Plant a Geranium in Your Cranium - Softcover

Johnson, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 084993785X ISBN 13: 9780849937859

Publisher: Thomas Nelson, 2002

Synopsis

"I never wanted to be in the cancer survivors club. But, then, I never wanted to be in AARP, either!"

Barbara Johnson laughingly lifted millions of readers out of the depths of despair with her book Stick a Geranium in Your Hat and Be Happy. In that classic volume of humor and encouragement, she shared how God's gift of joy helped her survive the deaths of two sons and the eleven-year estrangement of another son who was lost in the homosexual lifestyle.

Now that same laughter-lined attitude has sustained Barbara during a life-threatening battle with cancer?a battle in which she never lost her bubble of joy. Plant a Geranium in Your Cranium is the inspiring yet funny story of Barbara's journey through a year of illness, frustration?and abundant humor. It's a joyful chronicle of her own experiences combined with dozens of hilarious anecdotes and cartoons sent to her by others who share her belief in the healing power of laughter.

About this title

About the Author

Barbara Johnson was the founder of Spatula Ministries, a coauthor of various Women of Faith devotionals, and the author of numerous bestselling books, including Boomerang Joy, Living Somewhere between Estrogen and Death, and Stick a Geranium in Your Hat and Be Happy.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Plant a Geranium in your Cranium

Sprouting Seeds of Joy in the Manure of LifeBy BARBARA JOHNSON

W PUBLISHING GROUP

Copyright © 2002 Barbara Johnson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-8499-3785-X

Contents

Unexpected foresight...........................................................................................................................................................vii1. I don't know what the problem is ... but I'm sure it's hard to pronounce-Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?...............................................12. Having a tumor ... with humor It's been lovely, but I have to scream now....................................................................................................133. This would be funny if it weren't happening to me If all is not lost ... where IS it?.......................................................................................394. I'm gonna laugh about this if it kills me Warning: I have an attitude, and I know how to use it.............................................................................635. Give me ambiguity ... or give me something else What do you mean, it's not all about me?....................................................................................836. Just think: If it weren't for marriage, men would go through life thinking they had no faults at all If you want breakfast in bed, sleep in the kitchen.....................1097. Everything is okay in the end. If it's not okay, then it's not the end!-Even when you fall flat on your face, you're still moving forward...................................133Acknowledgments................................................................................................................................................................155Notes..........................................................................................................................................................................157

Chapter One

I don't know what the problem is ... but I'm sure it's hard to pronounce

Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?

What a luxury it was to have a few days at home in the middle of March 2001, with no traveling, no speaking engagements, no out-of-town guests to entertain. Women of Faith had just commenced its 2001 tour a couple of weeks earlier in Charleston, West Virginia, and Bill and I had enjoyed being back on the road with our traveling companions of the last five years. But now it was good to be home again with a few days to get caught up on all the work before the tour shifted into high gear. In the next eight months Women of Faith would be presenting conferences in twenty-five cities from coast to coast, including one stretch of seven back-to-back weekends without a break. It was going to be an exciting, exhausting year.

To celebrate my "downtime" I was puttering around the house, tending to little chores we hadn't had time to do for several months. For example, I'd noticed that my clothes dryer wasn't drying clothes as fast as it once had. Someone told me it helped the dryer run more efficiently if you cleaned out all the lint that had collected not just in the lint trap but underneath the trap, too, in all the reachable corners of the dryer's outer shell. So, while Bill was out running errands, I armed myself with an old toothbrush and settled onto the floor in front of the dryer to dig out all the fuzz that had accumulated.

I was happily excavating long strings of lint when the strangest feeling came over me. Suddenly, my arms and legs became as flimsy as wet noodles. There was no pain, no tingling, no dizziness. Just an overwhelming sense of weakness. I felt fine-except that I just couldn't get up. I oozed onto the floor-and stayed there. Suddenly I regretted all the times I'd made fun of that old lady in the TV commercial for the health-monitoring device-the poor old thing who pushed the button on her radio pendant and shouted, "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!"

No Time for Trouble

There was no pain, no nausea, no discomfort at all. I just couldn't muster the strength to get up off the floor. It was the strangest sensation I've ever known.

Eventually Bill came home. It really irked me that, seeing me sprawled on the laundry-room floor, he didn't immediately sense that something was wrong. "I thought you just got carried away with your toothbrush and decided to clean under the dryer, too," he said later.

He helped me get up and into a chair, and we discussed whether we should call my doctor. But it seemed so silly to call up and say, "I feel fine, except that my arms and legs have suddenly turned into stretched-out rubber bands." I thought my doctor, who had known me for years and read all my books, might tease me. "Well, what do you need, Barb," I imagined him saying, "fresh elastic?"

Throughout the afternoon friends called to say hello. When I told them the perplexing and rather unusual thing that had happened, they didn't think it was funny at all. Every one of them fussed and threatened to call 911 long distance and send the medics hurrying to my rescue. They worried that I'd had a stroke. But I laughed and reassured them. I knew I hadn't had a stroke. I could talk and think and function the same as always. I had just been unable to get up off the floor.

