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| Busy beaver. Reedsburg Dam 2015 |
I've always been a list maker. It helps me organise my thoughts, and sometimes it's the only way I can feel calm. lately there's been more than usual on my mind. Like all human beings, I have a lot of things to process through and to accomplish each day. As a person with a terminal illness I also have a ticking clock constantly sounding in my head now..Maybe we all have that sense that we are limited (time-wise) here on planet earth..but trust me, my clock is ticking much louder than it used to.
I lost a friend and dear brother in Christ to cancer just last week. We both had our radiation treatments at the same time nearly every day in April this year..The last time we spoke he told me that they were sending him home to die, and that they said he had four months to a year left. he died less than two weeks later. As you can imagine..this really shook me. As a stage four cancer patient myself, this really shook me.
As of today, and as far as we know..The cancer that I've been battling is now in remission. Of course, we can only know that from one scan to another. My next scan is in August.
One of the best conversations I had with my friend Chris was in church a little more than a year ago when he found out his cancer had returned..I remember telling him that whether the Lord chose to heal him here or take him home..either way it was the Lord's will, and either way he will be healed. The last months of his life, the cancer had put him into a wheelchair with a head brace because the disease had spread from his spine into his brain.
But as my husband said: "Chris is standing tall now."
The loss of my friend also makes that inner time-clock tick even faster and louder now..and the lists of things I need to do become more urgent. This is stressing me out and it's not good to be too stressed when you have cancer cells in your body!
So I have decided to try and just write about it here on my blog.
Some things I am stressing about:
1. Church - (for reasons I cannot write about here) Jeff won't go with me anymore.
I have formed some really close friendships with many of the ladies there.. some even since my children were little! I don't have the time or energy to start all over again. It also is not easy or safe for me to go alone.
2. Lost friendships since cancer diagnosis. Some people cannot deal with it so they disappear.
3. Lost family relationships.
4. It's getting too hard with Jeff's RA and my illness/weakness to maintain this large wooded yard.
5. My camera has been broken for several months now..I don't know if I can get it fixed. I miss taking photos, but I'm blessed to have my cell phone to take photos with.
I already have so many photos saved on my computer that it has been taking me hours at a time to sort through them, and I am not finished doing that yet! Maybe this is a blessing in disguise.
6. Will I have the time and energy to be able to spend time doing things with my loved ones?
I am such a homebody. I cannot change this just because I am terminally ill..In fact, my illness has weakened me to the point of exhaustion some days.
*I turned off comments for this post because I'm not looking for answers to or ideas about how to deal with the items on this list..I'm just venting in order to get them out of my head if possible. Please try to understand.
