Perspective

I wonder if I was starting to feel sorry for myself. Perhaps I was just embracing the reality of the situation, as my dear cousin MaryClare suggested. I have been positive about the whole thing for so long, and I just got tired. I got tired of always saying, "Oh, I am ok. I am fine. Really", when I really didn't feel so fine. I mean, I have always been fine. My baseline doesn't feel like I want to, so when I am feeling bad, I don't even notice it most of the time. I suppose that is why I often do too much. You can call it denial, or stupidity, if you care to, but I think it is just survival with a smile.

You know what? We all have our own stuff. We all have burdens to carry. This is just one of ours. It has been the unknown that has made things so difficult lately. Add that to all the regular stuff- bad colds and a terrible stomach flu that literally left me unable to remove my bum from the couch for a full 12 hours other than to sprint to the bathroom- and you have a recipe for grouchiness. Hey, I know people who just had the stomach flu and were grouchy as hell. But who knows what other burdens they stuck with. I am certainly not judging.

I went in on Friday for another IVIg, and as usual, the ladies took fantastic care of me. I am telling you, one of the things that makes this disease easier to live with is being surrounded by such caring and intelligent and QUICK health care professionals, many of whom I now call my friends. The very second I tell one of them I am feeling strange in anyway, they move like cheetahs to get me so meds to stop it. It makes you feel like a very loved and well taken care of baby animal. Odd analogy, but it is a good feeling.

Yesterday was a little tough, because I went into see Dr. Buff with very high hopes that he would see me and see my blood work and say, "Ok, we are all set to start chemo this Friday". I had my folks all lined up to take the kids for the day and I have been cutting my hair fearlessly for weeks in preparation for the beginning of cytoxan. Oh yes, folks, hearing that you will likely lose your hair (or most of it) makes you very brave with your own scissors- it has been extremely liberating! Unfortunately, my visit did not turn out as expected. When the ladies drew my blood, my heart started to sink because they put the type and cross bracelet from the blood bank on me right then and there, "just in case". Didn't feel like a good talisman. The nurse led me to my room standing right at my elbow, again, "just in case". They must have thought I was going to collapse right there on the floor or something! lol. Once they filled me in on the numbers, I guess I understood. I am not going to get into the specifics, because honestly, I have a hard time keeping them straight, and I don't want to get the wrong info out there. They were all low. Low enough that I was not permitted to leave the hospital, but went straight to get another blood transfusion. Yup. Your friendly neighborhood vampire has returned.

I Did manage to escape to get up to the cafeteria and grab a huge burger- in the hopes that it would somehow miraculously change my blood counts! I then hit the gift shop and grabbed a gently used book so I would have something to do for the next 5 hours. Today I am feeling much perkier, and I can't stop grabbing my kids and kissing them. Have I mentioned how cute both of their bums are? (They will probably kill me when they are older for having said that, but it is true).

I have probably blabbed on enough for now. We are still waiting for more results to come in- Dr. Buff isn't happy that this happened, but he is glad that he is on the case. The last time my counts came in this low, he wasn't in the picture, so we never really figured it out. Hopefully this time it will be different. We have some ideas about what is going on, but nothing definitive yet. Until we have some answers, the chemo is on hold. One step at a time. It is likely that this is being caused by a combination of things, and we certainly don't want to add another factor to the mix. Jason and I have great confidence in my doctors and nurses, and we know that as long as we all keep working together we will figure this out, I will start chemo, and our lives will be changed forever. It is all a matter of perspective.