The Appointment

I have really struggled since my diagnosis in 2013.  The idea of dying and leaving my daughters behind just absolutely gutted me.  Before my surgery, the doctors were hopeful that it was contained to my appendix, in which case, the long term prognosis was very good.  If any of the cells get into the abdomen, though, it would be a very different story.  After my surgery, the pathology was unfortunately murky, and they were not able to tell me much about prognosis.  It's been very wait-and-see, with regular monitoring appointments.  In dealing with this uncertainty, I've had moments where I'm completely fine, and moments when I can't deal at all.  But when I think about the girls. . .that's the piece of it I just can't even contemplate.  I can't leave them.  I just can't.  They need me, and I need to be here for them.

So every time I have to go for a monitoring appointment, it is extremely stressful for me.  Will this be the moment when everything changes?  The weeks and days leading up to the appointment, the drive to a nearby city to see a specialist, that space in between the CT scan and the doctor delivering the news. . .it's just all really tough.

I am coming up on three years now.  It will be three years at Christmastime.  But I got sick of doing my appointments close to the holidays, because I felt like it cast a dark shadow over a time of year I love.  So I bumped the appointments, so they are no longer around the holidays.  It hasn't gotten any easier, these appointments, but at least they do not overshadow the most festive time of year.

Which is a long way of saying that I just had my monitoring appointment, and it went well.  There is no sign of a recurrence.  Or in my doctor's words, my "scans look good"  Every time she says it, I think she's saying my skin looks good.  So weird that I misheard her in that way.  But anyway, she also said this time that most recurrences are found in the first two years after this type of neoplasm.  They'll continue to monitor me for five years, and I won't be totally considered out of the woods until 10 years out.  It's the first time that I've really been able to exhale.  Maybe, just maybe, I can stop worrying about the "what ifs" and start living totally in the now.

First Days of School and an ER Visit

I have mostly been doing okay with my impending medical appointment.  It really helped to write about it.  But honestly, that is not the only thing I've been having anxiety about.  The constant rushing around, the high cost of everything in America, the lack of family time, work stuff, the ordinary day-to-day stress of regular life. . .it has all felt oppressive lately.  I'm trying to step back a little bit and savor the moments, but it is tough.

Miss M had her first day of school this past week.  The school is an amazing fit.  She is a part of it, just like that.  It is everything that her school last year was not.  It's a bilingual school again, and she is cranky about having to do 50% of her time in Spanish, but I'm sure it's an effort after largely not having to speak it all summer.  She'll quickly settle in, I know, as her Spanish is good.  She has friends, and she comes home happy every day.  It's been perfectly seamless.

Before she went back to school, I had another week of vacation with the girls, which was lovely.  Unfortunately, SB fell at the playground and dislocated her elbow, which was high drama.  We had gone out to do a quick errand via public transportation, and then we got ice cream, and we were walking around and spotted a playground.  The girls begged to stop and play, and of course I let them.  I was sitting there in the sun, watching them play and truly just enjoying the moment.  As I watched Miss M, I heard a terrible noise come from SB, who had fallen while I wasn't paying attention to her.

I knew as soon as I heard the noise that it was bad.  She had tried to jump off a fairly low platform on the playground in order to reach the monkey bars, which had rings that dangled down.  She'd missed, and had landed with her arm underneath her and twisted backwards.  I ran over, and when I sort of lifted her torso off her arm, I could see that the bone was pushed out of place.  Where there should have been smooth lower arm skin, there was an extra fold.  I still cringe thinking about it.

I scooped her up and ran to the road nearby, which is a major thoroughfare.  I thought I'd be able to grab a cab, but after a few minutes, there were none in sight, so I ran over to a nearby hotel.  They kindly had their town car driver take us to the hospital, for which I will be eternally grateful.  Anyway, it all worked out fine.  The hospital had an amazing pediatric emergency room (which I didn't know existed--good to know!), and they were incredibly kind.  X-rays showed the arm wasn't broken.  They put it in a partial cast to immobilize it until we could see the ortho, and gave SB some morphine to make her comfortable.  It was all fine in the end.  Parenting!  It's not for the faint of heart.

When we followed up with the ortho a few days later, he concurred that the arm was not broken, and removed the cast.  Her arm was swollen to more than twice its normal size, and pretty bruised.  It's still pretty bruised, actually, but getting better.  Over the last week, the swelling has really come down, and it's bothering her less and less.  The ortho did want her in the sling until after Labor Day, but. . .SB had other ideas.  She has a crazy high pain threshold, so she just kept saying it didn't hurt.  Ah, my little wild woman.  Anyway, she's doing great, and I'm relieved it's not broken.