I haven't really given a good update in awhile....things just have gotten away from me. Chemo and dr's appts. aside, I've also been busy with the kids. I feel like I hardly get a chance to be online anymore. I'm still having to go to school daily with my 6 year old for both recess and lunch..then there is geography extension, academic triathalon, band, girl scouts, boy scouts, tiger scouts...etc. This weekend we finally ended our week-long busy schedule with the pinewood derby. I'm so glad to have it out of the way....there was no school today and I was so grateful for the extra chance to just sleep in!

Life for me has been a bit of an emotional roller coaster lately. Last night, for example, dh and I pulled out our old American Wedding and American Pie II DVD's (juvenile, I know!) and sat down and had a good laugh. We really just laughed like we hadn't in months....and in the middle of it all, I was just struck by this awful feeling of doom. There I was laughing and ...boom...suddenly, tears just started rolling down my face. It was startling to me to go from laughing one minute to feeling so profoundly sad the next. The odd thing is that I didn't even know what I was feeling sad about...at least not at a conscious level.

I feel so ridiculously melodramatic lately....when I was driving around today to drop my daughter off where she needed to go and was looking at the snow I wondered to myself "is this the winter of my life?...did I skip the summer and the fall?" It's all so foolish....chances are, this time next year, this will all be but a memory and I won't even be able to believe that it 'really' happened. Why, then, do I insist on thinking these kinds of thoughts? Most of the time, I feel upbeat...almost in denial...and then I have these momentary thoughts that I need to finish the photo albums etc.

My husband keeps riding the rollercoaster next to me. Today, he called me because he has a 35 year old patient that had a hodgkins lymphoma at 18 that was cured. Six years later, the same patient developed Burkitt's lymphoma ... and was cured...but because of all of the radiation, he now needs a lung transplant. Sad Then there was the 27 year old patient he was consulted on with a brain lesion...the neurologist thought it might be infectious..dh called me "it's malignant..it looks like she has brain mets....I can't do this job anymore".

He says he can't separate himself now from his patients...what used to be a patient with problem x is now a person with a family, or children, or a life not finished being lived...and he can't handle it. He also keeps getting online and reading all kinds of studies, etc...recently, he found something that suggested that mediastinal lymphoma is diff. than the standard b-cell lymphoma and has a poor outcome because of some type of genetic who-knows-what because it rises from the thymus instead of the lymph nodes, etc. It gave a 30% cure rate or something ridiculous...and he was beside-himself. After telling me to STAY OFFLINE, he can't keep himself from doing it. This was one blasted little study at one little university and there is a ton of data out there to point towards what the oncologist says is an 80% cure rate....but I guess he is afraid..and...I guess so am I.

I'm also struggling to deal with the whole hair loss issue. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't seem like such a big deal..except that I feel even less attractive than I did before...and it is so..obvious to everyone around me now that there is something 'wrong'. DH was stopped in the hallway today by a nephrologist whose son had been at the pinewood derby "is your wife sick? Can I help?"

I went to the boy scout pack meeting on Thursday night and it was as if all eyes kept peeking at me....I knew that people were taking an extra look to see if I had just..tied back my hair in a bandana or I had really lost my hair...sadly, I've done the same thing. I never did it to be mean or to stare and I always tried to look without the person noticing (great big DUH, now!). I think it is natural curiosity....and it is also human nature to see something like that and then feel badly and have questions...The scout families from our dens avoided me at first, but they were doing that 'circling closer to the table' each time they passed by bit....then finally one mom jumped in and they all followed. I felt so akward and uncomfortable and I realized that I had tears in my eyes even though I didn't feel like I was sad..I was upbeat, postiive "this is just a bump in the road, so many good things have come from it" blah, blah, blah...I assured everyone that I would be cured this time next year and then changed the topic of conversation, but I just wished in a way that everyone had ignored me...of course, if they had, I would have been ticked off about that, I'm sure. Rolling Eyes This is just an akward thing.

To add to the chaos...I have jumped full speed back into the "what should I do with my life" question. Apparently, I don't have enough issues going on right now to keep me busy Rolling Eyes Didn't I say at some point I would never contemplate career again? At first, I thought that I must be the only person going through this type of experience to not have an 'aha' moment...to find a greater understanding or purpose for their life. Instead, I was feeling selfish and guilty because my thoughts had turned to myself. Now, I realize that is part of my aha experience...I have been struggling with the issue of balancing family/career for years now and I simply do feel the need to go back to school at some point. I want to focus on my family right now, but I also want a clear plan of what I will do in the future when my littlest is getting off to school.

I have decided that I will go and get a graduate degree in Psychology in a few years. I would like to work in a hospital to help patients and their families cope with devastating diagnoses of all types.

More than anything, right now I want to establish better family routines and focus on making things here at home the way that I want them to be.
I want us to go back to game nights, movie nights and the things that we have sort of fallen out of doing. Amanda and I are going to scrapbook together this weekend....something we've never done.