Bad Day

I feel like crap. Today started out well, and then I had a fight with my husband and I haven't really felt good since. Technically we're reconciled, and he's babysitting kids for the moment so I can have some time to myself (yay, David!). But wow, I wish I'd feel better. Today's just... lame. Full of lame, and sucktitude, and all the cocoa in the world isn't helping.

Blarg.

Tomorrow shall be a better day. Tomorrow David takes his first final. Thursday is his second final. Saturday is Shelley's party, meaning a trip to Salt Lake. I dunno if I'm taking kids to that or not. I'd really, really like to leave them home, but I don't know if I can find a babysitter. Both Matt and Shay are moving at the end of this week. I dunno if I can help either of them.

I need like... 8 hours of solitude.

People are Irrational

I worry that people will cease to look at me and instead only see my bad eye. It's not really bothering me, just something that tickles my brain on occasion. I'm excited to get my prosthetic eye, so I'll have two green eyes again (and not have to worry about putting on an eye patch to open the door for visitors or go out). Also, I haven't had two green eyes in a long time. It's been one green and one brown... So I'm looking forward to getting my prosthetic.

I think people are over-pitying me. Yeah, I acknowledge that having cancer sucks, and losing an eye sucks, and part of me feels like my body is no longer whole. But it still works. I can still see. The rest of me is healthy. I can do everything I could do before I lost an eye. Quit thinking that I'm dying or that this is the end of the world!

People in church aren't going to leave me alone until I let them bring me a meal or babysit. "You must need help with kids now!" ...Like every other mother in the ward wouldn't like extra help, too? I tell them I'm fully functional, and they're not listening to me.

So to resolve that, I told them to bring me a meal and set up a rotating babysitting service in the ward. But that only appeases one group of people. I'm told there are other people who are still wringing their hands. Apparently my grandmother thinks I'll never recover. I think I'd like to kick her in the head. You know what "not recovering" looks like? It's my brother-in-law's best friend who went through a long ordeal with chemotherapy and surgery and almost died with colon cancer. He thought he was done. And then his screening came back with abnormalities on his innards again, so now they're telling him he's got to be on chemo for the rest of his life. THAT'S what not recovering looks like. Yes, I've lost an eye. I won't get it back in this life. But I can still SEE, and DO, and FUNCTION.

I suspect I'm going to bite somebody's head off the next time they call me "you poor thing" or something equally stupid. I had the best health care possible. I live in the best country possible. I have luxurious food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, education, family support, etc. Everyone's healthy. So SHUT UP about how "hard" you think my life is.

Today is the first day of sunlight after 3 days of rain and snow. I'm gonna go outside with my kids, and then clean my house.

CRANKY!

As I get to feeling better and resuming normal life, I seem to be getting crankier. I seem to be just furious with the universe. I lay in bed trying to sleep and my brain just started in on "I hate my life. I hate this apartment. Why don't we have a house yet?" Which is stupid because I LIKE THIS APARTMENT. It's the right size for us right now, it has great playgrounds for my kids, it's conveniently located by school, etc.

And my kids are driving me nuts. And I want my husband's full attention and am mad when he's not paying full attention to me every minute when he's got things he needs to be doing. And I seem to be mad at EVERYBODY for anything humanly possible... It's not rational.

I took a nap to see if that would help. Ate food. Still violently cranky.

Why am I so cranky?

Back From Philly Sans Eye

We went to Philadelphia. We includes myself, my husband, our two children, and my parents. My parents were there to watch my children. We decided taking the kids with us was a better option than leaving them behind for days on end, especially since we didn't know an exact date we'd be coming home. We knew we'd be gone at least a week, which is a long time for little kids to be without their parents.

To make a long story short, they removed my right eye. Cancer had spread across my entire iris, seeded from the original tumor.

My dad and my husband took it very hard. You'd think from reading this blog that my dad's a jerk, and sometimes he is and most often to his wife, but he does care about us. So he worried a lot and was incredibly supportive. They were on their best behavior during the trip.

I have not freaked out once since we left for Philadelphia and came home. I didn't freak out during 8 hours of testing, or during a biopsy, or when they told me I was going to lose my eye, or after surgery when I sat in a hotel for days unable to do anything, or now that the bandages are off and I can see my swollen, bruised eye and know that I'll never see out of it again. I really do keep expecting my other eye's vision to come back any minute, but logically I know that's not happening. It's like when my grandpa died(step-grandpa, really, but he was the grandpa I knew from birth til my early 20s when he passed away). You go to think of him, and your brain just says, "He's not here right now." And you'll always get that "not right now" message but there's no real emotion attached to it.

Anyway, my theory is that I'm on enough prayer rolls that I've had spiritual help not freaking out, or maybe I'm just not dealing with emotions at all.

I know I miss my eye. I want my two eyes again. Depth perception is off, and it's frustrating to know that it's permanent. But I won't get it back, so there's no point in mourning.

