Saturday used to be my second favorite day of the week (behind Friday - the anticipation of the weekend was always almost as exciting as the weekend itself). Maybe it will be again, but for now, it's just another day.
I woke up this morning feeling heavy, as if the weight of every mom of a cancer sufferer in the world rested squarely on my shoulders. Adam called from the hospital at a little after 8 to coordinate our plan for the day. Abby asked that her grandma take her to her swim class this morning, so we're making that happen. When she arrives at around 10, I'll head up to the hospital. Then Adam will leave to come home and relieve her at about 1. So with driving time factored in, that gives us a whopping 2 hours in the same place at the same time. It's maddening. I feel like I'm going through this completely alone because we both feel a need - well, okay, so maybe Adam feels it more acutely than I do; I hope that isn't awful - to be with Abby and Isaac as often as possible; to try to keep a sense of normalcy in their shaken and stirred lives. And since they can't really hang out at the hospital (it's big, boring, scary, you name it), it means our only solution is to divide and conquer. I hate it. I should say that I know that I have offers from many wonderful friends to sit with me at all hours of the day and I appreciate them. And I know I'll be calling some of you down the line. But for now, when things seem so big and scary and out of control and without hope and sad, I just want my other half to be within arm's reach.
This next part is a bit of a jaunt into a theological direction, so please bear with me. It's not as if I didn't think this before, but I'm now convinced that cancer is pure evil, not only in how it grows in its victim, but in how it systematically pulls apart those affected limb by limb, heart by heart. Especially those of us with families. There's nothing I want more than to just sit with my whole family, but I can't because Logan is sick and Abby and Isaac are too young and too scared and too a-bunch-of-other-things for that to happen. So instead of being able to literally stand together against the disease, we're forced to communicate via phone and email, coordinating schedules on an invisible dry erase board with colorful markers that don't exist. It's great that the technology exists, but it's just not the same as being there, being united. And at least in our case, cancer takes that away. I can't go in the 'why does God allow it' direction because I don't know and there's not a soul on this Earth who can tell me, because no one here is privy to God's thinking. But I CAN say that given its purely evil nature, it needs to be fought. As aggressive and destructive as cancer IS, it CAN be fought. And one day, it WILL be eradicated.
As for my little sunshine this morning, Adam shared that he didn't have a great night of sleep. He was finally moved to the pediatrics ward at about 10 PM last night, and apparently he has his own private room in the hepa-filtered wing. He also finally had a bowel movement overnight, but unfortunately it mixed with his urine collection, so the previous 12 hours' worth that had been collected had to be tossed: Another setback in an already painfully frustrating line of setbacks. Then he had yet another substantial bowel movement this morning. I'm so grateful that he was finally able to go and hoped that it would help with his tummy, but it doesn't look like that's the case. I could hear him crying to Adam yet again this morning that his tummy hurt. His head seems to be much better, but the tummy remains an issue. Please pray that someone will finally really listen to my concerns and his cries and figure out what's causing the pain so it can be handled quickly.
I've always been mercurial by nature, but the ups and downs associated with this journey are mind-boggling. It feels wrong to laugh, even when something strikes me as desperately funny. It feels wrong to cry, even when I reach my breaking point and can't hold it in a second longer. I've never spent so much time crying in bathroom stalls as I have over the past three weeks. It's the only place I can go to cry that doesn't scare Logan or completely strip away the vestiges of my dignity.
But anyway. For a few days now, every time I start to get angry or frustrated or upset, the words you don't know what I'm doing have flitted through my mind. And it's true: I sure as heck don't know.
Have a great day.
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