Confession

When I first received my diagnosis, I have to admit that I received a lot of sympathetic looks and pity stares.  Which I have to say kinda confused me.  I felt like, yes, this is bad, but it could be worse, and I don't intend to give in, and I have every intention of being around for Hugo's high school graduation and to babysit my grandchildren and all that jazz.  Plus, I am not one (in general) to feel overly sorry for myself.  If there is a problem to face, my general attitude is to face it head on; find a solution, solve it, and move on.

I think it was a few weeks ago now that I suddenly realized why all the sympathy...  I believe it was on a day that my mom left a little earlier than she usually does, and it was a good hour before Matt would be home from work.  Kyrie and Lari arrived home from school and Hugo and Declan were running around.  Kyrie probably started asking me incessantly what she could have for a snack, and Declan was probably pretending to be Jay, the blue Ninja, and Hugo was more than likely taking the phone off the hook and dialing China, while Lariska was crying or whining about how someone said something mean to her (Declan or Kyrie, take your pick).  I would've been tired.  And, it was likely on a day when we did not receive a meal and so I needed to start figuring out dinner and just the thought of listening to kids say, "___ again?!" (I mean, do kids ever not complain about eating leftovers?  It doesn't matter if it was the best meal ever, if you try and feed it to them again the next day you are going to get an earful.) made me bang my head against an imaginary wall. And, all of a sudden I felt really sorry for myself and wanted the pity party to begin.  I also just wanted to go lie down on my bed and sleep for a year.

I have yet to get mad about this whole situation.  I figure it is going to happen eventually, but since I have mostly remained in denial about the seriousness of all of this (and I intend to stay that way as long as possible, since it is a much happier place to be) and since I firmly believe that God does not give people cancer, I am not sure exactly what or who to be mad at.  Plus, blaming people or deities doesn't really get you anywhere or change anything.  And since anger takes a whole lot of energy, something I am not particularly stocked up on these days, I think I will just try and avoid this stage for as long as possible.

So...in the middle of trying to balance our already chaotic life, you throw cancer into the mix, and what you get is one very tired Mommy.  Not angry, not sad, not entirely mindless, not 100% crazed, just physically tired, and a bit heart-weary.

And, the ridiculous thing about facing this head-on is that the "moving on" stage is a minimum of 2 years away - 24 weeks of chemo, then surgery with a month to recover, then 6 weeks of radiation, then a year (hopefully!) off, and then reconstructive surgery and 6-8 weeks of more recovery time.  Sheesh!  What the heck?!

Stupid cancer.

"Suck it up, Buttercup!"  (Thank you, Jenny!)  Here is the silver lining that Jeanne told me I would find - I am so blessed to have these four crazy children.  They may have weird quirks and issues with ridiculous things, but they are my children and I love them.  I wanted every single one of them and I am so lucky to have them.  So, even though they exhaust me to the Nth degree, I still feel so fortunate to have them and so blessed to be their mom.  They make me laugh and they make me cry and I love them so much.  So, who needs sleep?  It's over-rated.  I choose these guys.