Carrying Gorrillas
Print ViewThe conversation I’ve been having with myself over the last few days: “I need to blog. I’ve promised to blog more often and I have info to blog. Get up and blog. Stop knitting and blog.” It has continued along that line for several days. I’m not really sure why I’m having so much trouble walking up to my PC and typing away. It’s usually therapeutic and wonderful. So today I’m doing something I rarely do, I’m forcing myself to type a blog. I hope it doesn’t turn out to be boring.
I have been knitting. I’m not a very good knitter, and I’m a little embarrassed to even discuss it, but it’s incredibly therapeutic for me lately. It uses enough brains that it’s distracting, I can’t concentrate on too many other things, and yet it’s repetitive enough that my mind doesn’t have to be completely focused. It’s kind of like watching a documentary on TV, only productive. I’m working on an afghan that is made up of 20 different squares. There are something like 60 square patterns in the book, which is really good because there is a lot about knitting I don’t know how to do. I do get on the internet and watch the youtube demos, but I still don’t get some of it. So I concentrate on the squares that I can actually manage to make and they look, at least a little, like the picture in the book. I’ve got six squares done so far and am working on the seventh, that is called valentine hearts and actually has little hearts knitted into it. I’m kind of proud of myself because you can actually see the hearts in mine (a small miracle in my book). My next square will be one of the easy ones that doesn’t take too much brain power. I’m trying to insert some pictures in this blog (my first effort at that) so you can see a few of the squares. See below:
I think I knit to avoid the 800lb gorilla on my back. I should tell you something creative, like I’ve named it and it helps me count stitches, but really, I spend most of my time trying to ignore that it’s even there. Honestly, it’s not really even on my back, it’s under my arm and spreading across the right side of my fake boob. For the second time (first being my last biopsy) I’m really glad that I have no sensation under that arm. This node is really ugly and it looks like it would be really irritating if I could feel it. As a matter of a fact almost every doctor that has seen it asks me “does it bother you?”. That’s a signal that they think it should be irritating. Thank you again Lord for your mercy, grace and numbness under my arm! Everyone says I should be most concerned about the tumors on my liver, that this big, ugly, gross, node isn’t going to matter in the “big picture”. Of course I know that, but it doesn’t escape me that if I didn’t have the tumors in my liver everyone would be all over this node, now it’s an afterthought. Accept for me, because I see it, and touch it every day. My oncologist said that it would be more bothersome in my head that on my body. He’s starting to be more bothersome in my head when he predicts the inevitable.
I’ve said all that to say this. I’m starting radiation on the node tomorrow. I had a choice, leave it alone and watch it mess with my head as it grew and spread, or hit it with some radiation and see if it will stop growing, maybe die off. What kind of choice is that?!?!? So we went home, and prayed about it. I actually hoped that I would be sure that I shouldn’t have the radiation. Of course that was my selfishness stepping forward. I didn’t want to drive to the hospital every week day for three weeks, change into the hospital gown, lay on the table and get zapped. It doesn’t take long, but the process messes with your head. I also didn’t want to show my oncologist that he was right about my state of mind. Yeah, petty I know, so what! I’ve done this process before, in 2006 I got six weeks of radiation across my entire boob after the initial lumpectomy. This would be a lot easier, but I know that I’m not the woman I was then. I’m not as physically strong. Wow, that was hard to type. Let’s shove that gorilla back in the box it came from too!
Ok, so I start tomorrow. I went Thursday to get “marked”. Usually they tattoo little dots on the area to line up the red laser lines that bulls eye where the radiation is shot. I’m getting a small area radiated, in an area that I have no feeling in. I thought it would be great, I wouldn’t even feel them putting the black dot on me. But they decided they wanted an entire circle, so they marked it with a sharpee marker and covered the area with a clear tape. Then the very nice treatment person told me not to get the area wet. Ok, I would have chosen the tattoos over not getting my underarm wet!! She told me to use baby powder. Now due to the several surgeries in that area I don’t have a lot of lymph node left (although enough for the cancer to grow there), so I don’t really sweat very much, but still!! Am I going to have to struggle through three weeks of no water in that area? That’s just insane. I could still back out of this right???
Of course I could, but would that be obedience? Would that be walking in the direction the Lord wants me to go? I know it seems like my decision, but it’s not really , is it? How do you know what direction the Lord wants you to go in? That is the magic question isn’t it. Well, prayer is a BIG factor and reading the Lord’s Word (which I do daily in my devotions, but need to do more). Walking in the Lord’s path for your life is sometimes perfectly clear, but more often it is hard work. I know the Lord wants me to do this treatment. Everything fell into the path, it shows my obedience to fight on. More hard work. I’m so glad I’m not in this alone. I guess the gorilla isn’t really on my back, thank you Lord for carrying my gorillas. P.S. It’s be ok with me if there weren’t quite so many gorillas.
