No ER Trip & Lessons Learned from Cancer

Well, we successfully avoided a trip to the ER. I am not sure what happened except that someone flipped that switch that I have talked about in the past. While I said that neither TJ nor I really thought he needed to go to the ER I would have taken him if he felt worse on Friday. He actually felt just a bit better Friday morning so we decided to hold off and see how the day went. I would like to think it was my biscuits and gravy Thursday night that attributed to his recovery but I really don't think so. I think it was the fear of going to the ER. Also, Thursday night I stayed up until 11:00 pm to give him some more pain medication and woke up at 3:00 am for another dose. While 4 hours of sleep made for a long work day on Friday for me I do think that staying on a 4 hour schedule with his pain meds helped him immensely.

Friday TJ worked on his car for a bit and even ran the vacuum for me. We were beginning to swim in dog hair around here so I really appreciated the vacuuming. After dinner we bowled a game on Wii and shortly after that he called it quits for the night and hit the sack about 8:00 pm.

This morning we were both up shortly after 5:00 am and the weather here was beautiful this morning so we sat on the patio and drank coffee for about 2 hours. He then called a friend, Rick, and he came over to help him work on his car for a couple of hours. While sitting outside and watching the dogs goof around it really made me realize all that I have learned from this journey.

Mostly I have learned that it is OK to slow down in life a bit. Before cancer we never would have sat on the patio for 2 hours drinking coffee. We always felt like we had chores to get done or someplace to go and most of the time it was both. I have learned that household chores just aren't as important as they used to be. My house does not need to be super clean and a little (ok, sometimes a lot) dog hair never hurt anyone. Now all I want is no clutter and no filth. Time is too short to waste it cleaning house. I have learned that you really don't know what you have until something threatens to take it away in the blink of an eye. The reality of this hits you like a sharp blow to the head and brings you to your knees. Granted that reality is always in the back of my mind but I have, and so has TJ, learned to cherish every moment and not spend time worrying about what "might" happen. It is all about living in the present now. Not that we don't talk about the future, we do, but when we do it is with caution as we don't know what the next week will bring let alone the next year. The weekend that TJ was diagnosed he went in the hospital on a Friday afternoon. I was with him until late Friday night and back up there by 7:00 am on Saturday morning. It was 10:00 pm Saturday night before I got back home and the dogs had been locked in the house all day. Needless to say I had some "accidents" to clean up when I got home (thank goodness for tile floors). Obviously I could not be mad at them but while I was mopping up urine I just thought aloud, "this is just small stuff, not important, and in the big picture it is all small stuff, don't sweat the small stuff". There was a time before that I would have been crazy hysterical about the dogs peeing in the house but not anymore. When TJ came home from the hospital I told him about that incident. From that point on there have been countless times that things have happened and we both just look at each other and say "it's just small stuff, don't sweat the small stuff!"

Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain!

Battle On TJ, Battle On