Gratitude - the goal.

Sometimes it is so easy to be grateful.  Things go the way I want them to, people help in a way that is easy to appreciate, intentions and good and so are the results.

Sometimes it is just hard, especially with close family members and jobs I would rather be doing myself.

I have to work hard to keep from snapping, grumping, and being ungrateful for a job being done, but not the way I would like it.  But it is done and I couldn't do it, and their way is okay.  Maybe not as pretty, but totally functional.  

So I am working on it.  I am working on smiling when I want to cringe, saying thankyou with a full heart and appreciating even the things I wish I could have done myself.  

Can I play hookey from my body?

I really just need a day off.  I have been up since 7am, got the kids out B"H nicely and should have gone for blood tests.  My body is twitchy, I feel like an electric current is running through me, I am having heart palpitations, yet I want to hibernate.

I did blood tests and went for IV yesterday.  Today I want to stay home.

Urgent blood work needed to be sent off by 9am.  It is 9:12am and I am sitting at home blogging instead of leaving.  The latest time for blood work, without going to the ER is 10am.

It is so tempting to climb under my covers and tune out the world, but my body insists on coming with me and reminding me it isn't happy.

Making life a little sweeter

One of my goals is making good sweet memories for my children:  family fun, quiet time together, puzzles, cuddles, and happy memories.

Pesach (Passover) is on its way.  That means a lot of cleaning, cooking and potentially a lot of stress.  We do our best to keep the preparations for the holidays as fun and stress free as possible, but the kids do have to lend a hand and do a good deal of work.  The holiday cooking is also a lot of physical labor which I can't do on my own.  Our custom is to use minimal processed foods and we peel all of our vegetables and fruits.  We cook everything from scratch.

We have lots of fun, and lots of good food.  Homemade ice cream and fruit for breakfast, potato kugel and sponge cakes, meringues, homemade chicken nuggets, and lots of roasted root vegetables.

But every year one of my kids complain that they don't get their Shabbos treat.  Cake isn't good enough, ice cream isn't what they want.  I have tried making candy out of boiled sugar, bought honey just for candy making one year, and so far, never found a good sweet solution that made everyone happy.

Util now.  I realized tonight that cotton candy needs just one ingredient, sugar, which we use.  So I bought a new toy, one we will use one week a year and one week a year only.

I can't wait to see their faces when it arrives and I can't wait to make some sweet, sticky, and hopefully long lasting happy memories over the holiday.  <3 nbsp="" p="">

"Sheesh! They need to lighten up - its just cancer."

This was a line from a magazine column.  The lady writing the column is sharing her journey through cancer treatment, surgery, chemo, external beam radiation and all of the emotional ups and down that that entails.

My friend was really upset about the line.  She was offended and felt it was insensitive.

I read the same article and didn't even blink at the line, to such an extent that I wasn't sure if I had actually read that weeks column.  I had to go back and find the magazine to re-read it to realize I had.

The following was my reply to my friend:

I sympathise with your reaction to the line you quoted, but I also think I understand where the author is coming from as well.

Sometimes when people are going through them, they make light even of serious things. If you don't laugh you have to cry and laughing is more comfortable.

I was at a consult with a surgeon who wanted to do less of a surgery than the first two surgeons I had consulted with. I asked him why, and he said "I am not going to answer that since you won't understand anyway." My reply to that was to laugh. I am an intelligent and informed patient, so his answer seemed absurd to me. His response to my laughter was "this isn't funny, it is cancer!" and that had me laughing so hard I had tears running down my face.

To this day, whenever things get too much, all anyone has to say is "this isn't funny, it is cancer!" to start the laughter flowing.

Mind you, the doctor was wrong, he would have been leaving behind cancerous nodes with his abbreviated surgery. B"H I didn't go with him!

I lost my father to cancer when I was 15. I have had cancer. My brother had cancer. My grandmother had cancer. My MIL has had two kinds of cancer, one of them two times.

