www.cancermonster.net

Before I tell you about yesterday’s visit with Dr E, I am going to let you see what I wrote in the morning and along the way to the city. It was a long ride by myself and I had to make many stops to relieve the pressure on my backside. One of the reasons I ramble so much is to keep from thinking. And when you read this you will understand. Lol.

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Day 55- Thursday, August 9th, 2007

5:30a

The day is starting dark. I am out here on my porch with my book and coffee again. The sounds around me are a combination of early morning risers of both human and animal beings. Trucks and tweets. Crickets and coffee pots.

My tree up on the hill is silhouetted against the blue black sky. I hope somewhere you can see a tree like this. I hope someone today can see the survivor in me as well.

Several people have told me that they couldn’t stay sane in the same circumstance. I am not sure I am sane. I alternate between resolve and dissolve. I am a revolving door of emotion. This morning I woke up on the numb side of the door. Back to the city I go today. This time without my Team in tow. Dan has to work. He can’t miss another day. A day alone might be good, I don’t know. Alone but not lonely. Like the tree on the hill. It’s too early to tell.

A shower now will hit the spot I think. I want to take off by seven. Earlier than I need to, but weeks later than I had hoped. I will pick up today’s script on the way I guess. Wonder how it will turn out. The ride will be bumpy in that old work van.

8:00a

There once was a woman. Just a normal, average, run of the mill woman. A woman like a million others. Nothing special. Then the woman had children. Now she became obsessed with the job of raising the children. No longer average. Now titled. “Mother.” And that changed the entire world.

Then along came a spider and sat down beside her. Her children covered their eyes and started to cry. The woman glared at the creature and screamed, “How DARE you scare my children!”

And she frightened the spider away.

If only it were that simple.

HOW DARE YOU SCARE MY CHILDREN!

9:50a
I am sitting here in the parking lot forty minutes early. On the way here (about an hour ago, I guess), I received a call from the scheduling department. I seem to talk to more “schedulers” than any other type person these days. She apologized for taking the day off yesterday (as she should! Haha) and told me she had some answers to the questions I posed on Monday. And Tuesday. And again while she was off on Wednesday. Being that Radiation is a separate department, she explained, I will have to have another “new patient consult” with them before the mock-up can be scheduled. And since I am “self-pay” the business office will be putting together a list of my options for radiation. They should have it ready by the time I finish with Dr E.

My options have been discussed before.

I hope and pray that these options will have a better subtitle. What if I am denied again? Where do I go next?

No. No NO NO!

I screamed at the top of my lungs to the disconnected phone. You just can’t deny me again. I won’t go gently into the good night. I will go kicking and screaming to where ever, whomever I need to this time. I won’t let them do this to me again.

I will get the exam at least. At least someone will actually SEE how big the tumor is now. Maybe it will be harder to deny me treatment with the lump staring them in the face. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I need to flash a pencil pusher the moon!

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe if I get myself arrested I can get treatment. Maybe I had too much time to think while I drove two and a half hours to get here. Maybe.

Maybe I am worrying for nothing.

Maybe.

Maybe, oh God, please fix this.
Please help me.

Well, I might as well get this over with.

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Back to Friday morning now:

Ok. I have a question to ask you? Is it really a temper tantrum if no one hears you? I mean, even if the people in the cars around me heard it . . . I wasn’t yelling at them . . . So it wasn’t like road-rage or anything. Right? So I didn’t have a temper tantrum per se, right? Just a little hissy fit. Ya, a hissy fit.

Let’s go with that.

So after my hissy fit in the van, I gathered my courage back into a ball and marched inside. I announced my presence and took a seat to wait. It took a while to get from the waiting room to the exam room. In the triage area, I found that I lost a little weight. (Must have been the JennyCraig meetings I didn’t go to.) My blood pressure and body temp were a little high. (Could have been the hissy fit, I don’t know.) I followed the nice young girl to the exam room (Sub-labeled “waiting room 2″) and waited some more. The remnants of the hissy fit still smoldering, I was formulating all kinds of arguments for the “Business office” in my head.

When Dr E finally emerged through the door, he said, “Welcome Back.” Little did I know at that moment how far he was to go with that welcome.

We talked a bit about the skill of Dr H and his wizardly plan. I explained why there was no pathology report in my file. “Here’s your copy.” I explained the delays -all detailed in my medical history printed out. “Here’s your copy.” I told him how much the tumor had grown since the MRI on July 24th, and the CT on June 24th. “Here’s your copy.”

