Some Joy

May 18, 2012 By 2 Comments

Considering the last time I mentioned a house, we were going to wait to look for House #5, this may be surprising to hear, but we’re in escrow on House #6. Mmhmm.

Number 5 came and went and then came 6. This lovely place is down the street from what we’re calling Mold House. It’s also a million times more awesome and the BEST house we’ve seen (in about 60 total). We were more than a little surprised when our offer was accepted. We weren’t surprised at all when the inspection was fabulous. THEN…then the appraisal came back at a bizarrely low amount and the whole thing nearly fell apart with our financing. We challenged the appraisal and after waiting on pins and needles for three and a half days, we finally heard back – the appraisal was revised. The house was once again in our reach if the sellers could meet us half way on bridging the gap in financing. And they DID! Yay!

We’re not out of the woods yet. We need the bank to approve our new financing. But we’re damned close! We should know for sure that everything is a go next week. We assume nothing until then!

Amidst this house drama, Jack lost his first tooth – one on the bottom. For some reason this makes us absurdly happy. I guess because it’s a sign he’s growing up even while fighting cancer. He’s living! And he’s damned cute with a missing tooth. He has a slight lisp and has trouble with S sounds at the moment. It’s adorable.

I also had a wonderful Mother’s Day! David and Jack made me breakfast in bed and then we went out to have fondue for lunch. I loved the pampering. We had our celebration a bit early so that Jack could have fun with his dad the next weekend while David and I took off for Sonoma. I got an incentive trip through a contact at work – two nights in a resort hotel plus wine tasting, dinner, and brunch – all free. We sprung for massages, too. I felt like I got two Mother’s Days!

Life isn’t all bad right now. I’m glad I get some relief, even if it’s hard won!

Filed Under: Cancer Mom, Domesticating, Family Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Eight Weeks

May 16, 2012 By 3 Comments

Tomorrow is the day. Jack starts the Delayed Intensification part of his treatment. It will last eight weeks and add at least eight medications (seven of those are chemotherapy) to the two he is taking now. He’ll take four medications at home – the rest he’ll receive through his Broviac catheter or by spinal injection. He’ll visit the clinic three times within the next ten days alone.

I’m terrified.

So far all of this has been relatively easy, all things considered. We’ve actually managed to forget sometimes that Jack is sick at all. This won’t be the case during this phase. He’ll almost certainly lose all of his hair and experience nausea and vomiting – at least five of the meds list those as likely side effects, not to mention weight loss. He’ll ache and he’ll be moody and he likely won’t sleep well. I can only hope he doesn’t experience the side effects that would result in long-term damage to his body.

I’m filled with dread. Jack’s tired already – we all are – and the hardest part hasn’t even started yet.

Please let these next eight weeks fly by.

Filed Under: Cancer, Cancer Mom Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Getting Lost With Ghosts

April 26, 2012 By 6 Comments

I wish I had better things to say. I wish I could say I’m doing a great job of handling everything that is going on right now. I do have good days and bad days – the bad days are taken over by anxiety attacks and depression, while my good days are still filled with weariness and worry. I’ve been burying myself in television and books to escape err, cope.

I haven’t been sleeping well. I look at the calendar several times each day to remind myself what day of the week it is. I forget to drink my coffee. Most nights I skip dinner. Last night I ate peanut butter cups.

My house is a disaster. And it smells. My cats ran out of food last night but I got home too late to get to the pet store for more. They are surely pissed off today. I need to fix the flat tire on my car, too. Oh, and go grocery shopping…

I took a day off last week sometime. I stayed in bed all day. I knew I had to move my car or risk getting a ticket. I went back to sleep instead. When I woke up, I peeked out the window and saw a ticket on my car, but I still couldn’t find it in myself to care. The idea of getting a second ticket didn’t even push me out the door…not until I realized David would be upset about it (we’d JUST talked about our expired parking permits a few days prior).

Things are a little better when Jack is with me. It gets me out of my head, I suppose. When he’s not here, I think about his treatment. It’s a few weeks until he starts the phase with eight different meds…it’s been a while since he’s spent time with kids his age…he needs to go to the dentist…we need to draw blood on XYZ days…I need to take a day off for his next treatment…when will he lose his hair…how will he handle it…is he doing too much activity…when will he end up back in the hospital…

It’s only been three months since his diagnosis – how long can I do this? I’ve been trying to think of ways to destress. Obviously this all has lit a fire under my PTSD. Usually when I’m stressed I take a trip, get away…but now I’m terrified to be away from Jack. Every time I try to make plans I just think about all the uncertainty ahead and how I’d rather just sit on the couch watching movies with him and snuggling under a blanket. I need to be here in case something happens.

