We are not done yet, and there is a lot of hard work to be done. In a lot of ways, getting to the "end" is really just getting to the beginning. A sort of rebirth I guess. Another chance at life. The post cancer life. There are people that have said to us, well what if this doesn't work? What if he has to keep having treatments? What if, what if, what if. There are ALWAYS what ifs. We have to have faith to believe that this is it. We trust the doctors, we trust the process, we trust that his body is healing. We have to. Quite simply, there is no other option.
Faith is such a funny thing. A lot of people have a lot of it. Faith in their religion, their god, their hopes, dreams, life, etc. But when you think about it, it's kind of a hard concept to grasp. I was trying to explain it to the kids- it's truly just a BELIEF, an intangible. An unquestionable conviction in something, even if you can't see it or feel it. In this case, a gut KNOWING that we are going to make this and kick cancer's ass in the process.
We know the next two weeks are going to be grueling. We have three rounds of chemo built up in him at this point, and chemo by definition means putting toxic chemicals in to your body- obviously for the purpose of healing. That said, as we all know (but probably most of us can't even imagine), it feels like absolute ass and the cumulative effects continue to build as we wrap up the process of treatment. However, despite how brutal we know these next few weeks might be, there is one thing that is getting us through. The HOPE that is two weeks. TWO WEEKS. We've come 50 days to be looking at, technically, only 14 more of chemo treatments. How freaking amazing is THAT?!
Day 50 started bright and early at 6am again for chemo treatments at SCCA. Unlike day 49, but like days 1-3 of this cycle, the IV attempts were many. After several tries they finally brought in a professional. Again, FAIL for not already having something in his file to say, maybe start with a professional versus poking him and failing 4 times first? But what do I know...
Luckily, soon after, he was out. Colleen was the only one who made it over today as I was tied up with work, and Justin had the kids.
The hours can get long during these long days, so she had some fun with snap chat- hilarious!
She also had a surprise visit from her friend/roommate, Jan!
Meanwhile, I was reminded that traffic does still, in fact, suck on 405! Especially at 2pm on a Friday.
I was by the pot shop and made my 2nd stop in there- I think this qualifies me as no longer being a pot shop virgin? Maybe? I handled it like an old pro....or something. Ha. Except that I forgot that Oliver wanted capsules and not edibles. Duh. But, we'll give these a shot and see how he likes them.
I got home to Justin doing this.... uhhh…. are you going camping? Ha. Nope, just moving the trailer around because why not add a tree cutter to down 8 evergreens tomorrow to our chaos? Sounds like fun! I mean, we already have no less than 20 projects started right now, let's add more! Yippee. In fairness, he has about a million blocks to finish a wall and has to get the trees down to continue it... the timing is just funny.
Colleen and Oliver got home around 6pm. Oliver seemed to be feeling slightly better than the night before. I think it helps him mentally to know he's done with the big chunk. Mr. B building with OG in the background.
Meanwhile, pops and Owen outside playing cards.
Reading time before bed. The kids spent the latter half of the afternoon playing with neighbor friends again (no pics), and so they were wiped. After basically dual meltdowns, they were in bed early.
And with that, we wrap up day 50. Day 1 seems like a different lifetime ago in terms of mindset. We were scared. We had no idea what this journey was going to hold. We were terrified of the implications of cancer and chemo. We had no idea of the changes, growth, and even blessings that we would experience along the way. The one thing that hasn't changed from day 1, is that despite the change in feeling from day 1 to day 50 and all of the in between stuff, we still have faith. We had faith then, that despite being utterly terrified, it would be ok. We took a step and a deep breath on day 1 when we marched as a team in to SCCA. And then another step. And then another step. Sometimes we crawled. Sometimes we lifted each other up. Sometimes we just laid on the ground in a ball crying, waiting for the support of our team to encourage us to get back up. But, whatever we did, we KEPT MOVING. And by keeping moving, we arrived at day 50. Still with the faith and hope that not only will we make it through day 6 of round 3 (always bad in terms of how Oliver is feeling), and day 7 of round 3 (also probably bad), but we will make it to day 53. Then to day 55. Then to day 60. And eventually, we will make it to the beginning of the next journey. What is so cool about this, is that every blind step we collectively take, we grow even stronger. In our belief, in our relationships, in our health, and in our faith that we will come out of this stronger than we were before. #oliverstrong.
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