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I’m Here!

It’s very good to be back at the place that I love so much. The getting here was a bit much for me though. I am very tired. It rained all weekend, which made our homecoming soggy to say the least! I over estimated my stamina. Now at 8:00p on Sunday night, I find myself achy and worn to a frazzle.

Tomorrow, we have to go on up to Portland for one of my very favorite things: An MRI! Oh, how I hate that dang tube! But I have some handy-dandy Valium to calm the claustrophobia. I have to get used to these things. ( The MRI’s not the Valium!) I will be having quite a few over the next five years. I will also be getting a chest x-ray.

We are staying at the same hotel I spent five weeks camping out for my radiation. Just over night and in a double this time. We see Dr. House Tuesday morning for a pre-op chat. He will look over the MRI and Chest pictures and answer a long list of questions from me. I hope. After that, I have to check in with the anesthesiologist for his pre-op. And have some other test done to make sure that I am ready to roll!

Edge of Close.

I am not going to ramble on tonight. But I will have time to write on the way up to Portland tomorrow. I just wanted to check in and let you know that I am happy to be home, but too tired to chat.

One more thing . . . I wish I could give each of you a hug and tell you how much I appreciate you. Your thoughts and prayers and messages of encouragements . . . it keeps me from throwing in the towel! You help me cowboy up when I need to. This time next week, I will be . . . I will probably be scared silent. Me? Silent? Go figure.

Love and Thanks to all,
teresa

8:30a
This day was cleaned over night by a rain so drenching that even though the sun is bright and warm (for an Oregon September morning), it is still dripping and tinkling with moisture. The air is fresher and the details around me sharper. The calm after the storm is mirroring in my mind a peacefulness that is long over due.

The birds seem to like the wetness too. I wish I knew how to identify them by their song. All I know of them is that these birds singing this morning are not the geese I heard honking late last night. This is the time of year that the first of the geese flock across our neck of the world on their annual trek south. The early birds get the sand crabs, I reckoned.

I can’t help but imagine myself among their caravan heading for warmer climes. I was planning on being south already, myself. Who knows when I will follow the geese now? I must not have been as done with Oregon as I thought. Maybe Oregon is just not done with me, I don’t know.

I don’t know much of anything. I used to think I had it all figured out. Remember when we were eighteen and knew it all? We knew then that the old people were stupid. And little did we know that we hit the nail on the head with that evaluation. It’s just that the nail we hit wasn’t the one we were aiming at.

What those bright eyed, eager new adults that were us didn’t count on was that as we would grow older and wiser we would realize how much we didn’t know. Thus fulfilling our own prophesy. Because the more you know about living in the real world, the more you come to know that you have so much more to learn.

If life would just listen to our naive younger plans, it would be so much more fun to grow up, don’t cha know.

“Futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight”

Now I am sitting here contemplating the past 105 days. Wondering who planned all of this? Not me, that’s for sure. If I had to write in a diversion for the story of my life, I might have placed a tree (OK, a grand huge sequoia, if I had to) across the only road to Texas. We could have pulled over and chopped the road block into firewood and had the mother of all bonfires, sang girl scout songs while holding hands around the fire pit, and then moved on down the cleared out road. That would have been diversion enough for me. But it wouldn’t have made for a block-buster movie I guess.

Nothing like a big scary Monster jumping out of the hole in the fallen log in my version. No shoot-em-up, kick butt fight scenes in my preferred saga. Yet here he is, the CancerMonster, all fangled toothed and hairy, jumping up and down on the itinerary of my life that I so carefully scheduled and typed up in triplicate. How wwude!

One more week of easy resting and I have to fight the campaign of my life. The final showdown of this battle between the Mother and the Monster. (Cross your fingers behind your back so that IT doesn’t see . . .) If all goes as planned (see the irony there?), Dr House, surgeon extraordinaire, will chop out the fallen sequoia and I’ll be done with it. Get this freaking thing out of me! Then I can move on into the search and rescue scene of this story I am playing out.

I just wish someone would slip me the script for the next act. That’s all I want right now. To know what next week will bring. Has this all been a build up to a passive ending? Will I just get up out of my hospital bed and walk off into the sunset? Will I have to be carried into the sequel? In the long run, it doesn’t really matter, I guess. I will play the part that my agent secures for me. Let the sequel run its course and “Get’er Done.” I just want someone to give me a heads up on the script. Not too much to ask.

The only end I will not play is one with an end.

Whether I come out of this as a full fledge Biped or not, is not the important plot point, you see. I just want to come out of it as Sheena, Slayer of Monsters. I just want to come out of it. Period.

End of discussion.