I copied him many times over. I was prepared, with the proof of the problem in hand.

He was impressed with my copies. He popped the copy of my scans in his computer.

Isn’t it wonderful that they have learned how to compress all those great big plastic films into one small disc? Wonder what they are going to do with all those light boxes in all those hospitals and doctor offices across the world? I suppose they could send them to Hollywood. ER and Grey’s Anatomy still use them. Or sell them to craft stores for the scrapbookers and artists to use. Maybe architects could use them, stacked end to end, one top of the other, as walls in a trendy retro New York loft. Who knows. They could sell them on eBay. People will buy anything on eBay. But if your doctor still looks at your innards on a light box on the wall, run screaming away from the old folks home where he has hung his shingle.

Being a brand new facility, there wasn’t a light box to be seen. Dr E studied my scans on his flat screen computer monitor. He flipped from the MRI to the CT. He flipped me over and looked at the tumor first hand. He said, “I have to go talk to my partners and the business office.”

“If I am going to be denied, I need to know right away. I don’t have anymore time to wait.”

He smiled and disappeared, with all my copies in hand, back through the door.

Partners and business offices. Lions, and tigers and bears, oh my.

I began once again to hissy. No, wrong approach.

“Hey God?”

Here is the short version. The appointment started at 10:30. By 11:30, Dr E was running around the building talking to each partner. By 11:45, I had changed my mind about stereo typing “Business Office” people into the same lump as “tax collectors” and “undertakers”.

“This isn’t going to be a problem. I will need your tax returns and a profit/loss statement.”

“Here’s your copy.”

By 1:30, I was sitting in front of the Dr. G, Director of Radiation Medicine (who looked too young to even know what a light box was) and he was explaining what I could expect from his services. By 2:30, I was in a gown and being lead down the yellow brick road (I finally found that road!) to recovery.

The mock-up took about an hour or so (it wasn’t all that fun, by the way) and I was scheduled for radiation treatments starting Monday afternoon.

As long as it took to get to this point, was as fast as the day whirled around me. I left that late afternoon, tattered and tattooed. Black and blue on one end and glistening with glad tears on the other, I drove directly across the street to the studio loft hotel where they offer housing to out of the area Oncology patients like myself, and booked a room with a view and a kitchen for the first week of treatment.

The view is most spectacular. It looks out at the place that is going to save me.

I found out something interesting in all this. Dr H thought he was doing me a favor by sending me to a public facility. But public places are not run by the doctors. They employ the doctors. Even House, with his vast reputation, couldn’t get all the Kings horses and all the Kings men to put Humpty-Dumpty together again. If someone would have thought to take poor Humpty to a place where the King didn’t rule, the world might be one nursery rhyme short today.

The partnership of doctors in this center employ the Business Office staff.

Every once in a while, Hell does freeze over.

Today, I am wearing my jacket ’cause it’s a cold day in August here in Oregon.

I will save the mock-up story for later. I will be able to tell it better when I am able to once again sit on my . . . tumor.

Not much to report today.  I have the appointment with Dr E tomorrow.  I have been trying to get multiple appointments for the same day.  Dr E will examine me, but he is not in the radiation department.  I have the feeling though, once he sees how big the tumor has grown and hears how long I have been waiting for treatment, he will send me straight on to where I need to go.   I am hoping for the trial run and tattooing to be done tomorrow after my morning appointment.  The woman I talked to today in scheduling said that that does happen often.   After everything I have been through just trying to get to this point, I’m not holding my breathe.  I hope to be home tomorrow evening with new decorations on my back side.  I’m going to pack a bag just in case.  If they say Friday morning I will have to stay over.  Whatever. The sooner I can get this party going, the sooner I can get it behind me.  (no pun intended!  Ha)

This morning, I defrosted my frig.  De-iced is more like it.  I have some other housework that needs to be taken care of today.  I feel like I am “nesting.”  They say you can tell when a woman is about to give birth when she starts cleaning her house with a tooth brush.  The subconscious mind in tune with the body.  My body knows that something has to be done.

Now.

Or in this case, tomorrow will have to do.

I’m having coffee on my porch. Looking at the motorhome. Sometimes I have to wonder at where we are. Even before we moved into a campground, I had to remind myself.

