Little by little I am becoming a believer. There are days where I rock along fully comfortable in the belief that I have everything under control. I am learning how to live with this disease. I am figuring out how to function with poison coursing through my body. I am getting to a place where I don't jump every time I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror out of my peripheral vision. Then something happens. It can be a tiny something (stubbing my toe...eating the last mint chocolate chip ice cream bar)...or it can be a huge something (realizing the my hair does still fall out a little bit with each treatment...realizing I am not a strong as I used to be.) Then I get frustrated and the house of cards I have worked so hard to build and continue to drive myself crazy trying to hold it up all on my own...starts to wobble. Someday I hope the wobble will let me know that I don't have to do anything alone and I will give in and ask for help...or maybe...just maybe I will allow someone else to be in charge and I will just help support the tower.
My aunt and I had a conversation about a month ago, and it pops into my head at least once a day. My life is like a Rubik's Cube...that toy was the bane of my childhood. I knew there had to be a trick to getting all the colors to line up...but i could never figure it out. My Rubik's Cube was ALWAYS a jumbled up mess. It didn't take long for me to figure out the the color blocks were just stickers, so if I couldn't figure it out I would just carefully peel the stickers off and solve the puzzle that way.
Now I know after doing that the first time I ruin the cube. No one who actually understood how to solve the puzzle would be able to solve it ever again. I didn't care...it was important for me to look like I had it all together and that I had done it all by myself. My life is a little like that cube. I struggle and trudge through my days trying to figure out everything that needs to happen in my life. Trying to figure out why I got cancer. Trying to figure out why chemo isn't getting my Ca125 down to normal. Trying to make all the sides of this stupid cube match up. Then it gets to be too much and I fall apart. I cry...I scream...I rant and rave (thankfully I am alone sometimes when this happens). Then I give up...and ask the appropriate person for help. I ask God...now I am not uber religious...but I still remember standing in my shower one morning in May 2010. I hurt all over...I was hugely bloated...I had been throwing up for over a week. So I crouched in my shower with my head leaning against the wall begging for help. "God, please...please...help me find out why I am feeling this way. Help me get better. Help! Please oh please...help me!"The next day I made a doctor's appointment and in one week I had completed the surgery that would start me on the road that would save my life. I fully believe God did that. I had been fighting against it for almost a month...working at fixing my body all on my own...I just needed to be stronger...I just needed to suck it up and move past the pain. Then God stepped in...nope...I needed a gynecologic oncologist to remove 6 liters of fluid from my abdomen...all my lady parts...my appendix...my omentum...part of my colon and scrape the remaining tumors away from my bladder, liver and abdominal cavity. Now after all of that I thought I had gotten it...I cannot fix my Rubik's Cube...I have no control over the chaos that is that puzzle...I just need to enjoy myself...have faith that there is a plan...and relax...the cube may still be messy, but at some point it will be solved.
So easy to say...close to impossible for me to do. Well I ordered a reminder that I can wear. there is a website called wootshirt.com and they sell a different shirt everyday. On a particularly difficult day after my last treatment the shirt of the day was a Rubik's Cube shirt...yup...sometimes it is a whisper...sometimes the reminder hits me in the side of the head like a ton of bricks. I promptly ordered a shirt and it arrived today. So now if I am frantically trying to rearrange the stickers on my cube hopefully I will see that shirt and remember...that's not my job!
This was a much longer post that I meant for it to be, but I have wanted to share my Rubik's Cube analogy for a while now. So thanks for reading...I hope something in there made sense.
Oh wait...I forgot. Today I am thankful for Josh Sundquist also. He is a motivational speaker who lost a leg to cancer when he was 9 years old. He went on to become a gold medal skier in the paralympics. He is an amazing speaker and so funny. He has a channel on YouTube and I go there sometimes when I am having a bad day. He is the person who created 1mt1mt (1 more thing...1 more time). I think that every time I close in on another treatment date. He says it means that if you do 1 more thing 1 more time it can be the difference between winning and losing. So I figure each time I make it through another treatment I am one step closer to winning this battle. But today he had a word art video posted. This was posted on the perfect day and I watched it at the perfect time. I have been fighting an illness all week (started as allergies...then a cold...then fever and aches...then a cough...then three days of antibiotics later...the inability to take a deep breath). So I was feeling a little down. Then I watched this video. Don't get me wrong I have had much darker days than today, but this one wasn't in the top 310 days of my life. So I sat down at my laptop and hit play. I'm not going to tell you about the content I am going to let you check it out for yourself. Just know if you are struggling with something and you really can't see the light at the end of the tunnel watch this video. Hey if your life is perfect and you can't imagine anything ever being better...watch this video and save it in your memory banks for a time that things may not be so perfect. Love you guys lots and lots...go check out Josh's YouTube channel...he is adorable and amazing! Sarah
You amaze me, Sarah, with your strength and your mindfulness. New tattoo next weekend?
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