WHAT i HAVE LEARNED IN A FEW WEEKS

In the last 8 weeks or so our own family world has been upside down.

How did we handle it?

I can truly only speak for myself. I see the pain in others eyes but I do not know what in fact is making them to continue one step at a time and one day at a time.

I have solace, I now drink too much coffee (with caffeine- a no no) I run to the fridge whenever a tear comes in the duct ,like this is a permission to go and eat "something" any thing.
My scale tells me stories, the batteries must be low....

The one person who has taught me something is Zack.
The man/child. He looks healthy, he had trimmed my hedge just some weeks ago, works like a man and with a smile. He has dimples when he smiles.

This guy was never sick. His pediatrician must have filed his paperwork in the trash years ago. He would have a headache or an upset stomach but if a friend came in to invite him out he was healed.

He had more doctors look at him in the last weeks than I have seen my whole life.
He had surgery to remove the "cyst", he had needles put in him in every office he visited. He was shoved into giant machines, not one but several, I honestly lost count.
He was put back in "lalaland" to remove lymph nodes and put needles into both hips and remove bone marrow. (that was for sure an "ouchie" when he woke up and several days after.

His only complaints were about not being able to eat after 9 PM.
Then not having the tests like at 4PM the next day.
His reward: The steak house after the torture.

The kid is incredible, he does not run around bringing every body down, he tells his friend to just have fun now while he can. We smile and laugh and wonder if he can see how phony we are, how we want to take it all away from him. How we would gladly trade places...he is too young to have to deal with this.
Yet he does like a trouper, I am amazed at him, I am truly in shock on how little he shows us IF he is worried or frightened.

He sat with us on Saturday at the 1940's ice cream parlor where Elvis is King and he ordered a giant banana split. I watched him eat it with gusto. He does not save his whipped cream for later like I do but delves into it layer by layer, cream, ice cream, bananas, then the chocolate sauce. One can see how good it tastes by the
gorgeous brown eyes twinkling. He loves his ice cream!!!!!

He runs around with his pals and they are all hanging around him. They do not speak much about his condition. He tells them that he has 4 doctors on his team and he is tire4d of listening to them and what they predict. He says F'it lets play football.

He is missing the one year when school is more or less fun in High School, he was going to be on the football team. He was looking forward to that.
This is a big year.

The only idea of "poor me" is only about his hair.
He put on Facebook for his friends to see : I likes my hair!!!!!

He has been my sweetie pie when he "lived with us " in the shop till preschool, he now is my teddy bear, he can pick me up and I am not a dainty small old lady.
He protects me all the time. Tells me to watch this and that step, asks me if I need anything. He lost his other Grandma who loved him so much, and then his Grandpa who was his artist hero (he collects his work) ,he is hanging on to two other grandparents. He loves us and it shows.

He is my hero and I am learning from him every day.

help from Pema Chodronj

Pema Chodron
‎"The next time you lose heart and you can't bear to experience what you are feeling, you might recall this instruction: change the way you see it and lean in. That's basically the instruction that Dzigar Kongtrul gave me. And now I pass it on to you. Instead of blaming our discomfort on outer circumstances or on our own weakness, we can choose to stay present and awake to our experience, not rejecting it, not grasping it, not buying the stories that we relentlessly tell ourselves. This is priceless advice that addresses the true cause of suffering- yours, mine and that of all living beings."

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LOST

I am somewhat lost in a sea of questions.
Lost in the "why's".
Lost in being firm and in knowing that everything is going to be OK and IT IS OK right now.
No cancer to be found in this great giant child.
The reaction to chemo may be next to nothing.
The hair will come back (his biggest worry)
It is not about me and yet it is because the me is lost and
I need to find her to help him.

GUNS and more GUNS

Colo. gun sales spike after shooting

Gun sales in Colorado have spiked since last week's massacre, The Denver Post reports. Background checks jumped more than 41 percent since Friday's shooting that left 12 dead and 58 injured during a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" at an Aurora movie theater. Over the weekend, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation approved background [...]

Please what will all these people do with their guns? Go hunting? I doubt it.
Fight each other???

A fresh week

Starting a new week.
I am finally starting to KNOW that Zack will be fine at the end of this road.

Rhonda called and her ultra sound for the breast was ok.
A water cyst or something like that, said dr.
She was afraid if it was bad news how she was going to tell this family.
But all is good.

I now know that I have been a total wreck.
I am now calmer because of Sabrina's visit, we talked a lot about what dr. say and
what Zack tells us.

Time and time again we hear from parents that they learn from their sick children, the courage and grace they have. We are starting to see this in Zack.
He does not want fuss around him, just let him have his games and his texting with friends and he is ok. He refuses to take meds because he is afraid to have accidental overdose of mixing medicine , he knows the results which we had in our own family.

