Fun stretchy senior citizens

Just the day that you’re feeling pretty motivated about working out you should go to a yoga class and watch a man over twice your age do everything 10 times better, longer and more gracefully than you. That really puts you in your cosmic place. I almost couldn’t do the poses because I was so fascinated with watching this guy contort himself into the perfect 3-legged horse….whatever that means.

The kids had the day off school so we used the time to chill out and just do a whole lot of nothing. We played games, our neighbor kid came over and he and Nathaniel built an enormous city of legos and I spent the majority of my day back in my jammies. It rocked!

Tomorrow is Peyton’s big chemo day of the month. We’ll go to Little Tales in the morning and then head to the clinic after a special lunch date with Peyton’s beloved Cody Bertoch. She’ll get her port accessed and her does of Vincristine and then we’ll start our 5 day pulse of steroids….joy. I’m praying that she handles this month’s steroids and Vincristine better than last month, but am mentally prepared for more aches, pains and emotional breakdowns.

Peter let later on Sunday than planned because he ended up having to work through Sunday morning. It ended up putting him on the road during a horrible storm through GA, so he had to stop and hotel it for the night. But he’s back safe and sound and working his butt off in Alabama.

A few weeks back I got a questionnaire from the National Children’s Cancer Society, I took the time to fill it out….and I do mean time…I think the only thing that kept it from taking longer than my SAT was the lack of a math section. They are putting one of my answers in their Patient and Family Services Newsletter. It was a question about how having a child diagnosed with cancer affects your relationship with your spouse.

This was my answer:

It's hard to focus on your marriage, to put the other adult high on your priority list when you have a critically ill child and two other children that you're attempting to make a "normal life" for. You expect them to be able to cope with coming far down on the list, somewhere between laundry and trash day. But the realization that this is your support person, this is the only other person in the world that understands what it's like to be the parent of your sick child and is going through the same pain and agony of watching them suffer through procedures and fearing the uncertainty of their future…you have no one better to rely on. We've been so lucky in the fact that we always count on each other, we reach out for that support and understanding, even when the stress is so high that all you want to do is snap their head off at the neck. We face each issue together, even when we disagree, we have learned to compromise and work towards our common goals in a new way.

Which sounds so much better than “Sticking your husband’s hand in the blender is WRONG WRONG WRONG. Find more constructive ways to vent your frustration and irritability.”

It’s not a healthy coping method, but it IS a coping method. Whatever works.

f.r.o.G.
–Anissa

ps…An interesting new discovery today. We were at the grocery store and I put a box of strawberries to her face so she could smell them…she sniffed and sniffed and told me she couldn't smell them. They had a very strong scent and the other two kids had no problem. When we hit the aisle with candles, I had her sniff a bunch of them and she couldn't smell any of them. So, I guess I'll have them check that out at the clinic tomorrow, perhaps more sinus problems.