I realized today that Andy is really the only one that I really blubber too. He gets on the phone with me and the waterworks just start. As a caregiver, I'll bet it skews his picture of how I'm really doing. I know he knows I'm strong, and that waterworks in no way means someone isn't strong, but his shirts have soaked up a lot of my tears for sure...
This morning I woke up and I was feeling really tired and I stayed in the bed longer than I normally would. I find the mornings can be hard. I miss the days when I cooked breakfast and I took the kids to school. When you're a mom and you don't have that on your list for the day, it can feel pretty rotten. So I was a little gloomy, checking yesterday's crossword puzzle against today's answers when Andrea walked in, decked out in "Early Morning Mom" attire and it made me feel inspired. Like, I can do that again...
She brought me a bunch of button-downs she and Katie bought for me yesterday at Target. I looked at her and realized she's been with me the whole time through this. We lived in Chicago together when I was diagnosed. She came to London to be with me this summer and now she lives in New York and we're together again. Some of my favorite memories with Andrea were before any of this happened and we'd go to prenatal yoga together at Exhale. We'd do our best to kick butt and also relax a bit in those classes. After, we'd walk out together and people would stop us and tell us how cute we were together and how cute our bellies were.
It hit me today, that that was a time when I felt pretty confident of my mind/body connection. And after having Leukemia, that confidence has been so undermined. Right now I am completely giving my body over to science. Doctors are completely controlling my immune system. I feel my part is to always inform them of this thing or that, big or little, that I feel might be occurring or changing in my body. But mostly, my body is theirs to do with what they will. It's a feeling of a lack of control. And then the tears came.
I am scared and happy and confused. But I was glad that I could get a good cry out with Andrea, and the nurse here. They were extremely helpful and loving and Andrea was relentless in expressing her extreme confidence in me and my doctors. They both said I should take a rest and tucked me in. But when they left, I felt so much better, I opened the shade, had breakfast, did some exercising with the PT guy and so on. It was like night and day between maybe not crying and holding all that in, and crying and feeling so much better. I moved forward through this a bit. One more day completed.
I took my two "bronzing" prevention showers today. Tomorrow I start the last drug. Again, I'm too lazy to get up and find the name of it (maybe it's not that I'm lazy, it's just that I'm so tied-up and plugged-in it makes quick and spontaneous movement completely impossible. (You don't say things like, "I'll be right back" in this situation.) With this new medication, I'll chew ice chips for 1.5 hours while it's going in. It's to constrict the blood vessels in my mouth and throat to help prevent mouth sores. And this is fine with me because they have the greatest ice chips here. They're kind of pellet-y and christalize-y. I've become a real connoisseur.
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