Home time and Nausea

Monday, July 30, 2012

I am home again with Luca from Sunday afternoon to Tuesday afternoon.  Such a  blessing and such torture at the same time.  Luca and Sean are so happy to see me and I am happy to see them...have regular meals at the table, walk to the mailbox for mail, take a spin around the neighborhood on our bikes; and at the exact same time I am in an internal panic much of the time worrying about Dillon; is he eating, is he sick, what were his blood counts on the last lab draw, did they bring him all the right medications at the right times, on and on.  BREATHE SHARI BREATHE!!!!  It is all going to be okay, I tell myself in my mind over and over.  Dillon is fine, Luca is fine, Sean is fine, Shari is fine.  We are all going to weather this storm.  Do we miss each other, is it difficult, are we all hanging by a thread...YES, YES, and YES...but it is going to be okay.  We are going to get through this...it will be in our rear-view mirrors and we will look back on what we learned, how we changed, how we each grew and became better than we were before.  I know that is true and I have to hold that in my heart everyday.

Poor Dillon has quite a bit of nausea this time around.  He is okay during parts of the day and is eating some things (tonight he sent my mom out for tacos) but other parts of the day he is just miserable and he usually requests an anti-nausea med and that makes him sleepy...so he sleeps and eats and goes to the bathroom (just like a baby or an old person...hahaha)...with a little Olympics watching and taking walks sprinkled in.

His counts are SKY HIGH again.  We are waiting waiting waiting for them to drop just like last time.  He is getting acupuncture tomorrow afternoon so it will be interesting to see what the counts are on Wednesday evening/Thursday morning.  The trend the past 2 times has been big changes about 24 hours after acupuncture.  The doctors acknowledge that this sort of high count is unusual in someone with this sort of cancer and this much chemo.  They also acknowledge that Dillon's body has shown this sort of resistant pattern...taking longer than expected to react to chemo...so we have to be patient and persistent. 

I was informed today that we are on the path of going to Denver at the end of August.  I honestly thought it would be September. YIKES!!!!  It feels like that is tomorrow.  It feels like I will just disappear off the face of the earth for my Luca and Sean.  It feels like I won't be ready in terms of logistical stuff (packing, bills, paperwork, work, finances).  It is just still unbelievable to me.  I am still shaking my head, not comprehending that this is really happening to my boy and my family.  Can shock last this long?  Will it become more "real" at some point? 

Luca continues to completely blow my mind.  He is the most grounded and thoughtful child.  He is absolutely enjoying his summer.  He has done one activity after the other with gusto, full throttle.  However, deep inside, in his sweet quiet mind, he holds his brother close and dear.  At dinner each night we say a blessing of sorts; we hold hands and we each talk about something we are grateful for; sometimes it is small (like a flower) and sometimes it is huge (like being glad we have a loving family);  Well this evening Luca's grateful statement was this....."I am so so so grateful that there are no more cancer cells in Dillon's bone marrow."  We have not talked about that in a couple of weeks.  There was no recent conversation around cancer or Dillon or anything related.  Luca just came up with this seemingly out of the blue.  WOW!!!  Who said they are glad Luca is only 7 because he cannot fully comprehend the gravity of this situation?  Who said Luca is a little boy and just busy with his own life and fun activities and does not give this brother's situation a second thought?  He proves to us every day that he is fully present and embracing the entire process; his brother, his father's role at home now, his mother's role at the hospital and inability to be in both places all the time, his grandparent's roles.   This young boy "gets it" and it is humbling. 

Remember the post from Denver with the Buckley and Dillon street signs....well look what I found in Albuquerque....