He takes the pain, wish he would not. The pain from the last surgeries is a bit hard to take but he just takes it.

Not a wimp at all. Perhaps too much of this macho stuff.

Today preps for the first chemo, EKG's and stuff like that.
Tomorrow final council before a schedule is made.
Not all of them stay in hospital, they check the vitals and how they react to it.
Then decisions are made to either stay or go home.

He is so strong perhaps this will not touch him very much.
His buddies have sworn if he looses his hair that they will shave heads too.
He thinks this is cool and nuts.

so much for shopping

My shopping trip with Brie was finished in a hurry.
We went to lunch.
Had a great conversation back and forth about the last week.
I feel so much better.
She has become my mother.
Went to Staples and immediately became ill with indigestion and everything else.
Rushed home and stayed in the bathroom for awhile before crawling back in bed for several hours.

Fine now I think that I just let go of all my worries and said like Bobby said "F" cancer and we go on.

I think I will be OK and able to function like normal (what is that) again.

We all want "normal" schedule the chemo and be on with our lives.
Zack already had an entourage and when he did not feel well , he called his cousin (same age) and this calm young man came right over and spent the night.
These kids are resilient. Zack saw a lot of kids much younger at the cancer center so he knows he is not alone.

Brie was upset that all they sold in the gift shop was pink ribbons and shirts about saving the tatas. Little bald girls looking around if there was something for them and is was zero. The pink ribbons and tata shirts bring in the money but for heavens sake start making something for the kids with leukemia and other cancers.
I lost 2 friends with breast cancer, I miss them, but then I also lost a friend with other cancers.

We hardly ever hear about prostate cancer, tell the men to go and have a psa check before 50. The ones who die from prostate are the young ones, for the old ones it is a slow moving cancer. My husband had it and seed implants saved him. Now at the same age they no longer do anything, they figure that they die from something else first.
But make people aware.

Off my soap box. I am feeling fine and will be on the go!!!!

A day out and looking at shops!

Brie is coming, I need groceries for the week ahead but we will have lunch together, pour our hearts out and make it a fun day.
It is warm outside with gorgeous white clouds.
Bob used to have names for clouds as he did so many watercolors in different countries and so these clouds he would name "Dutch clouds". They would remind him of some watercolors he did in Amsterdam in the 1950's before he knew me.

I was surprised to have my son take me outside the other day and show me the
clouds. They were gorgeous. He had never done this before. I was a bit chocked up as old Bob did this often. Unfortunately he also did it while driving:"Look at that cloud" he would say and I would yell "look at the road ". We would both giggle because I knew he was always an artist before he was anything else.

Colorado

While I just worried all week about my family there was terror lurking
in Colorado.
12 miles from the massacre at Columbine years ago another person had plans of destruction.

The massacre at the movie theatre so far has cost 12 lives and many more are struggling to survive.

The young man who did all this is a mystery to most of the people he touched in his life.

Where to put the blame????

First of all the crazy laws in this country. He bought a lot of weapons on line.
The others which required ID's he passed, he had a clean record.
BUT why do we sell these weapons? Because the NRA is holding hands with Washington
and I do not see any changes coming soon.

What have we become???About 5 years ago someone snitched on a friend and police stepped in a house full of weapons and ammunition. The house was a few blocks from mine. Police said if it had exploded probably 2 blocks would be flat. They said he was nuts. Voila, that is a good explanation. They shoot because "God told me to do that" they shoot because of mental illness and in the end it gets forgiven.

Where is our mental health help? Clinic after clinic closes.
Our prisons are full of people who need mental help not shackles.
It took my son 3 years to be able to find help for agoraphobia. Try and get someone to come to your house to help you is almost unheard of.

My heart cries for all these people who lost someone because they wanted to see a movie.

Blame Hollywood? They will. But they have made Batman movies forever. Come on.

The world today is again pointing at the Americans who are weapon crazy, we may just as well point to Washington and follow the money.....it is all about money in the end.....

Again in THAT place

My mental stability is in question this week end.
I am so confused about so much, I can't get things straight.
Sabrina called and talked but in my comprehension it seemed she was talking a foreign language. I told her so and she started to say :Mushy mushy mushy (thinking Chinese)

Made macaroni and cheese and had to read the labels, I truly did not know how to start and how hundreds of these did I make in my 80 years.

I am acting like someone at stage 3 Alzheimer. It scares me.
Then I remember to be that way when things got so bad with Bob and I was so
overwhelmed.

Everyone says I am strong, I WAS, but this week with daily changes into Zack's healing process have thrown me for a loop. I crawled in bed this afternoon (not my sleeping chair) and slept 4 hours, I heard the phone ring...I did not answer...the hell with the world I needed sleep.