********
11:00a
I have so much to do today to get ready for tomorrow’s move. The pain in my leg has backed off a bit, but I am still a slow poke. I am going to post this early and get to work.

My mind is full of tomorrows. I’ll let you know about this one, don’t worry! I am anxious to get going! Meanwhile, since I won’t make it to the beach today, I will imagine reading on the dock of my favorite river with the reflection of my Survivor Tree looking back at me through the ripples.

I’m coming Tree! Keep a look out for an old duck-mobile coming down the lane . . . With a transplanted red-neck yelling “Yee-Hah!” following close behind. You’ll know her by the bump on her butt.

That will be me!

More planning today. It’s all coming together. We are trying to figure out who is sleeping where and when. I know where I am sleeping. In a craft-matic super slumberizor hospital bed! Oh, goodie. The last time I was in the hospital for an extended stay I was so uncomfortable in that thing they expected me to sleep on that, in the middle of the night, I made them bring me a whole new bed! I bet that is hard to believe. Ya right. I am not shy about how I am treated in a hospital. I hope they are ready for me!

I spent so much time strategizing today that I didn’t get to my water source this morning. Denny called about 1:00. “Are you at the water? ‘Cause I am!” “No, I didn’t make it this morning!” “You better get going. Everyday!” hahah I know, I know.

Before I knew it, it was time to get the kids. “Hey guys, you think it would be ok if we stopped off at the beach on the way home?”

It wasn’t a problem.

But as we walked out of the school, a sharp pain shot through the top of my left leg and into my knee. I don’t remember twisting it. I leaned a little heavier on my cane.

We pulled into a unnamed neighborhood beach access catty-cornered across the main road from the school. Just a random beach parking lot along the edge of the United States looking out over the Pacific Ocean. The beach there was wide and nearly deserted. Not knowing what was going on with my leg, I settled myself on the seawall and sent the kids down to investigate.

I snapped a few pictures and then picked up my book - reading with one eye on the book and one eye on the kids.

A few minutes later, a man walked up with a bag full of popcorn! They say a picture is worth a thousand words. . .

Now I hope you don’t mind if I used my pictures to tell the story tonight. It’s now 9:07p and my entire left leg is screaming at me. I need to take something and get to bed. Tomorrow is our last day here at camp quiet and I am going to need this leg to be in better shape so I can pack up and get ready to roll out of here on Saturday.

One more day!

I am on the edge of close.

All around me plans are being made. Work days canceled. Plane tickets procured.  I am being invaded.  My surgery is Monday, October 8th.  My mommy and Dan’s mommy will both arrive on the Saturday before.  My sisters come in on Sunday.  On that Monday morning, the out of town folks will merge with the in town folks to form a waiting pattern that will last . . . I don’t know how long.  I can’t remember the last time such a party was planned in my honor!  Being the guest of honor at this party though is not so great.  While the combined family gather to toast me, I will be asleep with a silly plastic short order cook hat over my head and a tube down my throat.  My companions at that point will have masks over their faces and rubber gloves on their hands and they will be fiddling around with parts of me that no one (besides my Dear Dan) should be subjected to.

What will the party goers think when the guest of honor sleeps through the big surprise?  I just hope they don’t expect me to clean up the after-party confetti.  I might be busy.

I have been busy the last couple of days.

Yesterday I had my morning beach excursion at the lake instead of the ocean.  We have a beautiful 680 acre lake called Devil’s lake.  (No one knows why it was so named . . .) The lake is about three miles long and is connected to the ocean by the world’s shortest river, D River.  Our favorite little swimming hole is not far from this park.  I sat there on a bench reading for a little while.  This lake reminds me of the chain of lakes we lived on in Ohio when I was small.  I love it there.   I had the park to myself.

When I got back to the RV, I talked to my friend at the river park.  She is as anxious to have us come home as we are.  I am not the only one homesick for our old spot.  The kids are willing to give up their 76 channel cable AND the playground to get back home.  Dan is looking forward to being able to do some of the work he has not been able to do on the motorhome for fear of disturbing all this blasted quiet here.  We both are looking forward to putting the kids on the bus instead of driving them and picking them up everyday.  We are returning a couple days early!  Instead of on Monday the 1st, we will be back there on Saturday. I am ready to go home.  I feel like I have been gone longer than a month!

After I called to make the arrangements for our triumphant early return, I received a call from the Orthopaedics Department’s version of a business office.  Someone just doing their job, I know.  But she scared me.

“I know that you have made arrangements with the University for financial assistance, but our department is not actually part of the hospital. We don’t give discounts.  We need our part upfront.”

Twelve Days until I am scheduled to get my butt cheek lobbed off, they want a lump of their own.

