Cancer Blog #50
By Brian Zimmerman
Begun on July 31, 2021
Email: dyingman1@yahoo.com
My Dying Words
Entry #50 – Our Shortness of Life and God’s Length of Years
August 12, 2022
[Psa 90:3-6 NASB95] 3 You turn man back into dust And say, “Return, O children of men.” 4 For a thousand years in Your sight Are like yesterday when it passes by, Or [as] a watch in the night. 5 You have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep; In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew. 6 In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew; Toward evening it fades and withers away.
I’d like to take the next two entries to discuss several passages related to death and dying in Psalm 90. The first set of verses are verses 3-6, which I have quoted above. I’m sure that at this point you can guess what the psalmist’s theme is in this passage. It probably sounds repetitive to you. After all, I’ve highlighted this perspective in many entries, but the fact that it continues to return should tell us something. It should indicate its importance in the first place, and second, it should tell us how hard it is for us to keep this perspective in our minds. God reminds us of our fragility here by describing our final destination: dirt. We came from dirt and as we said in the last entry relating the curse of Genesis 3, God’s pronouncement there and here is the same: “Return”. We came from dust and to dust we shall indeed return. And, that perspective is contrasted with the life of the one who made us from dust. The psalmist says that for our Creator, a millennium is no more than yesterday or last night. To Him, it is a brief period of time. To us, trying to imagine a thousand years is like to trying to picture a billion dollars. It’s so large how can anyone comprehend it? Trying to imagine the world of 1122 AD is almost impossible. And yet for God, it’s like us trying to remember yesterday or last night. Not hard at all.
To demonstrate our brevity, the psalmist compares our lives to grass growing in the desert heat. It may sprout up in the morning but, because of the heat, it is dried up and dead by evening. We’ve all seen that phenomenon when we planted a sprout and came back the following day and found it desiccated, dead, from heat and lack of moisture during the previous day. That plant is our life – alive in the morning and yet our whole life is gone by the end of the day. Once again, that gives us some idea of God’s perspective on our time here. It is so easy to lose that view. To us our life seems to go on and on. But, to God, it is so brief, it’s as if we are born, lived, and died all in a single day. We marvel when we hear of some insect who hatches, lays eggs, and then dies all in the course of only days. Its life seems unbelievably transitory, short to the point almost of being meaningless. Should it worry about the size of its home, the color of its carapace, its renown or fortune? Sounds faintly ridiculous doesn’t it? And, yet we should remember the shortness of our lives and the length of God’s. May the view that God gives here inform our view of each day of our life.
Next: Part 2 of Psalm 90: Teach Us
Medical Update: I was asked to say a few words about my current health: As I have mentioned previously, my last status CT scan (July 8) showed that my cancer (the metastases in my lungs) has begun growing again. So, on August 1 I restarted my Opdivo (the immunotherapy drug) (I have never stopped taking Xeloda, the old school oral drug, on for two weeks and off for one). I was apprehensive as the first time I took Opdivo (spring of 2021) was pretty rocky with lots of very bad side effects. But, this time, my oncologist had me take a pretreatment mixture of lots of drugs, primarily steroids and antinausea, that helped me accept the drug with virtually no side effects. In effect, last Thursday and Friday (August 25 and 26), I felt better than I have felt in a long time. As I told my wife, of course that’s just the steroids talking. And, it was true. By Monday morning (August 29), I was crashing and burning with severe shortness of breath, making lifting weights a real chore (while I usually enjoy it and feel better when I’m done). Tuesday and Wednesday were better, but Thursday was even worse than Monday, a real barn burner of a bad day. But, today is Friday (September 2), and I’m feeling significantly better.
My real concern is what will happen in 2 ½ weeks. At that point, my wife and I are supposed to fly to California (San Jose) to see our oldest son (this time will be the fourth attempt). I have one more Opdivo treatment before then (September 13) as my oncologist wants me to not miss any treatments because the change in my cancer status. I will have two questions for him in our next meeting (on the treatment day): one, should I take the next COVID (and I guess the influenza B) vaccine, and two, how should I prepare for and handle the flights and the rest of the trip (we’ll be there a week). My thought is that I should bump my prednisone up significantly on the flight days, and then when necessary while I’m there. Of course, I’m limited in how many medications I can haul cross country as airlines are very concerned about weight (which translates into fuel), but I’ll just have to guess what would be most helpful if I have a severe attack while there. The life of a cancer/chemo patient is always exciting – what meds do I get to take next? I’ll post another medical update once I meet with the oncologist and get his perspective.