"I'm fine," I told them all.

But it was obvious there would be no peace until I had myself checked out. In fact, I began worrying that some of my fussbudget friends might have a stroke themselves, worrying about me, if they didn't calm down. So the next morning, feeling sure I was wasting my time, I drove myself to my doctor's office. And the next thing I knew, I was checked into a hospital, assigned to a different doctor-a specialist in neurology-and was being poked and prodded and scanned until I absolutely had no secrets left from anyone!

The tests went on for a couple of days. Then the next morning the neurosurgeon came into my room, trying to look pleasant but obviously hiding some hard news.

"Well, Mrs. Johnson," he said kindly. "We think we've narrowed down the problem to two possibilities."

"Oh ... that's good-I guess," I said, not sure how to respond. "What are my choices?"

He laughed. "Well, it's not really a choice. And neither one is something you'd ever choose. It looks like you've either had a massive stroke ... or you have a brain tumor."

"Ohhhh," I moaned. It took me a minute to catch my breath. Then I began pleading. "I don't have time for either one of those problems. I've got a ministry to run and twenty-five speaking engagements scheduled. We've got company coming this weekend, and we're leaving for Sacramento next Thursday," I began, as though I could argue with him.

The doctor smiled nervously. "Mrs. Johnson, I wouldn't count on going to Sacramento if I were you ..."

"So you think it's either a stroke or a brain tumor ..." I was barely able to repeat his devastating words. I had to let them soak into my poor, besieged brain until finally I could understand what he was telling me. "Which one should I pray for? It's like choosing between Hitler and Mussolini!"

He laughed. "No, it's not the greatest choice, is it? But I think we should pray it's a tumor. Some brain tumors are very treatable; a lot of them we can melt with chemotherapy. But the damage caused by a stroke is irreversible in many cases."

Obviously, I wanted to have the problem that could melt away. After all the harsh news the doctor had brought to me in those last few minutes, the word melt seemed soothing and peaceful.

He squeezed my hand and left the room.

A Major Change in Plans

An MRI would determine which condition was causing my problem. Now, MRI officially stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging; it's a high-tech test that lets doctors see horizontal "slices" of the inside of your body. But to me MRI stands for Mini-Roll Insertion or Magnificent Racket Inducer, because the experience made me feel like I was being inserted into the tiny center of a giant roll of bathroom tissue-or, more accurately, the even smaller metal tube of a toilet-tissue holder. Inside the tube, it sounded like a giant drummer was pounding away, right above my face.

Lying flat on my back on a slab, something like a conveyor belt slowly carried me into the tiny tube of the giant machine. The technician had cautioned me that it would be absolutely essential to lie perfectly still throughout the ninety-minute procedure-no coughing, scratching, shifting, twitching, or laughing-or the whole thing might have to be repeated.

Right! I thought. As if anyone could laugh when her head's disappearing into a giant steel toilet-tissue roll! Then, as soon as I heard the lecture, I had the most urgent need to rub my nose. I gave it one good swipe as the conveyor belt started up then quickly tucked my hands by my sides, as instructed. It was a little scary, but fortunately, I'm not claustrophobic, so I wasn't overwhelmed by nervousness. Suddenly, I had the silliest image as I thought about what it was like to lie on that conveyor belt bed. I thought about that I Love Lucy episode where Lucy's working in the chocolate factory and the conveyor belt brings the chocolates faster and faster until she's unable to keep up and starts shoving them into her mouth and down her blouse and under her hat. Maybe I will laugh after all, I mused. But just then the first bong! echoed through the tube, and I didn't have to worry about moving. For a moment, I was scared stiff!

After several minutes of the loud bonging! a voice seemed to come from right inside my head. "Mrs. Johnson? Are you all right? Are you doing okay?"

At first I thought it was God, calling me home. Then I realized it was the technician. (God would've called me "Barb.")

What I wanted to answer was, "Get me outta here! This is crazy! I feel like I'm stuck in a huge roll of aluminum foil!" Instead, I murmured, "Uh-huh. Just fine."

Finally, ninety minutes later, the test was over. Afterward, a friend sent me a clipping by Colorado humorist Chris Westcott, who wrote in the Durango Herald about her own MRI. She was the one who first compared the procedure to being put into a "vibrating metal canister roughly the size of the paper tube inside a roll of toilet paper." And she noted that before undergoing the procedure, patients have to remove anything metal from their bodies since the scan uses a magnetic field. "The magnetic field didn't hurt," she said, "but when the scan was over, I did have a strange compulsion to walk due north."

Thank goodness I didn't feel the urge to head for the North Pole! But I did come out of the experience with a stronger urge to draw nearer to the Father. It started when a friend told me it helps, when you're having an MRI or CAT scan, to have someone hold your feet as you lie inside the tube. It reminds you you're not alone and provides comfort, she said.

Since that first one, I've had lots more MRIs and CAT scans, and several friends have volunteered to be my foot-holders, but I have declined. I've had Someone else helping me. When I'm in that small, confined space, I picture myself hidden away in "a cleft in the rock," covered gently with God's own hand as His magnificent glory thunders by, as Exodus 33:22 describes. And in that loud, tight, toilet-paper tube of a place, I feel an unusual sense of comforting peace.

