A Change of Perspective for the New Year
December 27, 2024
By Geoffrey Peckham
Director, Tusen Takk Foundation
I hope you are enjoying the end of 2024. It is the tail end of December when darkness replaces light more than any other time of the year. The good news is that for the next six months each tomorrow sees more light.
Every year I try to post a message around this time having to do with an idea, a thought, that I feel deserves consideration. This year that thought is about perspective. A month and a half ago a significant event occurred that changed my perspective about everything.
On a Monday night in early November Patricia (my wife) had a CT scan at our local hospital in Traverse City. The scan showed an image of a large mass in her right lung, a mass that had metastasized throughout both lungs and was threatening to pierce the wall of her esophagus. This explained why she was having trouble breathing and why she had a constant cough. The diagnosis of pneumonia she had been given the week before in the same emergency room was changed: lung cancer. She would need a lung biopsy to confirm this.
Patricia has never smoked and never lived with second hand smoke. She told me this was the last type of cancer she ever expected to have. As a physician, she knew that dying of this disease was somewhere between possible and probable.
The next day, Tuesday, we contacted Memorial Sloan Kettering in NYC. Since her fevers were so high, they asked us to go to Presbyterian Hospital, just across the street from MSK, to be evaluated. We flew to New York on Wednesday.
Patricia in the emergency room at NY Presbyterian
On Wednesday night we were in the ER at Presbyterian. Blood tests were drawn, antibiotics were started. A CT scan showed the same metastasizing mass. During this time we cried, prayed, texted a couple of people to let them know what was going on and we were quiet a lot. When we did talk, it was about essential things. Things like how there might not be much time left, how we always thought we would have more time, how we were not afraid, and how our faith gave us peace—we would meet again in heaven.
Late in the afternoon on Thursday Patricia talked to me about her wish to be buried in a small cemetery about two miles from Tusen Takk. We had visited this place a couple of times over the years. I would describe it as an old graveyard off a seldom used road on a hillside surrounded by cherry orchards. It has a couple dozen headstones. When you look west, you see Lake Michigan in the distance. We visited this cemetery ten years ago on a clear evening when the sun was setting and it seemed like the most peaceful place in the world. I promised Patricia I would bury her there and that I would make her the pine box she wanted—I would make it out of straight grain quarter sawn Douglas fir, wood that had been the original ceiling in our home at Tusen Takk. What made this wood appropriate for this task is that it is both strong and lightweight, qualities that Patricia mirrored. After discussing this we held each other and wept.
Evening came. Thursday night. A young woman came into the room. She was the fellow specializing in pulmonary medicine who had questioned Patricia in the morning. She brought with her one of the country’s finest infectious disease specialists. They had smiles on their faces. With great joy she told Patricia that she was 99% sure Patricia did not have cancer—she had coccidiomycosis, otherwise known as Valley Fever. Though Valley Fever is a serious illness and could last 2-3 months, it is treatable and she will get over it. This diagnosis explained everything: the fever, the rash, the mass in her lungs, the coughing and shortness of breath. A biopsy performed the next day confirmed the diagnosis. Not cancer. The anti-fungal medicine she began taking almost instantly relieved some of her worst symptoms.
Experiencing this event that saw the person I love most in the world swing from life to death and back to life again changed my perspective on my existence in two significant ways. First, I appreciate some things more, things that deserve my time. Second, I realize that discerning what deserves my time is one of the most important things I can do with my remaining life on earth. Choices have to be made—a person can’t do everything, one does not have enough time. Refinement is key, intentionality is paramount—and that understanding is new to me. Most importantly, with this new perspective comes joy because we, you and I, are alive and we have some time left to actively love the things we discern to be of utmost importance. And that is worth doing.
