big stuff ... little stuff

Matt and I are home from our little getaway. Some sweet, incredible friends offered their beach house to us - it was heaven on earth. I felt a little guilty leaving the kids at home since their summer was not great but in the end, I figured it would be best and WAY more relaxing to just have my hot husband and I go and celebrate our anniversary a month early since I will be in the hospital for our 13th wedding anniversary.

We had a wonderful time.

Having all that time to myself was fabulous but it also allowed for some emotional stuff to rise to the surface.

This has all been such a whirlwind.

I really didn't cry very much the first month of my diagnosis. I was afraid that if I started, I literally would be unable to stop. I was all caught up in the craziness of it all, still not really processing it all. Then treatment started and all my focus and energy went to dealing with the physical difficulties and I just had to push through and get through it.

But with 7 weeks to sit and think about the next step, and to think about where I have been and all that has happened, and what is coming next - now that the physical challenges are over I've really begun to face the emotional side of cancer. And I'm struggling.

I am noticing it in small ways - I'm less capable of dealing with stress. I get super annoyed at really small things, like irrationally angry at stupid California drivers, haha. I have less patience for my children. These children who I love so much and I'm literally begging my Father in heaven to let me live so I can raise them, and the day before I left for my trip I was just so awful to them. Ethan, my 9 year old, asks hesitantly, "uh, Mom are you tired or something?" Ugh, I don't want to be this way and I'm hoping that now that I have realized what is going on, I hope it helps. I get it that it might be related to the m-word (menopause, haha, I almost typed 'mean'opause. It is mean!! Hot flashes, night sweats and now mood swings. With 4 kids ages 9 and under. Fantastic. And the doctors won't let me take ANYTHING for it) but I don't want to blame it on that. I think that's a cop out. 'I'm awful because I'm PMSing.' Nope. Doesn't fly with me. I get it that you might have hormonal craziness happening in your body but you are still responsible for your behavior. I am still responsible for my behavior.

I am noticing it in big ways too. I'm somewhat irrationally focused on dying. I'm terrified that something is going to go wrong and that I'm going to die. That these words that I'm typing will be among my last and that my kids will be motherless and my husband a widower - oh I just can't even handle it. I'm terrified. It's driving my husband crazy. I say all these morbid things and it's making him nuts. I have always thought that I would be content to live to my 70's. Now that I'm dealing with all of this, I'm getting greedy. I want to live forever, I want to live to be 100 and be so wrinkly and have tons of great grandbabies that I can tell all about my crazy life and that one time I had butt cancer at 31 yrs old. I don't want to die. And that's all there is to it.

I am grateful for this time though, because amazingly enough, I am slowly and surely getting less and less traumatized about the whole poop bag thing (youtube 'ileostomy bag change' if you don't know what I'm talking about.) I had said previously on here that for so many people, a bag is a new lease on life, so much better than dealing with their health problems that they were suffering from before they had a bag. Well, the bag is going to save my life so I guess I have to look at it like that and appreciate the fact that yes, I have poop coming out of a hole in my stomach. I will have basically INTESTINE on the outside of my body. Heck, I'm even going to FART out of my stomach, hahaha!! Oh my gosh, it's going to be so weird! But that means that the surgeon got the tumor out of my body, and that I'm giving my body a chance to heal, and that hopefully the bag is temporary and I will poop and fart like a normal person in just a few months time. So as gross as it is, and as unsexy as it's going to make me feel, it's a heck of a lot better than leaving the tumor in my body! Time is helping me with the acceptance. I feel like I am taking tiny little baby steps in the right direction.

So, just like this post, I'm a little up and down. I'm crying more... I'm letting myself cry. I'm pretty freaked out about having surgery and worried about the pain. I'm pretty much a wimp. And having a hysterectomy and tumor removal - this is pretty legit. This is major surgery. The week long hospital stay, the pain meds, the limitations afterward, trying to get back to normal as quickly as possible - I'm pretty nervous. But I'm working through it all, trying to face what is coming and dig in my heels. I will be tough, I will fight like a girl and I will get through it. But I'm letting myself be scared and trying not to live in denial but walk forward with faith. It's tricky. This is hard. But I can do hard. Um... I think... haha!