It’s Late again and I am up

I am sitting up because I cannot stop hacking away. Whatever this chemo does to me seems to effect my respiratory system. I can’t stop hacking tonight to save my life. I have been drinking and drinking water and taking the cough medicine they gave me and nothing seems to stop it so far. So, here I sit. I am so tired of not feeling normal. It has been so long since I felt normal, I don’t remember what normal feels like any more. Much less what feeling good is like. I was a happy, healthy young woman one day and the next I was sick everytime I turned around. I have a picture of myself with my family in Arizona that was taken at Christmas time 4 years ago just weeks before my life went to hell. I looks at it some times and can feel my old self in there somewhere. It literally makes me cry some times. It’s the last time I remember feeling truly happy. It gets tiring being sick. It’s frustrating being sick when you feel like you have done noting to ask for being sick. I was not a smoker, drinker, partier, and I was very much into exercise and health. And here I am. It’s just really not fair. My baby has only ever known a sick mother. She was just 3 when my downward spiral of health problems started. She doesn’t know the real me. The strong, healthy, independent, fearless me that I was before this all started. I just pray that I can get back to some sense of me when this is all over. That I don’t die before that baby gets to know what her mother really was all about. Some times I just cry. There are so many chemicals running wild in my body. Medication, after medication. The taste in my mouth isn’t even the same. There is always some residue of medicine ruining my taste buds. It’s sickening. There was a time when I wouldn’t have even take an Advil for a head ache, and now I am on bottles and bottles of medications that are necessary to keep me alive. It’s ridiculous. But when you are faced with that or death, you do what you are told and take your medicine, no matter how miserable it makes you. Some times I make the mistake of reading some of the statistics of stage IIIa breast cancer and they are not good. Unfortunatly, I have a college mind that is drawn to reading about research. I still choose to maintain a positive attitudes and include myself in the survivor group, but only by the the grace of God will that happen. I just pray he doesn’t want me for something I don’t know about in heaven before what I feel like I am done raising these children. How can I leave them with out a mother.

I had some one who is a cancer survivor tell me the other day that my blog is too negative. I don’t think so. I think it’s honest and it brought back all the bad memories she remembers from when she was in my shoes. This is not a pretty process and I refuse to sugar cote it. I think it is best said like it is. A true up hill struggle. I have never been one to mince words and I don’t plan to now. It is cathartic in a sense to write this stuff down for me.

I like to write and it suits me. I can put down on paper in some what of an eloquent form what I cannot say. It just seems to pour from my fingers.

Some times you just have to keep moving. I think of that silly song that Dorey sings from “Finding Nemo. ” when I feel like giving up. ” Just keep swimming….just keeps swimming, swim, swim, swim.” I know it’s goofy, but it works for me. ha

This is me just swimming.

5 comments April 6th, 2008