Let's Radiate Don

I’m a grateful girl.

You’re wondering how I can say that. I didn’t feel it yesterday, and I may not tomorrow. But for some reason I do today.

I had the privilege of spending 33 years with the man I loved. And here’s one thing I can say with confidence – he loved me back. He brought me flowers, and made me coffee. We got to go on fun tropical vacations. (Think Don with an umbrella drink.) He made me laugh. I miss him more than I ever imagined possible. But still I’m grateful.

Don was part of a wonderful “band of brothers”. (Sorry for the horrible misuse of your quote Brian). These guys showed up one Saturday to put Christmas lights on our house. Granted, it’s a big house, but there were probably 12 of us hanging lights in trees, bushes, on rocks, and places that had never before seen Christmas lights. It took a few hours. We had sandwiches after, and sat around the fire pit in the back yard telling stories about Don. They showed up again last Saturday to take down the lights. As I said, it’s a big house, but this part took about 15 minutes. They stayed and cleaned the gutters and raked the leaves from the eaves. As Jeff said. “I know we don’t need a lot of hands, but it’s the gathering….”

Dave stops by every other evening or so, ostensibly for his “scotchsicle”. He checks in with the kids, asks them about school and work. He eats the candy on the counter. We talk about Don and laugh about a memory. Although it’s a different kind of grief than I feel, he’s just lost his best friend. He’s craving that connection with Don that we all need.

I probably couldn’t write this entry without Kathy in my life. I don’t know how I would have gotten through the last weeks without her. As my friend Lore said the other day, “My tears could probably fill a jacuzzi”, and a good part of them have been shed on Kathy’s strong shoulders. She is my rock.

We have three amazing kids. Don poured wisdom into their lives that I can never even begin to replace. I said to Carrie the other day, “He had so much more to teach you”. Her reply was, “Yes Mom, but look at what he already taught us”. Talk about gratitude.

The kids have stepped in and stepped up in what often seem unbearable circumstances. They have shown grace and maturity that floors me every day. They have parented me when they need to. One Friday evening a few weeks ago I told them to all please go out and be with their friends. I then decided it would be a good idea to listen to the audio portion from the memorial service on my computer. At this point it’s 9:30 at night. After I finished that, I decided it would still be an even better idea to read all of Don’s blog entries from start to finish. As the kids started trickling home about 1:00 in the morning, I was a blubbering mess in my bed. I tried to explain what I had been doing, they all three took in the scene, shook their heads and Andrew said, “Mom, what were you THINKING??!!”

So many others, too numerous to count, have shown up in ways to meet needs I didn’t even know I had. Some friends have started sending me photos of Don over the years. I’m startled by my own gratitude to receive them. Karen sent a photo that has become one of my favorites – of Don hosting our family and friends at his office to watch the Rose Parade. He looks so happy to be with the people he loved.

Today, at least at 6:30 in the morning, I feel grateful. I don’t know what tomorrow, or even the rest of today, will hold. I trust in my God who promises not to show me what’s on the road ahead, but to walk with me on the journey.

-Kate

The kids and I have heard from some of you that you’d like us to keep the blog going, to post every once in awhile how we are doing.  The next part of Don’s journey – his family continuing on without him, but at the same time, preserving his memory and so many things he taught us along the way.

I’m not a writer, and would never claim to be.  We often joked about it.  On a few occasions, Don’s 50th birthday for example, I would write a silly little rhyming poem, because I could never put into words what I wanted to say.  That particular one began:

“To you Donald Rhymer,
At this special time
Your job is to write,
While my job is to rhyme”.

After all, I am a Rhymer.  But not a writer.  Our kids, however, seem to have inherited some of his talent.  So the kids and I, with your indulgence, will continue to post on the blog every once in awhile.  Maybe it will make you smile, thinking of us, and of Don.  Maybe, like Don would, you’ll ask someone how they’re doing, and really listen to the answer.  And hopefully it will prompt you to “focus on the good”.

-Kate

Several months back my dad took me to a Dodger game.  We sat in the dugout club and talked about life between bites of our Dodger dogs.  (Did I mention we are both gluten intolerant?)  Kershaw was pitching.  He asked about my  job and friends. He asked what I’d heard from Andrew & Carrie lately. He asked about my dating life.  Strike.

Then he told me about a book he was reading, a book that meant a great deal to him at the time.  “The Fault in our Stars” by John Green about Hazel, a sixteen year old cancer patient who had eery similarities to my father (disease wise mind you, although I’m sure he and a sixteen year old girl had more in common than he’d like us to know).  Both had cancer which had metastasized to the lung, spent 6 days in the ICU, both had 1.5 liters of fluid drained from the lung.  Both didn’t want to “wound” anyone in their battle. Hazel refers to her cancer as a grenade.  She says, “I’m like a grenade and at some point I’m going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties”.