I’m mad at myself for feeling this way. Jack’s been doing great. There have been no set-backs. Side-effects are few. In so many ways he is a normal kid. There will be an end to all of this. The end is three years away, though, and there will likely never be an end to my worry…

I need to keep going. There is so much that needs doing. I just need to stop getting lost in all of it and leave my ghosts behind.

Filed Under: Cancer Mom, Illness Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Waiting For No. 5

April 17, 2012 By 1 Comment

The cancellation for our contract on the house was processed yesterday. We were willing to move forward if the sellers would work with us on a credit toward repairs, but they were adamantly opposed to budging one bit. We’re super disappointed. We spent money on the house already, we were supposed to move into it in a few weeks, we were emotionally invested…and after looking at 53 houses and making 4 offers, we were ready to be done looking. We are tired.

So now we sit back a bit and regroup. The housing market around here has dwindled and there isn’t much to look at currently. The bright side is we’ll have more time to save up more for a down payment, I guess…

Filed Under: Domesticating, Family Tagged With: , , , , , ,

HAWMC: Health Time Capsule

April 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This is my first post for WEGO Health’s Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge. If you’d like to participate, please do! You can find out more info on the WEGO Health website.

Today’s prompt is: Pretend you’re making a time capsule of you & your health focus that won’t be opened until 2112. What’s in it? What would people think of it when they found it?

My health focus right now is mostly on the mental and staying sane. My son is battling Leukemia, my husband is back at work, I was given expanded responsibilities at work, and we are moving in a month. That’s enough to make any person crazy. Luckily, I’m already there so I think I have an advantage!

In my time capsule I’d have to put:

  • A picture of my husband and son. They both help me stay healthy. It’s for THEM that I stay healthy. I simply didn’t care about my health before I had Jack and David. I want to soak up as much time with them as possible. They are my motivation, pure and simple.
  • Prozac. This depression medication is not perfect but it has worked well enough for me for over three years now with the health of therapy. It has very few side effects and I don’t feel like a zombie on it.
  • My therapist’s business card. I see my therapist weekly and have been for about two years now (I had a different therapist prior to this). I’ve noticed that when I’ve skipped a week with him, I felt ready to explode.
  • A list of friend’s names and numbers. It’s a small list, for me, but it’s important. I know there are people who have my back at any time.
  • A few of my posts at Band Back Together. That site, and my work behind the scenes, means a lot to me. It remind me how far I’ve come when I read stories of individuals just beginning their mental health journey. I love helping others who are in places where I’ve been, too. If I can help someone else avoid any modicum of the heartache I’ve dealt with in my life, even if I never know about it, that makes me feel good.

I hope that anyone who opened my time capsule would see where my focus lies. I feel that as long as I have my mental health, I can get through anything. And when my mental health isn’t so good, I have resources and people to help pick me up and carry me through.

Filed Under: Getting my groove back, Issues Tagged With: , , , , ,

Where I’m Complainy

March 29, 2012 By 5 Comments

Jack is being a total pill lately. I’m not sure if he has been saving it all up for when things with his treatment weren’t so intense or what but it sucks! Sometimes it’s a matter of snapping at us or demanding that we not say certain things (tonight it was “googly eyes”). Other times he won’t pick up after himself and defaults to “my legs hurt.” It makes it difficult to tell when he is really not feeling well and when he is just trying to get out of something!

This is weird territory for us. I know many of the medical professionals we’ve seen have mentioned to me that discipline should still be in Jack’s life but, oy. Who has energy for discipline on top of all the cancer stuff? And how do I even tell if he’s just being a little jerk or really not feeling well? One minute he’ll dash into his room and the next he is crawling on his knees to the bathroom.

Lord knows I’m not at my best, either. Fatigue has more than caught up with me, it seems. I’ve taken more than my fair share of naps lately. Hopefully I will ‘catch up’ soon.

