Good Questions

This afternoon I had to do something that I haven't done in a few days - lay down and pray my stomach back to sleep.....

My stomach and gastro seemed to be happily buzzing along towards normalcy and health again as long as I obeyed the "Live-Strong Alkaline Diet" laws and took my two times a day Zantac.  Tuesday, I decided it had done so well, I could ignore the diet.

I think my guess was off by a few weeks.  It's madder than a hornets nest in there.  Or disturbed wasps.  I'm hoping that like some crazy Monopoly board, I am not sent back to square one, missing all my chances to buy up good things along the path.

While laying in bed trying to recover a stomach lining and subsequent gastro health, I realized it has been days since I have seriously been on Facebook or checked emails or, well, done any blogging.

I had 208 emails staring me in the face when I opened it up in bed.  Some are pictures I have sent myself from my phone hoping to use for my blog, but cannot download them.  Or upload them.

Other emails are "sales" that I have tried to block - in particular Victoria's Secret - and they never give up.  They seem to believe I need that 'push-up-bathing-suit' that I don't think I would have worn when I was 35.  Daily, they faithfully think of me and kindly send me the latest update on swimwear, intimate-wear, short sexy dresses - you know - because I have never bought from them in the past, but for some reason, they think I just might, just might this year.  

Their marketing department is not doing its homework.  

Even google knows what ads to pop up beside my emails - "Cancer Centers of America".  There's no escaping on the internet here folks.  Unless of course Victoria's Secret gets your name.

Besides, my late-night wide-awake times have been spent following a young guy that is in South America climbing mountains.  I could not be distracted.  It was so awesome that he started a blog and gave people like me such a diversion and pleasure in reading the ups and downs of mountain life that I could not pull my eyes away.

I had no idea.

I read his elation as he made it in-country.  His disappointment when he came down with altitude sickness.  Then his subsequent "made it!" post.  The views were pretty awesome and the colors and strangeness of a different land - simple eye candy.  Especially since I knew this strong guy when he was a wee baby.

I have been trying to figure out how many finger exercises I would have to do to rock climb like him.  How long it would take me to acclimate to altitude.  How long it would take me to get into fighting shape to climb that high that long.

I have a pretty good idea, so I read his blog instead.

When his mom visited me a few months ago after I had been in treatment for maybe two months and I felt barely above surface, we were chatting and she asked me a question that totally threw me off.  She asked,  "If you could go on a vacation, where would you go?"

That thought was so far out the hemisphere of my thinking to that point, that my brain stopped and I could not answer immediately.  That was something I had put away with my hair brush and business-office clothes.

I wasn't going to need that for a while.

And yet it touched something so deep inside me that every time I think on it, something at the bottom of the deepest well inside me wakes up and touches me and tells me that it's ok to think about it.  It gave me hope that she thought I was going to go on a vacation again, and that she thought it was ok to think about it.

In the deepest of the deepest valleys, there was someone asking where I wanted to go when I would get out.

***

The ladies I used to work with long ago brought me in a meal the other night for all of us to share together.

We had a party!!!


We have done "get-togethers" a couple of times a year for a long time.  We used to do progressive dinners each year at Christmas, until we realized the fact that there was no easier way to call in a winter storm that covered State Route 89 with six inches of glazed ice each December than to circle a day on the calendar.  Every year.  So we relaxed a little and moved these get-togethers to the summer or fall.  They all have beautiful homes and gardens, and it is wonderful to see those, but better yet, it is wonderful seeing them.

They taught me how to think outside of my box a long time ago, and they taught me how to laugh.

Some of the most hilarious moments in my life were spent around a surgery table with my lunch in one hand, taking inventory with the other, all the while talking and laughing hysterically about something that I don't even remember sometimes - I just remember the laughter.

When I first started at the vet clinic, these women all came as a bundle deal.  I was in a painful time in my life and felt so alone.  These women knew pain better.

And they taught me how to laugh it out.

They taught me so well that to this day when I feel stress and doom building, I say something stupidly funny - because I am not a natural comedienne - but something stupid, that makes people relax a little and laugh.

Because, I found, on top of prayer, that's the best way to deal with stress.  And doom and gloom.  And those incredibly hard things in life that can break you, but on the other hand, can be seen as crazy bad but lead to laughter whenever I spend time with those ladies.

The same Shirley that called me one day and said she was cleaning my house - no questions asked - she was just going to come in and do it when I maybe needed it most; that same Shirley emailed me and said they were showing up Monday night with food.

It was quite an evening.

Sometimes, we laugh so hard at some stories that you spit your drink out.

***

Before that and since then, I've not been around people that worked so hard.  And didn't complain about it.  Veterinarians do not get insurance kick backs, they don't have poor pets covered by Medicare, they work for every dime they earn.

Sometimes I wish I could step back in time and be there now because nobody would quite  understand as well the fact that the hair on my arms surprisingly fell out again this past week.  And my eyelashes, but not so much my eyebrows.  It's curious to me how it all happens, and they would be curious as well, and I know we would end up laughing about it.

Or, I know they would marvel at how my gut can bloat.

Probably while looking at intestinal parasites under a microscope.  You have to multi-task there - if you are going to laugh, it has to be between rooms, or while filling a script, or while looking at greatly enlarged nasty things.

But it never stopped any of us from laughing when the hard things in life hit really hard.

I wish I could tell the stories, but cannot.  They are mostly confidential.

It's really a hard day of work.  You hit the ground running, and you jump back in your vehicle to go home, with barely a breath in between.

There are hard things.  Loved pets being euthanized.  Tremendous work loads that any other business would have triple the amount of people attending.  And if you take it all too hard, it piles up and could cover you.

But, there were some insanely hilarious things that happened there, and there are a group of ladies that get together and can talk about it to no one else but each other, and we laugh out loud again.

I knew then, and I know now, that God gave me that gift of friendship with those ladies all those years ago, because He knew what I needed then, and what I need now - joy and laughter.  And realizing that life is still full of hilarity even when difficult.

But it happened the other night as well - I took them out to show them Scott's garden.  I showed them the peaceful place we sit and have our coffee most days.  I showed them what we were going to be eating soon.  I showed them the flowers that were blooming.

I told them how we had planned to move this, do that, build this and then had not been able to due to an inadvertent series of unfortunate events.

Then one of them asked me, "what are you going to do next year, then?"

It wasn't because they did not understand the seriousness of my disease.  In fact, one of them is a cancer survivor.  They have all been around the medical field and have a pretty good idea what I am dealing with here.  So I knew the question was not out of ignorance.

It made me pause and smile, again, because someone was thinking that I should be thinking about this.

Maybe, next year we will tear off that railing and add a deck.  Maybe, next year I will tear out that one bed that isn't looking so good and the wind blows over the tall flowers every time.  Maybe we will think about, pray about going *somewhere*, wherever that might be.

Don't get me wrong.  You don't want to go around using that as "THE QUESTION" to ask those in the midst of a life battle with cancer.  But, for the ones that have openly asked me what I was planning for next year, I just want to say, it was so nice.  So good to pause and think about.  Because I had not for ever so long.  

It's so easy to spend so much energy on the here and now and the battle that I am fighting now to purposely not think of anything future.

It's so nice to know others are not thinking that way towards me.

They are asking me about planning our garden for next year.  Or wondering where we might go on vacation.

It makes me pause and smile.

***

So we have tucked a couple of days away to "go somewhere" before my surgery.  But - we didn't plan anything.  So if you all have any "drive-able" ideas, let us know.  I'm not so swift on the hotel planning websites these days.

But it is so good to look forward to something.  And to be reminded to do that when in the deep is an awesome thing.