“Huh?  No one said anything about this. . . “

“We’ll take half as a deposit.”

“Huh? I . . . Ah . . . I have to call my husband. . . “

And I did call Dan. Again and again. When he finally answered, I tried not to cry, I really did. By that time, I was on the way to get the kids and didn’t want to walk into the school looking like a wreck.

Dan got the number and called her back.  “This is not elective, this is her life we are talking about. This is a rare cancer that only Dr. H is qualified to remove. The surgery is just around the corner.  Does this mean that if I don’t give you the money, my wife won’t get her surgery?”

“Oh, no no.  I didn’t mean that . . .”

“Well, you scared my wife. I can only give you what I can.  If you have any further financial matters to discuss, I would appreciate it if you called me instead of her.  She has enough on her mind.  I don’t want her worrying about paying for this. I will bring what I can next week when we come up for the pre-op and I will try to pay the rest by the end of the month.”

“Well, that will be fine.”

Go Dan Go!

This person was just doing her job.  She was not on the personal staff of my doctor.  She didn’t know the specifics of my case. She was hired to get money for services rendered.  She didn’t know my husband.  But she does now.

I didn’t get to tell you about this yesterday, because last night was Open House at school.  We took turns touring one class after the other and talking to each teacher.  By the time we got home, Momma was tired!  I meant to write, but I just ran out of steam. IT had been a full day.

I guess I will have to tell you about today, tomorrow.  I seem to be getting behind here. It’s getting late and I am at the bottom of my energy.  (No Puns Intended.)

I am on the edge of close.  Yes, close to falling asleep.

Love to all!  Until tomorrow. . . think of me here:

12:30p
True to my word, I am sitting on a bench overlooking the pacific ocean at a beach called “Roads End”.   This was a good idea.  I am content to watch the birds and the surf play tag.  I am not sick here.  Why didn’t I think of this before?

I am watching a couple wrestle a kite.  I hate to say it, but the kite is winning.  The losers don’t seem too upset about it.  I guess there are no losers when surrounded by so much majestic beauty.

This morning I gave relaxation a try too.  I lingered over my coffee and my book and made myself realize that I wasn’t being punished with inactivity. As a middle aged woman with a family, I am not used to idleness.  I have to remind myself that by sitting quietly reading, I am doing something more valuable to my family than the laundry.  I am healing. It’s what they need from me most of all.

I am, once again, airing out my attitude.  Go figure, but I needed it.  Just as I need the smell of salt in the air and the roar of the ocean.

I wiped away a tear that I didn’t know was building.  Don’t worry.  It wasn’t a tear of pain or of pity.  I was a tear of happy realization in a cool change within me.

I am going to be ok.

You can take that to the bank.  Funny, but only one eye is crying.  The other eye must know some secret it’s not sharing.

Wonder what that is.

********
6:00p
I didn’t make it home before having to pick up the kids at school.  I went from the beach to the fabric store for supplies to complete my curtains and then to the grocery store for supplies to complete a fish stew for dinner.  By the time I zoomed around the grocery in that Speedy-Gonzales cart, I had just forty minutes to take my stuff home and get lunch and be back in town to collect the children.   Too much pressure for me.  I got some lunch at the deli and headed to another beach closer to the school.  As I ate my half sandwich and cup of chowder, I read more of my book.

I did quite a bit of reading today, come to think of it.  I am rarely without a book.  You never know when the opportunity will arise to lose yourself for a moment or an hour.

When your IN the story, time loses it’s control over your senses. It stands still and rockets forward at the same time. Being engrossed in a story is like entering a dream sequence.  Time is frozen. There is nothing but the world of the book.

Unfortunately, this alternate life can be snatched away without warning.   All of a sudden you start to recognize reality again - fighting to stay in the dreamwork woven by your favorite author as you are being pulled into wakefulness. Like being in “half-sleep” you hit the snooze bar like a rebellious teen trying to finish the dream.   You realize that your attention has been drawn away and you have read the same line over and over.  You close the book and move on. Only then can “time” resume control. It slams against you like a Wyoming Wind. An hour has past.

This is how I whiled away the day.  First on my porch with the morning sun and again on two different beaches nearly making me late getting the kids.  So I rested as prescribed without being needlessly bored.  I didn’t get anything else done except the stew.

********
8:00p
Fourteen days until my “buttockectomy.”   I came across that term on a cancer forum.  I like it.  There is another Butt Cheek Sarcoma guy out there.  He tells me he recovered well.  That is encouraging.  I did a goggle search for “gluteus sarcoma” and surprisingly found more than I expected.  There was a study done of tumors of the buttocks at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital Sarcoma Unit from 1990 to 2002. Seventy-three buttock sarcomas were treated in that twelve year period.  Only twenty-nine of those were contained in the gluteus maximus.  Not very many.  And here I sit on a prime example.