I take cancer seriously, but it is only cancer. It isn't my emunah (faith) or my kesher with HKBH (relationship with God). It isn't even my ability to laugh or smile. It is a nisayon (challenge), and not a pretty one, but if I had a choice I would take it over severe mental illness chv"sh (God forbid) or brain injury.

I am not downplaying cancer chv"sh, but if it is the nisayon I am given, I will try to get through it with a positive attitude, even if that makes it seem that I am not taking it as seriously as people on the outside would like.

 Cancer is serious.  It is messy.  It is horrible.  I hate cancer.  But it is also me.  It isn't something I can leave behind because it has changed me and how I must live my life.  It has robbed me of my father.  But I can't let it steal my sense of humor, my ability to laugh or my smile.  It has also been the reason I met some wonderful people and given me perspective on life that I wouldn't have had without it.

You know, miracles happen every day, but often we just don't notice

Today, thank God, I had open and obvious miracles.  With a bit of work, and a lot of flushing, my doctor was able to get things moving through my port again and even get blood return.  According to the laws of nature this shouldn't have been possible, but He can make even the impossible possible.

So, I am still on sepsis watch, will have to run to the hospital even on Shabbos if I start running a fever, but I know He can get me past this safely as well.

Now if only He can stretch my refrigerator.  With the holiday of Purim Sunday and Shabbos tonight, well I need a miracles to get everything in there.  We have 72 bagels in the freezer, 50+ bags of chocolate milk (they are the cutest Israeli thing, single serving size bags of chocolate milk) and about 6 lbs of cream cheese in the fridge.  It is stuffed with things to give out on Sunday, yet we need room for our Shabbos food tonight.
Maybe He will just make people extra hungry so there aren't any leftovers.  That would work too.  I don't get to order my miracles up specially, though sometimes I try, I just get to appreciate them as they come.

I am scared

I am davening/praying that this ends up okay, but I let down my guard and I am worried.  My port was used by a new nurse who I had been told was "central line certified" though it turns out she was nice but plain old clueless and I was feeling bad enough not to be on top of things as I should.   I came home too exhausted to go upstairs and fell asleep in my recliner.  I didn't get to bed until 5:45am.  When I put on my nightgown I realized my shirt was soaked with blood, but she had apologized for getting blood on my shirt, so I still didn't wake up enough to look at my line.  It was only this morning that I realized she had taken off the clave (a vital part of the line that serves as a valve that keeps bacteria from getting in  http://www.icumed.com/products/infusion-therapy/needlefree-vascular-access-devices/microclave-clear.aspx) and that the tubing had blood in it, which even without the clave on shouldn't have happened except the line wasn't even clamped until I thought to check it while driving home.  The only thing that kept me from bleeding out was a swabcap, an alcohol filled cover which is meant to be an extra safeguard over the clave, not a cap or stopper at all.

I called my doctor and we weighed the risks of the port clotting off because of blood in the chamber (which there likely is since there was blood in the tubing) vs the risk of central line infection and we decided that the safest thing was to pull out the needle to try to reduce the line infection risk.    Line infections are a big deal which we have many precautions to try to prevent .  They can, God forbid, easily lead to sepsis and death.

I am worried because both possibilities, God forbid, still exist.

Please pray for me, Chaya Liba bas (daughter of) Sorah.

Thank you! You totally made my day!!

I got to the hospital early, knowing that finding a parking spot is usually difficult.  Before I had time to even look for a spot or get the least bit frustrated with the lack of places, a man walking next to my car smiled at me, showed me his keys and motioned to where his taxi was parked, offering me his parking spot!

He totally made my day.

I blessed blessed him with good health and nachat ( joy or blessings, pride especially from one's children or grandchildren.) and am still heaping blessings on his head even though he is far away and I don't even know his name.

Sometimes small kindnesses go a very very long way.

I also got to visit with my friend Ahava Emunah today, which was really special.  The visit wasn't long enough, but her smile lit up my day.

I am so blessed to run into such wonderful people.