A Long Story.

This is a long one, if you want to take today’s journey with me, grab a cool beverage, or a nice cuppa coffee and settle in for my story of breaking. Because I think there comes a time during treatment when you finally just loose it. You go on complete overload, you can’t handle one more thing and you find your breaking point. I found mine today.

I lost it. Completely. I yelled and cussed and screamed. Unfortunately, I did it at my daughter. She didn’t deserve it, she may have had a small part in it, but it was all me. I lost it. Then I lost it again at the doctor, I couldn’t stop crying. Poor guy. Doctors have to hate crying patients. But given the last few days, the recurrence of so many symptoms, the degradation of my general sense of well being, he wanted to do a stat MRI with contrast and that freaked me out even more, and I did all I could do to keep it together. I hate crying patients too.

So Lindsay, my dear sweet Lindsay (my friend and scheduler), got on the phone and Kadlec seemed to think that STAT meant Tuesday…needless to say I was scheduled at 4:45 by the time Lindsay was done talking to them. I love that girl. She was ready to take on United Airlines on my behalf if she had to earlier this week. She is a pit-bull in fabulous clothes and a rockin haircut. Gorgeous girl and an amazing ally.

In the midst of all of this, my dad has hurt his neck (recurring injury), my mom’s leg you all know about, my son has some sort of infection on his head and is having horrible headaches, my daughter’s feet are acting up and it appears that her SVT (supra ventricular tachycardia) is also misbehaving. The only good thing is that they are not certain how far my aunt’s cancer has spread, they know for sure it is in her ovaries but are not convinced it is in her pancreas, so are doing a PET scan to see how far and where it is spread. We aren’t even sure what kind of cancer it is yet. Which is crazy, but I know that really, that is how the medical system wheels turn, especially if you are on Medicare, the wheels turn very very slowly, when they should be moving at Mach 5.

So, back to my afternoon. Durashine showed up unannounced today. I am SO happy that they came, but I wasn’t expecting them, and threw a little monkey wrench in my day. They offered to come back at 1:30, which was great, and I planned on just locking the dogs out in their nice new dog run. In the meantime, the Tri-City Herald asked to do a story on the backyard transformation, which I was more than happy to accommodate. I want to shine that light on my beautiful extended Kadlec family and friends and give the biggest positive light I can on Kadlec, the community and the beauty that can come out of such a horrible disease. I talked to the reporter and then a photographer showed up around 1:30. Mike picked me up at 1:45 and we locked the dogs out amidst my temper tantrum with my daughter. Then I melted down at the doctor, came outside and it was pouring rain, so then I was worried about those dumb but lovable dogs, so I wanted to run home and get them and take them to my parents, so we squeezed them in Mike’s little truck and they are shedding something terrible and I hated to do that to him, since he is really not a dog lover like me, but what do you do? So I run to my parents and see my dad and he is hurting and doped up (which I know he HATES) and my mom is traversing better, but she doesn’t feel well either, and I know she hates not being useful, and I know my daughter is so mad at me, and I am scared about this stupid MRI, and I just can’t deal with one more thing. So I get out of my parents house before I lose it completely and they have to deal with a crying daughter, which is an awful thing to have to do, believe me, I know. I have dealt with a crying daughter a lot.

So I cry, and I cry, and I cry. Mike drops me off and I cry some more. He has to leave, the poor guy does have to keep a job amidst all this strife, so I cry some more. And alone I yell some more and I tell GOD that I CANNOT HANDLE ONE MORE THING!! I CANNOT! YOU HAVE TO GIVE ME SOMETHING GOOD, SOMETHING TO HOLD ON TO!! Not one more piece of bad news, not one. This has to be good news. There has to be a statute of limitations for crap in your life, and I have reached mine. NO MORE I bawl at God NO MORE!

I need a ride to my MRI so I call Peyton, I have to have a ride and she is going to have to forgive me sometime, so she comes home about 3:30, walks right past me and goes to her room without a word, so I cry some more. I lose it completely, she hates me, I am sure. I am the drama queen, a complete babbling idiot. I can’t imagine the hell I have already put my children through in the last year and now I have completely lost my mother of the year award for 2010, that is for sure. I can’t handle it, I am sobbing, I am a puddle of tears. I can’t do this anymore. I am beyond my breaking point.

I pull myself up the stairs to get ready for my MRI, no metal ya know, so I have to de-bling myself. I stick my head in her room, she is on chat with Mason, so I quickly close the door. She hears me sobbing, I mean, how the can she not, and follows me to the bathroom, where she makes me sit down on the commode and tells me it is okay. She is not mad at me; she loves me, which makes me cry even more. I am pathetic.

So she takes me to Kadlec and gets me to registration and I send her home. I mean who would want to sit there for an hour and just wait for and an MRI to be done. So I get registered and get the paperwork and it asks all these stupid questions about headaches and sudden onset and brain trauma and crap, and I can’t decide how to answer them, I don’t know what to say, so I call Mike at work (I am sure he really needed me to interrupt his meeting) so I can cry and tell him I don’t know how to answer the questions. I can’t figure it out. He helps me answer and God bless him, does all he can to calm me down. I am crying, trying to fill out this dumb one page form, and I look up and there is my dear friend Joey, who wraps me in her arms and tells me it is gonna be okay. I actually believe her.

The tech comes to get me. I can’t keep up. I have my little pink cane now, which I find even more pathetic, and I think…I used to stride through these halls in my 4 inch heels and killer suits and I owned the place. It was my hospital, my home, my stomping grounds, my place to help people heal. Now I can’t keep up with the technician taking me to the MRI that helps to determine if I live or die. I was upset he didn’t bring me a wheelchair. I feel humiliated because I can’t keep up. I feel useless.

The tears stream down my face through the entire MRI. I can’t help it. I am listening to the Christian music station, hearing about how God will not leave me or forsake me, and I keep saying over and over, give me good news, give me good news, please God, please God, I can’t take anymore bad news. I can’t take it.

I am beyond my breaking point. I am completely broken.

I finish the MRI; I try to pretend it is all okay. I make small talk with the nurse. I look to the door and there is my hero, My Mike, waiting for me. Coming to save me from myself and slay the dragons in my path. He has the new Sarah MacLaughlin CD in his car. Her voice is like an angel singing to me on the way home. I cry some more and wonder if I’ll ever stop crying. I know I will. I just have to get through this. And I will. Somehow I will. I know it. I have to.

I send an email to Dr. Iuliano asking him to look at my MRI tomorrow. He is the best neuro-radiologist in the business in this region, and he is also a friend who I trust with my life. Hopefully, I’ll hear something tomorrow. Hopefully it will be good news. Hopefully it is just some residual swelling from the radiation or some fluid from the cancer cells that have been butchered that need to be drained or some other benign or obscure disorder that can be fixed. Hopefully, it’s not the worse, which would be for this insipid cancer to behave badly as it has in so many ways before, and attack again without warning. God, I hate cancer. I hope You hate it too.

So, I think we all have a breaking point, we just don’t always see it coming. And that's okay. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to yell at God, He can handle it. His answer may be no, but if I can dish it out, He can take it. And He hasn’t given up on me yet, of that I am sure. I am just SO not ready to die yet. I want to keep living. I have things left to do, my backyard to enjoy, my daughter to make peace with, my son to be happy and healthy. I have to outlive my parents, that is just what good children do. And it’s okay to break. Because then, those who love you, well, they just put you back together again. And it may be superhero band aids and masking tape holding you together, but it’s the best we can do for now. And for now. That’s okay, because sometimes super-hero band-aids really can fix anything.