Game Day

The time that elapses coming up to a big scan is always "dead time" for me. Like a wave rushing to shore that gets slower and slower until it finally crashes in a Big Bang. I am in the slow mode right now and am finding it hard to navigate this limbo until the crash where all things become known. Things have been going really well for me lately and I have finally become excited for the future again without fearing it as much. I have managed to get my crap together for the third time and it feels good. But now as this day gets closer and closer, I felt like time has started to stand still and will remain so until we got through this hump. It is like pre scan, during scan and post scan time periods and right now I feel this genuine reluctance to let myself get really happy about future plans until I know things are going to be okay. I tell people all the time that by thinking this way it in no way means that I am thinking negatively - I am just being prepared for all possible outcomes. It is safer that way at least for me especially considering my track record. I never want to be caught out ever again by that bitch called cancer.

I have found the weekend exhausting and emotional. And my level of frustration over some physical issues is making me mad. I wanted to scream and cry all at the same time last night because of this damn chest pain that has picked up momentum in the last few weeks. I am just so sick of being in pain and of course my mind plays out a dozen different scenarios surrounding its origins. Any change in anything is utterly terrifying. In addition my stomach has been awful and I just feel sick pretty much after every time I eat. Being chronically bogged down by these chronic ailments all the time when I should be in pretty good shape is demoralizing and I cant exactly talk about it all the time because it is boring. But just because it is boring and constant doesn't make it disappear for me. I live with these things every day and my patience is wearing thin. I want to wake up and feel okay. It is so draining dragging this tired aching body around all day and I feel like my happy face often hides the pain. If i looked at myself most days, I would have no clue what I had been through nor what I am still dealing with. That can be the tricky bit - what truly lies beneath. Because I am the last person who wants to look how I feel and I put so much daily effort into looking like the person I hope I will one day actually feel like. However others can think that the outside matches the inside and not realise what burdens i am carrying along in my fabulous handbag.  Some days I feel like my bones are made of glass seeing as how fragile and weak they feel. I actually awake from the pain I feel when I sleep on my side and my hip presses into my mattress. What am I the bloody princess and the pea? But I keep trying and keep trudging on in the hope that all of this will one day be a bad dream I vaguely remember bits of.

For now - it is game day tomorrow and we will have to wait longer this time before we know what is the score. A whole week of wondering the what ifs until we sit down in a white sterile room trying to read the face of my oncologist again. I keep looking at my skin and pondering what is happening underneath. Are my cells behaving? Or have they commenced their own civil war again? One week is nothing and everything at the same time. So if you have a moment for me tomorrow around 10am send me some happy thoughts and here's hoping my next entry will again be nothing but good news!

Love and hugs from a slightly more fragile than normal OBB.

Time to put my big girl panties on!

"Without fear there cannot be courage." Christopher  Paolini

Well here I am sitting in front of my command center in the living room trying to compose myself. It has been a very busy day for me and I have had little time to really digest what begins tomorrow.

I will wake up at the same time as I do every morning but I wont get suited and booted for work. It will be track pants for me. I will walk into my daughter´s room and try to rouse her from her deep sleep and hear "mama go away. I am not awake" a few times before she realises i mean business. We will eat breakfast, I will sip my coffee and we will pack everything up to get in the car. I will drive the same way to her daycare as I do every single morning. A quick drop off and a wink and kiss at the window and I am back in the car. I turn up the volume now and look for a favorite song. As i veer down the icy laneway, I stop - my instinct is to turn right but i must go left. Today has a very different plan in store for me. Anything but normal. My husband and I will then carry small bags full of overnight stuff and leave our daughter´s luggage by the door for her grandpa to pick up. She will not be with us.

Now I wish I could say we were going off on a wonderful romantic weekend but in truth we are not. We will be on our way to the hospital to start the beginning of three days there. One day of planning and marking. Another where the main event happens. The last to recover and make my way back home. I don´t entirely know what is going to happen aside from the fact that they are digging into my chest wall and taking something out. But I am afraid. I am afraid of the things that need to be done at work while I am gone. I am afraid of how much pain I will feel during and after. I am afraid of the restrictions in movement and capacity afterwards. I am afraid of the waiting once it is all over. Maybe that is the worst the part of all? Because you have truly done everything you could possibly do and then it all left up to some person sitting behind a microscope to decide your fate. Waiting is awful and much of the cancer experience involves waiting. You would think I would have grown more patient in the process but I am not. So I need to put my brave face on, crack a few jokes in the operating room, pop a boatload of valium and go in all guns ablazin´. I can do this. And it isnt like I can just not show up tomorrow. I have to do this and I will - with grace and courage.

Wish me luck everyone!

Kate