I also learned that the problem surgeons face when removing the tumors of the gluteus is leaving the sciatic nerve in tact.  This nerve is the longest single nerve in the body running from the lower back, through the buttock and down the leg.  It serves nearly all the skin of the leg, the muscles of the back of the thigh and those of the leg and foot.  This is why only an expert specializing in sarcoma removal should be fooling around in there.  And this is what may keep me from walking normally on this leg for the rest of my life.  I have been asked over and over why a tumor in my butt cheek would keep my leg from working.  There’s your answer.  Nip the nerve and I won’t walk.

I remember the day I felt the tumor hit my spine.  When I related this to Dear Dr G, he told me that pain was due to the tumor pressing on the nerve.  THEE nerve.  Not nerves.  The one that matters.

Too much knowledge can be a dangerous thing.    Now, after thinking that all the way through, tomorrow I need to go to the beach even earlier than I did today and stay even longer in the fantasy world of my current Alan Dean Foster novel.  Sounds like a plan.

Did you miss me?

To tell you the truth, I have been missing me too.  You know what I did today?   I took a short road trip by myself. Not far.  Just about twenty-five miles to Newport and twenty-five miles back.  We needed new curtains for the motorhome so I headed to Walmart.  By myself.  Doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it was.

To get to Walmart from here you have to head south on Hwy 101. This takes you right up against the ocean most of the way.  It didn’t take me long to roll down the window, crank up the radio and breathe in the smell of the sea.  That is what I have been missing. The ocean. Water of any kind.  I have been sitting here in this land-locked park feeling sorry for myself.

Today I aired out my attitude!

It felt so good.  It smelled so good.  The music was LOUD!  If you called me this afternoon I didn’t answer.  I. Did. Not. Hear. You.  sosorry   No I am not sorry in the least.  I have been so caught up in the fact that I can’t move to Texas, that I forgot to notice how beautiful Oregon is.  The cliffs overhand the beaches, standing sentinel against the waves as they come crashing in.  The white froth like a grand root beer float.  It is breath-taking.  Seals on rocks.  Whales out there somewhere.  It was the nicest September day that one could ever hope for in Oregon.  The sky was clear and blue.  Just a slight wind.  About 70 degrees. Wonderful.

When I was a small child I lived on a chain of lakes.  When I was eleven we moved to the Gulf of Mexico.  I grew up with gills, I think. I am a Pisces.  Water is important to me. It makes me feel . . . Alive.

If there’s one thing in my life that’s missing
It’s the time that I spend alone
Sailing on the cool and bright clear water
Lots of those friendly people
And they’re showing me ways to go
And I never want to lose their inspiration

Time for a cool change
I know that it’s time for a cool change
And now that my life is so prearranged
I know that it’s time for a cool change

Well, I was born in the sign of water
And it’s there that I feel my best
The albatross and the whales they are my brothers
It’s kind of a special feeling
When you’re out on the sea alone
Staring at the full moon, like a lover

Time for a cool change
I know that it’s time for a cool change
Now that my life is so prearranged
I know that it’s time for a cool change

I’ve never been romantic
And sometimes I don’t care
I know it may sound selfish
But let me breathe the air, yeah
Let me breathe the air
“Cool Change” by Little River Band

I decided that I would try to get the to the water everyday if just for a few minutes. Just to remind myself how truly small I am in comparison.  How truly short this time in my life will seem once it has passed.  I decided that I will play music for at least a short while everyday.  It is also a big part of me that I have been neglecting.  I decided that I will embrace this quiet time of rest as a blessing.  Milk it even.  Lol.

I decided that tomorrow I will Practice Happiness.  Who needs a bus?

BTW:  Happy Day 100 to me!

I didn’t make it to the river.  I barely made it to my porch.  I slept pretty much all day.

I am tired still.

I guess this is part of the story.  This part that isn’t funny or insightful.  This part with no answers and no snappy comebacks.

I’m tired and scared. I am mad.  I’m not as strong and funny as people tell me.  I have cancer and I’m having a bad day. A bad week. Oh what the heck, I’m having a bad month, year and decade too, as a matter of fact.

My writing has suffered as of late because I have been trying to hide all of this.  Looking back over it, I see it was like a toddler trying to hide behind a sapling.  I know.

Dan keeps telling me that the worst of the effects of the radiation are over.  But I think he is just trying to sooth me. I am so tired.  The skin on my backside where they zapped me five days a week for five weeks in a row is like old shoe leather and is cracking painfully. (When your butt hurts, your having a bad day whether you want to or not.)  Doing the laundry yesterday was a bad idea.  A hair-brained attempt to be normal that backfired on me today.  Who has to sleep all day from doing the laundry?

