That which does not kill us....

There's frost on the marigolds this morning. I covered the tomato plants out in the garden but left everything else to fate. Most of the other plants are closer to the house and I'm hoping that their proximity has spared them. The house is cold and I refuse to turn the heat on - it's June 3rd after all. I'm sitting in bed with a cup of coffee and the heated mattress pad on low. One of the rabbits is thumping in her cage. I'm going to guess her water is frozen and this is her way of voicing dismay. I'll go out in a little while and see what I can do for her. Right now I'm taking care of me. It's so beautifully quiet. No city buses rumbling by, no beep beep beeping of trash trucks, no jets taking off, no cars alarming, no people shouting....just quiet punctuated by the soft voice of a bluebird now and again.

Mike is off to work already and I will be following suit in about and hour and a half. It'll be good to get back into some routine and feel like "normal" or at least familiar. Maybe, familiar is the better word choice? Familiar, where the path is even and the pace slower. Where change is more deliberate and gradual occurrence. Life changes everyday, I get this, but we now seem to be on such an accelerated track I can't keep up. OOOf!

The past few days have been....have been....what? Hard? As if hard could describe it. Emotional roller coaster? Too cliche'. How about this? Dredge up every emotion you can find, tuck it in your purse and then go running across a crowded street, trip, fall and watch all the contents spill out across the pavement. Now, try to get up, find everything, put it back in your purse and try get off the street before a bus runs you over and don't forget to try to walk away pretending nobody as noticed.

It's like that.

This weekend we were sent to the wrong doctor. Thankfully, he pulled strings and we were able to see who we needed to see and get the tests we needed to make the plan. We don't exactly have that plan yet...Dr Madoff needs to read the reports from the 3T MRI and the ultrasound and get back to us, hopefully today. So, we are waiting, again. And our life is on hold and I'm not going to complain about that because while we are on hold it's more familiar and this is good.

I'm still scared, we are still scared. We have options but they are all complicated and this whole ordeal is going to be long and ugly. I saw first hand just how ugly during the sigmoidoscopy and the ultrasound. Both Mike and I have seen the "lesion". Picture a ping pong ball, now squash it, then picture a cold sore or fever blister that size. That's what we are up against.

I also got my first glimpse of the pain Mike must walk through as I watched the hurt rip across his beautiful face during the ultrasound. And then there is the grief, fear and anger...wow. I'm going to see more of this, feel more of this, I know that but don't know how a person gets used to it? I know we'll get through it...but seriously...how DO you get used to it?

Peace,
Karen