Comfortably Numb
We're on week 9 of Colette's treatment. Our new normal is taking each abnormality in stride. That's ultimately how I can describe having a child with cancer. Nothing is the same, but what keeps you sane is accepting your new abnormal life with a certain numbness.
I'm almost afraid to feel things. It can be good and it can be bad. It doesn't matter. I just don't want to feel too extremely. Example, I can't stand listening to music right now. I don't want to be too excited or sad. I'll break down either way. If I was feeling deeper I could go into relating it to your pleasure/pain threshold, and how they're so close to each other that some consider them on in the same.
So, I stay numb a lot. I try to stay in a mode that keeps me even keeled when I'm reeling and spinning on the inside. Sometimes I even catch myself talking about Colette's cancer like it's just something we're dealing with, like she had a minor illness, and it'll all be 100% better in a week. I don't know if i'm doing that for the benefit of the person I'm talking to, or if the benefit is for me. The truth is sometimes it can feel like a fixable thing we're dealing with right now. If she feels okay, if she wants to go swing, if she's her typical hilarious self, then it's easy to overlook her bald head or the mediport so clearly defined above her tiny collarbone.
I cried one of those cries where no tears our sound comes out today. I haven't done that since we first heard about her diagnosis. That cry is reserved for people who are in pure hell. The cry comes with a feeling of total hopelessness and terror. I read if you see a stuffed animal beside the bell in the oncology department that a child in their care passed away. I can't recall seeing that in person, but I felt that instant pang of terror that I felt in January. It's a sobering reality to face that we could lose our daughter. And that, if we do, I have no idea how I will ever recover if that happens. I am most certainly not strong enough.
She begins radiation in a couple of weeks. It'll be a new group of doctors and a new hospital. I'm worried how she'll take it. There's a lot to radiation- she will have to be completely still, she will have radiation every day for at least 6 weeks, and she will probably be sedated each time.
She has an MRI on April 8th. I always begin that with "what we're hoping is.." but I'm far more honest on here, so here's what I want to say: what needs to happen is all the cancer cells are dead. That MF tumor better have nothing living in it whatsoever. I need it all to be dead. Colette needs it to be dead. We need good news. We need something to make all this pain, this terror, the late nights, the trauma, the crying, the rage, the exhaustion- we need something to make it worth it. We need a win for this girl.
I'm almost afraid to feel things. It can be good and it can be bad. It doesn't matter. I just don't want to feel too extremely. Example, I can't stand listening to music right now. I don't want to be too excited or sad. I'll break down either way. If I was feeling deeper I could go into relating it to your pleasure/pain threshold, and how they're so close to each other that some consider them on in the same.
So, I stay numb a lot. I try to stay in a mode that keeps me even keeled when I'm reeling and spinning on the inside. Sometimes I even catch myself talking about Colette's cancer like it's just something we're dealing with, like she had a minor illness, and it'll all be 100% better in a week. I don't know if i'm doing that for the benefit of the person I'm talking to, or if the benefit is for me. The truth is sometimes it can feel like a fixable thing we're dealing with right now. If she feels okay, if she wants to go swing, if she's her typical hilarious self, then it's easy to overlook her bald head or the mediport so clearly defined above her tiny collarbone.
I cried one of those cries where no tears our sound comes out today. I haven't done that since we first heard about her diagnosis. That cry is reserved for people who are in pure hell. The cry comes with a feeling of total hopelessness and terror. I read if you see a stuffed animal beside the bell in the oncology department that a child in their care passed away. I can't recall seeing that in person, but I felt that instant pang of terror that I felt in January. It's a sobering reality to face that we could lose our daughter. And that, if we do, I have no idea how I will ever recover if that happens. I am most certainly not strong enough.
She begins radiation in a couple of weeks. It'll be a new group of doctors and a new hospital. I'm worried how she'll take it. There's a lot to radiation- she will have to be completely still, she will have radiation every day for at least 6 weeks, and she will probably be sedated each time.
She has an MRI on April 8th. I always begin that with "what we're hoping is.." but I'm far more honest on here, so here's what I want to say: what needs to happen is all the cancer cells are dead. That MF tumor better have nothing living in it whatsoever. I need it all to be dead. Colette needs it to be dead. We need good news. We need something to make all this pain, this terror, the late nights, the trauma, the crying, the rage, the exhaustion- we need something to make it worth it. We need a win for this girl.
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