If you don’t mind, I am going to moan, groan, and complain today so that I can get it out of my system and get back to just being sarcastic.

Writing all this out is harder than I thought it would be.  Oh, in the beginning, when no one was reading it, it wasn’t so bad.   But when people start to tell me that I am so brave, so strong, so honest with my pain . . . Well, I have been feeling guilty about that.  I am not any of those things.

And to compound the problem, I haven’t seen a bus carrying a message for a week now!  I haven’t had a motto barring dream in all the sleeping I have done either.  This park doesn’t have any motivating trees and I can’t see my reflection in that silly creek even.   Can you believe they have signs all along that stream saying, “Danger -Creek!”  What’s the danger?  That you might stub your toe on a pebble?

I am trying to like it here, I really am.  But it’s hard. Yesterday, I was sitting on my porch at the top of this hill and I realized that I could hear my kids screaming all the way down at the playground.  I hobbled down there as fast as I could to see what was going on and as I was almost there, an old fella in a camp work shirt said, “Are you responsible for that?”   I thought it was a stupid question, being that I was the only female around that could have given birth to children in the last decade, but I didn’t tell him that.  “Yes, yes. I heard it.  I’m going to get them.”  It’s possible that he was making a joke, but you can never tell with grumpy old men.  So I left it alone and dragged my  noisy brood back up the hill.  If I had had three hands I would have pulled them all by the ear.  With only the standard two, one of them would have thought they weren’t in the same amount of trouble as the others. So I just took turns giving them “the look.”   The “how-dare-you-make-me-come-down-there” look accompanied by the “and-get-yelled-at-by-an-old-man” grimace.  They were pretty scared.

Why do they have a playground here if kids aren’t allowed to play loudly.  Kids can’t play quietly on a playground.  Not mine anyway. I hate all this quiet!

Who would have thought I would ever hate quiet?  I have had enough quiet time in the last six weeks to cure the mother of fourteen sets of twins of the need for a quiet moment!  I am bored!  I am achy and I am mad as h-e double hockey sticks.  And I can’t hide it any more.

There I said it.  And didn’t it feel good!

Please stop telling me how proud you are of me!  It’s too much pressure!   I’m just a cranky woman with a tumor in her butt.  If you had a tumor in your butt you’d do everything I’ve done to get it out too!  I’m not special.  I’m just me.

Tomorrow I hope to be in a much better mood.  Well, at least I will try to be awake.  That’s the best I can do.

Gotta’ love me.  It’s a rule.

2:40p
My sneaky family ducked out this morning without waking me.  How they did that, I have no idea.  Yesterday, I was sure they woke the whole camp getting ready for school. It was a quarter to nine when my eyes popped open.  I panicked for a moment, thinking that we were late for the day.  Turns out it was only me that was late.  I was late taking my medicine.

I down my Contin with a cup of hot coffee and settled into my favorite chair on my roving porch with my laptop to surf.   Nothing going on out there in cyber space.  I got a second cup of coffee and switched to my book.  That used up a little bit of time.  Oh, but this “”resting”" is boring!  I watched people pulling out for parts unknown.  Wishing I was going with them.  There is a such thing as too much rest, I tell ya.

Climbing back in the RV, I tripped over the discarded PJ’s of a seven year old stinker. And I had a sneaky idea of my own.  Hehe

My mother called about thirty minutes later.

“Are you laying down?”
“No. I am being sneaky.”
“I am afraid to ask.”
“Don’t tell anyone. I am doing the laundry!”
“Your not supposed to be doing the laundry, are you?”
“No.  And that’s what is so sneaky about it!  When in my life, mother, have I ever had to sneak and do the laundry?  And when in my life have I ever enjoyed doing the laundry so much?”

We have to wallow in life’s little pleasures.

The plan was to get all the laundry washed and put away before the kids were home from school and see how long it would take them to notice. Alas, it took more time than I thought.  I am here, outside the school waiting for the dismissal bell and the laundry is only mostly done and sitting on the couch.  Ten minute projects, remember Teresa?

Dan called while I was on my way to school.  “Yes, I am awake and on my way to get your children!”

He pretended that wasn’t why he called.  But it was.
“Can you blame me?”
“No.”
“What did you do today?”
“Agh . . . Nothing.”   Hehe.

Oh, there’s the bell. Gotta go.

********
5:30p
Dan is on his way home. Will he thank me for doing the laundry or be mad?  I think he will tell me that I shouldn’t have done it, but secretly be glad.  Shall we take bets on it?

