Numbering Days, Week 4

I feel like I'm still getting my bearings as I write about this current journey we're on, trying to figure out the balance of how much to share. By nature I'm a pretty authentic person...I'm much too simple to be able to keep up with pretending to be something I'm not. Additionally, I'm in my 40's (woot!), which means I'm in that lovely time of life when I just don't feel like I have anything to prove. All that to say, I have no trouble being open, I'm just not sure its all profitable to share. I hope that makes sense and I know you'll give me understanding as I navigate that.

I'm slowly training the kids, inserting them into my household care system. Though I have always enjoyed doing the things to be a good steward of our home, its also nice to not have much of that responsibility now. The kids are quite capable.

Sometimes brave looks like turning up the music and dancing in the kitchen.

The girls had plans for the day, but we felt like we needed to keep Aiden close so he came with us. He is a veteran at cancer center waiting rooms. He read his latest library book and he and Shaun worked on fantasy football.

I've been called a warrior but every time I sit in this chair I am a toddler (or a teen) in my head, crossing my arms saying, "nope...not gonna do it and you can't make me". And then the nurse sticks the needle in my port and sends 15 different concoctions through my veins and I settle in to the fight.

Before we leave, I'm connected to a "pump", which disperses chemo for the next 40 hours or so. Eight years ago, the pump was much larger and it made a constant noise. Now it is nearly soundless and just a quarter of the size. I so appreciate the people who have gone to work in these past years and devoted themselves to making this a better experience for patients. I hope they feel like they are doing more than getting up and punching the clock. I hope they have a sense that, in small part, they are enhancing the quality of life for people going through treatment.

I think this also of the man on 53rd Street in Manhattan. For eight years I have seen him around collecting garbage. The building is always spotless. Shaun and I have engaged him in conversation and he willingly stopped his duties to talk regular life with us, as if we were regular people doing a regular thing. I hope he realizes how important it is that he shows up to work and does his job with excellence.

This week at treatment we were given a care package from strangers. A woman has organized a group that fills bags with things a chemo patient would find practical or uplifting. Things like the tiniest little pillow to fit between the seatbelt and the medi-port in my upper chest or a drawing from a child expressing hope. We will never meet, but their sacrifice made an impactful statement to our family.

Two treatments in, and we're exchanging five bad days for nine good days. I'm a pretty in-the-moment person so when I'm sick its hard to see my way out, and when I'm well its hard to imagine I was ever (or will ever be) down. My family does such a great job keeping me company or leaving me as needed. The sick days are hard on them, I can see it in their eyes but there is no amount of faking I can do to convince them that things are fine. So we press on and be brave and get through the days.

I think of so many of you...sending messages and cards and flowers, making meals, praying, encouraging. Reminding us that we are not alone. Like the garbage collector or the goodie bag-stuffer, when you get up and look outside yourself to see how, in small ways you can affect your corner of the world....it matters.