My dad’s greatest sadness was how much pain he caused his family. That his disease was our disease.  His pain was ours and he wanted to minimize his casualties.  He feared that when it all blew up, when it went to chaos, everyone around him would be left with embedded shrapnel.

And we are left with that in a sense. He left bits and pieces of himself to so many people. Bits of bullet in all of us. My brother emits his perfect balance of kindness and strength.  My sweet sister, a true daddy’s girl at heart has his quick wit.  Me, I encompass his “socially awkward while being extremely social” side, and my mom, at the heart of us all, is his rock.  That woman is solid gold I tell you. He touched so many lives.  His service on Monday, December 3rd was a demonstration of that.  Everyone showed up, even his hair stylist (and what a feat because he would be the first to tell you he had very little hair).  As Andrew said in a previous post, it was a whirlwind of a day but I did take a moment and think, “Damn, I am so proud to be his daughter and to have fought his battle along side him.”

The headline in the local paper the week after his death read, “Don Rhymer Loses Battle to Cancer”. Boy did that piss us off over here.  This was a hell of a battle all right,  but this battle was not lost.  We are still fighting over here thank you very much. We learn from the best; my dad taught us well.

And as we march on, we are still in awe over the outpour of love and postcards we receive.  We love hearing how he has affected your lives.  But for now, there’s peace.  No explosions, no grenades.  And like we told him that Wednesday, “You can sleep now, Papa”.

-Molly

It’s been a long week in the Rhymer household, and my family would like to thank everyone who has stopped by, called, flown cross-country, emailed, texted, facebooked, facetimed, sent flowers, cookies or soup. You have all been wonderful in helping my family fill the void left in our lives by an utter and devastating lack of Don Rhymer. In the past three days I’ve been told our house smells like a florist, a bake shop, and a bar. All of which would have made my dad very proud.

I would also like to thank anyone and everyone who came my dad’s memorial service. That day was an absolute blur, so I just sat down to read through the guest book with my mom. I was immediately overwhelmed by the number of familiar names. Some of you I haven’t seen in years, and some of you I may not see for many more years. Commandeering a blog is no way to properly say thank you, but please understand that the outpouring of support for my family is so great that I will never be able to fully reciprocate it. All I can muster is a paltry expression of my gratitude. Thank you all.

Lastly, if for some reason you are still looking to do something to honor my dad, please consider donating to Stand Up 2 Cancer. He was very fond of their efforts, and showed it by buying countless t-shirts, hats, and just about anything they sold on their online store. I have a Stand Up 2 Cancer candle in my bedroom. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m not really a candle guy.

The Stand Up 2 Cancer Memorial Donation Page is very easy to use and can be accessed by clicking HERE.

Again, thank you.  I hope this day finds you well and your family safe.

-Andrew

My sweet husband, the love of my life, passed away early Wednesday morning. We had been married 29 years, 6 months, and 7 days, and I’m left with a gaping hole in my heart. He was the strongest, most generous and most honest person I’ve ever known. Oh yeah, and he was funny too.

He had just spent one week at UCLA Medical Center, and one week at USC Keck Hospital. He had to drop the clinical trial he was participating in. He was poked and prodded, x-rayed and tested more in those twelve days than most of us will be in our lifetime. And still he kept going. We realized we weren’t going to win the war, but maybe we could fight some small battles and he would get to go home for his remaining days or weeks.

After surgery for a procedure we hoped would send Don home, he came out on the other side with a breathing tube. I sat on his bed with him, and because he couldn’t talk, was writing questions on a legal pad. After he understood what had happened, he wrote “Focus on the good”. Even from a bed in the ICU he was urging his family to remember the many blessings we have, and to give each other grace. He came off the ventilator that morning.

His last day, Tuesday, was a gift. Though he was still in ICU, he felt a little better and was more himself than he had been in weeks. He laughed and joked with us. He watched TV. His eyes were bright. But his lungs gave out on him early Wednesday morning with Andrew, Molly, Carrie and me by his side, as well as our best friends Dave and Kathy Gallagher. He was peaceful and not in any pain. We were able to experience a sacred time with him, for which I’ll always be grateful.

Through Don’s blog, he pulled back the curtain just a bit to give us a glimpse behind his humor to the pain he dealt with every day – both emotionally and physically. But it was only a glimpse, because, true to his nature, he was protecting us from really seeing the horror of what this cancer was doing to his body. He always said that his greatest sadness in this journey was the pain he caused me, our kids, and our friends and family.

Don’s blog provided him a creative outlet, as well as a bit of sanity in this insane experience. Thank you to all of you who faithfully read it, commented on it, or shared it with friends. He got so much satisfaction when someone going through a similar situation would contact him to say how much the blog had helped them. But I don’t think Don was trying to be inspirational. I think he was just trying to be honest. He was just being himself.