Week one of my three week “rest period” is almost over. My mind is still wondering what’s going on with the ladies at the center and I missed my dinner with my city family this week.  I wonder if it will fade to memory or if the routine of the last five weeks has been burnt into the front burner of my mind.

Last night I was missing my Kelli.  Last Wednesday, I planned to cook for Kelli and Tim.  Tim couldn’t come though and Kelli decided that we should go to her favorite Asian place instead of dinner in the hotel room.  It was nice to hang with her as two adults out for the evening.  I have waited a long time for that.  We gossiped and giggled. And chatted about her work and her play. She finally told me that the weekend before she flipped Tim’s four wheeler and went flying through the air with the greatest of ease.
“Why didn’t you tell me right away!”
“I knew you would yell at me for riding a four wheeler.  Wait. It wouldn’t matter if you minded! I’m an adult now!”

Hehe.  She still hears me in her head.  Cool.

The next night I had dinner with Denny and Leenie.  We met at a diner that advertised apple pie ala mode for 25 cents!  You had to buy dinner to get it though.  My hosts both ordered the Pot Roast -that’s what Dan always orders when we go there.  The waitress turned to me and asked, “Pot Roast for you too?”  I didn’t even think before answering.  “No thank you, my Pot is already Roasted!  I’ll have the meatloaf!”  She didn’t get my graduation-from-radiation humor.  But Denny and Leenie did.  And we thought up many more “roasted rump” jokes. (I will never cease to be the butt of all jokes-pun intended- for the rest of my life!). My Brother-in-law and his wife are two of the funniest people I have ever met.  We laughed our way through the main course and right into desert.  In between, they told me some things that I will carry in my heart forever.  I never spent much time with them alone without our collective kids running around, causing mayhem. It was nice.  I miss them this Thursday night.

********
8:00p
Dan was proud of me for getting the laundry done.  Something so mundane becomes heroic. I am feeling it tonight, though.  I feel it in my mind -I did something normal!  I feel it in my body, too - I did something stupid!

I don’t know if you can tell just how bored I am!  Laundry!

I should be looking for a physical therapy center that will take me after the surgery.  Without insurance.  I am afraid to even ask how much it will be.  I don’t even know what I will need.  I don’t know . . . I don’t know much of anything.  Lol.  This is my first rodeo and I am not much liking being a rookie.  Putting it off is not helping me learn what it’s going to take, I guess.

Tomorrow I will start making calls.  I have been putting it off because I don’t want a repeat of the first months of this fight.  Begging for treatment and getting the run-around.  Once more I need to cowboy up and get it done.

And I think I will run over to the river and dangle my feet off the dock.  Maybe hang on the camp store porch and see who’s catching fish.  That’s what I need to get me out of this funk.  Some adult conversation.   Ya.  That’s the ticket.

Tomorrow I will make sure I am not so bored that I have to sneak around and do the dishes or something!

Hasta Manana, baby.

10:00a
I did something stupid this morning. Or I should say I didn’t do something and that was the stupid thing. In the rush to get the kids up for school and spiffy for picture day, I forgot to take my medicine. In the quiet aftermath of them leaving for the day with their dad, I enjoyed my coffee without a thought for my pain pills.  I guess it’s good that I woke up without those maskers of misery being the first thought of the day.   Except that over the next hour, as I checked my affairs online, replied to emails and puttered around on my own (not needing a nine year old caretaker - or so I thought) the pain seeped in under the door and settled in places I didn’t want it to be. Sneaky little creature.  From years of Fibromyalgia, I know that it’s harder to make existing pain go away than it is to keep it out.

Think of pain as your second cousin’s lazy son.  If he calls and says, “I’m moving to your town. Can I stay with you until I find my own place?”  It might be hard for you to tell him no.  But if you don’t, and he moves onto your living room couch, it will be impossible to get rid of him!  You can hire a moving company to carry away the couch and he will just sleep on the coffee table!   You can change the locks when he runs out for beer and he will break a window to get back in.

The best way to rid yourself of that lazy second-cousin-once-removed is to remove your own self from the property!  Just don’t tell him where your going!   He’ll be the landlord’s problem!  Of course you won’t hear the end of it from the pain’s momma, but I figure she didn’t want him either, right?

Anyway, I let the pain in this morning.  It was about twenty after nine when I started wondering about my headache.  When I tried to stand up, I was rudely reminded that my second-cousin-once-removed was still attached to my left butt cheek.  I knocked myself in the head as if I had forgotten my V-8.

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1:45p
Well I couldn’t finish that line of thought (and that might be a good thing) because I fell asleep while writing it.  I was laying down with the blackberry in my hand, typing the two-thumbed way of kids text messaging. And the next thing, it’s 1:26!  I slept for more than two hours.  All those quiet puttering things I had plans for today will have to wait until tomorrow.  It’s almost time to get the kids.  Go figure.

