TIME AND WISDOM

Perspective comes with time and, paired with wisdom, can do a lot for a person. Here I am, five months beyond experiencing the scariest moment of my life, watching my husband suffering a stroke, six weeks past learning that, not only has my cancer returned, but has metastasized and six days into a voluntary quarantine for swine flu, and I’m OK. In fact I’m better than OK, I’m feeling normal and am looking towards the future with normal optimism and fear, not unrealistic optimism or agonizing fear.

Yes, our lives and plans for our future have had to be adjusted, but don’t we always have to continually change course as we navigate along in life? Sure, more uncomfortable tests and treatments are now a certainty and will be a constant in my life. Yes, my husband has to constantly check his blood thinner level and adjust it accordingly in order to prevent another, possibly catastrophic, stroke from occurring, and yes, our lives will certainly be shortened, but when we do get to that end is as much a mystery today as it was before and as it is for most beings. So, sitting months, weeks and days from the initial acknowledgment of our situation, perspective has eased the initial panic that is a given for such instances. Wisdom, which has come to me not from having done well in the past, but from where I have really sucked and have had to learn to do better, is what is fueling my acceptance of our situation and my determination to continue to keep my life one worth living. In other words, ain’t much I can do about it, so I might as well find something nice about it!

Here is another thing I have learned: it is nice when you like your partner as well as love him. Doug and I have had LOTS of togetherness lately. I stayed home to take care of him after his stroke, we have spent lots of time together driving back and forth to Chapel Hill and in waiting rooms, and we have been in voluntary quarantine for the last 6 days due to swine flu. Luckily our house is large enough for us to find alone space, our pets are silly enough to keep us entertained, cable has On Demand movies, and we’ve learned to not take the other’s crankiness personally! The only down side to all this time spent together is we’ve used up almost all of our paid time off and still need to take off at least once a month for my treatments from now on. So, my determination to actually take a real vacation together, our first, may be put back on hold. Heck, what really is the difference between hanging together, let’s say, at the Grand Canyon, and hanging out together at home like we’ve been doing? I mean really, we’ve seen pictures of the canyon, how much better could it really be in person? And, gee, a few nights in the mountains at a cozy little cabin, dinning at a romantic lakeside bistro, and hikes along trails full of natural beauty, breathing in fresh mountain air? Really, what fun would that be? And of course, if we don’t get health reform passed, we’ll need all that money we don’t spend on a trip to pay for all the medical bills insurance won’t cover because it doesn’t have to, if we still have health insurance at all once they figure out all the trouble we cause by having strokes and getting cancer…

So, stroke, cancer and swine flu, what could be next?