Looming ahead of me is another week. There will most likely be phone calls from doctors and decisions will need to be made - new steps will need to be taken - new territory will need to be entered. The cancer is bad. I know that. But I can't dwell on it or I will go crazy.
Right now I have two children that are driving me crazy with non-cancer related issues! They are actually issues so small that they shouldn't even be considered issues!!! I also have a teenager. Thankfully my teenager has a good head on her shoulders, a deep faith, good role models and awesome parents (well, her dad is pretty awesome anyway!). Despite all she has going for her though the teenage road is hard. Very hard. There are so many things I wish I could just tell her to do so she can avoid the heartbreak that I went through and avoid the mistakes that I made. Even if I could get her to make the choices I want for her I can't make the kids around her do the same. My parents watched me trudge through adolescence and now it is my turn to watch my children do the same. Add the heartaches of parenting to the fear of cancer unknowns and it just becomes too much to bear.
Brian came home today after being gone hunting for a few days. It sounds like he had a really good time away with his friend but I could already see it on his face when he came home. He had the post-vacation blues or better put - the back to reality blues. When I asked him if that was what was wrong he said yes. I informed him that today was Sunday and we are still in denial mode here so he needed to leave his "reality" parked at the front door and that was all the further it was allowed. It can wait there until Monday morning. I got a little smile out of him at least :)
Right outside our house lies cancer fears, parenting concerns, only 34 more days left until Christmas shopping stress, and much, much more. Inside our home right now we are in our happy place. There is no cancer here. My back pain? No, that's not the tumors - that is from this new weight lifting class I started last week. Yup, bench pressed 300 pounds the other day!!
Tonight I am going to wrap my family up in bubble wrap. We are going to enjoy each other, we will not fight (okay, so this will be a stretch), we will watch mindless silly movies or play board games. We will have tickle fights and laugh so hard that we can't breathe. We will pretend that cancer does not exist. We will go our our happy place. Denial. I know we can't stay here forever but for right now that's where I want to be.