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4:00p

Even with the addition of my three little babes home from school, the park is quiet.

Since we moved in here, I have been trying to figure out what the draw is for this campground. The tinkling brook that runs along the edge doesn’t compare to the flowing Siletz River.  You certainly can’t fish in it.

creek vs river

I see people saying hello to each other, but not so much stopping in for a chat.  The lake is across the street, but you can’t see it from here. The playground is nice, but as Rob just informed me, not as fun when there isn’t other kids to play with. There is a good size store, but the kids aren’t allowed inside without a parent.  Maybe it’s the laundry room? I know Dan is happy not to have to lug all the clothes into town.  No, it can’t be just that.

It must be the quiet.  It’s just very quiet here.  If you want to be quiet and listen to the birds and your own thoughts, this is your place.

I took a walk around to see if there was anything else, but no.  Just quiet.

As I was walking I did come across a couple sitting outside their travel trailer.  There was something different about them that set them apart.  I think it might have been the heavy winter coats they had zipped up to their noses.  I turned to look at their license plate and sure enough, it said California.

“Are ya warm enough?”  The smarty pants in me just had to ask.

They laughed.

“When we left southern California it was 100 degrees!”   We talked a bit about their travels and in turn, I told them we had been here in Lincoln since May.  But not in this park.  I told them about my place on the River.  How it was not as . . . quiet as this place.  They said they were headed a ways further up the coast, but would be coming back through in a couple weeks.

“You say that other place is on the river?  And they are catching salmon from the docks?”

“Yup. You have fishing poles in there?”

“Yup. Where is this other place?”

I have a feeling we’ll meet up again.  He didn’t look like a “quiet” sort of fella.  Just hope he doesn’t take my spot on the river bank!

Life is funny.  To each their own.  Why does one person prefer quiet to social interaction?  Why do some like to live in zero-lot-line townhouses and others country ranches?  Maybe it all started with the scattering after the Tower of Babble fiasco.  “Go away! Find your own language and your own way of living!”

And we have all been trying to find our way ever since.

Finding your way in this world is not easy. Especially when road blocks get in your path. Like Monster Fights.

I am sitting here just rambling on, trying to think of anything other than this battle of mine.  Since I let the pain in this morning, I am working very hard not to dwell on the cancer.  As if you didn’t notice. I’m scared. But not scared to death.  I’ll never be able to say that line again.  This time next month. . . I don’t have a clue what this time next month will be like.  I have the rest of these next three weeks to wonder.  How do you prepare for a life changing event.  This surgery will change my life. It’s hard not to say, “Why me?”

Why me.

I wouldn’t give this to my worse enemy.   But I would sure hand it off to a pig if I could!  (No offense to pigs or those that love them.)

Ok, there was my two minute pity party. That’s all I am allotted at one time. Two minutes.

Tomorrow I will be sure to take my medicine first thing. I don’t like it when the pain gets in.

8:30a

My bags aren’t packed,
I’m not ready to go.
I’m sitting here out on my porch.
I hate that they woke me to say goodbye.

I’m not leaving on jet plane.
Don’t you know that I am back to stay.
Not leaving.  Not today.
Oh babe I’m really gonna stay.

Ya ya, I might not be going anywhere but my brain is gone!  I can’t help it.  This is the first Monday in five weeks that I have no bags waiting at the door.  Dan and the kids are off to school and work and I am here alone.  It’s not like I haven’t been alone in the motorhome before, but this time it’s for almost seven hours!  I spent most of the past weeks alone in my hotel room.  But that is not like being “”Home Alone!”"

Home alone.  Just me.  And my Monster, can’t forget him.

Why do I consider the CancerMonster a “him?”  Do men with cancer see their invader as female?   Maybe I am looking at this differently than the average person with cancer.  Why do I see the tumor as an invader anyway?

I’ve thought about this a lot. See, for me, the cancer is not a part of me. I have not embraced my cancer as a blessing in disguise like some enlighten people.  The mutated mound of alien tissue isn’t me. It doesn’t belong there.  It’s a hindrance, an interruption in the plan I had for my life.  Nor do I believe that God planted this monster in my left butt cheek to punish me or teach me a lesson.  Contrary to some beliefs, God doesn’t plan bad things for people.  Not even bad people. (Well, there are some bad-people-punishment stories in the Bible, but . . .) There is an adversary in the world to do that.  God will use a bad situation for the good of others.

All things come to good.

