So this morning I just had a full on meltdown. I mean like a 12 year old girls car getting a flat tire on the way to a Taylor Swift concert type meltdown. The thing about having cancer is that you just dont have any control, and for someone who is used to having control over all aspects of my life it all just kind of hit me in one moment today. I will give you some back story. This weekend was amazing, my older brother and his family came to visit me for the three day weekend from MN and it is great for my whole family when they do because his kids are my kids age and we were able to just hang out and all have a good time. One night we even went out to a friends 40th birthday party for a short bit and it was funny because both he and my brother turned 40 on the same day. My brother is one year older than I am and even though I am bigger than he is he has always been my big brother. He wants to take care of me and make sure that everything is OK. It is just like when we were kids, if I am hurt he want to figure out how to stop things from hurting me. Sometimes that is just not an option though, and you have to drive through hell to get to the other side of it. So I know all of this cancer stuff and the fact that it isnt totally cured has hit him as hard as it has hit anyone. Even though I am positive and strong I am not ignorant of the fact that there is a chance that this whole thing doesnt go my way. I dont talk about that, people dont really talk about that with me. it is not one of those things that anyone wants to consider. I am still very young and strong, so it isnt something that could happen in the near future, but no one can know the future, and for that reason he wanted to talk to me about the ifs and possibilities. He is pragmatic as hell, and he wants to make sure that every stone is turned over and that every contingency plan is accounted for. He is more of a control freak than I am if that is possible so he cant do anything about my current situation so he plans. The small talk we had regarding every contingency could not have been easy for him to have to bring up or talk to me about. We talked for a short time about that, but spent most of the time discussing my new doctors and treatment plans and not discussing cancer at all. When that conversation was done I thought I mentally buried it deep enough to stay buried, but I guess not. Another nice thing about this weekend was that I finally had gotten some extra supplies from the speech pathologist at MD Anderson and I was using my hands free voice prosthesis. I cant tell you how great it feels not to have a tube stuck down your throat that you have to push on in order to talk. I felt normal, I felt like I could have normal conversations. I felt just a step closer to the me that I was before surgery and that felt so good. The main thing that made it all possible is skin glue, I use it to attach a sticker to my neck that holds my new filter on. Without that glue, my sticker just wont stay put and falls off after only about 2 hours. So that glue has freed up my life and made me so happy. This morning I was getting ready to go to work and I was putting on a new sticker and I was prepping my neck to do so. I had the glue right next to me on the bathroom counter when my big clumsy mitts didnt set it down in the right place and the open container fell into the sink. I FREAKED as I saw the glue draining out of the bottle. I grabbed it as fast as I could and I swear I tried to put what I could back into the bottle by scooping it with my hand and then I just crumbled. I screamed, but have no voice box so it was a silent scream, and at that point I just broke down. All of the lack of control hit me at once and the one thing I had finally gotten back, the ability to talk without having to press a button on my neck was draining down the sink right in front of me, and it was my fault. It was like all the things in my life that I couldnt control were built into that one thing that I should have been able to control but couldnt, and I had to watch it drip down the drain. I just sat there crying and then when my wife found me she thought I must be hurt or I had fallen, but it was just all of the emotions coming out in that one moment. The moment came and passed pretty quickly. I put myself back together and I looked at the jar, and I was fast enough and the glue was non viscous enough that I only lost about half the bottle. Plenty enough to last me till I could get more, and really I just had to look in the mirror and ask myself what I was really so upset about. It was glue, it wasnt life or death. Yes I am sure a lot of the emotion that I have buried and some of the hurt and pain came out in that moment, but really it was just one moment and I was still there, and still standing and I still had to finish the job and get to work. We are all going to have those mornings and those days, it just happens, no one can be happy all the time, but you cant appreciate the sunshine unless you have stood in the rain. I spent the rest of the day recalling small things that made me happy over the weekend like my brother, my son and I celebrating our January birthdays last night and my other son blowing out my candle because I cant blow them out anymore. I went home for lunch today and had some of the leftover southern BBQ that my brother got for all of us to eat because he cant get the good stuff in MN. I remembered standing there waiting on it with him as we realized we still had to get Mexican food for the rest of the family that didnt feel like having BBQ and the football games were about to start. It was all fun because we got to hang together just he and I without anything being to heavy, it was like we normally are before all of the depth crept into my life. I thought about his youngest son who I tormented pretty much all weekend long by grabbing him whenever he was close and kissing his face and neck which made him laugh so hard because it tickled and he would run to get away, but then later purposely walk close enough for me to grab him again and do it all over. I had one semi bad moment and they will happen for everyone, but the most important things to remember and to focus on is the good and the positive. There will always be good thoughts and good people to get you through. Fight for those good times, remember the good times, because they are what this life is really all about. It isnt about how much money we make or how many things we have, it is about the memories and the people lives we touch and effect during our life. I can only hope that you are as blessed in your life as I am in mine. Have a great week.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 00:23:00 +0000
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