Connie's Story

Today's blog is a guest column by Connie Cox Atkins, my dear friend from the time we were both six years old. She wants to share her story, so feel free to pass it along.

by Connie Atkins

As you may know I have been through a terrible illness. I was diagnosed with a rare form of sarcoma on my right kidney last July. I was treated with one of the meanest combinations of chemo that is used. They used more in me than my doctor said he had ever used on anyone. I had 6 rounds of it that included hospitalization for a week for each treatment. It was given continuously over a 4 day period. I would have to stay the extra days because I was usually too sick to go home. I would have the treatments every three weeks. The tumor on my kidney had destroyed all function and literally had taken over the spot where the kidney used to be. It had grown to approximately 30 pounds. They were able to shrink it to about 15 pounds.

After all the chemo treatments, surgery was done this past February.My surgery took about 6 hours. The surgeons would take turns holding the tumor while the other would carefully cut it away from my body. They had to be careful not to leave any cells for fear of it spreading. With their steady hands being guided by God, they were able to remove the entire thing. I was in intensive care for about nine days. (I do not remember this time.) My remaining kidney shut down. I was placed on dialysis. I am still on dialysis (we don't know how long I will have to do this), but luckily my health continues to improve.

Yesterday was a Glorious day. My kidney doctor took me off of ten pills a day that I was having to take (I still have to take some, but not nearly as many). Today my surgeon told me that they would schedule a removal of the dialysis port (they are using my arm now). All my numbers continue to improve. All because the Lord wants me here a little longer.

I don't know what my purpose is yet, but I am beginning to understand. My most important message to people is to PLEASE GO TO THE DOCTOR! You know your body. You know when something is wrong. I knew something was terribly wrong with me, but I was stubborn, or scared or just downright trifling. I was losing weight. I had no energy. The pain was awful. But I went on. People would ask, but I would make up some excuse. My older brother, Jimmy Cox, died from colon cancer. I guess I was convinced that I too would have the same fate. Then I waited. Then I thought I had waited too long. My dear sweet husband, Jeff Atkins (Bolow to some) is a patient man. He asked, begged, pleaded with me to go to the doctor. His last straw finally came. He was fed up. He told me that he was not going to sit by and watch me die when he knew I could get some help. Jeff, by the way, is also a colon cancer SURVIVER.

That night, Jeff told me that if I refused to go to the doctor to get help then he was going to have to ask me to leave because he would not be a part of me just shriveling up and dying. The look in his eye was one that I wasn't going to play with. I knew he meant business.

I finally agreed to go to the doctor. Like I said, I knew it was very bad. We made plans to go to the emergency room that same weekend. I worked at my job up until the day before I went into the hospital. How I worked I don't know. I was very, very sick. But, as they say, the rest is history.

Now, I'm not writing this for pity, or trying to make myself out to be a martyr. I just want people to know how important it is to go to the doctor when they need to. I could have saved myself a lot of grief. Maybe my other kidney would be working better if I had not had to have so much chemo. Maybe my family would not have had to go through all they did. I don't know. I just know how it did happen. It doesn't have to go this way for everyone. Maybe I'm not even through with it yet. The cancer could come back at any time, but I go to every doctor's appointment I have.

All my family and friends have been so supportive to me: Jeff, Mom, my brother David and his wife Connie, my dear friend Kristie, my two nieces, Julie and Courtney, and my little fishin' buddy Taylor (who never said a word when he saw me with no hair--and would let me talk when I needed to). My extended family has also been there. My aunts, uncles, and cousins would stay with me at the hospital when I was so weak I couldn't get up. They would hold the trash can for me when I was too sick to make it to the bathroom (now that's love).

A lot of prayers have been said for me at the local churches. I appreciate each and every one. They have been heard. Thank you all!

Here By the Owl

The owl is a time-honored emblem of knowledge and wisdom.
Being older than the rest of you, I am asked to advise you from time to time, as the need arises.
I hope my advice will always be based on true knowledge, and ripened with wisdom.

From the FFA opening ceremonies, in the official FFA handbook, circa 1978.

My dad was an FFA advisor. He taught agriculture at Horace Maynard High School beginning in the fall of 1955 until he became "just" an administrator about 1993. Much of the time, he was a teacher and administrator both. But in his capacity as ag teacher, he spoke the advisor's part of the opening ceremonies hundreds of times.