“Dan, we have been remarried for ten years.”

“Yup.”

“We have four kids and live in Oregon.”

“Yup.”

Remember, I told him we would never get back together . . . That was back in Florida. Back then I never imagined any of this. Oregon was a place on the map, but I never yearned to see it, let alone live here. The farthest west I had ever been was New Orleans on a high school band trip. There was a jaunt to Biloxi with the staff of an Indian Casino I worked at. But that was as far as I ever went as an adult.

I had lived in Florida most of my life. When I was eleven, my folks moved us from Akron, Ohio, to Marco Island, Florida, where I lived until I went off to University to be a gator. I messed around Central Florida for many years before coming back to the southwest coast with Dan and baby Kelli in tow.

The most I ever thought about Oregon in those days was in connection with a band director at UF. My first year there was also his. He had come from University of Oregon. He was a Duck out of water and no one at Florida liked him. When we had to march in the rain, the whole band would start to chant, “Quack Quack, Waddle Waddle. Quack Quack Waddle Waddle.” I think at first, he thought it a tribute to his former life. But it wasn’t. Haha. Last I heard, not long after I left school he was selling Insurance. I had a little to do with his change of professions. But that’s another story I’ll save for later. (You didn’t cross me in those days.)

So, how did I get from Die-Hard Florida Gator to a campground in Oregon? By way of Cody, Wyoming, of course.

After my sister-in-law Brenda died it was too hard to go on with day to day life without her. She wasn’t where she was supposed to be. Without her there, I couldn’t be there either. I was already homeschooling Kelli. Brandi and Jaymi were babies and I was pregnant with Robbie. And I was mourning my dear friend badly. I was a bear to be around and was fighting with my siblings and mother so. One day I said to Dan, “Do we have any relatives in Montana?” Dan took me seriously. He started researching Montana and found it much too cold. But there was a city in a valley just outside Yellowstone’s east gate that was shielded from the deepest winter. Cody, Wyoming.

So we moved there. Dan flew out with a buddy to check it out. He rented a house. I was eight months pregnant when we drove across country. It was a really stupid idea. But my Daddy always said, “If your gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough” and it was a tough couple years. We loved the town and the people, but we just couldn’t make a living. When we arrived, there was already two other tile installers. This little Wild West Town named for Wild Bill Cody just wasn’t big enough for a third flooring outfit. So we had to move on.

We packed up our stuff and traveled over the snowy Divide in March to a place we had only heard of.

“Dan, we have four kids and live in Oregon.”

“Yup.”

We did better financially in Oregon than in Wyoming. Yet no matter where you live, the construction industry is either “Feast or Famine.” This past winter was worse than most. We had a huge rented house and two huge car payments and a mess of other bills. And no work.

In February, Dan came across this job on the coast. A whole hotel! Weeks of work! It was an answer to our prayers. It was also too far away for Dan to drive back and forth everyday. He would go to work on Monday morning and not come home until Friday night. He stayed in a hotel that was part of the deal. Kelli had already moved out so it was just me and the three little kids alone at home through the week. I felt like a single parent again. My Fibromyalgia was getting worse. I was so tired, achy, and lonely. (Although, now that I think about it, the fatigue might have been from the Cancer I didn’t know was growing inside me.)

The money now coming in was too little and too late to shut down the wolves at the door. Everything was behind. The car payments, the rent, the utilities already on payment plans. We lost both cars.

And I was so tired of feeling tired. My health had gotten worse in the five years in rainy Oregon. For my sake, and to the dismay of Kelli and Dan’s brother, we had already decided months earlier to move south after school was out. The six week job already at ten weeks and not slowing, I had had enough of visits with my husband. One day on the phone, I said, “Why don’t I just pull the kids out of school and come down there with you?”

Once again, Dan took my hair-brained idea seriously. That weekend, we formulated “The Plan”. We could put our stuff in storage and come back for it. The job should be completed by the first of June. (Yah, right.) An old RV would be the ticket to reuniting our family and we could use it to find another place to live in Texas. Then we thought, “Why should we bring all of this junk?” Most of it came from auctions or Goodwill anyway. (I didn’t tell you what we carted across country the first time, burned up in a fire six months later in Wyoming. We knew we could replace our things by experience.) So we set a date of May 1st for the move.

We saved our pennies for the rv. The middle of April, we had the mother of all yard sales. It’s harder than you think to get rid of everything you own. What we didn’t sell, we donated. What went in storage was just what we couldn’t part with.

