Mixed Emotions

I am in need of a major attitude adjustment. The latter half of this week has been really hard. I am in a really bad mood. I try to keep this blog as positive as possible, but every so often I need to just vent. If I am going to be sincere, then you have to get a little of the bad along with all the good.

Right now, Thursdays and Fridays are my free days. I only work Monday through Wednesday. When I am home with nothing to do, I get bored. And when I get bored I start thinking, and when I start thinking I tailspin into major over analyzing and then I get depressed. I was sad all day Thursday and all day yesterday. I cried off and on for 48 hours and here is why.

It's evident that we need to get some "normal" back into our lives. Brian had his first seizure five months ago today. I have said it before, but it still rings true; I feel like our lives stopped that day. I wake up each day and cannot believe its ninety degrees outside because I feel like we should still be in the cold grip of February. But life carries on. My sister had a birthday, so did Brian. Then Mother's Day, my birthday, Father's Day and the Fourth of July. Our second wedding anniversary is just three days away! But none of it feels normal. Brian hasn't been able to get back to work, and I have been out of school for the summer.

Monday, I am starting another job. Dr. Chiou and I have been talking about me coming back for about a year now. I was going to start at the beginning of the year, but then when Brian got sick he said to just call when I was ready. Dr. Chiou is great. He has always looked out for me. I left there two years ago when we got married and have regretted it many time since. It's nice because I know everyone there, I know the idiosyncrasies of the office and I love the patients. And all of this working around my school schedule. It will be great experience while I am in school. Coincidentally, July 16th is the very same start date I had five years ago when I started there so I feel like I have truly come full circle in some ways.

Brian sees the oncologist Monday and then the neurologist at the beginning of August and then he will hopefully get to go back to work. I think that life will start to feel normal again. I will be working and studying, Brian will be back to working nights. This should make me happy, right? It's what we need.

WRONG.

I am terrified. I am so worried that he will have another seizure. He is going to be so exhausted trying to work third shift, taking chemotherapy, and trying to keep up with his calling at church. I am afraid he will have a seizure at work or while driving, and get really hurt. And we will be so busy again that we won't get to see much of each other. That makes me sad.

I saw the quote at the top of the page and rather than feeling happy when I saw it, I PANICKED.

When cancer invades your life, everything changes. Brian and I are well aware of the many blessings we have been afforded, but have we made them count? We had all this free time and we didn't do anything with it. Furthermore, I worried most of it away and now its gone. Our circumstances haven't changed, but our timetable has. Or maybe that is an illusion. No one knows how much time we have on this earth, but now I have become acutely aware of how precious that time is. I just feel like I wasted five months we should have been making the best of.

My goal is to work on this. I need to find a way of coping. Do you ignore the huge cancer elephant and carry on like nothing is happening and risk taking your time for granted? Do you keep it at the forefront of your mind and risk worrying too much and letting it ruin your time? It seems like a no win to me right now. I want to be able to accept that this will be a part of our life, but I don't want to worry constantly about it. I want to be able to be grateful for each day we have instead of feeling sorry for myself, and mostly, I want to make our blessings count.

There are a lot of people I know that are having interpersonal issues in their relationships right now. Sometimes I want to shake those people and say, "Look at what you have here! You have someone to share your life with who is healthy! You have beautiful healthy children and while none of us know how much time we are afforded, you don't have serious illness looming over you. Take advantage of your health and work through your issues and enjoy the love that you have!"

Brian and I were talking about all of it and he actually said, "I wouldn't trade what we are going through for what they are going through." I have to admit, I was a little taken aback. He said even though he may be sick, he is feeling great right now, and we have a loving companionship to be grateful for.

And he is right. We do have a very loving, relatively drama free relationship ;) and I like it that way. It made me think back to the time when we were separated by choice and not circumstance. Was that worse than this? I don't know. I was sad that we weren't together, but it was because we decided not to be together. I remember some of the thoughts I had then and I think maybe Brian is right. Even if cancer shortens our time on earth together, we have the comfort of knowing how much we love each other. We love each other tremendously. That is a blessing that I count every single day.