Playing the waiting game

“Maybe you think you’ll be entitled to more happiness later by forgoing all of it now, but it doesn’t work that way. Happiness takes as much practice as unhappiness does. It’s by living that you live more. By waiting you wait more. Every waiting day makes your life a little less. Every lonely day makes you a little smaller. Every day you put off your life makes you less capable of living it.” Ann Brashares, Sisterhood Everlasting

Here I am writing a second entry in under week. Feels like old times again. To be totally honest - I really dont know what I did all that time I was home. I am on my second day of being home alone recovering and I have already logged onto my work computer. I know I am bad! I really don´t do idle well anymore. I want action! I dont want to sit and watch bad TV in my pjs. I want to look at the clock at 3 in the afternoon and think - wow where did that entire day go? But instead I am carefully moving around the house, drinking coffee, checking facebook, watching some real housewives and feeling pretty stir crazy. I can´t even drive to go pick up a yummy cinnamon bun or indulge in some retail therapy (my personal favorite prescription to feel better). What makes this steady state all the more challenging is that I am waiting for something. Waiting is that much worse when you aren´t distracted by other things. That was the good thing about working right up until the day before I went into the hospital - I had so little time to worry. Now all I can do is think.

But I am miles ahead of where I was when I wrote my last entry. I was in a dark place then and the mood has become decidedly lighter since my pain has improved. Major milestone last night was that I could sleep on my side which was so nice. However at 3am (like clockwork the last 4 mornings) I was wide awake and the wheels in my brain were spinning in overdrive. I couldn´t quiet them and I just lay there wishing myself to go back to sleep. Doesnt everything else seem and feel that much worse in the middle of the night?

I now know that my waiting has a deadline. Friday is the day. It makes me nauseous just thinking about it. I remain highly positive and hope it will give us the answers we are seeking. I so badly want to move on from this and i am mere days away from finding out where the road will turn. And you know what I think about? I think about those pathologists sitting in those labs going through my tissue (kinda gross I know from the gory side of things). I have often thought about this in earlier situations where I was waiting for results. What do these people think? In my first ever pathology report way back at the begining, I wondered if the woman who discovered I had cancer thought about me as a person and not a number? Did she look at my date of birth and realise how young I was? Did she think about how shocked and devastated I would be by this news? Most likely no but I still wonder. I know doctors are trained and skilled in distancing themselves from the emotional elements of their jobs - I dont know how else they could do the job otherwise. But I am curious whether they think of me as more then a number? Because there is another woman sitting in a laboratory right now making the call on my fate. Does she realise how much power she wields with her microscope? It gives me a new appreciation into how tough it can be to be a doctor especially in the dark world of oncology. It is not all six figure paychecks, golf games on the weekend and holidays in the sun. It is a pretty tough job. I find it hard to tell people they didn´t get the job so can you imagine telling someone they are going to die. Definitely no walk in the park. I remember asking my own oncologist in a valium fuelled state how she dealt with the tough times that came with her job. Without giving too much away, her response was  "I get to give people more good news then bad in my job. I get to witness their pure joy and happiness." I guess that is what keeps her going through the harder times.

Well I will get back to my trash TV and coffee. Thanks for all the support and love over the last week. I have appreciated and read every kind word so many of you have shared. I hope this time next week, the chains will be cut and I will be free. In the meantime maybe I should take up knitting?? :)

OBB