Graduated.. Well small steps

Seek. Him. First. 

Big news in the oncologist office today ... I graduated to every 4 weeks. Yay! As I leave I realize that this means I'm doing this thing, if nothing major happens, I'm in it.  Full blown cancer treatment ahead, for prob a looooong year. I go into normal check ups, is there a such a thing seeing your oncologist while on Sylatron? and leave totally overwhelmed. Am I prepared to handle the things ahead in my life I wonder often. I need to just know that from now on there is no more little check up at the doctor, no probably not ever again. New normal, new me. 

So starts a new chapter today.  I will go back in a month to see Dr. Schuchter. The week before I will have all my scans so that she has the results when I see her on the 17th. We will drive out to UPENN to do them the week before. We scheduled and received instructions for them today.  Also in the meantime I need to see a lymphodema specialist. I haven't had too many issues but this for me is a lifetime maintenance. My doctor wants me to get into a clinical specialist now to start doing physical therapy. This will help me get ahead as I start to become more active and learn how to maintain lymphodema, or lack thereof, in my leg. Now that I'm finally feeling a little alive and able to get out of bed, these are the other things my time needs to be focused on. We haven't even had a chance to talk about anything like this yet. 

So the next few weeks will be busy. (So really saying I've graduated doesn't mean anything) I will continue to take my treatment injections on Tuesdays. We have Lizz helping my hardest days to get me through. I will start a physical therapy treatment for my leg. Most good hospital systems have some great specialist and I need to find one with practice in leg lymphedema from lymph dissections.  I have all my scans scheduled for the 10th of February. On the 17th I will go back to UPENN to get bloodwork, all my scan results, and see my oncologist. And that for me is a busy month ahead considering.  This whole cancer life takes up time, energy, and my joy some days. Pushing through is what I do because I must, and because I can, but it's hard. I have not even began to know how to handle this "scanxiety" everyone talks about. I already just can't think about it. I do not want to even imagine waiting for results again. God knows, peace there, he knows and there is a plan. There is no cancer, there just can't be, that is not my plan.

How ironic that this year for Valentine's Day week Kev and I were planning on going away for our 10 year anniversary trip. We didn't want to go in November or during the craziness of the holidays. And we thought holidays were crazy, little did we know what crazy means.  Now here we are while vacations are planned all around us, scheduling ctscans and making appointments with the oncologist, what a new reality. Happy Valentines week to us. I hate this, I do, but I'm here. I'm thankful for that, I'm not sure how communicate the jealousy and the fight for everyday normal I feel, but that's ok. These are some of the real irrational thoughts my brain and heart fight everyday. I feel like no one knows how to do life the right way. Things like this are what I think about when I see the calendar, I'm still mourning maybe some over the life I had planned versus the reality of the life I was given. I know this struggle is not my own, I know its real for more than just me. I know that God can meet me in my hard days, he has and he will. 

This was so meant for me today, maybe it touches you to. In a fight for me to be real, be vulnerable, but still remain strong and not let sorrow overwhelm this solidified my feelings of life being HARD. 

Sorrow is better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the heart.(Ecclesiastes 7:3)

Sorrow, under the power of divine grace, performs various ministries in our lives. Sorrow reveals unknown depths of the soul, and unknown capacities for suffering and service. Lighthearted, frivolous people are always shallow and are never aware of their own meagerness or lack of depth. Sorrow is God's tool to plow the depths of the soul, that it may yield richer harvests. If humankind were still in a glorified state, having never fallen, then the strong floods of divine joy would be the force God would use to reveal our souls' capacities. But in a fallen world, sorrow, yet with despair removed, is the power chosen to reveal us to ourselves. Accordingly, it is sorrow that causes us to take the time to think deeply and seriously.

Sorrow makes us move more slowly and considerately and examine our motives and attitudes. It opens within us the capacities of the heavenly life, and it makes us willing to set our capacities afloat on a limitless sea of service for God and for others.

God never uses anyone to a great degree until He breaks the person completely.

Every person and every nation must endure lessons in God's school of adversity. In the same way we say, "Blessedisthenight, for it reveals the stars to us," we can say, "Blessed is sorrow, for it reveals God's comfort."A flood once washed away a poor man's home and mill, taking with it everything he owned in the world. He stood at the scene of his great loss, brokenhearted and discouraged. Yet after the waters had subsided, he saw something shining in the riverbanks that the flood had washed bare."It looks like gold," he said. And it was gold. The storm that had impoverished him made him rich. So it is oftentimes in life. Henry Clay Trumbull

 (From Streams in the Desert)

Through life's motions we went today and figured it out. I wonder will I always have these thoughts, feelings, and despair, and if so what gift will God use in my life to be able to use these things set before me. I have a few difficult days of trying to process and then usually a couple good days of feeling hope. He's my everything and through his plan I will see Him, his goodness, and his purpose. I know and hope that my hard creates some beautiful purpose for someone to see him more clear. Even thought the other day while looking at the girls all playing and for a moment wishing they didn't have to endure this hard, that God will even be able to use this to make them stronger and it will be a beautiful part of their lives.

 We got to have an unexpected dinner with great friends, and we were able to make something fun out of this day. I even Got a goody bag from the radiologist, a pink Chapstick with two HUGE bottles of barium sulfate.. Yuum.