Hanging On

My dad is still hanging on, though mostly sleeping or groggy or just out of it.  I haven’t spoken to him in days.  My brother and sister put the phone to his mouth so he could say hi a few days ago, but that hasn’t happened for a while.  They are both burning the candle at both ends, taking care of him and their own lives.

I found alternate transportation to my MRI on Friday.  Well, I’ll take a taxi there but a friend is picking me up.  It’s all I have to offer in way of helping them.  And the pain has been through the roof again, as have my GI issues, which have been tamed for months.  I know it’s nerves and I’m working on that with prayer, meditation and essential oils.  This morning for the first time in over a week, the pain is at about a 6 instead of the 8 or 9 it has been.  I’m praying it stays that way for my MRI.  And of course, I want to cancel the whole thing.  But the purpose was to see if the tumors in my leg are operable. 

I’m trying to take a page from my dad’s book on life.  Keep fighting, kid.  But all I wanted to do for the past few days is give up.  Then my niece came by yesterday for a visit.  She works at Crate and Barrel and I had mentioned all my juice glasses but one had broken and she brought me 4 great little juice glasses.  We talked about life, about her upcoming semester in the South of France, books, her boyfriend and politics.  She’s beautiful, smart and excited about life.  I adore all my nieces and my nephew and talking to them is a joy.  I need to remember that.

I may be participting in an NF project on coping with having NF.  It’s a long project, and frankly, I think I do pretty well with coping.  Not always, but nothing works all the time.  I need to think more about filling in the forms (I’ve already been accepted; I applied a long time ago but forgot about since it is starting so late after I applied....October, I think).

And reading it yesterday, in the state of mind I was in, I thought “I’m not going to be around long enough to finish”   But I’m always having those thoughts.  When it gets miserable, I have to remember to just let go.  As in, “Surrender, Idiot”

Good luck with that.