Daily double trouble: August 7, 2019

It felt weird not to get up and write this morning. What is that saying? 30 days to make a habit or something? Well I had 60 and it definitely became a habit. I used to be much better about keeping this blog updated when the kids were smaller and maybe just a tiny bit more cute. No promises on if I'll stick to it this time, but I'll give it a whirl. It's fun for me to write and to have a tangible tracking of what the heck we did on any given day. Parenthood... well... it just sucks the life out of you sometimes, or at least the brain cells. Ask me in a day what we did last week? NO CLUE. And then there's the beauty of documenting it: THEN I KNOW.


Things have been... strange here. Colleen moved back home today. Oliver may follow shortly (back to his girlfriends). We are still kind of "on edge" and waiting to see if there is a 4th round or not, but in the meantime, it's sort of back to life as per usual. Like in a day we went from chemo and freaky fevers and hospitals.... now back to.... normal? As Owen would say....what the? I think I made the comment that it's like stepping out of the twilight zone and wondering what the hell just happened. ALL IN A MATTER OF A DAY. We were there and now we are here. And we were there June 7 and now it's August 7. And WHAT? I think we are going to have to process the hell out of all of this.


Luckily, the kids keep us mildly entertained so that our heads don't spin and blow off too readily:

Day 60: August 5, 2019

Day 15, round 3. AKA: the unofficial "last" day of chemo treatments. The day started off bright and early for the troops as they headed to SCCA for an early morning infusion and meeting with the doctor. Found out that weight was low (few more pounds lost), numbers were low (but not abnormally low) and everything else was "as expected." So, that's good news. The doctor also indicated that it will be at least 6 months before Oliver can really be "back to normal" in terms of work, school, feeling like himself, etc. Which is about as we expected.


It seems both simultaneously long and short since we began this journey. Remember the friend of the friend who I mentioned was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer the other day? She went to SCCA today to start her process- port placement, etc. Hearing her words of the shock of being at the center brought back a whole slew of memories from waayyyy back when we started. The shock of people at the center. The shock of actually being there in general. It's amazing how the novelty of that shock wore off so quickly to where now we are pretty immune to it.


The day was pretty normal by all accounts- Oliver felt tired and yucky, but that is about status quo or how he should feel. I am in a conference that I attend annually- this year based out of Washington DC, which is ROUGH given it starts at 5am Washington state time! The kids had a blast playing around in typical summer days. They set up a "track" to race... I mean, looks totally safe, right?

I decided to attend the conference online this year, just due to how things are going with Oliver-- that way I would be local and not 2000 miles away, for the just in case. TURNS OUT. Great decision. At around 5:30pm, Oliver spiked a 101 degree fever which continued to rise. By 6:30 it was 101.6. Colleen called SCCA who told them to go in right away. His white blood cell counts were so low earlier (almost neutropenic), so likely could be an infection given the fever. Justin, Colleen and Oliver headed in to the hospital for what is hopefully one last hurrah of that fun!  Around  9pm, Justin texts to ask if I could come bring Oliver's car and pick him up because his fever was down to 99 and the ER was being incredibly slow at finding resolution (fast track: it took 7 hours for them to be released....) The kids and I were just heading to bed, but I think Justin felt bad about promising to be there for them, and given that every was "static" and likely Oliver would not be admitted, we were considering the 4am wake up calls for us both to work tomorrow morning. Turns out that they think Oliver has an infection ("general") and so sent him home with antibiotics after midnight.

We were lucky that we got to see a beautiful sunset on the way to/from the hospital!

We were just headed to bed, and I threw the kids in the car without shirts or shoes to head down. Ha!

And while there, Colleen and Oliver picked up a matching gown for Owen!

After a bit of a climax for this last day of infusions, given the unexpected hospital trip, I have decided that this is going to be the last DAILY update on Oliver's journey. It has never been my story to tell and I have mentioned before that it has been awkward at times telling such intimate details, even if I do live some of them personally. At this point, we are expecting the next couple of weeks to follow how the last couple of rounds recoveries have gone... lots of nausea, lots of fatigue, but mostly resting and powering through to heal. I started this forum to update everyone on how Oliver is doing, and it has served its purpose well. However, I am not sure that there will be many updates to post in the next couple of weeks that are very revolutionary other than the above- so my updates would mostly be pictures of Oliver on the couch saying: same old.. I will continue to post on an intermittent basis if there is anything "out of the ordinary" and obviously will post upon once we have the "next steps" and plan.


This has been a good resurgence of blogging so, that said, I will continue to post as I am able to about what's going on in our life- spoiler alert- it's mostly kids and looks a lot like the above. I won't be linking those posts to facebook so just check back here, and often, for anyone who cares to see new posts.


