the week in review...

So many thanks to everyone who has been praying, emailing, calling and wishing me well through another round of chemo-hell. It has been a rough week. (no surprise, really...) I felt as though the first 5 days were harder than last time (I was EXHAUSTED to an extent that I have never been before...) but my energy started to return a bit by Monday. However, the weird tongue stuff (it feels as though the whole thing was burned and it gets ulcers along the sides) and taste problems have carried on right through to today. I do feel like I am starting to feel a little bit of improvement, but this has been rough. Someone was asking me if I was craving anything and really... it doesn't matter because it all tastes bad!! It really gets difficult once you start to feel hungry again (for me, about Sunday night) because then food smells great but tastes awful. I have found that I can eat ice cream (it soothes my tongue and something about the mouth feel makes it bearable even if it doesn't taste exactly right) so I've been satisfying myself with pints of Ben & Jerry's and Starbucks (because, you know, a 5$ tub just wouldn't cut it!!). That definitely is not helpful for my healthy diet (I follow Janelle's amazing organic beef vegetable soup with a half a pint of ice cream for lunch every day...) or my waistline!! ugh.

This time around I didn't feel safe to drive until Monday although I did manage to get my exercise in every day. I look back and marvel at that because I was generally useless the rest of the time! The mental aspect of chemo is really very unnerving. I feel unfocused, unable to think clearly and just overall out-of-it. It is weird... I did have less headaches this time around and the pepcid truly did the job on the reflux. I also - praise the Lord for this - slept very well. You wake up a lot to use the restroom due to all of the fluids that they pump you with and the ones that you are instructed to drink to flush it all out, but I never had any trouble going back to sleep even when I was taking long naps every day. Thank you Lord!

Throughout all of this, I have obtained a true sense of appreciation for feeling good. You don't realize how badly you feel until you wake up one day and feel better... wow. I woke up on Monday just thanking the Lord for energy and for a more "normal" feeling. What a blessing to be able to recognize the gift of feeling healthy! That is something that I definitely took for granted in my pre-cancer life... I am slowly learning to take full advantage of the good days (and let me just say that the beautiful meals coming into our house are a big part of my ability to do that to the fullest! thank you, thank you!!). I don't want to waste any moments of feeling good. Oh how I wish that I could have back a lot of the time that I wasted before I knew that this was what was in store for me. It's more than just what I did during those times, it was my attitude, my outlook and my selfishness... in some ways I feel a little selfish now as I try to gather all of my hours to myself to love my children, my husband, my friends, my family and to drink in everything around me, but I guess that is a different kind of selfish. That's not to say that I haven't wasted time feeling sorry for myself now, but I am definitely starting to recognize the uselessness of that and the beauty of embracing each moment for what God has given me in that moment. Thank you Lord for opening my eyes and continuing to work on my heart... may I hear everything that You have for me in each day that You have given to us.

Parker continues to love school and seems to really be adjusting very well. He mentions now and again that he wishes that he didn't have to be away from me and Neely, but I don't think that it is interrupting his fun at school very much. Thank you for the prayers that you have offered for him, I know that they have been answered in abundance!

Audrey is off on her adventures home to Colorado, back to Edmonton and then to Australia. Please keep her travels in your prayers - mainly that she will have a fantastic time and not spend too much of it worrying about us! The kids are pretty upset that she would dare to leave us (nevermind that she never came for more than 10 days at a time prior to buying the condo and then all of this crashing down on us - which all happened within a few months of one another...) but her absence means that we will get to spend some time with Grammy and Grandpa Hawn. I have to admit that it is a little scary to not have her to lean on... I have definitely gotten used to that!

We are getting into the full swing of school days now as Dryden is into soccer, Parker is back at skating and both boys will be starting Kidz Krew (a local church program) tonight. I can't believe how busy our lives are when we feel like we have consciously made such an effort to slow them down... This is certainly another area for intense reflection because we want to make the most of the little lives that we have been entrusted with rather than make them so full that we never really pause to make sense of it all. However, it is really fun to watch them blossom in activities that they enjoy and it does make for some good family time (especially when Saturday morning soccer games are followed by gigantic FirstWatch chocolate chip pancakes!).

So, we are off into another chemo interlude praying for more strength, wisdom and patience as we navigate the cancer pathway. I am still investigating acupuncture as a method to control chemo side effects and plan to spend a lot of time enjoying "feeling better" before we have to do it all again.