Reality Bites

“The ship of my life may or may not be sailing on calm and amiable seas. The challenging days of my existence may or may not be bright and promising. Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed.” ― Maya Angelou


Denial, might be too strong word, but as denial is one of the phases I am supposed to be going through according to all the books, I guess it is somewhat true...... auto-pilot seems to be more accurate. I know I have been going through the whole range of emotions and foolishly thought they had finally evened out, then I got hit with another cold slap of reality this past week.

Everyday I wake up prepared for crisis mode, never sure of what level it may be.....then keeping the girls' schedules normal with their dance, gymnastics, horseback riding lessons, school, play, while also catering to my baby girl... every morning I just try to take on only what I have on the calendar for today. I don't focus too far in the future, I can't plan vacations until we get C's pain under enough control that we can be in the car for a decent amount of time, can't plan a trip to visit family in Texas for the same reasons, even accepting the offers of friends to help with the yard work has fallen on the shoulders of good friends to organize and arrange as I can't seem to focus that far out. Play dates are hard to put together as I don't know how C will be feeling day to day and I hate leaving him when he is having a rough day. I know it is easier on him to have a quiet house on those days, but it is still a struggle for me as I wish I could be in both places at once.

So I don't know if denial is what I walked in to our appointment at NIH with, but I wasn't quite in the right place to hear the doctors talk about C's cancer and what exactly we are up against. Yes, I have repeated our story many times... used all the right terms, explaining why they aren't removing the prostate tumor, how the hormone therapy he is on reduces the testosterone in his body to slow the spread to his bones. But hearing a doctor talk about just how we will be fighting and managing this cancer for the rest of his life brought into focus that this really is my life, this has really happened, it isn't some awful dream I get to wake up from. There is no magic bullet that will make it all go away, this is our new reality, our new normal.

After processing the events of this week, and revisiting the pain, sadness, and fear I thought I had moved past, I have found a renewed energy to fight. I want to research all that has been published about fighting this beast, I want to change our diets to give C's body a better chance at not only standing up to the cancer but to the treatments as well, and to get our house back in order and not let it stagnate in the chaos it's become.

I took the girls to church this morning, dropped them in their respective classes, then settled in the room they reserve for nursing mommies to feed baby T as she had woken up just as it was time to walk out the door. As I was sitting in the little room following along with the service on the overhead speaker, I opened the Bible app on my phone (yes, they have an app for that....) to follow the scripture from which the pastor was reading. I don't know why, but the app opened itself to the story of David and Goliath. I have to admit to drifting away from the pastor's sermon and reading that story several times. I feel like that is exactly where we are. This cancer is huge, scary, determined.... but we have to go in with faith and fight the best we can, and hope for the same outcome.

Also with the realization that we only have today and that tomorrow will always be uncertain regardless of our current circumstances, mortality being more in focus than ever, I need to remember how to stand on my own two feet. C takes amazing care of me, provides for our family so that we never need for anything, as curmudgeon as he can seem to outsiders I can't remember a time he ever said "no" to anything I have wanted for myself or the girls. To begin conquering my fears, I really need to learn, if not take over, the areas of our household long since delegated to C like outdoor maintenance and finances.......... though I think I'll take a chance on tomorrow for learning to change the tires on my car.