I am here! Navigating the walk of illness and wellness
By Glenis Redmond
I got the gift of gab from my Dad. My fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Kathrine Priest, wrote on my report card in the English section: oral work is excellent; Glenis enjoys talking, acting, and singing before the other children. I hope she develops this talent. I was that kid, the animated kinesthetic one acting out any story or scene with dance, humor, and timing. I was always the student called upon to read stories and poems out loud. Once, my teacher asked me to read “I Wandered as Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth, and my classmates met me with wild applause. I felt not only heard but seen. In retrospect, Mrs. Priest was very strict and stern, yet she was one of the only teachers who saw the storyteller in me. Wherever she is now, I hope she can see that I developed my talent by becoming a poet and a teaching artist.
Who knew while running around the world professionally telling stories for twenty-seven years that I would end up here––fighting for my life in my 55th year? Maybe I should have known something was wrong when I had developed a dull throb at the base of my back and that my knee hurt so bad that I had a noticeable limp. I was hobbling around the office at the Peace Center, where I was the Poet-in-Residence. I took no real note of my gait until a co-worker asked, “What happened to you?” I brushed her off with a clipped response, “Oh, it’s just my Fibromyalgia acting up. I thought it was just that. I have been dealing with Fibromyalgia since 1992, which meant I was accustomed to muscle pain and flu-like symptoms. I had learned to push through.
However, on this day, my co-worker just shook her head and raised one eyebrow, and this non-verbal communication of concern was enough for me to schedule an appointment with my nurse practitioner. She advised me that we should do a complete physical with blood work. I told her that I was leaving for a poetry residency in New Brunswick, New Jersey, for the State Theatre in a few days and would be gone for three weeks. She said, “Let’s do it when you return. The physical will be six months early, but do not worry; your insurance will pay.” I agreed. I was dubious that the physical or the blood work would reveal anything because my last physical was routine with no red flags. I thought this was just the slippery life of Fibromyalgia, and all I needed to do was rest and take muscle relaxers to gain my footing again.
So off, I went on my 21-day poetry community residency in New Jersey, which consisted of at least three to four engagements daily. The events included poetry readings or workshops, which could occur at a school, a corporation, a conference, a prison, a halfway house, a detention home, or a church.
As a former counselor, poet, and teaching artist, I aim to create safe spaces for participants. In each setting, my goal is not necessarily to make people poets but to make them aware of the poetry in their lives. It is challenging but gratifying work.
At one school, the principal apologized; he told me he was glad I was there, but these students would not want to learn poetry and were gang members. By the end of our time together, I got buy-in; these young people shared heartbreaking stories through their poetry. They moved me so much that I wrote a poem called “Bruised.” The poem ends like this: I know this detour we took/ down old roads is a place we had to go,/ places where we have been loved so hard it hurts,/so hard we are still bruised./ We bear our scars,/ then we pick up our pens/and write.
The red X on my map that said I AM HERE was not so much a geographical locator but defined my identity, how I saw myself, and how others saw me——a Mama, a Gaga, a Black woman poet, and a fierce literary citizen. I stand firmly in poetry and my outreach of it. I also embrace the unconventional artist road life that I live. However, my May calendar that year was packed as always, but it felt more taxing. During the residency, I was dragging and exhausted. I knew something was off at my core. I pushed and pushed through. When I returned home, the terrain of my life swiftly became unrecognizable.
I had my blood work done before I returned to the doctor for my physical. I saw the red flags on MyChart populate. Eventually, I noticed that I had a Monoclonal M-spike. I copied and pasted that phrase into Google. Instead of fifteen possibilities of how I would meet my demise, there was only one option: Multiple Myeloma. In the privacy of my own home, I learned that this meant blood cancer. I did not cry; I went numb. I did not tell my Mother or my twin daughters Amber and Celeste immediately. I kept this knowledge to myself until the official diagnosis. I dreaded telling them and I hoped the blood test was wrong. However, when my nurse practitioner entered the room at my appointment, she had tears in her eyes. I told her that I already knew. I felt immense shame and failure. Who was I without caring for my family and friends and traveling the world giving poetry away? I had lost my footing. This was quite a turn; the caretaker had to be cared for.