Oh Good! It's a Tumor

Doctors should be required to take acting classes as part of their medical-school curriculum. Then when they have bad news to deliver they could be a little more successful in hiding their feelings as they approach the patient. My poor doctor walked in my room that day looking like a little boy who had been caught stuffing a frog down his sister's turtleneck.

"Well, hello. Do you have news for me? It's okay," I told him, trying to be encouraging. "Whatever it is, God won't fall off His throne."

"It's a tumor," he said gently, "a little larger than a golf ball, deeply embedded in your brain. And we're almost certain it's cancer."

"Cancer...." I echoed, frozen by that one awful, breathtaking word as though I'd been shot with a stun gun. It hung there over my hospital bed for a moment. Then it occurred to me: This has to be a mistake! I can't have cancer. There's been no cancer in my family. I come from a long line of heart-trouble people. This guy obviously has me mixed up with someone else who landed on the laundry-room floor last week.

"Cancer! It can't be cancer," I told the doctor emphatically. "My family doesn't get cancer. I'm supposed to die from a heart attack or a bad pulmonary valve or blocked artery. And I can't have a brain tumor. Why, I haven't even had a headache; how could I have a brain tumor?"

"We need to do surgery, a craniotomy," he continued, smiling indulgently at the shocked responses that poured out of me nonstop.

"A craniotomy! Brain surgery! How can this be? I feel fine, just a little weak, and I've got so much to do-those twenty-five Women of Faith conferences and book contracts and a ministry to run ..." Wasn't this guy listening to me? Didn't he see I didn't have time for this? I COULD NOT HAVE A MALIGNANT BRAIN TUMOR!

"But we've got to reduce the swelling in your brain before we can operate," he rambled on as though I hadn't said a word. And maybe I hadn't. I was in such a state of shock, I wasn't sure what I was saying-or hearing. "We'll do that with medication," he said, "and then as soon as it's feasible, we'll do the surgery."

"I'm gonna have surgery? Brain surgery? You'll remove the ... the tumor?" I asked, still unaccustomed to thinking the word had anything to do with me, with my head.

"Maybe," he answered. "We have to get a good look at it in order to know how best to treat it. If we can remove it without damaging healthy tissue, we'll do that. If not, we'll leave it alone and treat it with chemo. And of course we'll need to keep an eye on your diabetes while we're doing this."

Chemo. Another new word in the awful vocabulary that had suddenly been personalized for ME.

"Mrs. Johnson," he said, holding my hand, "I know this is hard news for you. And I suspect these next twenty-four hours, as you adjust to this news, will be the hardest twenty-four hours you've ever lived."

Somehow, his warning snapped me out of my shocked state. I looked at the doctor and actually smiled. Doctor, I thought, you obviously know nothing about my life!

Moments of Mirth in the Manure Pile

It's our tradition in my books to share a smattering of inspiring stories, funny jokes, and cartoons at the end of each chapter. They've all been sent to me from friends around the country, and in many cases the author is unknown. But obviously the writers were folks who loved to laugh. And oh, how we all need to laugh!

Probably the best-known sentiment about cancer, sent to me by a host of friends and well-wishers, is this little essay by an unknown writer:

Cancer is so limited. It cannot cripple love. It cannot shatter hope. It cannot corrode faith. It cannot eat away peace. It cannot destroy confidence. It cannot kill friendship. It cannot shut out memories. It cannot silence courage. It cannot invade the soul. It cannot reduce eternal life. It cannot quench the Spirit. It cannot lessen the power of the resurrection.

* * *

A riddle: Q: How do you make God laugh?

A: Tell Him your plans.

* * *

The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day He created springtime.

* * *

God loves to decorate. Let Him live long enough in a heart, and that heart will begin to change. God can no more leave a life unchanged than a mother can leave her child's tear untouched.

* * *

If you want to be the picture of health, you're gonna need a happy frame of mind to put it in.

* * *

Mixed maxims:

Don't count your chickens before they cross the road. He who laughs first shall be last. Beauty is only skin deep ... in the eye of the beholder.

* * *

Don't be a cloud just because you failed to become a star.

* * *

Jesus didn't avoid storms- He weathered them. He didn't keep the boat out of the water- He kept the water out of the boat!

* * *

My body is all messed up: My nose runs, and my feet smell!

* * *

Errors have been made. Others will be blamed.

* * *

The next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it.

* * *

THE FAMILY CIRCUS

By Bil Keane

* * *

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. To these I commit my day. If I succeed, I will give thanks. If I fail, I will seek his grace. And then, when this day is done, I will place my head on my pillow and rest.

* * *

Energize the limp hands, strengthen the rubbery knees. Tell fearful souls, "Courage! Take heart! GOD is here." (Isaiah 35:3-4 MSG)

Excerpted from Plant a Geranium in your Craniumby BARBARA JOHNSON Copyright © 2002 by Barbara Johnson. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 084993785X
• ISBN 13: 9780849937859
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 180