The lessons that I have learned because I have cancer are the good in this mess.  The lessons other people have learned because I have cancer is even better.  I don’t mean to sound arrogant.  But people have learned from my situation.

There was a man that pulled into the spot in front of us the first weekend we were in this park.  He had a rig just a few years older than ours and it was his first time using it.  He had some questions about how to level it that started a conversation.  He had always wanted to ride off into the sunset in an RV and never come back.  The fact that we live full time in our motorhome intrigued him. “I may come over and ask tons of questions!”  I walked away, leaving the conversation to Dan.  On my way inside, I wondered if this was the person I was to meet here, but didn’t think much more than that as I busied myself with getting ready to go to town.  Dan came in a little while later and said the conversation turned after I walked away.  Seems the reason the man wanted a motorhome was that he felt wasn’t going to live long.  Dan asked him why at the same time noticing the Lance Armstrong band on his wrist.

“Ya, Cancer.”
“Oh, I see.  What kind of cancer do you have?”
“None yet. But it runs in my family.  I am going to get it and die soon.”
“You can’t think that way.  My wife has cancer.  She’s not just sitting around waiting to die.  She’s fighting it with everything she has!  You don’t know that you will get cancer, but if you do and you just know your going to die, you probably will.  That’s no way to live.”

The man never came over again to ask the rest of his questions. In fact, we watched and he never came out of his motorhome his whole stay. I felt bad about that.  We never found out if what Dan said made a difference in his attitude, but it effected mine.

You can’t live waiting to die.

I have been sitting here looking at what I wrote and wondering what gives me the right to preach.  I can’t find the answer to that question so I will leave it alone.

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11:00a
Wonder what the ladies at the treatment center are doing now.

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6:00p
So much for my day of quiet reflection.  The school called about 11:15 to say that Brandi was in the nurses office.  They put her on the phone.

“What’s wrong, Bran?  You’re not feeling well?”
“I feel kinda like I’m gonna throw up, or something.”
“Really.  You didn’t feel bad this morning.”
“It was kinda bothering me last week too, but Dad didn’t believe me.”
“So, you’ve felt like you were going to throw up since last week?”
“Ya, mom.”
“People usually don’t feel like they are going to throw up for a week and not actually do it.”
“I know, isn’t that weird.”
“Ya, weird.  Do you think you can go back to class? Or should I come and get you?”
“Well, I really don’t know. I might just throw up if I go back to class.”

I had to think about that.  Was it a threat or a promise?

“OK then, I’ll be right there.”

I drove to the school with my own diagnosis in my mind.  And when I got to the office, the staff gave that diagnosis a second opinion - which just happened to match my own.

“Does she seem sick to you?”
“Well. . . ”
“Ya.  I think it’s more likely a case of ‘Mom’s home and she’s not.’ ”
“I had that same thought.”
“If I make her stay, she is liable to throw up all over the place and I’ll look like a bad guy.”
“It happens.  That’s why we called you.”
“There is a such thing as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.”

So I took my nine year old hypochondriac out the door.

“You think if we went to lunch together, you could relax and be well enough to go back to school?”
“That would be too weird to explain.”
“Ya, I guess it would.”

And we got in the car in silence.  Just down the street and around the corner from the school is our favorite used bookstore.  “You think you feel well enough to go in the bookstore?  Or do you need to go on home and take a nap?”

“Oh, I think maybe the book store would be OK.”

Ya, that’s what I thought.

The two of us had a long talk about how being worried about someone else could make you not feel so good.

“You mean that I was worried about you being home alone and so it made me feel sick?”

You’ve heard of the 24 Hour Flu, but have you ever heard of the 24 Minute Flu?

We had a talk about crying wolf.  And we looked at the books in the book store while we did it.  Together, just the two of us.  Then we went back to the motorhome and Brandi folded socks and towels and swept and moped the floor. I could see the realization on her face as she figured out which was worse, housework or schoolwork.  Just when she thought she was done enough to get on the internet, we had to go back to the school to get the other two.

“You will have to come in with me to get your brother and sister.”
“Huh?  Can’t I just sit in the car?”
“No. You have to be properly supervised.  Especially in front of the school!”
“I was planning to scrunch down in the seat.”
“I was planning for you to march back in that school with me to get Robbie and Jaymi.”
“Rats.”

We get so few chances to have fun as a mother.  One can’t help getting a small thrill out of teaching our children a lesson.

I wonder if that’s how God feels when he sends you a bus to tell you to be happy.

I could have made her go back to class or yelled at her for faking.  But what she really needed to know was if I would still come if she needed me.

That and that she better really need me or she would be doing housework instead of school work!

I am still mom.

Maybe tomorrow I will be Marilyn Monroe.  You never know. Stranger things have happened in the past few months.