I began doing the cancer dance of weekly blood draws, chemotherapy, and steroids to get ready for a Stem Cell Transplant. This process all transpired during the six months before the pandemic. I had already been homebound before the rest of the world shut down. I had been saying that I needed to slow down for five years. Be careful of what you ask for; you might just get it. Stage III Multiple Myeloma told me to sit down––to have several seats. Being still is the most challenging work for a doer. This is when I discovered my screened-in patio. Who knew? I had a new relationship with it and the cast of characters that inhabited my backyard, Pine.
What Emily Dickinson Said About Hope
Called it a winged thing perched on the soul
From my backyard, I agree.
Through the most challenging year of my life
my feathered friends came through.
The red streaks of the Cardinals
dot the pine-like Christmas tree ornaments.
The next day mourning doves
wake the day with their sorrow-filled calls.
Our state bird, the Carolina Wren, claims
not only South Carolina but also my sanctuary;
my heart belongs to the hummingbirds with their
incandescent darting. Surely, good omens are to follow.
Then, the brilliant blur of Eastern Bluebirds.
Between the leaves, my eyes can never take in enough
of this tarot reading of wings.
I hold on as they lift off into the cerulean skies.
People say that I’ve gone to the birds,
I disagree. I believe. I’ve lived here all along.
I spent most of my time at home with my grandson, Julian. He and his Mama, my daughter Amber, live with me. Julian was five years old when I was going through the most arduous stages of cancer. He and Amber both were my lifeline. Yet, I hated him seeing his Gaga sick, bald, and frail, but we are a multi-generational household. We both suffered. He had spectrum and sensory issues. I was dealing with not focusing too much on dying. While Amber was working, I taught him board games: checkers, Chutes and Ladders, Battleship, and Trouble. We had great fun, but we were the ones who were troubled. As I got stronger, we began frequenting the South Carolina State Parks. I knew we needed to be out in nature. We loved the adventure so much that we wanted to visit all forty-seven state parks to earn the Ultimate Outsider classification granted by the South Carolina State Parks. We have been to twenty-two. We had to do something to shift our outlooks. If I were to die during this cancer ordeal, I wanted Julian to have a treasure chest of memories that we had built. I eventually published a poetry book about our excursions, The Song of Everything: A Poet’s Exploration of the South Carolina State Parks. This is an excerpt of a poem titled “Dear Grandson”:
“Julian, I want you to know
every wonder belongs to you,
though some will say to you otherwise.
Go anyhow: Your passage
has already been paid.
Be an Ultimate Outsider
wherever you go.
It’s up to you to forge on.
Remember, it’s the destination and the journey.
Remember our rain prayers.
Remember, even when I have turned
to nothing but air and am carried
away by a strong Gale.
Know I will be there with you
out in the green and gold meadows
in the gloaming.
My hand will be in yours.
I will be singing as everything sings to you.
Grandson, listen with your whole self
and with your whole self
sing back.”
I wanted to live. I knew there was a good possibility that I could die, but I wanted to live for myself, especially for Julian and eventually for my newest grandchild, Paisley. [I now have another granddaughter, Quinn.]
For six months, I was readying for the Stem Cell Transplant. At first, I did not look cancer-ish, with no hair loss and no weight loss. Many people told me that I looked good and didn’t look sick. I was grateful for this small mercy, But often, I wanted to reply to that comment with, “Multiple Myeloma is an inside job.” When I finally reached the point that I was ready for a Stem Cell Transplant, I slid the most. I was having an autologous transplant. In other words, I was my own donor. This harvesting was not event-free, though I told it would be. My blood pressure went dangerously low. I eventually pulled through, and the next week, I was admitted to the hospital for my twenty-one-day stay. During this process, I had fear. I felt terror. I felt rage. I felt sorrow. I felt grief and loss, but I did not speak of it.
The first day in the hospital, they gave me my cells back. Then, the next day, they gave me high-dose chemotherapy. This is when the fight began. I was in the wilderness. I did not know who I was, let alone where I was–– wild-eyed and weathered between pneumonia, vomiting, and constant diarrhea. I hung on with teeth and claw. During my stem cell transplant, my Mother would come and sit by my bed and not say much but stare at me as if she was lending me some strength to live. I was delirious, going in and out of a morphine haze. My daughter Celeste (one of my chief medical advocates) said I was conversing with people not in the room. I made it through this part of the woods. When I was released from the hospital after the Stem Cell Transplant, I was bald, bloated, and looking very much like my own grandfather. This is when I looked cancer-ish. I received gawks when I went out in public. There was no denying I had cancer.
