Living with Cancer

I have had a slight change in mindset recently.  Two times recently I have said out loud “Dave is living with cancer and will be living with cancer for the rest of his life.”  Please don’t interpret this as me giving up hope.  I HOPE that the “rest of his life” will be a long long time.  I HOPE that one of these chemo drugs will stop the tumors dead in their tracks.  But for whatever reason, I need to acknowledge the reality that he has multiple tumors in his lungs and liver that are growing and that he is not a candidate for surgery – the only cure for colon cancer.  He is fighting hard every single day to battle down these cancer cells while still working, attending school events and being an incredible dad and supportive husband.  He is stronger and tougher than anyone I know.  I feel this strong need right now to identify and honor what he is doing.

xoxo

Robyn

Happiness

My friend, May, sent me a link to this article http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=378.   There were several ideas which really resonated with me.  The author writes about his experience with cancer “Blinded, dazed, I became a prisoner of my calendar, confined to the dates and times of examinations and appointments. I looked out at the world through the bars of laboratory tests. Blood. Fluids. Counts. Indices of all manner and description. Scanners. Scopes. Probes. I’d become some new planet, upon which all manner of instruments and optics were brought to bear, transmitting back the encrypted reports of my newly discovered life-form.”  As I read it, I realized that despite our efforts to the contrary, we do spend an awful lot of time living that way.

Another idea that he talks about is how not matter how high our highs or low our lows, we all have a level of happiness to which we rebound.  I think this is true too.  I am grateful that I was born with a pretty high natural threshold for happiness.  So was Dave.  It is what keeps us afloat.  Even our lowest of lows are temporary because we know our natural happiness is just around the corner.  I find that comforting.

At the end of the article, he talks about ways you can pursue happiness.  There are some nice ideas.  So if you get something seemingly random in your mailbox, you will now know why.

xoxo

Robyn

Limbo

Living in limbo stinks.  It’s not that I mind waiting for things.  In fact, I think that I am pretty good at waiting.  That is the great thing about living so much in your head, you can entertain yourself pretty easily.  But limbo?  Not having the answers?  Ugh.  Samantha should hear from her #1 school, CNU, by Tuesday.  I feel confident that she will get in, but even if for some reason she didn’t, we can handle that.  I just want to know and am so ready to celebrate her acceptance!

Cancer is the ultimate limbo.  Not knowing from one week to the next what will happen.  Being in a state of constant questioning.  Maintaining a hopeful attitude while not getting a lot of positive reinforcement.  Feeling paralyzed to make long term plans because you are worried about treatment schedules and how he will be feeling that far away.  Dave’s bloodwork last week showed his CEA was up to 17 from 6 before he took his unplanned chemo break. This doesn’t change the plan of attack to begin chemo again on Wednesday.  It just means that we have more unexpected news and more unanswered questions.  The alternatives to limbo are cure/remission which is what we are praying, hoping and striving for or things not turning out well which is unthinkable.  So, we take it one day at a time and one step at a time and one bit of information at a time in our world.

xoxo

Robyn