We bought this old motorhome off craigslist. I’m not sure it was the best we could get for the little we had, but now it was ours. Ironically, we bought it from a Die-Hard Oregon Duck fan who used it for tail gate parties. He had changed the striping to green and yellow and had HUGE Oregon decals complete with ducks on both sides. Sometimes revenge takes a long time to exact. I paid for my sins in college by moving into “The Duck Mobile!”  Quack.

“No, we’re not Duck fans. We just bought it this way.” ggrr

The ducks are now gone, but the striping remains. We built in bunks for the kids. And now, it’s hard to remember any other way to live. The job drags on. It’s steady work we can’t leave. They keep adding to it. Enough for a few more months steady work.

We didn’t know I had cancer when we started this chapter. And we thought the motorhome was our idea, but it wasn’t. No matter how much you plan your life, your plan may not be the one that prevails. Downsizing our lives was part of a story we just hadn’t gotten the script for at the time.

Texas is a goal not yet realized. Another place we have never been. A chapter on hold. On hold for just a time, that is all. I will get there. I will. That is a promise I made to myself I won’t break. I don’t make promises easily. You have to make good on the deals you make with yourself -or the next time you offer up a bribe, even your own mind won’t take it.

“Dan, we live in Oregon in a campground and I have cancer.”

“Yup.”

God Bless Texas.

I woke up ready to do battle again.  This time, however, my target is the world around me instead of the entity within.

I am woman.  Hear me Roar!

I will not be denied today.

Dan thinks HE needs to scream at people himself.  It made me both proud and angry.  Why shouldn’t my own insistence be enough?  This has to be done strongly but with diplomacy.  If we just end up making people mad, we will get no where.

I asked him to call DHS and get us an appointment.  I want to be able to say that we are in the process of getting Medicaid.  He must make that call first.

I have to laugh at myself.  Dan has been the head of our family always.  We discuss everything, but he generally makes the last call. (That’s what he thinks anyway.  So I let him go with that. Hehe)  But this morning I made it clear that I am in charge.  This is ultimately my life and my cancer even though it effects the whole family.  I am not incompetent . . . yet.  “Do what I say!”  haha. He was taken aback by my insistence.  And, to tell you the truth, so was I.

My first call was to the force behind the Wizard.  I have talked about her before.  She is Dr H’s assistant in charge of scheduling.  I will call her Angel, because she is one.  Angel was mad that she had not been told what was going on.  Or in this case, what was NOT going on.

I will spare you all the details this time and cut to the bottom line.  Angel got results.   She found out the problem and fixed it. She got the ball and threw it to right court.  (I hope!) Evidently, deep in my file was a contingency party invitation.  It must have been written in small print with an ultra-violet pen.  “Just in case no one else picks her for the dodge ball game, she can come back to my team.  Signed: Dr E.”  {Remember him? He is the Doctor that referred me to OHSU to begin with.  The good fellas in financial found it when they were searching for a way to get me treated.  Wasn’t that nice of them?

So, my Angel assured me that my files and scans would get sent along lickity-split.  Not wanting to wait for them to arrive and get filed again in the forgotten folder, I went ahead and called the center and took the first appointment I could get with Dr E.  I will give them a day to get the paperwork with the orders from the wizard, and then make another call to see if I can have the long awaited mock-up and tattoo job at the same time.  Who knows, I might even get to the party by next Monday?  Wouldn’t that be nice.  The sooner I get to the laser light show, the soon I can get this monster cut out!  There’s just not room enough in this life for the both of us.  Sorry dude, you gotta go!  Besides, if something is not done soon, I am going to need a wagon.  (”A wagon?” you ask?). Yes, a wagon to pull behind me to carry this bump on my butt when I walk.  I tell ya, it’s big.  (No!   I’m not gonna post a picture of it!  Not even for you! - sheesh, sisters!)

Tomorrow, I’m going over to Goodwill to look at their party gowns!

While I’m there I might see if they have any wagons . . . you know, just in case.

It’s Sunday. I remembered to set the alarm last night. Finally. Sunday morning is always a big battle day.

I woke up just in time to foil the Monster’s plans for the morning. The moment I opened my eyes, I knew he was at work. I didn’t have to reach behind to feel it. I could tell IT reach my spine over night. The thrumming of his warriors vibrated to the beat of my heart.