Though I had survived the worst and had achieved remission, I still had to return to the hospital for weekly infusions––yet all I wanted to do was go home to cocoon and heal in the comforts of my home. My hope was deflated. It was an uphill climb. I had pain from multiple sources. I had bone pain from Multiple Myeloma from lytic lesions on my skull, clavicle, and femur. I had muscle pain from Fibromyalgia. I had nerve pain from neuropathy in my feet and hands. In other words, it was and still is pain on top of pain on top of pain. I never went back to a 9 to 5 position because I am physically and psychically beat up.
I lost so much, and I began to take stock of my losses: My livelihood. My gait. My energy. My ability to dance. I am a dancer. Think old school: Prince or Cameo. I could not walk around my neighborhood daily because it was too high impact, and it hurt. I couldn’t wear my beloved Fluevogs shoes. I have a collection. Don’t ask how many. My favorite is the metallic orange Bebop boots. Think Alice in Wonderland meets Parliament and the Funkadelics. I remember taking on virtual keynotes and poetry workshops too soon; I was very winded. People wanted the old me, and I wanted the old me, but she was not there. I needed to give myself more space to get stronger and healthier and learn who I was in this now.
I am still reckoning with what I can and cannot do. I am fully aware of my limitations and the life expectancy of Multiple Myeloma patients diagnosed at Stage 3. Don’t google the statistics. It is sobering, but I rest when I need to rest. I use Trazodone to battle my cancer insomnia. I get up to write poetry, to garden, and to spend time with my mother, children, and grandchildren. One of my greatest lifelines is talking weekly or sometimes more to my brother Will on FaceTime. He lives in New Zealand. Later, when I was out of the woods he told me, “Glenis I really thought you were gonna die.” I appreciated him showing up. We joked a lot. We tried to right the world. I am thankful for my family and my community, which cares for and about me. However, some days, I still feel lost in the wilderness of cancer. Somedays, I feel broken and withered, but I do my best to make meaning and strive to find purpose. I remind myself now is all there is. I remember to breathe in fully. Remember to enjoy all the growing things around me, including me. Know that there is rugged terrain in the wilderness, but there is also beauty. Remind myself that I am here to claim my space and in my Glenis-way––Bloom Anyhow!
My Favorite Season: Love
I felt the Tacoma Fall chilled air
as I walked alongside Renee
buttoned in my favorite coat,
the one with a faux fur collar
and magnetic clasps as buttons.
I struggled to match her long stride
but we twinned with our plaited hair,
when we entered her hush-filled home
she did not warn me of her mama
lying on the couch taking a nap,
on her way somewhere
from which she would not return.
Every one of her bones pronounced,
but I was not afraid; I felt the room
hum around me like it did in chapel
when the rays of light shone on me
through stained-glass windows
when she extended her skinny branch
of an arm and circled me with her voice
clear as the dome of sky outside
“Glenis, come here. Don’t you know I love you?”
Me, a scruff of a muffin little girl
what did I know of love?
But her words made a solid landing.
I think it was about the place she was going.
I think it was about those three words.
Every Autumn, I think of Mrs. Langley
when the leaves turn golden, rust, and ruby
and begin their dancing descent,
I can feel her brightness upon me
especially now on my cancer journey.
I remember the gift she gave me
and now I too, never hesitate to say
to anyone in need, I love you.
About the Author
Glenis Redmond is the First Poet Laureate of Greenville, South Carolina. She is a 2023 Poet Laureate Fellow selected by the American Academy of Poets. Glenis has published six books of poetry. Her latest books are The Listening Skin (Four Way Books), Praise Songs for Dave the Potter, Art by Jonathan Green, and Poetry by Glenis Redmond (University of Georgia Press). Glenis received the highest arts award in South Carolina, the Governor’s Award, and was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors in 2022. The Listening Skin was shortlisted for the Open Pen America and Julie Suk awards. Glenis has performed nationally and internationally from Hawaii to Haiti. She has toured in England: London, Liverpool and Luton. She speaks for the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) US. She presented in Muscat, Oman, in 2016 and virtually for students in Guatemala and El Salvador for Juneteenth in 2023. Glenis is a veteran and a former Captain in the Army Reserves. She is a medical advocate. Glenis is a mother of twin daughters, Amber and Celeste. She is a Grandmother (Gaga) to Julian, Paisley, and Quinn. Glenis believes poetry is the mouth that speaks when all other mouths are silent.
Photo Credit: Eli Warren