So here it is June 3rd, School just ended for Daniel for the year and today of all days is National donut day and I know this probably means nothing to most of you but as I am sitting in the quiet waiting room for Daniel at Children’s Hospital Colorado I am trying not to have a nervous breakdown. It was National Donut Day when Daniel was originally diagnosed. Daniel loves donut day and it will NEVER be the same for us again. Rob had to stay home with a handyman that was a total slow poke and that is just as well because I think I will do better in quiet as I am used to at the hospital without distraction. Daniel is having an MRI on his shins for ongoing shin splints that continue to plague him and he just wants to move on with his active life and feel good and that just doesn’t seem to be happening. I am a constant ticking time bomb this past week and suspect I will be the next few as we are in the two year anniversary time of Daniel’s diagnosis. It happened 2 years ago June 6th that we were called in for that fateful blood test that determined the diagnosis that would change our lives. I would be an lying idiot to say I am handling it fine. Actually I am overcompensating with a million and one other things to avoid confronting how I really feel and hoping that I don’t implode on Monday which is the actual diagnosis day. I know it would be absolutely normal to be effected by the date as it is huge and it is important and normal to acknowledge its existence. Every family that has had this life changing event happen deals with it differently. It is a day that changed our lives forever. It is a day that any parent never expects to happen. It is the words any parent never imagines they will hear “your child has Cancer.” but it is the day I think I will choose to CELEBRATE. The day my son became a SURVIVOR. I don’t know, I guess it is all in the perspective and how you look at it right? It has to be the way I choose to handle this and what I do with it. Look at how we are doing. I can choose to see the losses, and boy do we have losses. But those I will not share now. I know that many think we are better now and cured and done with Cancer. Those are the ones that look from the outside and don’t know what we live with and have really been through. What this disease takes from your body, and your mind and your soul. From your family, your marriage, your friendships. Today though, I will share what we have gained. At least what I have gained because I write this from my point of view. I have never written this from anyone else’s . I have been mostly honest. I have shared most of how I felt. Not everything. Some things are too deep and too personal and cannot be shared but some will completely break me if I let them out all together but most things I share. Today I share what I celebrate. I share that I am taking Daniel to Los Angeles to have an internship at NFL Network that he earned in Chicago. He will do some recordings at the studios and will get the chance to be a corespondent on the red carpet at a primer event of a new NFL Network series (All or Nothing), and we are going to tie in a college tour while we are out there. These are huge celebrations. Daniel is going to be riding in the 81 mile mountain bike ride Courage Classic for Childrens Hospital Colorado with some friends and I am going to hold a Bone Marrow Drive at the two day event in July. Right now all I can think about is Daniel back in his second hour of MRI scans hoping that all is wrong with his legs are that it is mild shin splints that we can do something about because he cannot seem to stop working out and playing basketball wanting to get better for next season. The only problem is he is in tremendous pain after playing and still won’t stop. He is so happy to be ‘healthier’ that he doesn’t realize that the pain and collateral damage of unimaginable treatment continues to torment him. Where he tries to push through it I am daunted by the never-ending other shoe that I always about to drop. I am assured that the worry will end one day but not yet. I am far from that day yet. Far , far from that day. Right now sitting in this waiting room it is mocking me. I hope being away on D-Day (the 6th, diagnosis day) will give me the distance from this place to not have a full blown PTSD attack and that being in public and with Daniel at his internship will force me to be on my game and not fall apart. At least this is my hope. I will have no back up. I will not be able to crawl under the covers and hide. I will have to put on a brave face. I will watch him and be enormously proud and hopefully be able to overlook my anxiety to actually measure his growth from two years prior and see how far he has come. …yah that will do me in, maybe I should just find a prescription for Zanax and fake it. Phew this is going to be a tough few days. Again I will choose to see the positives and not the losses because this is a choice I can make. At least I can try.
So please wish us the best for his work and me getting through the week. I hope for strength as always to get through. I know Daniel will be great as always. I hope he takes it all in and learns a lot and makes great new connections and loves his tour of USC. I hope Rob and Matthew have a good time together at home and hold each other up as they have for the past two years. Matthew is getting ready to go to Israel for 5 weeks when we get back and I look forward to spending time with him when I get back getting him all packed up and ready to go. It will be an adventure of a lifetime for him.
So please wish us the best for his work and me getting through the week. I hope for strength as always to get through. I know Daniel will be great as always. I hope he takes it all in and learns a lot and makes great new connections and loves his tour of USC. I hope Rob and Matthew have a good time together at home and hold each other up as they have for the past two years. Matthew is getting ready to go to Israel for 5 weeks when we get back and I look forward to spending time with him when I get back getting him all packed up and ready to go. It will be an adventure of a lifetime for him.