If I Could Just Sit With My Feet in a Mountain Stream

As our hopes faded of my condition getting any further effective help at the clinic in Arizona, Jonathan and I made the decision to pack up my belongings in Arizona and head to Colorado on our way to South Dakota. I had decided that surgery was probably the only option I had left. A doctor friend in Colorado was trying to get us in to a breast surgeon acquaintance. In the back of my mind, I was thinking, "If there was something I really wanted to do right now, it is to sit by a mountain stream somewhere with my feet in the flowing water." It wasn't just a desire. It was an urge. It was something I needed to do.

When Jonathan burst into tears Wednesday noon, saying that with our 30th anniversary coming up, he felt it was now or never to pack up and spend time in the mountains on our way to Colorado, I told him I felt the same way, only I was hesitant to say it out loud. I was in a lot of pain. By four-o'clock that afternoon, I packed the last item, Jonathan stuffed the last thing into our little white Honda in 108-degree heat, and away we went. We spent the night at the cheapest hotel we could find in Flagstaff, which actually turned out to be a lovely place with potted flowers and a breakfast nook. We sat on a bench in the twilight by flowers, holding hands. 

I snapped this photo at the hospital in Colorado Springs, but oh, well, it works great here!

The next day we drove through northern Arizona, a tiny corner of New Mexico, and into Colorado. I was taking a turn driving so Jonathan could handle some paperwork when I saw a road turning off that looked like maybe it went to a mountain stream. 

It did!

When we found a good place to pull off just before a National Forest Campground, I hadn't even opened my door before I discovered stems of wild raspberry bushes loaded with little red berries waiting just outside my door! I could hardly believe it!

Jonathan and I both went like happy six-year-olds to search for and pick berries!

Having picked all I could find, I made my way to the stream, and there was another loaded bush, just dripping with berries! Both Jonathan and I picked and picked, popping red mountain juiciness into our mouths. Those berries were not particularly sweet, but they were chock full of sunshine vitamins!

I pulled off my sandals and found a little rock on which to sit. The water was cold, but I stuck them in anyway. The water was so cold, but I kept them in there. Down in Arizona, when I had been in extreme pain one night after some of the earliest chemo and herceptin infusions last year, I had gone to Salt River, and to my surprise, the pain went away all the time I was standing with my feet in the river water! Flowing water, we learned, such as in a mountain stream has free electrons, carrying the earth's energy. (I learned this is scientific and not something weird like people who talk about energy as if it was a god.) Having your feet in a mountain stream has more than emotional benefits. It has health benefits, too, as the exchange of electrons helps a person's body release negative energy and absorb positive. 

Jonathan brought me more berries, which I ate, hoping that the pain would miraculously go away as had happened last year in Arizona.

Instead, the pain became worse.  

So much for flowing mountain streams, free electrons, and natural pain relief!

However, in my anguish, as I checked for the source of even worse pain, I realized that the awful purple mass on top of the cancer had burst and was draining!

I did not know what to think. Had a small miracle just happened?

It had. 

The pain was not quite as bad now.

Sparing the gory details, I dealt with the wound care as Jonathan drove us through the rest of the evening and into the wee hours of Thursday morning to arrive at our daughter Carrie's cabin near Colorado Springs. We thought we'd stop at the ER, but I was so tired, I couldn't fathom sitting for hours on a hard chair waiting for care. So we tried to sleep at our daughter's place.

 

The next morning, just before heading to the ER, we got a call from the cancer surgeon's office, from whom we'd been waiting for days to receive a call back about an appointment about possible surgery. She had an appointment for us for Monday as well as instructions for how to deal with the draining mass. She prescribed an antibiotic and antibiotic ointment and said if it wasn't bleeding non-stop, not to bother to go to the ER. The ER wouldn't help anything.

What a relief! I went to bed instead of to the ER. 

An hour or two later, as I was wondering how I was ever going to endure the pain until Monday, God sent an angel of a neighbor, Carrie's landlady who is a pediatrician. She asked if she could take a look at me, and then she and her friend came in close to pray with me. A couple hours later, she came again, just after that mass had started to drain all over again. She started helping to place warm, wet compresses on it, calling it an abscess, and I watched that thing melt away right under my eyeballs!

All the rest of that afternoon, we kept applying warm washcloth compresses and letting that thing drain. Carrie's landlady was an absolute angel! By evening, I was in almost no pain at all. 

One of God's humbling mercies in the middle of an anguished journey!

Over the next few days that mass has disappeared.

A small (but large) miracle that started with my feet in a mountain stream.