The Pressure Cooker…

Look at that: week 8 has arrived.  No matter that this tumor has probably been in my body for 10 years, I have known about it for eight weeks so week 8 it is.

I’m dragging a bit, I suppose.  Many, many positive things are happening right now — I am just feeling the tiniest bit disconnected from it all.  I tend to think it’s as a result of all of this waiting.  The waiting is starting to feel just a bit like torture to me.  And, truth be told, I am really scared of what the PET scan is going to show (when I finally get in there to take it).  Last November, my regular doctor discovered that my right ovary was damaged.  I’ve had the same medical condition since about fifteen, so this was different but not altogether shocking to me.  Now, my oncologist needs to make sure that isn’t cancer too.

Except ovarian cancer is a whole different kettle of fish, as people like to say.  That kettle of fish might as well be filled with piranhas for the way I feel about it.  So, I have devoted some time and energy to trying not to think about it, in between my increasingly frequent naps.

I still have my sweet woman with me here, and thank God for her.  I keep trying to count my blessings.  But I get knocked off track very easily by many things.  All the kids have been so “worried” about future hair loss, that it completely escaped me that my son had entirely different worries.  When he had me all to himself the other day, he finally laid all his questions on the line.  That was the hardest conversation I have ever had.  He’s such a happy-go-lucky kid, affectionate, and comedic (sometimes to the point of driving me mad), that it is hard to realize he thinks just as deeply as the rest of this family.  He just takes a little longer to share his thoughts.  His bottom line is, “Mom, are you going to die? Because I don’t want you to die.”

I don’t want me to die either, and I don’t believe I am dying.  I believe all of this is fixable.  So I told him I am not dying, that I am just sick and we are going to fix it.  But my own mortality isn’t something I really want to spend much time thinking about, and certainly not because my five year old is thinking about it.

Yes, it’s all fixable/curable/insert your own word here.  If we could get a move on with what happens next, we would already be doing those things.

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