Thursday, May 25, 2006

The Things I Sometimes Do

Well, today I am home with the girls since Nadia has a fever close to 103. Wonderful. This is not really how I like to use up my comp time, but I am sure this is not how Nadia likes to spend her time either.

I find myself doing some strange things, not that that would surprise anyone. Every time I turn on the computer, I have a few sites that I have put into my favorites that I look at every day. My Sisters In Survivorship online support group, which I have been laying low with lately, but check daily. Sometimes it gets overwhelming, and I need a break. Sometimes I check eBay, sometimes I play games, sometimes I look at our scarey bank account, and I always look at my favorite blogs. In fact, I have quoted one blog in particular called Cancer,Baby. I don't even remember how I came across it, but I would check it every day. Cancer, Baby writing always made me laugh and cry, so I tried to keep up with her blog. I would check and check and sometimes there would be something new, but most of the time I waited. Every once in a while there would be a post made on behalf of CB by her friend, which I always appreciated. Until the final post. It had been weeks. And there it was, CB had died. I was so sad for the loss of such a person, but glad that she was no longer suffering. http://cancerbaby.typepad.com/cancerbaby/ if you are interested. But here's the odd thing that I find myself doing every day since. I still go to her site and look. I read those words over and over, almost in denial, but I know better. And even more than that I know that that could be any one of us cancer people. I know that we walk a very fine line, balancing between the world of cancer, and the world of not, trying not to fall on either side of the fence.

I was talking to my mom the other day and she was voicing her concern over not being able to help me anymore now that treatment is done. Her want (and need) to help, to try and ease the burden that cancer has put on my family and she mentioned "survivor's guilt". I found that very interesting since I had only heard that term used by us cancer people when one of us dies. The guilt that we have survived (thus far) and another person has become a victim. I had never thought about survivors guilt in the context of non-cancer people. I learned a new thing that day, but more importantly, my eyes were opened a little bit more than they had been before. This cancer stuff can be so tricky. You don't know if you are coming or going, staying or leaving, surviving or just managing. I guess it is different every day, depending on how I am feeling and what is going on around me.

I go back to the doctor in August for my check. I have come to not like the graduation process, the opposite, of course, of what you would expect. These checks are little safety nets, they allow us to walk across with a quicker step in our feet, knowing that it will be there if we fall. Now, deep down I know that it is a false sense of security, because I know if the cancer were to come back, before they would find anything, I would probably have symptoms first. And by then.....well, the medical field is a science, that's true, but unfortunately our bodies don't always conform to how science conducts itself.

I don't even know if I am making sense anymore. Forgive me, I have been up since 5:15 with the girls, and the Diet Coke really isn't doing what it should at this point. I better go though and make sure everything's kosher around the house, and make it through another day.

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