Friday, March 18, 2011

I have to be honest here people, as I am getting better and better, I am not writing as much on here. Truth be told ~ it is wonderfully mundane around my house right now and I am relishing each moment. Just everyday normal stuff like say... taking kids to school, volunteering at the book fair, helping kids with homework and therapies, making dinner, doing mountains of laundry, never quite getting caught up with the dishes or folding clothes. That kind of thing.

If I could have known than even 18 months ago I would catch myself in the middle of doing said chores and suddenly feel like I just had to stop and thank God in a silent but fervent prayer for being able to do them, I would have been stunned to silence. And believe me, that is hard to do. The stunned silence thing not the laundry. The laundry is pretty easy ever since all the boys have passed that stage of putting bugs and worms into their pockets and I didn't find them until their dead carcasses floated up to the top of the washer.
Oh I still have those  eye-twitching-plastered-on-grin-through-the-teeth-cause-if-I-don't-I-am-afraid-I-might-beat-my-children nights where I swear they are testing the hypothesis that even the most loving mommies can go loony if said experimenting kids whine enough. But afterwords, when all the threats of bodily harm have subsided and they have fallen into that angelic sleep moms love to just look at and get all weepy, I remember to say those prayers, thanking Him for the blessings of raising these wonderful little hellions spirits and I remember how very much my soul loves my beautiful children.

And then there are those mornings I wake up and just lay in my bed enjoying the fact that I don't hurt and I thank Him again. I will repeat that in case you missed that... I DON'T HURT. HOW COOL IS THAT????

I have even stopped the free for all weight loss! I will probably loose a few more pounds but on purpose this time.

SO all in all, life is good. Nathan is excited about a real robot his teacher let him bring home, he is saving his money and buying the pieces bit by bit to make one himself (he already has 4 servos on order and that about used up every penny the kid had saved). Daniel is formulating his science project, getting ready to subject Venus Fly Traps to different radio frequencies.  Jonah's neck lump is still there, but it looks like we don't have to do surgery, thank the Lord.  And Ben made a "firebug" for a school project which promptly melted all over the bag he brought it to school in. He told me since it lived in a volcano and ate lava, melting was really OK, it was its camouflage. Cary made dinner tonight  (which is why I am here writing this instead fighting with my pots and pans).

I love the wonderfully mundane. And as I said, I thank God for it.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

OK, I haven't written for an age, so I figured I would give you a multiple choice as to why. You get to choose. ( oooo that is so interactive, I feel so i-phone app-ish...)
a. I'm dead.
b. I have forgotten my password to this blog
c. I have been busy learning belly dancing moves to start my new career
d. life has been crazy hectic and I just haven't taken the time to do this

Did you choose? Cause I am really voting for c.
Really. Can I please vote for c?

* sigh*, oh all right you party poopers.

We all know which one you automatically assumed it was.  Either a. or d. and unless a zombie or an impersonator is sitting here typing this you logically have to go with d. Unless you are a fan of the x-files...

then you would go with c.

OK, as far as what has been going on. The kids and I went to the beach to see Grandma, I got so I couldn't swallow anything but liquids, Nathan is learning his times tables, I kept passing out because I couldn't get enough stupid calories in me, Daniel got grounded from his computer until he pulls his grades up, I had my balloon party/dilation with Dr Lo and got caught up on all the latest from his staff - WOO HOO and I can now swallow again and am bouncing back beautifully (after some unknown caused puking fit), Ben went on his field trip and ... Oh yeah, and Jonah scared the living  beejeebers out of us.

He woke up one morning with a goose egg on the side of his neck the size of a freaking apple. He wasn't sick, didn't have a fever, and other than just a little tenderness and a lump that looked like a weird case of one sided mumps, he was hunky dory. In taking him to the doctor, I expected antibiotics and a shoo out the door.After all, a swollen lymph node isn't THAT serious... right?

Now let me tell you all, the one thing you NEVER want to hear your kids doctor say is even the remotest possibility of the "c" word and your childs name together in the same sentence.

The world stops. you hear but you don't hear her explain that it could just be a bacterial infection from a recent teeth cleaning or that it might be Mono, or whatever.

You just hear that ever so slight chance of something so ugly, so insidious that all you want to do is yell and cry and scream and panic because of what you went through with all the chemo and radiation and pain and needles. And your heart nearly implodes with the terror of the idea that your childs name might be said in the same sentence as all those afore named horrors. Your hands clench and unclench and you realize that your mouth has bitten into your tounge and you can taste the blood.

But you keep it together because of your child. You go though all the tests with him, even having your own blood drawn at the same time he does so it won't be so scary for him. You hold his hand and you try to comfort him as he gets his 4th needle poke of the day.  All you want to do is break down, but you know you can't.

In the meantime, you have called the husband and he immediately gets to work getting on the internet finding all the best hospitals and doctors and treatments an tells you that we will get through this like we do every thing else, and maybe it is just one of the lesser diagnoses, but if it isn't we will handle this. He is a rock. But you know it is his protection mechanism. You know secretly he is terrified. But he is strong for you, like you are strong for your child. You wonder if he is tasting blood right now too.

You finally realize as your child is in the CAT scan, that you haven't eaten all day and you were only able to get 800 calories in the day before. You realize that because everything is starting to go black and all swimmy. You cling onto the scanner PRAYING to make it to the end of the scan so your child wont panic and move and have to redo the test. You make it. Barely. Then you get to lay on the cold floor while your baby asks why mommy is on the ground. Stupid of you not to have eaten. You determine grimly, that if, GOD and heaven forbid, that we have to do this again, you will pack an Ensure or Boost in your purse.

You don't sleep that night. At all. You are back in that doctors office at 7:30 a.m.. You get there even before the results make it back, so you sit there with your wonderfully oblivious child. He is only concerned if he will get more shots. Your heart is  bit more anxious. It seems like hours. Maybe it is.

This is where my story might differ from other mothers. Mine has a happy ending. The doctor came in smiling. An infected lymph node. The release was almost exhausting. And gratefully anticlimactic.


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I am watching Jonah sleep. He is sleeping in my bed tonight. I don't care I just want him near me. I realize I need sleep too.  I will sleep tonight. After I silently sob my relief as I watch his slumbering face.

I am so grateful for anticlimaxes.

why I fight

why I fight
my family