Update 17

Update 17

We had a great Christmas and I think we succeeded in having it feel "normal," which the boys were really longing for- even expressing to Santa in letters that we have had "a rough couple of months."  Hope, generosity, gratefulness, kindness, perspective…these are big themes of the season for us and every season because we follow Dickens' good advice to "keep Christmas well" in our hearts throughout the year. 

My port incision is healing nicely.  The port itself is barely visible under my skin and I don't really feel it at all unless I turn my head in just the right way.  Tomorrow during my first chemo & Herceptin treatments will be the first time it is accessed. I have numbing cream to prepare the skin for that.  

I chopped my hair today to a short pixie cut so we can all get used to short hair Sarah/Mom before bald Sarah/Mom.  It felt good to exert some control over something but I do now feel like I have an audition for Peter Pan tomorrow and I kept standing tall with my hands on my hips tonight. :)

My first treatment will get started tomorrow morning around 8:30.  I don't know exactly what to expect because reactions to everything they'll pump in me are so personal and varied. The best way I can describe the feeling of yesterday and today is unsettled. As a proud graduate of the D.A.R.E. drug education program circa 1990, I kind of feel like I am saying yes to drugs.  I have never so much as held a cigarette (nor have I ever been offered one or anything else more potent) and here we go authorizing the pumping of toxins directly into my bloodstream. It's an odd thing to anticipate and I hope I don't get caught just saying yes. Just kidding.  But truthfully, knowing what it does to you and imagining willingly sitting yourself down for the IVs is a little surreal.

I do know this, and I'm paraphrasing this from another: 

Hardships might shake your core and knock you to your knees, but when you stand again, you stand with something you didn't have before.  

This family will have cancer behind us, camaraderie & compassion between us like most little boys don't witness before their eyes, and a crazy zest for all the days of life, good and bad, we're gifted. 

As soon as we start, we're on our way to finishing, so I'm ready to go and really hoping I remember that numbing cream in the morning...