This has been a journey. I have a feeling it is far from over. I can't even put in to words how far we've come. And I likely have no concept, really, of how far we have to go. But for now, we head in to the last unofficial week of chemo which is the recovery period, and we fill hope-filled at what might lie ahead. As we march onward, we are lifted up and supported by the team that has surrounded us: the doctors, the hospitals, family, friends, supporters WE DON'T EVEN KNOW. All of these people have offered pieces of themselves to allow us the ability to continue on in this journey. We've learned more than we thought possible. We've shown strength when we felt weak. We kept going even when we felt like quitting. Above all, we have to believe we accomplished the main goal: healing.  #oliverstrong

Day 59: August 4, 2019

Took me three days, but I have finally gotten on board that it is August.


I'm not going to lie, sometimes all of this is just overwhelming. I think that is where I personally was yesterday- for really no good reason. But sometimes it is just overwhelming, and I was in a bit of a funk. The treatment. What we are actually doing here (IE: CANCER). The cost of treatment. The implications of what is actually happening with chemo. Changes in all of us- whether good or bad. Justin missing work. All of the other stuff in life that continues regardless of treatment: house projects, work, kids, all the things that continue to speed right along and don't care about the elephant in the room that you are dealing with. You like to believe and think that life has stopped, but truthfully, it hasn't. It carries on with  or without you, so if you don't keep up with it, when you get back to it, you find that you have some catching up to do, which sometimes makes it even that much more overwhelming. I think it's ok to embrace even the days where it seems overwhelming. It's ok to feel sad. It's ok to cry. We've had all of these emotions. It's not always a pretty process... clearly. And some days, even at the end of it all and perhaps even more so because it is the end of it all, it seems just... overwhelming.


Sometimes in those moments, it is hard to see the positive. It's hard to see how far we've come. It's hard to see that we are ALMOST OVER THE HURDLE. I don't have a good solution, either, for how to get through it. I tried to go on a walk- wasn't feeling it. Did some yard work... worked out a bit in the gym. Pretty much all half ass. Talked to Justin. Read my book in the sun. Basically tried all avenues of just allowing myself to breathe and decompress. Sometimes, you just have to allow yourself to be in a funk. I kept thinking, man life is hard. I think back 10 years ago to when I met and was dating Justin and our youthful "problems" and dreams. You kind of know you will be thrown challenges in life, but you never really expect to have CERTAIN challenges. I told him at one point yesterday, in some ways, selling everything and just starting all over in the middle of nowhere might be good once all of this is over.... that life is just hard and let's get back to the basics of what REALLY matters.  Irrational I know. And CLEARLY, things could be MUCH WORSE. But, what we have learned is that sometimes you just have to embrace the muck. Embrace the feelings for what they are. I felt overwhelmed as we all have at certain points in this process, and the best way to combat that was just to try all those routes, and then realize that tomorrow is a new day in which we can just start all over again and hopefully being in a better frame of mind to tackle them one at a time.


First up: Oliver today. Did not feel well, at all. After several really good days, it is too bad that cancer/chemo reminds him all too clearly that he is still in this. He was tired, his throat hurt, just overall felt yucky. His buds came over to say goodbye (one of them is flying back to Michigan tomorrow), and they were all pretty low energy also.

 What we did today? Did our best to enjoy the gorgeous summer weather in the pacific northwest. Bright and early this morning the kids, Colleen and I made the trek out to a blueberry farm by our house to pick blueberries! Next time we'll bring our hiking shoes and hike before or after. Owen couldn't believe that he has hiked this mountain before (he has!)

 

The kids were enamored! At one point Bennett said: I could do this all day. Until 5 minutes later he decided, maybe he was done. Ha! We have been before but Owen was too young to remember and Bennett was a baby on my chest.

We spent about an hour and got 8 pounds of blueberries! This is awesome, and we have huge bags of bluebs in the freezer now, too, for the winter! We might even have to go back there in a week or two, to get more to stock up for the winter. In case you didn't know: blueberries are definitely a superfood! Even better when you can pick them yourself and know the source. If you freeze huge bags, you can put them in your smoothies, or thaw out later to juice, etc. Win-win!

When we got home, Justin was still playing 50 million tree pick up. The game that never ends... he decided to take a load of the scraps to the dumb. GREAT PLAN! It actually ended up working really well as the dump by us takes yard waste (which we did not know).

One of our friends who we know from her sons' involvement on the bike team brought by a boat/kyak for the kids. Of COURSE, this became a fun toy in the driveway yesterday afternoon.

Justin also washed the cars, and since it was almost 90 degrees here... he got the kids with the nose. Which was then reciprocated from them to him.

There were baths afterwards, and B decided he wanted to get "all fancy."

To which he then broke out the dance moves...

Owen is of course our perpetual athlete, so his idea of changing clothes into something else was his baseball uniform. Ha!

Later in the evening, cuddling on the couch for family movie night. Pretty low key day, but we did get a fair amount of work done around here, and the kids had a blast with another summer day in which they just run all over, get dirty, enjoy the sun. We will miss these days once we are back in to the rhythm of school and the cooler days of fall. One more month to go! They start school September 4.

#oliverstrong with the mountain behind the picture. Kind of like the real #oliverstrong- with his army mountain behind him. One more day of chemo tomorrow, and then we are done with chemo... hopefully forever. We believe we will be done forever!