I have been reminded to be grateful instead. I had the best care from family and friends and doctors that I could have possibly had. Everyone else is healthy and relatively happy. I know what it’s like to not be able to see, to not be able to get up (like when I had my c-sections), to choose between doing something you really don’t want to do or die. I can use this knowledge to be grateful for what I have and to push myself to do better and be better at doing things, helping people, etc.

So, there you have it.

Going to Philly

I'm being sent to Philadelphia to have the tumor in my eye removed. On the one hand, this is great news. It means I'm keeping my eye, which was unexpected. It means I'll be in the care of the best doctors for it in the nation. My family and friends are being extremely supportive, especially my parents who are paying for all this treatment and traveling as well as volunteering to watch my kids while I'm gone.

The downside to this is that I will be leaving my kids for a week, if not more. No one can give me a concrete timeline of when I'll be able to fly home after surgery until I actually get there and they look at the tumor themselves. So I've got my husband and my father both wanting to go with me while the other stays behind. My dad wants to go so there will be one parent with my kids and so David won't miss so much work and school. My husband doesn't want to leave me. He doesn't want to have me half way across the country at the mercy of a parent that causes me so much stress, or be helpless and far away waiting for a phone call when I'm in surgery. So we seem to compromise on my dad being there for the first half of the week and my husband being there the second half. But nobody's really going to be totally happy with any situation that's put forward. Everybody's stressed. I've been on the verge of crying all day just from stress. I really don't want to go, but I have to.

This is a really lousy way to live. I can't seem to function very well this stressed out, and it doesn't seem to be stopping. One doctor appointment bleeds into another before I can calm down. Monday I get to go in for a round of blood tests and liver tests and an EKG. I was supposed to schedule a general physical exam today, but never got to it. It was enough trying to sort out the travel plans. It's causing a lot of hurt in already strained relationships, and I don't see any way to stop it.

I need to dig myself out of this pit of stress and depression. My body is still capable of movement. I'm not sick or in pain. I need to have the house clean before bed tonight (because mess = stress, and cleaning helps me feel better). I need to make dinner. At least I went to the gym this morning for the first time in a couple weeks. I had a good breakfast/lunch. I got the dishwasher running. I dealt with the things that absolutely needed to be dealt with today. I got groceries for this weekend. I'm not totally useless, but I need to get off my butt and do more so I will stop feeling like my chest is caving in.

To keep myself from getting overwhelmed I will do things in very, very small amounts. One thing off the floor and put away. One small section of countertop cleaned off. One piece of laundry folded and put away. At least it will be progress. I really, really, really just want to read and/or play video games, though....

I'm Still Kicking

Hey folks. Sorry I haven't updated. I've been distracted!

Monday's therapy session (our first family group session) was mostly answering questions about what we want to get out of therapy this time around. We go back again tomorrow and maybe we'll make more progress. I was supposed to write down times things went well this week as my therapy homework, but I didn't. Things were pretty laid back this week, so we didn't have too many tempers flare. We're just letting a lot of things slide because everybody's stressed and we don't want to aggravate it.

My doctor appointment was much more of the same. Doctors coming in, poking me in the eyes, and not giving me a lot of information. We did get an ultrasound done of my eye, and they want us to come back this coming week to do Grand Rounds, which is where a lot of doctors look at interesting patient cases and decide what to do about it.

I'm noticing a pattern in stress levels. I get stressed in the two or three days leading up to an appointment and the two or three days after an appointment as I digest whatever information they've given me. I spend those days watching television, playing on the computer, or reading a lot to try to give my nerves a break by distracting them with other things to think about. I've been pretty useless this week post-doctor appointment. Today I am finally cleaning the house and getting things in order in preparation for next week when I'll be too stressed to handle things again. But at least we're still getting by and nobody's blown a gasket or anything.

So today I'm cleaning the house. It's almost done. Tonight I hope to make food that we can munch on all week, and update the checkbook. Maybe clean off my kitchen table, which is piled in papers needing to be filed. That's all. And then it's off to playing more World of Warcraft.

Hope everyone else is doing well. Take care. *wanders off*

Family Counseling Session Scheduled

There. Parenting therapy session made for the whole family for next Monday. Parenting is causing me all sorts of grief right now, so I will kick its behind. ...Or maybe lovingly but firmly place it in time out until it behaves. Yeeeeah, there's a reason we're going to therapy. My brain is violent!

This past week has been CRAP. Spent the whole week watching television like a vegetable so my brain doesn't have to think and/or deal with this reality. Which is not healthy, and I know better. I did do house cleaning and whatnot, but my kids got ignored. And Sunday they got taken out of class in church for poor behavior, and they were the last straw on my babysitter's bad back so I came home from date night to find her in tears. And it's just gotta stop. I feel I can't communicate with them. I feel I cannot have a life beyond babysitting which makes me really, really frustrated and angry and resentful. And it's not changing any, so I'm getting outside help. *points to counseling session* So THERE.

My counseling session is one day before my eye doctor appointment. Who knows if I'll be a basket case by then. Probably. Arg.