Emotions

Tomorrow is my birthday.

I don't want a party.  I don't want wishes.  I don't want to think about a whole new year.  That's my usual routine.  Usually I spend the last day of __ reflecting and looking ahead.  This year.  I can't seem to.  Living in the moment is a big enough effort... don't borrow worries from tomorrow.  And... what do I want?  Not to die.  Kind of a fun-sucking idea.  I don't know.  Was up at 4am, nausea.  Then thinking.  Then crying.  Woke up Shawn.  Took my meds.  Crying.  Just all the emotions and trauma of the last weeks in hospital.  Still can't have a good cry because I'm afraid to cry and loose some clot that sends me into a stroke or death.  I assume that doesn't really happen, but ... who knows.  I don't really worry about it, God has a plan ... but... you still don't want to loose blood clots in jugulars I assume.

When I reflect on 40, it was a great start.  Kori and Keri surprised me at the mall with a huge and fun "You are 40" balloon...that was the best start to the birthday celebrations.  I loved it.  The surprise.  The meeting my sisters unexpectedly at the mall.  It was awesome.  And dinner with my dearest inner circle friends at a local restaurant.  And being surrounded by women who love me.  And family dinners, and celebrating Shawn's 40 the next day after mine (I'm one day older and wiser than my husband, super fun as my sisters are twins and now I get to share a birthday with my own buddy).  So many great memories if I work to recall them... and then the cancer mixes in and I realize that my symptoms started right about my birthday.  And then I have to work really hard to remember that all of this last year wasn't scary and scary.  I was in excruciating pain for months before we realized it was cancer, but the days were good.  I was in university, working towards my final semester of the Library Technician program, the kids were settling into school, my baby went to Kindergarten and was loving it, my biggest boy was in high school and loving it, swim club and soccer were successes yet again, hubby is in a job he loves, things were settling into a new pattern... out of 'baby days' and into 'adventure'...and then cancer.  Four months suddenly seems like a lifetime, so I tentatively am teaching myself to celebrate that I have survived cancer for four months since diagnosis... but I want to thrive.  And at 4am the tears felt like a flood and the emotions wouldn't wash clean, they just hung there until the meds mercifully drifted me to sleep.

But I am not blue.  I am just trying to process.  That's how I do things, but this is hard to process.  We meet with the Thrombosis (vein) specialist on Friday.  Hoping he will have some clear information and we will have an understanding of what this jugular blood clot means to daily life.  The thing with cancer, as with maybe other medical things (I don't know)... you have a whole slew of doctors and medical people but each only cares for (and therefore, speaks to you about) one specific part of your disease or body or care.  I have a lung doctor who can't talk about my kidney, a kidney doctor who put me on meds that my oncologist took me off of because the oncologist is in charge of cancer-fighting-medicine, a hospital nurse that medicates one way but a chemo nurse who does it another... so many things to sort and figure out and remember.  And all I can think about is the next needle I need to self-inject.

Thanks for listening to me ramble.  This is my journey and my journal and it helps to get it off my mind and out my hands.  Writing is such a blessing.

Being home has been... surreal.  Shawn looks at me in relief.  The kids look at me in awe.  I have been very weak so I sit here and just be.  And last night, exhaustion across every single one of us.  The strain of Mommy being gone so long, the happy of having her home, the 'shhhh, she's sleeping' and the 'can I hug you?, is it safe'.  It's a lot.  I think everyone slept well last night, they seem a little more normal in my presence, though the side-looks and checking on me (so cute, but breaks my heart that they have these worries) are still there.  Lazing about, watching a movie.  Just good to be together under this one roof.

God is bigger.  God is good.  We are blessed.  We are tired.  Please pray rejuvenation and recoup and rest and normal for our day.  I think that's what we need.  I have this week off from chemo and I believe that every day I will regain strength and energy.  That will translate to more normal for the entire family.  That's what I want.  Normal for the kids.  For Shawn.  For my family.  Whatever the new normal is.  That setting keeps changing on us.  [smile]

Love you.  I know God is blessing your day... watch for it!
Kristin