The Matzoh Ball

Finally got some sleep. Maybe 5 hours and then one this afternoon. I woke this morning with a high fever and had the rigors again. The TOTAL shakes. And my blood pressure is so low! Like 85/55. I'm getting tons of fluid and a new antibiotic but the BP is still up and down.  Sitting here I'm again thinking,  "I never ever had ONE symptom of Leukemia."  Total fluke that it was even discovered. So, it's still, soooo suuuurreal when I'm not well because I, for sure, have symptoms of chemo!  But Nurses/Docs are so good and on top of it. But, still, don't ever let your guard down in a hospital. There's always too much going on and remember, people are human. As they said on Friday Night Lights (my new TV addiction), you need an Advocado.  Even if it's yourself some days...

So, rigors for some reason always make me emotional. I shake so much, it just makes me cry. And today my memory has been so jogged by the old friends from Scarsdale that have contributed to my Donor Circle it made me re-remember the great importance of my Circle of Friends when I was growing up in an unstable home. I cried a lot there, often until shaking, and it wasn't until later that it was realized by doctors that my mother actually had  Borderline Personality Disorder, leaning toward psychosis. And my sister and I had been living under that, undiagnosed, for our whole lives.

In junior high and high school I took GREAT refuge in my friends and really feel that they raised me. Kaethe, Allison, Susanne, Andrea. Mothers to me.  And there were the boys that kept me laughing. Emerson, Stuart, the Peters. They were also the ones who witnessed it all. And they were the ones who told me I was OK. They swooped up my sanity and kept it alive enough for me so that I could later fully retrieve it, grow up, and have a family. Yup. They really did that for me...

And in a way, this whole time with the cancer,  I have never accepted that I have Leukemia. I haven't wanted to. (Well, who would?)  But somehow reaching out even further afield now, past my address book, to friends and family on my FaceBook page, and The Gift of Life Donor Circle, I think everyone I know now knows! I've heard from people from EVERY step along the walk of my life! So, only in doing that, have I had this gift of friends, (my usual and very effective form of comfort), come back to me and say, "Yeah. This is crazy. We're going to help. And you're Ok".

Isn't there that scene in Seinfeld where Jerry says to George, "That's a big matzoh ball you left hanging there"? It was right after George told his, deaf in one ear girlfriend, that he loved her and when she didn't respond, he said it again, thinking she didn't hear him. And she responded by saying, "I know. I heard you"... Maybe that's what this blog entry is about. Did I get over the fear of the matzoh ball?  I think I did!