Friday, September 28, 2018

Friday, September 28, 2018

Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2003. Mattie was a year and a half old and every Fall, we would take him to a different fall festival each weekend. The festival featured in this photo was in Leesburg, VA and it featured a petting zoo. I absolutely love Mattie's expression as he was having an up close and personal experience with a goat. 



Quote of the day: They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for. ~ Tom Bodett

Today would have been my maternal grandmother's 111th birthday. She died in 1994, 24 years ago, and yet I feel we are still connected. As we had a lot in common. In some ways, my grandmother was like a much older sibling to me. When I was born, my grandmother was already living with my parents. My grandmother lost her husband to colon cancer at a young age and the options for women back then were not tremendous. So it made sense for her to live with my parents and in reality I was the one who benefited from this decision. My grandmother was the ultimate caregiver, a great cook, and simply gentle. 

This photo was taken of us while I was in college. I went to school in upstate NY, and though my grandmother and my parents were living in Los Angeles, they would come and visit. I remember taking this photo on a chair in the Westchester, NY Marriott. 


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I went back to physical therapy today and I am happy to say that I feel the cortisone is working. It is hard to believe that inflammation can cause so much pain. But I am motivated to avoid surgery, which is why I complied with the steak knife sized needle this week. Ironically now that this pain is under control, I am developing back pain and pain in my other hip. The therapist says this is normal as apparently the rest of my body has been walking differently for months to compensate for my right hip problem. 

I view this as moving in a positive direction, but of course the question will be..... will the inflammation come back as the cortisone wears off? A question no one has the answer for right now. Fortunately I am used to living with a one day at a time approach to life, an approach that I adopted quickly when Mattie was in cancer treatment. Yet I never returned to a forward/future oriented approach after Mattie's death. Naturally we continue carrying on, but I have to say we live in a permanent limbo. Meaning that we know Mattie is no longer alive but his presence remains with us always, and drives the work we do, along with our attitude and outlook on a daily basis. We are parents, but not parents. We don't live with a child who has cancer, and yet we will always live with the ramifications of having lost Mattie to cancer.  This constant tugging and pulling of living in both the non-cancer world and the cancer world is alive and well.