Normalcy?

Today I showered before noon, dried my hair (sort of while not moving my left arm too much) and applied make-up. I took Lucas to his babysitter and went to work for five hours. I've started my return to normalcy.

And it is weird.

My sore arm/incision area is my reminder that things aren't normal. And, I don't know if I'm ready for them to be normal. What is normal anyway?

I need to tell you my story. To tell you about all the thoughts and feelings I had in the hospital and at home. But it is so overwhelming. And, there's every day to keep thinking about and writing about, too.

I mean, yesterday Lucas realized I was a girl.

He was telling me to sit down because I was a "bad boy". (Waaaayyyy past his bedtime and he was very grumpy.)

Abel said, "Lucas, Mama is a girl."


"A gir-rel?" (I'm really bad at phonetic spelling, but think rhymes with squirrel if you make squirrel two syllables)

Yes. A girl.

Then, the rest of the night Lucas called me "gir-rel Mama".

Very cute.

And normal.

And I want to tell you these stories. But I also want to tell you about how that first night in the hospital. I didn't sleep. Not a wink. Well, maybe 20 minutes. I was drugged up and my body was totally relaxed but my mind, it was racing a million miles an hour. And I composed the most beautiful perfect tell-the-Internet-I-have-cancer post. And I realized why I love to blog. It is because composing (no matter if it actually gets typed or written) is how I organize my thoughts. I've always done it. The many late nights I've spent tossing and turning composing complaint letters in my head. Or, love letters. Or, wonderfully creative stories. Or, the perfect most masterful fundraising letter in history (did you know that's my day job? non-profit fundraising?).
You know what else I composed that first night?

Cancer comic relief posts.

Yeah, I had this perfect one all lined up in my head for July. Remember July? When I cut off inches and inches of my beautiful long hair to donate to Locks of Love? Well, as far as I was concerned that night, I had cancer and so would be starting treatment soon and that would mean that chances were pretty good that this July I would be bald. How's that for irony? Oh, yeah, and I'm MoH in a wedding in July, too. That night I was shaking my fist at karma, I'll tell you that.

So this isn't my tell-the-Internet-I-have-Cancer post and it isn't my comic relief post. What it is, though, is the start of getting back to normal. So bear with me if I ping pong a bit between the mundane here-and-now and the hellishness of the past two weeks.

I'm here

Here. I'm home. I'm back on-line. But, not myself.

Two weekends ago we went away for our anniversary. It was such a great time and I was looking forward to telling you all about it...the rest and relaxation, the spa, the meals, the wine, the lilies of the valley growing outside our room.

But that Saturday night I wasn't feeling very well. It only got worse. Such that Monday morning I made an appointment with my primary care doctor. Before my appointment my nose bled for 3 hours without stopping. That on top of the strange rash all over my torso and my fatigue and my doctor ordered a blood workup. Call Tuesday around 10am for the results, he told me.

Instead the phone rang at 6:30am (which we didn't hear) when the first person arrived in the office and saw the test results. My doctor called as soon as he go in at 8am and very seriously told me that I had to go to the nearest emergency room immediately.

Normal platelets are 150,000-300,000. Mine were less than 4,000.

There is serious concern for spontaneous bleeding. This is very dangerous.

Okay.

We got Lucas dressed; took him to daycare and drove to an ER (note to self and others, when you live in an area with many hospitals, might be worth giving some consideration in advance to which one you'd choose if you had a choice).

The rest was both the longest and shortest minutes and hours and days of my life.

Officially admitted; diagnosis: ITP; residents and interns and medical students troop in and out to see my rare rash; CAT scans because of a headache and an enlarged lymph node; ER doc tells me that I might start hearing the word cancer because there are many abnormal lymph nodes; I'm a mystery "residents love mysteries"; move into a real room (after 12+ hours in the ER); spend first night in the hospital; spend next day feeling pretty good; spend next night; platelets are going up; surgery--lymph node removed and bone marrow taken; spend another night; platelets up into normal range; initial pathology shows no malignancy; you can go home.

NO MALIGNANCY!

The initial look at my lymph node and bone marrow showed nothing abnormal. I can't quite wrap my head around it. We'll know for sure tomorrow when I go in for my follow-up and the full pathology report.

In the meantime, I'm exhausted just writing this so have to sign-off.

Just wanted to let you know, dear internets, where I've been. I'm been thinking of you, I promise. Do me a favor and think of me tonight and tomorrow. I really need that final pathology report to be clean.