Time

I have lots of things dancing around in my head that I want to write these days. However, what I don't have is time. I am back on a schedule of sleeping for 12-14 hours a day. Add to that one hour a day to go to radiation and that leaves me with a whopping nine hours every day to get everything else done. This is one of those numbers that I wish I had not actually calculated, kind of like how much sleep you get with a newborn/toddler in the house. Sometimes it is better to just not think about it. But when I do think about it that way, it allows me to give myself just a small break. When you only have 9 hours, everything is not going to get done. So in my world that means the laundry almost never gets folded and the kids have to excavate their own underwear every morning from the laundry basket. Worse things have happened. Hmmm, maybe they will learn to fold...don't hold your breath on that one!

Also on the matter of time, I had a perspective altering conversation with one of my nurses last week. I asked her how long it was going to take for my skin to heal. She said that since it took six weeks for it to get this damaged, I should expect it to take at least six weeks to heal. Six weeks!? Argh! I am not that patient. But, wait a minute(here's where the perspective changed), since my poor body has been under attack for about a year now maybe I should stop waiting for it to get better overnight. In fact, I think I need to expect it to take about a year for it to come back to full capacity. A year? OK, new goal. Back healthy in a year.

So when does the cancer treatment actually end? I have six more days of radiation treatment. These are boost treatments aimed only at the breast tumor sight. After that, I can expect my skin right there to get worse for about two weeks and then to begin to heal. Next, I have to go for a mammogram and follow-up visits with all of the doctors. Hopefully, this will include the removal of my port which bothers me every night when I sleep. All of this will take until about the end of May. At that point I will consider the active portion of my treatment over, but as I said above, there is much, much more healing to do in the days to come.

The next most asked question now that you have seen my hair is what are you going to do after treatment is over? Party? Vacation? What to you really want to do? The very unglamorous answer to that question is clean my house. Yes, I really said that. Besides the emergency cleaning Mom did, not a single closet, bookcase, or drawer has been cleaned out in our house in over a year. Many, many minor repairs have also just been let go. These things are starting to glare at me from all corners of house and I am ready to get started fixing them. And to continue the very unglamorous goals, I would really like to get my left arm working properly again. Surgery, lymph node removal and radiation have made my left arm (my favorite one) and shoulder very weak. So weak that it even hurts to push a shopping cart. I would very much like to be able to go to the grocery store by myself again (think alone time for the home school mom), so I am highly motivated work on improving my arm strength. Aren't those exciting things? Really I just want to have a normal life back. One that is not controlled by trips to the doctor or by my napping schedule.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend celebrating the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jseus Christ. Thank you to all of you who helped us physically (with food) and spiritually (with the encouraging words and cards)in the last few weeks. We are so grateful for the care you have given us and that you have not forgotten us during this long, difficult year.

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he had given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." 1 Peter 1:3