For the entire ten “snooze” minutes I lay perfectly still, not wanting to know if I could move or not and wondering when that day would come.

I was afraid that any movement might break my back. Should I wake Dan or not? No, what if it was all in my imagination? Slowly I started with my toes.

Wiggles. Good.

Legs. Yes.

I sat up carefully, and pulled open the drawer where I keep my medication. Downing the pain pills before I went any further seemed the best action before I took a step.

Ok, your just being silly. Silly, yes, but the throbbing in my spine was still there. Never mind the throbbing, I told myself. I put on the coffee and got dressed and quietly as I could. Even put on makeup and brushed my hair. The coffee was still not ready, so I took my book outside without it.

Generally, I sit with my coffee and my book on the porch for a good long time in the mornings. And sometimes I write on my phone pad for a spell. But today, I had something to prove. To whom? Myself? Not my family still asleep inside. To the Monster?

To the Monster and me.

I turned away from my chair and started to walk. 8:30a on a Sunday, the park was just coming awake. Campers climbing out of their dens, canvas or coaches. Bacon smells filled my senses. I kept walking.

I met a princess less than a foot tall with her hair skimming the ground and her servant holding up her leash lest she trip and spoil her march. She owned the park, it seemed. I thanked her for allowing me passage through her kingdom.

I met a man on my way back from the dock and we contemplated the weather. We decided it would be another beautiful day in the neighborhood no matter what the TV predicted.

I saw two dogs having a meeting of the behinds and two women chasing small children across the lawn. I walked on.

I ran into J on his four-wheeler. He pulled over to chat.

“Good morning neighbor!” I said to the jolly old elf.

“What are you doing out walking so early?”

“Proving I still can.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“No matter, it’s a beautiful morning.”

J agreed, said he’d been out fishing at 5:00a. Caught a steelhead about yeay big.

“I have to make an admission,” I said quietly so no one else could hear. “I am doing my part for Salmon Conservation.
I hate Salmon.”

“You hate Salmon? Catching them or eating them?”

“Shh, someone might hear. I don’t like how they taste. I know that is sacrilege in this season.”

“Ooh, you’ll never get another spot in this park now!” he said with a grin.

“Maybe I just need a chef to cook them right?” In J’s former life, he was a chef working dude ranches in Wyoming, see. He agreed that must be the case. As he drove off, he promised to bring me some properly prepared Salmon as soon as possible.

I walked on.

My sweet neighbor lady was on her own porch and I sat for a couple minutes shooting the morning breeze with her and Bill her dog. I hope I am not making a nuisance of myself, coming over so often. I am new at this neighbor thing. I didn’t stay long. The smell of her coffee reminded me of mine still in the pot.

Finally, back to my house, I climbed in and made me a cuppa’ Joe. It hit the spot.

Too bad it can’t hit the other spot still throbbing. But I did it. I got out of bed when I wasn’t sure that I could. I walked when another might have just sat. I met the day with pride.

I refuse to be a victim. I am the Tree. The survivor tree on the hill.

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2:00p

I talked with Aunt Shirley, Pam and my mother this afternoon. Same as Anita and Leenie and all of my friends I have talked to in the past couple days, they all had plenty of good solid advice. None I can follow on Sunday, except to stay calm and relax. Tomorrow will be a busy day. First thing we are going to apply for state medical assistance. Then find a treatment center.

TOMORROW we will find SOMEONE to help us! We can’t let this go on any longer. I won’t allow them to make me lie to my children.

Morning 

I didn’t write yesterday.  That’s not exactly true.  I edited my previous pages and uploaded most of them to the blog site.  Strange thing, blogging.  Who could have predicted how popular blogs would become.  It’s not just the kids anymore.  Celebrities, corporate execs and 41 year old mothers are blogging too.

Why anyone wants to read about the lives of people they don’t know is beyond me.  It’s fun, I guess.  Reality TV stars, the whole generation.

About 4:00p yesterday, we found out that we still have no place set for the radiation.  People are fighting over me, all right.  It’s just that they are fighting over who HAS to take me.   It’s frustrating, to say the least.  The longer it takes to get the radiation started, the bigger my tumor grows.   And the smaller my confidence in Dr H’s ability to save my leg.  What is the use in having the best surgeon in the world offering his services when the rest of the team stands with their hands tied behind their backs.  It’s not the doctors’ fault.  There are those without a medical degree holding the stamp of denial.