We will be celebrating Don’s life this Monday. We’d love for you to join us.

-Kate

Memorial Service

Monday, December 3rd

2 PM

La Canada Presbyterian Church

626 Foothill Blvd, La Canada, CA 91011

The Trial continues.

And is, for the most part, going great so far. The Oncology Research Center at UCLA is top notch as far as I can tell. It’s the least “hospitally” medical facility I have ever scene. The staff is great, the Doctor and Study Coordinator smart with bedside manner to spare. So far, absolutely no issue with the drug itself, no side effects yet… but yes, there is a “big but” coming. Commuting down to Santa Monica for four days in stop and go, rush hour traffic… almost killed me.

You see, my shoulders and neck and lower back were bad going in and last week made them ten times worse. Nerve bundles of pain, back spasms, nasty stuff. Plus almost every day had a companion trip to USC for wound therapy so, yeah, long days. Rough week. But it ended fun. On Friday I had someone pass out on me, and then several hours later I managed to pass out on myself.

There was a first year intern “looking” in on my wound care treatment and somewhere toward the end of treatment when there is a lot of picking at an open wound with tweezers and scissors and Don wincing in pain and a little blood… The first year Intern pitched forward on top of me. Luckily the veteran Third year Intern caught the first year intern and with some calm instruction from the Doctor everything was handled just fine.

Later that night… I am at home. I stand up too fast. I start to cough…. I continue to cough until I have run out of air in my lungs to cough any more. And that’s when things go black. I put my hands on my knees and at this point I know I am going down.  I just have to figure the safest way to ditch. I aim for the carpeted hallway between the closets… I almost make it.

So, a week not completely without event, eh?

The trial begins today.

Shhh… opening arguments are just getting started.

What sleeping in the magic chair feels like…..

“The Magic Chair” arrives today.

You know the one, the La Z Boy, old man, fully automatic, cancer sleeping chair. Not gonna lie, have been dealing with a lot of intense pain, coughing, no appetite, fevers etc. etc. in the last few weeks but all that ends tonight.

The chair will make me whole. It will allow me to sit comfortably for hours without having to contort myself into all manner of strange and unnatural positions. It will give me lumbar support when I need it and the ability to whisk it away with the click of a button. You heard me right, it’s got buttons.

Recline forward, recline back, foot rest up, foot rest down. It puts more than a million possible adjustment decisions at my fingertips. It even has a button to summon a sassy Jamaican caregiver to my side at a moments notice. One who will mock me, emasculate me and scream at me twenty-seven times a day to – “Take da damn pills mon!”

Of course I have to pay extra for this option, but the fine people at La Z Boy guarantee that she will also teach me valuable life lessons before disappearing at midnight in an a slightly magical way.

So tonight I sleep the unfettered sleep of a child… reclining in my La Z Boy while waving to my wife across the room.

You guys didn’t think things were going to smooth out and get easier did you?

So, when we went in to see the surgeon he told us he didn’t want to do surgery to repair the two potholes in my neck, because he thought it was much more important to get me into a new, more exciting “stem cell” trial. One that he wanted me to start right away. But in the week we spent waiting to find out if we got into that trial, (which we didn’t), another tumor developed behind my ear. Yes, three weeks after removing one and getting “clear” margins, a second one pops up an inch or so away from the first.

What can I say? Don is a fertile land, where disease finds hearty purchase.

So, first thing Monday morning they are once again throwing me up on the rack for tumor removal. For those of you tracking the “over/under”… we are now at seven.

But we fight on! There is another “stem cell” trial at UCLA that we are looking into and we met with the radiologist to discuss a possible FOURTH time under the mask.  A lot of possible decisions lurk ahead which, quite frankly, we would just appreciate you guys making for us.

At first it was easy. There were standard, tried and true protocols backed up by mounds of research. Now… we are off the grid. There seem to be no “right” or “wrong” answers.

How does it feel? You know when you’ve been traveling a lot and you wake up in the middle of the night and you jump out of bed to go to the bathroom and you’re so disoriented you have no idea where you are? It’s like that.

Basically, most days I feel like I’m wandering around in the dark, hoping against hope that I don’t pee in the closet.

So, Monday they cut open my head again, then later in the week we meet with the radiologist to go over the tumor’s pathology to see if there’s a radiology option that may well put me in the radiology Hall of Fame, and then head out to UCLA to talk about the trial.

Are we hoping to get in? I guess? Someone asked me if I get disappointed when I get rejected for these trials and I tell them it’s hard to feel bad about not getting to be a guinea pig to a drug you’ve never heard of, that you have no idea how sick it will make you and no concept if it will help at all.

Hey, if cancer were easy, everybody would be getting it right?

Thanks for sticking with the Rhymer Family and for reading the blog. But if you find me over at your house with a glazed look in my eye… I would lock your closet just in case.