Adjustments

I've moved fairly often in my life, and I've spent extended periods away from my home—where ever that might have been at the time. But I don't remember ever being homesick.

Although I'm not experiencing homesickness now either, just over a month away from Lubbock, I am aware of some things I miss and some adjustments I have to make.

Aside from Amy—whom I miss on a daily and hourly basis—I most miss Marketstreet. A grocery store. What does that say about me? Well, that I like to cook and I like to eat. No secret there. But Marketstreet is a fantastic grocery store. And to think there are at least two of them in Lubbock! I have yet to find what I consider a decent grocery store here in the greater Loma Linda area. We do well on vegetarian, organic, and health food outlets, thanks to the influence of the Adventists, but no good, general grocery store. Produce? Forget about it. Unusual ingredients? Nada. Even usual ones. I have been unable, for instance, to locate canned pumpkin pie filling. Un-American. Congress should be notified.

The other Lubbock experiences missed—our Sunday school class at St. John's and the theology discussion group—both made up of people that gather around and continually derive inspiration from Ted Dotts. Those of you in those groups who are reading this: Count your blessings! You, your insights, your questions, and your laugh-out-loud good humor are wonderful gifts to me, to each other, and to the world. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy!

On this end, how interesting learning to adapt to a town where 40% of the population is Seventh Day Adventist! In preparation for the Sabbath, things begin to shut down here mid afternoon on Friday. Sometime Friday night, they apparently roll up the sidewalks and lock all the cars in the garages. Loma Linda's a ghost town on the Sabbath. In fact, there's no US mail delivery on Saturday. Sunday, yes, but not Saturday. And on Sunday the entire community is back in business. Stores open up, the rec. center returns to normal hours, and it's life as usual.

It's also interesting to observe the Adventist obsessions with food. The core Adventist belief follows the Levitical code of avoiding foods the Mosaic law branded as unclean—pork, shell fish, and so on. But many Adventists, extrapolating from that center, eschew all meats. Some are pescatarians (fish 'n' vegies only). Some are vegans. Dr. Hans Diehl, founder of the Coronary Health Improvement Project (CHIP), has spoken to the prostate patients' group several times. I call him Doctor Carrot. He vigorously attacks the Standard American Diet (SAD) and advocates near veganism. And of course he has all sorts of statistics and published studies to back up his contention that the majority of our Western diseases (heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, and cancer to name only a few) are directly related to SAD. However, Stella, the nutritionist on the Proton Center's staff, is reputed to advocate a high protein diet—in other words, meats, and plenty of them—to counteract the fatigue that some proton patients experience later on in their treatment. At the Restaurant Tour dinner last evening (where, by the way, quantities of Italian sausage, veal parmesan, and cheese were washed down by wine red, white, and pink), someone commented that not only are Dr. Carrot and Stella not on the same page—they're not even in the same book.

Somehow I find it heartening that there's this kind of controversy within the Adventist community. Differences are almost always a sign of life and health; lock-step homogeneity makes me nervous and gives me a rash.

Treatment count: 14 down, 31 to go.