Meanwhile, I think we may have to reevaluate those options the doctor set in front of us two weeks ago.  Radiation first may be the best path, but sometimes, when you are hiking in the woods you come across a fallen redwood blocking the way.  You could chop it to pieces IF you owned the right axe.  If not, you could climb over it.  IF it has not been grown over with thorny vines.  When all else fails, you have to go back and pick another path.

Removal at all costs was once the only path.  What good is the new highway if only the well traveled are permitted entrance?

I have no insurance and no lofty bank account.  I get no invitation to the party.  It seems I am not on the A list. I could get a gown at Goodwill if it’s just my attire keeping me from getting a ticket to the show.

These denials tend to come on Friday at close of office.  Go figure.  So, another week has gone by while I literally sit on this aggressive, High Grade Sarcoma of unnamed origins as it gains ground.  The Monster has won another battle.  But he has not won the war.

I have news for the Monster:  I may have IT, but IT doesn’t have me. 

Dan has come up with a marvelous idea.  We are going to hide the swimsuits in the trunk and load the kids in the car for a ride up the river to the fabled town of Siletz.  We haven’t been there yet even though we have lived on it’s river for three months now.  We hear there is a park up there with a crystal clear swimming hole.  Who knows? Maybe I’ll throw my suit in too.  What could it hurt . . .   It was a good idea Dan had.  One that might, just might, keep him from running off to Portland to confront a pencil pusher.   He’s mad.  And he’s scared.  And he is not gonna take it anymore.

******************

6:00p

Sometimes when your not listen closely enough, God has to move you to a more beautiful place with better reception.  And sometimes, He  places someone there to relay the call.

I met such a person in such a place today.  While wading in the clear cold water of the Siletz river at Moonshine Park,  I struck up a conversation with a stranger and came away with a new friend.  Whether I ever see her again or not, I will never forget her.  She calmed my spirit and renewed my strength. She drew my story out of me and made it less scary somehow. She told me she saw my faith and that she didn’t feel a sense of foreboding around me.  She told me that it would be ok. And I believed her.  When we both realized that we were shivering and turned to the shore, I said, “I think it’s time to go now.  I have done what I was supposed to do here.”  She smiled. “You think so?”   “Oh yes.”   And then SHE thanked ME!

“Why are you thanking me when it was you who listened and comforted a stranger?”

“Thank you for sharing your story with me.  You have shown me how to be strong.”

I am still amazed.

When I got back in the car I told Dan that he only thought it was his idea to take a drive up the river.

And me without a paddle too. Go figure.

A daughter is yours all of her life.
A son is your baby ’til he takes a wife.
The wife then becomes a daughter twice over.
More daughters to love and care for.  Moreover,
The son, now a man, is a boy to HER mother.
More love is spread ’round and now babies to smother
With kisses and wishes and grandmothery hugs.
This is the pattern of life, living, and loves.

TMC

I was thinking of my daughter Kelli when this poem came to me.  Kelli and I had a difficult few years before she left home.  I think she became a woman earlier than most.  Two women have a hard time sharing one house.  Now that she is on her own, I marvel at her.  She is brilliant, I have always know that.  Now she is shining.  She has come back to her mother faster than most young girls.  I wallow in the friendship we now have.  And she is beautiful!  How I gave birth to so gorgeous a woman I’ll never figure out.  Of course when I say that out loud, her daddy takes full credit.

Kelli has an “old soul”.  The moment she was born, she was wide awake and looking around.  Her wail was a statement, “I’m here! Look at me!”  And everyone did.  Within moments she was passed around between family and friends who admired her like a fine antique.  She didn’t fall asleep for four hours after her birth.  The nurses we’re amazed, but I wasn’t.  It was Thanksgiving Day, 1988.

She was a good baby.  She didn’t cry too very much and soon learned to sleep six hours at a time.  For a newborn, that was something grand.    She was five weeks old the last week in December.  I remember the day so clearly.  Her tummy was upset and she was fussy.  I was walking and soothing her when the phone rang.  It was my father. Dad never called me.  He would get on the phone after mom talked, but he never dialed my number himself.  With the baby in my arms, I listened as my father told me my little sister had been in an accident on her way home from our house in Orlando.  On her way back to South Florida, she had a seizure and crashed her car into a tree stump.  She was dead at 16.