I have one more complaint before closing out this sorry post. :P It’s become much harder to share the CaringBridge site with Jack’s dad. Aside from it seeming that he has more and more been using the site as his personal blog instead of Jack’s, having that much insight into what goes on when Jack’s at his house is driving me bonkers. I worry constantly that Jack does too much over there and Jack’s recent attitude problems haven’t helped relieve that fear…especially since Jack has been spending more time there since he’s not in school and David is back at work. I have to keep reminding myself that I can’t entirely protect Jack from his dad’s shenanigans – I can only teach him how to speak up for himself – and becoming a stay-at-home mom is not the answer (although it sounds more appealing on the days when Jack isn’t being a jerk to me…).

Alright, there is my bitch session. Time to put the kiddo to bed!

Filed Under: Cancer Mom, Domesticating, Parenting 101 Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Stream of (barely) Consciousness

February 21, 2012 By 1 Comment

House craziness aside (because, let’s face it, it IS crazy that we are trying to buy a house right now) I’m super behind. I came home tonight determined to do laundry…but I haven’t started yet. I DID put some things in the laundry basket – including some items that we brought home from the hospital over a month ago. Like I said…behind. I won’t tell you about the sheets on our bed…

It’s not completely my fault. I mean, there’s the cancer to blame. And also the fact that our washing machine isn’t working properly. I could call our landlord, probably, but who has time for THAT? Also, have you MET our landlord? He’s as hands off as they come. The roof on our shed out back caved in long ago and we’re too afraid to go out there because of the mold, anyway. Oh and let’s not forget the (poorly patched [sorry, honey!]) hole in the ceiling of our kitchen nook…that must have happened 2 years ago now.

But I can’t just wait around, avoiding laundry until we move into our new house (right?). That’s at least a month away (if we get the house – right now I’m tearing through loads of paperwork looking for David’s tax return from 3 years ago…). I’ve been through all of my back-up clothing and Jack’s moved on from pants to shorts. I need to get my ass in gear. I need to use that washing machine regardless of the fact that the spin cycle doesn’t work!

Instead I am sitting here drinking a glass of wine and writing…

Wanna hear something weird? (No? Oh well!) David had pretty much stopped looking for work to focus on Jack and school. And then a recruiter found him and he had his third interview today. AND then we heard that Joe has an interview this week – after a year of unemployment. So now we’re in a weird position. We were looking at dual unemployment as somewhat of a blessing because no one had to take family leave and miss out on half their income. And, really, this should have been a fine plan because the economy still sucks and there haven’t been job bites in ages. But then jobs just popped up out of nowhere!

When will this feeling of living in backward land go away? What alternate reality am I in that my son has cancer, we’re able to buy a HOUSE in the Bay Area on one income, and jobs fall out of the sky?

I’m pretty sure we’re going to see a zombie apocalypse soon.

If not, I’m just gonna put it out there – I could really use a new washing machine.

Filed Under: Cancer Mom, Domesticating, Parenting 101 Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

We May Have Found A House

February 20, 2012 By 4 Comments

Tomorrow we very well may be putting an offer in on a house. I am freaking out about it just a bit. It takes me so long to decide on how to spend a $25 gift card at Amazon…now I’m looking at something in the $300K range so…yeah. All the questions like, “What if something even more awesome comes on the market after we put in our offer?” are running through my head. I hate missing out!

The house is awesome. It’s located in the East Bay and cuts our hospital commute down by about 20 minutes each way. It’s a 3 bedroom 1 bath house with new EVERYTHING. And I mean everything – roof, electrical, carpet, appliances, heating system, furnace, grass…the house was completely redone under a program specifically for moderate income buyers. The backyard is gigantic. When Jack saw it yesterday he ran around outside – the first time I’ve seen him run in forever. The house is located on a street named after a constellation – how perfect for our Jackonaut.

Jack declared that he wanted the big room with the door to the backyard. We dashed his hopes and he quickly decided he didn’t like the house as much. :P We’ve since let him know that we would build a back door just for him and he’s perked up again.

We came home to San Francisco and starting gathering the rest of the paperwork needed to put an offer in. They want everything – including Jack’s birth certificate – to ensure that we are truly in the moderate income category. If David was working right now rather than enrolled in school full time and staying home to care for Jack, we’d be over the income limit. The timing on this is pretty incredible.

We may not get the house. There may be an offer better than ours or a family deemed more in need than us. In the mean time, we are trying to wrap our heads around the fact that we might be homeowners very soon. Holy crap!

