Battle Hymns of a Hot Mess Mom

My mom flew in last night – 3 connecting flights and a missed flight in ATL. She ended up landing in ONT at 11:30pm. To say I understand her heartache would be a lie. I can empathize but I can’t understand because my children are healthy, perfectly wonderfully healthy and I’m so so grateful for that. My mother, on the other hand, has a daughter with medium risk AML that will need a bone marrow transplant. She has her own mother with dementia and Alzheimer’s. How overwhelmingly she must feel. How painful her heart must be. How alone she just feel that both connectors of are sick.

There’s always a start of the journey, whether you’re on the PCT or a climb…there’s the first step. Tonight’s first step is making breakfast for my children one more time before I go into chemo. Children are bickering as usual. S didn’t want me to comb her hair even though I saw knots in her hair. She does want me to comb it. It hurts my heart but I have to let that go. Because my cancer will effect her as well; it will rob her of certain joys, events that I am supposed to be apart of, milestones we are supposed to share. S is not easy today. She is frustrating but I have to let that go. She left without hugging me.

I got up to see them off. I asked L for one more hug. I love you Mama. Then she offered to hug me. I whispered I love you and tears rolled down my face to the top of her head. I watched them get on their bikes and ride to school. I didn’t have a camera nap I just watched and waved. I waved them off and watched through the sliver of road I could see when they made the turn. The finality of it hurts. I have to beat chemo to come home and get a bone marrow transplant. Fu*k. I hate cancer.

7:52am they both called me to tell them they arrived at school. Usually just S but today L called me too. Bye baby. I’m home with the doggo while I wait for my mother and wait for the call from the hospital to when I will need to go in. Hopefully sooner rather than later, I like being settled. I like the organization. It just helps me focus and makes me feel centered.

1:45pm I’m here at the hospital. Checked in and waiting for my central line to start chemo. I lost another pound. Set up my bed, books and pictures. The room is a little bigger than the other one I was at but Nurse C is going to see if she can get me into room 17. It has an ocean view hehe. I mean if you’re going to have cancer – look at the ocean!

J is quiet. He’s sitting on the couch on his phone. He doesn’t want to really talk to me. I’m trying to let him process himself. It’s been a hard week. I see fear in his eyes. That’s tough to watch but like me cancer has changed our lives. In ways that I didn’t understand yet. But cancer has also given me the gift of quiet. It lets my mind slow down and have a little more perspective.