I heard him say the owl's part a few dozen times myself -- first, while trapped in his office after school listening to him and his "boys" practice for parliamentary procedure competition. The opening ceremonies were always a part of the contest requirements. Later, I was on his parliamentary procedure team myself, but that's another story.

In FFA meetings, each officer, including the advisor, is stationed at a bust of his official emblem. My dad's, of course, was an owl. He also had a stuffed, great-horned owl on the wall of his classroom. I never see an owl without thinking of my dad.

And that is fitting. He is, and has always been, a very wise man.

He had remarkable success with his high school program, especially considering the resources available to him. Not that he would have admitted that, ever. He would never take that credit.

He advised older "boys" too, because he worked with UT students doing their student-teaching in agricultural education. Several dozen University of Tennessee students passed through his program over the years on their way to teaching positions of their own. They would become owls, too.

He gave them good advice. "Start tough," he would tell them. "Let the students know you mean business from day one." That's important, because you can always ease up later. "But if you start off too easy, you can never go back the other way."

Part of Pop's success was a natural ability to size-up people, and a good, basic understanding of human nature.

When I was a high school freshman, it came to my attention that he was completely misjudging and mishandling one student in his class. I knew the guy. I'd gone all the way through school with him. He was bad news. And here my dad was treating him just like any ordinary student.

So, with all the wisdom of a young teen, I told my dad he was wrong.

Pop didn't seem too impressed with my advice. I wanted to know why.

He thought about that for a minute.

"Well, Lisa," he said. "It's like this. I know who that boy is. I know what he is. But he doesn't have to know that.

"You see, if I treat him like I know his reputation, why, he'll feel like he has to live up that reputation. If I treat him like everybody else, maybe he won't."

Did that actually work?, I asked.

Not always he admitted. But a surprising number of times, it did.

And wouldn't you know, the wise old owl was right. A whole bunch of boys who were trouble-makers in other classes never gave my dad much trouble at all.

I'll Take the Dirt Road...

My daughter got her drivers license a couple weeks ago. She spent months learning to park, back up, merge, watch for crazy drivers. Now she's can legally drive all by herself.

One nice byproduct of the whole process was the time we spent together as she practiced. She's truly one of my favorite people to hang out with. One day we were talking about what life was like when I learned to drive. That got me thinking on life experience -- especially the kind I have that my children likely never will.

I grew up on a dirt road. It was really a gravel road, but most of the rock would get ground into the roadbed or washed away long before the county would get around to adding more. Most of my friends lived on dirt roads, too.

This brings up driving issues my kids would never consider.

For instance, if you brake suddenly on a dirt road, and hit a patch of gravel, you scoot. Same thing when you're turning from a dirt road on to a paved one. You don't want to do that too quickly or you spin out.

Dirt roads are usually narrow. Until our road was paved, when I was 13, it wasn't even possible to drive past an oncoming car except in a few spots. If you met another car, someone had to pull over to the side and stop, and in some places even back up.

We lived about half way up a ridge. Overhanging trees made shady spots that kept snow and ice on the road for days. So my dad would put tire chains on the his Pontiac Tempest stationwagon, and off we'd go, careening down the ridge in a barely controlled skid. Deep ditches awaited if we ran off the road. Somehow, we never did.

In summer, the problem was dust -- and lack of air conditioning. It's common rural courtesy to slow down when you drive past someone's home on a dirt road. You don't want to be the showoff who stirs up the dust that settles all over them and their belongings.

Dust is a problem inside the car, too. What your own car creates pretty much stays behind you, but a passing car is another thing. When any passenger called out, "A car's coming!" everyone grabbed a window crank to get the windows rolled up, fast. Then, we'd sit sweltering in the heat until the dust died down enough to roll them down again.

Dust, window cranks, pulling over just to pass... Life on the dirt road is a lost experience for most of us now.

But the country group Sawyer Brown remembered it in 1992.

I'll take the dirt road. It's all I know. I've been walking it for years. It's gone where I need to go. It ain't easy. It ain't supposed to be. But I'll take my time. And life won't pass me by. It's right there to find... on the dirt road.