Gearing up

It has been a long, somewhat difficult treatment cycle.  I finally started feeling "normal" yesterday.  That means I will have four good days out of the fourteen in my cycle.  Try as I may, this is definitely not good for my attitude.  I was feeling great about being halfway done at my last treatment.  My doctor helped me feel confident that this next drug would be easier and I was sure I would breeze through the rest of treatment.  Even better, I can't even find the tumor anymore.  Somehow though, I just couldn't hold on to my optimism.  The last few days I've been feeling much more "Ugh, I still have four more treatments to go" than "Woohoo four treatments done!".  I'm feeling desperate for fun and function, but barely have the energy to show up for my normal days at this point.  So I suppose the lack of balance isn't helping much either.

On a positive note I had a realization today.  I was listening to the radio and the song "live like you were dying" came on.  The song itself isn't so important, but its message got me thinking.  In my frustration I'm fixated on the fact that I can't live my life the way I would choose to right now.  The "shoulds" and similar thoughts leave me feeling dissatisfied and frustrated.  But when I listened to this song, I thought about how maybe I should be living differently right now.  Maybe I should be "living like I was dying" right now.  Well I don't believe I am dying and still need to make sure the way I live contributes to the long term health and happiness of my family.  However, I did have to ask myself the question, if things didn't go well, and I was given a death sentence, what would I want to do?  I would certainly come up with some things if that were the case, but what I realized is that as of right now, I have no regrets in my life.  I feel happy and confident with the things I've done.  If I were to die tomorrow, I would not say "I only wish I had..." (fill in the blank).

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things I would like to still do in my life.  Places I would like to go, experiences I would like to have, and most importantly live to be old and happy with my husband watching my sweet baby girl grow up.  But if that weren't the case, I could say that in the time I've had, I've lived a good life so far.

I guess that is a good thing to realize.  Though it also made me realize I'd better come up with some new life goals!  Its hard to be driven when you don't have a direction to go!  Luckily I can focus on raising my beautiful daughter for now.  Being the best possibly mommy to her is the only goal I need while I work on healing myself.

Speaking of healing myself, chemotherapy treatment number five on Monday!  So I am gearing up.  It is a long infusion so I would love as many positive thoughts sent my way for the first half of the day on Monday!