501. Blessings!

*CRITICAL ANGELES HOSPITAL VISIT: CURRENT ESTIMATED COST = $25,000. AHHH! PLUS UNEXPECTED CRISIS CONTROL AND 4 DAYS IN ICU*

Donate to Zachariah's Health & Wellness Fund

Monday, January 28, 2013

I Have Aged


I have aged again, some new energy has moved through me.  I am closer to dying or I am closer to healing, it’s hard to tell which.  The feelings in my body, so strange at times.  Is that my kidneys aching?  The swells of blood that occasional flush through my body, from the sacrum up through the ribs and shoulders, and down through the feet.  Is that magic, or is that a mess?  The months of pain in my guts is subsiding and I am grateful.  Slowly back-stepping out of crisis, the pangs lessen each day, the appetite improves.  And food is so good!  And the side effects I try not to dwell: steroids, anti-napalm-biotics, protonix.  Suppressing my suppressed immune system, swelling my joints to ache, they snap like seasoned piƱon.  I reflect on last summer’s hobbling on these meds, but clearly the detriment of my symptoms was worse.  The suffering had to stop, I had lost track, I have been floating.  I am still floating, though my feet walk more each day and my face, for a moment, has felt the sun.  Perhaps I will find the ground again.

I have aged again, I feel more love and have grown more unattached.  Each day is somehow different yet I’ve grown fond of that which is constant.  I don’t care that it’s winter, I like the short days.  I’ve never said that before.  I may only fully realize the absence of sun once its warmth has returned.  This morning’s sloppy gray streets and skies such a metaphor for my guts.  I woke at three in the morning, tight, turning, turbulent.  Consciousness remained through some strange exhausted buzz behind my eyes, and now, as morning has turned to afternoon, I stare in a daze at monotonous space.  The drugs, my sterile insides insight mild nausea though food keeps creeping through, sensations of assimilation.  This aging is strange, am I wiser or more disenfranchised?  I visualize the strong-calved peak bagger I once was.  Full suspension climbs up technical single-track and the joy of the downhill earned.  Now just the fatiguing thought of gearing up for an adventure is daunting.  I visualize however, see myself strong in the shadows, feet dangling in Dominguez Creek.  I see white blood cells swimming through my waters, numbers growing, teaching each other the difference between the utilitarian and the malignant.  Outside my window in the drab, I am a dove nestled in branches, observing in silence.  There is something boundless.  There is something beautiful.   

My face, for a moment, has felt the sun.
Jan 27th, Colorado River

Friday, January 25, 2013

Complexities


I have a complex situation.  I guess I already knew that, but that perspective from one of the hospitalists I was recently visiting in St. Mary’s Hospital struck a new chord.  Add the fact that I had fallen so far into suffering that I lost track of where I was.  I also had to laugh to myself because his perspective was based solely on the physical ramifications of my scenario.  With a glance at the mental, emotional and spiritual, complex becomes a drastic understatement.  Weave in the philosophic polarity between holistic and allopathic treatment, and the fact that my health decisions are completely self-guided choices, and just the search for a synonym that adequately describes this “complex” situation becomes a daunting task.  It all calls for a long walk in the woods.  And, unfortunately, my energy, mobility, the horrific air quality and 20-degree weather really nix that as being a reasonable and prudent remedy.  So, I turn to writing.  Here, I attempt to purge the stagnation of thoughts and feelings that have not been flowing.  I attempt to make some sense of the insane.  I search for clarity and guidance on icy slopes under the dim light of hard winter.  I look for distractions from the daydream of an endless float down the dammed Colorado River.  I seek visions of a future worth working so hard to live for, and I simply muse the words “working so hard.”  Do I need to find a reason to dig myself out of another deep hole?

I certainly feel much more philosophical than practical in my mind this morning.  After a good 12 hours of much needed sleep following two miserable nights at the hospital I feel some relative level of calm.  I might have the post haze of hydrocodone and cannabis but am currently drug and pain free.  Confined freedom, getting to leave my cell to walk the fenced yard.  I would breath in the sun if it offered itself.  Instead I appreciate the comfort of soft fleece and down.  And I am amazed.  I have spent my life developing, whether I like it or not, a relationship with irritable bowels.  Call it Ulcerative Colitis, call it Crohn’s, call it six major surgeries, three missing organs and a poop bag to boot.  Call it what I like, I’ve never known it like I know it now.  And before now, as I have related to some friends, its lifetime tribulations have made a year with Leukemia seem like a walk in the park.  Leukemia, especially acute, is a freak the fuck out, not a walk in the park.  So what is it all together?  As far as I know, I’m the only one that knows.  I guess I’ll sit on that for a while…