“No.  Nononono” I cried as I slid down the wall, five week old Kelli still in my arms.  I hung up the phone in a daze.  I placed the baby in her cradle and looked into her eyes.  She knew.  She was no longer crying.  She was no longer just a baby.   Her eyes said what her tiny mouth couldn’t.  I knew that moment that she was special beyond just being mine.

Baby Kelli helped me through the toughest days of my life.  Her needs were what kept me going.  And going and going! She was a precocious child.  She learned to talk, walk and run all on one day.  Good thing Bald is Beautiful, because she had only fuzz on her head for the longest time.  I would affix bows with a dab of glue to the top of her crown!  She was a porcelain doll!

Dan and I were having problems adjusting to family life.  Just after her 1st birthday, we separated.  Listening to everything but our own hearts was our fatal mistake.  One that took many years to correct.

Now a single mother, Kel was all I had.  Looking back, I know that I pushed her too hard to be perfect.  Mostly I wanted my family not to worry about me.  A trophy child was the way to dissuade their disappointment in my failed marriage.  She was beautiful and smart and entertaining on cue.  She was willful and pigheaded and brazen and I don’t know where she got it!  (Although everyone else thought they did.)  She did everything early.  Talking full sentences by 18 months, potty trained before two.  Training wheels unneeded and cast off by four. She had two houses and two sets of rules. And took fair advantage of all of it.  She skipped first grade even.  That is one thing I would never allow again.  Younger now than her classmates, yet much older than them in many respects.  She was un-satisfiable.  She had a hard time with the other kids.  That drove her on.

Then Dan and I figured out why our lives were so empty.  The mistake we made so many years past was corrected.  Together now in a real home, we cemented the door “closed to retreat” with Brandi’s birth.  No longer an only child in a broken home, nine year old Kelli didn’t know quite what to do.  Haha. Which rules could be broken and which no longer applied.  What she had prayed for she got and she wasn’t sure she was glad.  It was fun to watch her.

“Dad said. . .”
“No he didn’t!”
“Rats!”

I homeschooled her from 5th to 8th grade.  She now tells me she hated it.  But when she went back to public school as a freshman in High School she was different.  Academically she was ahead and socially she was advanced. She now had a gaggle of friends.  She did well for the most part.  She was a teenager and we battled which was to be expected.  No one was prouder in the auditorium when she marched across the stage in her cap a gown.  Still seventeen though, we had an awkward five months to go until she was free of my meddling.  Ha like that would stop me from being her mother!

She is almost nineteen (going on thirty) and on her own now.  And scared for me. And for herself.   I promised her everything will be ok.  I am not going to die.  I won’t let her down.

Yesterday, she told me that an email had been sent out in the large office complex where she works, asking if anyone had an RV they could loan to an employee’s mother for the duration of her cancer treatment.   God love that girl.  I know I do!   Kelli is another one of my heroes.  I am going to tell her next time I talk to her.

It’s 4:00 again.  Another day passing with no treatment against the monster.  Unless of course, we count the love between a mother and a daughter.  As we should.

As we should indeed.

Noonish

I had a pretty good morning. It’s a beautiful day. Not a cloud in the sky.  It’s about 72 degrees.  I gave myself the day off from worry!

I am sitting on the dock with my feet dangling in the water. It’s so quiet here today.  Oh how I love this place.  I know I am here for a reason.  This is where I need to be to heal.  Strange, but I get the feeling everything that has happened to me my whole life was a set up for this very day.  This day that I am sitting on this dock in this camp at this moment.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I know that is an old cliché, but today, I get it.

I have to make a decision right now.  I can fight this monster with hate and anger, stress and fear.  Or I can fight it with peace and pride.  With the love of my family, my friends, and my Lord.

I can fight it on this dock with my feet dangling in the water.

You can’t catch me I’m the ginger bread man.

I love it here. I brought my book out with me, but I haven’t needed it yet.  What an easy life.

Hahah. That reminded me of when I was trying to convince an English fella to join Amway. At the end of my spiel he said, “If et’s so bloody ea-zee, wha idn’t eva’body doin’ et?”

That there, is the question.  Why isn’t everybody doing this?  As a society, we have forgotten what is important. What is really necessary.

We have forgotten how to sit on a dock is August with our feet dangling in the water.

If I take one positive thing from this mess I am in it will be how to dangle my feet in the water of life.