A note from the messy middle

I walked into the kitchen last night to find Mike lying on the floor clutching his foot, a pool of blood spreading rapidly beneath him.

“Go get gloves,” Mike said.

We’d both been given several lectures on how to handle Mike’s bodily fluids during chemo. The first step of the process is always gloves. Two pairs of them.

As Mike’s Dad took the lead on wrapping his foot, I ran for the car keys.

“We’ve got to go to the hospital,” I said.

“Lismore,” Mike said.

“Ballina,” I said.

“Lismore knows more about how to handle oncology patients when they come into emergency,” Mike said.

“Ballina is closer,” I said.

Ballina it was.

It all turned out OK in the end (or as OK as a 9pm trip to the emergency room on your second day of chemotherapy can ever turn out). The bleeding had mostly stopped by the time we got there. Mike had missed the nearest artery by a whole 1 cm. They cleaned the long gash out, stitched him up, and sent us home.

As we were all dispersing to head to bed, Mike’s father cracked a smile.

“More things to write about, I guess,” he said.

“No,” I said. “I quit. I’m not writing about any of this. I can’t.”

I’ve been thinking this morning about why I feel that way, why I’ve been so reluctant to write about this whole chapter in our lives. I think it mostly comes down to (a) feeling so very depleted on so many fronts right now; and (b) believing that good writing usually has beginning, a middle, and an end. It tells a story. It has a point; it’s not just an unfiltered brain dump.

We’re thrashing around in the middle of this story right now. Even though it only started just over three weeks ago, I can hardly remember that part anymore. The ending is still a long way off. And in the messy, map-less middle of this ugly story, all I’m pretty much capable of right now is an unfiltered brain dump.

This I know. And, yet, I’m also pretty convinced that one of my main jobs in life is to show up and write about it. I don’t get to quit on that. Not completely, anyway. So since my parents took Dominic grocery shopping, Mike’s father is with Mike at the hospital, and Mike’s mother is holding Alex, I’ll give the unfiltered brain dump a go – starting with the question that so many of you have asked me via facebook and email recently.

How am I?

I’m sad. SadSadSad that this is happening to Mike, and to us. Sad that the option of having any more children of our own is now closed. Sad that this happened just when we were getting settled in Vientiane after so much separation and upheaval last year. Sad is pretty much the backdrop for everything else at the moment.

Tired. Mike and I make babies that are gifted when it comes to smiling, but not nearly so gifted when it comes to sleeping. Alex is a cheerful baby, but he’s waking me up 4-6 times a night at the moment. Dominic is also up most nights, but my parents are babysitting that baby monitor.  

Confused. We’ve only been here three weeks, but it feels like months. And, yet, I also still look around at least once a day wonder what on earth are we doing here? I can’t shake the sense that we shouldn’t be here – that we’ve somehow wandered off script.

Angry. I hate watching this unfold and not being able to do any more than hold Mike’s hand. It took four tries for the nurses to get a line on Mike that first day of chemo, and each time they slid the needle in I wanted to scream at them to just get it right, dammit!! I watch those chemicals sliding down that clear plastic tube and into his arm and I am so furious that we have to pump him full of toxins to save his life. I feel almost as angry every night at the dinner table when our precious toddler refuses to eat his dinner. And the fact that I just put those two sentences back to back just goes to show that perspective is a slippery sucker and emotions don’t always play rational.

On that note, here’s something you might expect me to be feeling that I’m generally not… Scared. Sure, I have momentary visions of Mike not coming through this and all that would entail, but they’re fleeting. I don’t go there at the moment. I pray that I never have to.

Finally, here’s one last emotion I’m particularly proud of… Resentful. I’m not overjoyed at having to put all of my own professional activities on hold and pick up the lions share of active parenting duties for our two little ones for several months. Again. (And while we’re talking about feelings, let’s also acknowledge that I feel guilty for feeling this way).

Luckily, this yucky mixture is not all I’m feeling. There is also…

Peaceful. Look, it’s sometimes hard to figure out the difference between peaceful and numb, but I’m going to run with calling most of these many hours of calm that I’m experiencing peaceful.

Joyful. Even against that backdrop of sadness, there is still shiny joy happening. Seeing your baby smile and giggle is almost guaranteed to kindle joy, and Mike and have been doing some laughing, too (sometimes over some nice glasses of wine and big bowls of ice cream, both of which amplify the joy factor). There is also something profoundly restorative about this place. Seeing green and flowers, a river, and an ocean, every time you look out the window helps lift the clouds. Natural beauty is its own special type of balm, and we have more than our fair share of that here.

Present. The harder things get the more I’m aware of living each moment that presents itself – the beautiful ones and the terrible ones.

And.

Grateful. Grateful. Grateful. Grateful that my longsuffering parents didn’t hesitate to open their house to us again. Grateful every time one of our parents (all four of them are here at the moment) take one of the kids to play with them, change them, clean or feed them, and otherwise keep them safe and happy. Grateful for all the shopping and cooking they’re doing. Grateful for anyone who comes in at 6am to take Alex away after every night of broken sleep. Grateful that those chemicals snaking down that tube and into Mike will most likely turn out to be even more toxic for the cancer cells than they are for Mike. Grateful for good health insurance and the fact that this adventure probably won’t cause us undue financial distress. Grateful for all the people around the world who are thinking of us, loving us from a distance, and praying for us. Grateful for beautiful sunrises and sunsets, walks up the lane, smiles, good wine and ice cream, toddler games, and baby giggles.

And perhaps most of all, grateful for Mike’s amazing buoyancy and how he’s tackled this so far – with quick acceptance that this just is and that we’ll get through it. If good humour and a graceful, determined optimism are as dangerous to cancer cells as the chemo drugs, this cancer doesn’t stand a chance.

Amen.

Jan 19th, 2014, our “everyone still has hair” family photo shoot