Keep Going

I was reading one of my very favorite bloggers, The Pioneer Woman, and she was lamenting about how much she had to do in the frantic month of April. 

I always figured that after I raised my child and when she moved out on her own, I’d be home free.

Ha.

My life has actually never been busier.  Between check-ups and medical appointments (and there are still far too many of those), I am still trying to have a life here folks.  It ain’t easy, let me tell you.  I read the list of things that the Pioneer Woman was dealing with and thought, I can match you girlfriend, project for project, deadline for deadline, mess for mess.

For example, I have to clean the backyard deck because my goofy and persistently clueless dog brings new meaning to the phrase, “poop deck” these days.  I have to get my home office organized.  Luckily my son-in-law has already put together my bookshelves and put up decorative shelving on my office walls.  I have an entire garage to organize and all the holiday decorations to organize and divide between my daughter and myself.  Hint, the kid is totally getting the lion’s share.  I have a garden to tend because while I planted a few weeks back, everything has basically drowned on account of the recent rains so I need to get back there, clean up the watery mess and Start Over.  I need to do laundry, unpack from my most recent trip, do yet another short run to CostCo, and officially close the post-season hockey playoff ritual of, “We Hate The Other Team” with my BFF.  In Round One, the target of our hockey hatred was the St. Louis Blues.  We haven’t hated on them before so this year was all very new and there was this huge learning curve regarding whom on the team we hated the most, how much, who will were going to scream at, who we would simply just scoff at, how badly we want their goalie to mess up, etc.  It was lot of pressure, believe you me.  We started in when our San Jose Sharks got into a double overtime situation but being that we won, the hate-on took a backseat to surprise, celebration and downright shock.  We honestly didn’t expect to pull it out so deep into overtime.  This put us behind schedule in our WHTOT project which, as devoted Sharks fans, we take entirely too seriously. Then we simply lost the series in Game Five and the hate-a-thon was suddenly over. 

And we had just started warming up.

So, while the WHTOT team project is off the table (until next season), there is plenty to keep me busy. That’s the thing about surviving cancer, when you are done with treatments, you still have this decimated life to get back to.  Dishes to wash, dogs to buy treats for, laundry to fold, kids to pick up from school, other hockey teams to plot against.  The list never ends. 

And as overwhelming as it gets at times, for those of us in the trenches of recovery, it’s a good thing, this busy at life.  It keeps one’s mind off the ever lurking fear of cancer returning for one thing.  And it gives daily purpose when we can get so wrapped up in the impact recovery has on the quality of our daily lives.

Those who love us can forget, you see, because we look normal or close enough.  After the hair grows back and the right bras are bought and we put our heels back on, our loved ones can forget.  They don’t see the scars and the pain and the symptoms the meds cause.  They just see the person they love and focus on being grateful that they are still counted among the living. For them, its enough.  But for us survivors, well, we pull out the list and keep going because that’s what we do, we simply keep going.