I was dreaming of a friend who passed on very young from breast cancer, in my dream she came and was yelling at me. She looked young again and healthy and gorgeous, she said:"Jeannot stop acting like an old lady!". I said: I am old!
She left as swiftly as she came. When I woke up I was shattered. I never had a dream with her in it before. That was wild.

Bobby tells me that my fears he picks up and stop it Mom, we are feeding on each other and you got to stop it.

I want to see the red button which tells me "STOP", I am lost to find a way for now but then maybe with a regular schedule for Zack and all that testing done with ,maybe I will become the strong bird again.

for my Republican friends

You do not like Obama, I get that.

I never like Bush and I told it to the world too.
That was Bush son. I actually like the father.

Here is the deal.

My kids are using the Obamacare new law to get insurance for their son with a pre-existing condition, the insurance will pay 80 percent.

The other option would be to file bankruptcy when all s finished in a year or more. That would ruin Frank's business and make the rest of their financial life a mess.

OR: they could file and hope to get help from Medicaid (= we the tax payers)

Or they could pay the hospital 25.00 a month for the rest of their lives and still have bad credit and a hospital which will loose out big time.

I am not very smart with politics, I find them all to be crooked but I know when I tried to get long term insurance ,many years ago, my husband was refused because of a previous cancer (then healed) disease.

My kids will owe money at least the 20 percent but the hospital will get paid for sure with 80 percent of the bill, a bill which we, the tax payers, will not have to pay with Medicaid.
That is what it comes down to.

worldwide friends

When I was a teen ager in the late 1940's I wrote to 3 girls in the USA.
Our school gave us addresses. One sent me pictures, her name was Joan and she
lived in Minnesota. She was very cute. I could not get her letters fast enough.
I do not remember the others that much, one was from Ohio but no one from large cities. Their life seemed like a dream to me. That was eons ago.

I am still writing, I just never stopped writing. Most of it was letters to myself with all my problems and woes and after I wrote them I would burn them.
My grandmother had done that at the turn of the century when she found herself in Italy far away from her mother and with an workaholic husband. She told my mother to write and burn it and take long walks. That was all before we had yoga guru's, shrinks with long named titles, experts on the mind etc....

That advice however is a help.

Now in my small, small world. Most friends gone, my hearing a factor in conversations,
I leave the house perhaps once a week with Brie.
YET I have a world of people who write and support all my moods and woes.

Little did I know in 1997 that my son was telling me to get "with it" and learn about computers. I said NO WAY Then I saw how he was buying and selling on a new place called eBay. That was something else, I have retail blood in my veins. I was hooked.
I have been with eBay since November 1997.
I sold a lot bought a lot and still do.

The icing on the computer cake now this very day are my friends.
I get emails, advice, prayers, nice cards, uplifting words, gorgeous photos.
I live with these "E friends", I rejoiced when one had company from Indonesia and loved the photos of gorgeous children. I cry with a friend who's son is ill and too early in a nursing home. I had a football (soccer) coach and he passed on a few years ago and I still think of his emails about his heros in the sport. His wife now consoles me in a hard time. They are from everywhere, the UK, Belgium, Crete, New Zealand, Illinois, California, cold New England, I can't name them all.

I open an email and find myself smiling, I am not alone. I may sit in my nightgown, my dishes may be in the sink waiting for me to get off my derriere but here I sit with my coffee and drink in the loving words of comfort.

Alone? yes, lonely? NO.
I am involved in many lives and thank you, Bobby, for insisting that I was not
dumb and that I could master the computer plus listing on eBay, make thousands of photos from my wares and most of all giving me a world of women who care.

calming down

now that we have a program in sight and stipulations to what to do when, now then we are relaxing.

OK repeat that, please.

Relaxing:

Why did my waffles end op kind of mushy? Oh! I forgot the oil!
My teen age guest is very polite and did not say they were terrible.

Why did I go to the washing machine to reheat my spaghetti?

Why are all my entries in the scrabble with friends just 3 letter words and I am getting smashed in the contests?

Why did I go to bed the other night with my day clothes on?

Why do I yell at the dogs, they are always in my way but this week
they truly look like Mac trucks ready to fall over.

Why did I make an opera length necklace when the order was for a choker?

Why would I just like to go to bed and put the covers over my head and wake up next year.

It is unfair.
Life is unfair. My grandson is fullof life and energy, why does he have to be full of chemicals in the nextyear? Why? I am 80, I had a full life, why could it not be me. Why did my husband who had more faith than anyone I know have an disease which was a slow death sentence.

I am relaxing....never mind...tomorrow I will be much better.