Filed Under: Domesticating Tagged With: , , , , ,

Cancer Sucks

February 10, 2012 By 7 Comments

We are waiting for blood test results to see whether or not Jack will start Phase 2 of his treatment on Monday. I got a notice in my email that his lab results were in but they haven’t posted his white blood cell counts yet, so I can’t see whether he is neutropenic or not. The waiting is hard!

We met with the oncologist yesterday (update on CaringBridge) to go over what Phase 2 of Jack’s Leukemia treatment entails. It was a LOT of information – 26 pages or so. To be handed a page FULL of side effects for each of 8 different medications…I wanted to throw up. One medication requires us to wear a mask and gloves while giving it to him. Another can cause heart damage and result in a lifelong restriction to lift no more than 50 lbs. Many of these disrupt learning ability (some temporarily, some long-term) and it sounded likely that special services at school will be needed for Jack later on…

And that’s when it hit me – why this is different from managing a chronic illness like diabetes. The medications Jack is getting to treat his disease are hurting him, as well. To treat the disease, we have to wreck  parts of his body and then give him more treatment to help with those things. It’s a fucked up cycle and every time I think about giving my child toxic chemicals, I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. It’s all wrong.

So today it’s hitting  me anew how much I HATE CANCER!

I think part of what got me through Phase 1 was knowing it was short and that Jack wouldn’t be losing a bunch of weight and hair. His hair has started to go a bit, but Phases 2 will likely take it all. His chubby cheeks will go, too.

I dread it. I can’t stop thinking about my dad and watching the weight melt off of him when he was sick. I imagine Joe is going through something similar, as his father (Jack’s namesake) died of Melanoma. It’s hard not to feel like it’s especially unfair that we have to watch our son go through a disease that attacks his immune system after what we went through with our fathers. It feels like we are cursed or something.

(Jack’s blood test results were just updated – if my calculations are right, his ANC Is 770 and he is all set for starting treatment Monday. Yay…)

We will get through this. We will, we will, we will. But it’s so hard to walk around and participate in daily life when my heart hurts so much.

***

Today I donated to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to help my friend Beth reach her Team in Training Goal. Please help  me spread the word about this fundraiser. I’d love to see Leukemia wiped out.

Filed Under: Cancer, Cancer Mom Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Combing The Bay (Area)

February 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

We are looking for a house. I know how that sounds, considering David is unemployed and Jack was just diagnosed with Leukemia but, well, we’ve been diligently saving for it and had the purchase/move in our plan for this summer. The social worker at the hospital told me right off the bat that we shouldn’t set aside all of our life plans. We should carry on with life and keep it as normal as possible. We don’t want Jack to feel like his health is messing up our life or something. Okay…yeah.

So, we’re looking at houses. Our current place is too small for us and has some maintenance issues besides (we have a lackadaisical landlord on one hand…but really cheap rent on the other). We’d like to be in a place that is more accessible to the hospital since we’ll be spending a lot of time there over the next three years. Gas and tolls for crossing t he Bay Bridge are expensive!

We’ve gotten pre-qualified and are pretty much ready to go with a Cal FHA first time homebuyer’s loan (which allows us to get a house with only a 3.5% down payment). We’re lucky enough to be able to qualify for stuff on my income alone, which bodes well for our future once the job market recovers for realsies.

In the mean time, we are looking at houses online every day and setting up showings and attending open houses on the weekends. I know some people find this fun but I am not one of those people. Also, I’m impatient – I just want to find something that works and buy it. Not to mention I’m a sucker for a good deal…it’s a good thing my husband is more level-headed about these things.

Part of what makes this difficult is that we don’t have a particular city in this area that we love. We have friends all over the place here, I work in the city, Jack’s dad lives an hour south of the city, and the hospital is 40 minutes east of us and over a bridge in Oakland. We are central to friends, Jack’s dad, and the hospital right now…but it’s the city – we can’t afford a decent house here (with a yard for our dog) AND guarantee Jack will go to a decent school (enrollment is a lottery system, transferring is a crapshoot, and there is no way I’m driving across the city to take Jack to the school he currently attends).

So, anyway…wish us luck. We hope to find something that we love for a more-than-affordable price that is convenient and takes an adequately lengthy time to complete the buying process (this is where short sales come in handy – we want to find something now but buy months from now so that we don’t have to ask family members for “cash gifts”).

In the mean time I’ll be over here freaking out about growing up…

***

By the way, go check out Band Back Together today – Jack and the Monkey In My Chair program are featured.

Filed Under: Domesticating Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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