Tired. Oh, so tired.

It's been exhausting lately. Much more exhausting than it should be at least. I've been working a lot as of late and then I come home to juggle my new responsibilities as "parent who can move around." Don't get wrong, Vickie isn't comatose or anything, so she still carries out a vital role giving the moral and administrative support that I need. Also, this only happens for a week or so before she starts recovering. It's when she begins feeling well and she can move around and do more when we know its time for her to go back in for another round of magic stuff. 

But back to me for a second. (Narcissist, isn't it?) Usually during the summer we are busy at work. It's the time when the school district let's have the summer break to fix or upgrade the schools in the area. It's good work but the only drawback is we only get the summer to begin and finish, sometimes, very involved projects. This year is no different, except this year they had more than 75 different projects. Almost three times as much than the previous years and some of the work is on big projects. We have a good number of projects this year alongside a fast track elementary school we have been trying to finish in 8 months. You know, before the new school year starts in 2 weeks. We are almost finished but it does mean that I've been pulling down 55+ hours a week for the last month. A labor intensive week for that long can demoralize and exhaust a man quick. That's exactly what has happened to me. 

Usually you get breaks during the day. I don't really have that. Being ahead of the work for our contractor, I'm usually bombarded with questions so much that to make up for lost time I need to work my way through. Most guys break hard during lunch anyway, lounge around slowly eating, that sort of thing. Well, again, I don't. My work has been close to home. As in, a block from home, so I go home for lunch. I do this for a couple of reasons. 1 to save money. 2 to see my family. And 3 to feed my family. If I don't come home for lunch each day it's not a totally sure they will eat. That includes my wife. So I go home, make lunch for Vickie, Bella and Liam and if I have time, get myself something. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. It usually does though. 

But wait. Didn't I tell you how tired I've been lately? Yes, sleep. Our old friend. Our good ol' buddy. He can give you the kiss of life in one second or turn around and knee you in the balls the next. He's been kneeing my fleshy klackers a lot lately and it's been in such dire straits that I found myself setting a timer on my phone for ten minutes and sleeping on the laundry room floor for the last ten minutes of my lunch break after making sure my family was fed. It wasn't so bad. There was a dirty pillow I could use and it was pretty cold in there. Awesome. Now that I write that down it seems much more pathetic than when it happened. When it happened it felt great. Until I had to wake up. Then it turned into a fight to the death to keep my eyes open. I desperately wanted to find the contraption from 'A Clockwork Orange' to get through the next 5 hours. 

When I get home it's pretty much the same. Drag my carcass up the stairs, shower and find the sheer will power to do dishes, see if Vickie needs anything, make dinner, do more dishes, see if Vickie needs anything, perhaps some laundry, play with the kids, see if Vickie needs anything, read them a story, put them to bed, see if Vickie needs anything and then go to bed. 

But it's all worth it. The checks have been pretty good, my family is being taken care of and my work is flourishing. In a couple of weeks it won't be incredibly insane and hopefully I will go back to 8 hour days and sob at my paycheck again. Until then however, I will sit here having to constantly backspace, re-type every other sentence and re-read everything three times so I don't sound like I have a severe learning disability. (Well that I do have)

Not part three

I know I said I'd do this in three parts, but I'm a filthy liar. It's a well known fact, just ask my kids. Most of the time I'm telling them either we are going somewhere (movies, bookstore, ice cream) but its all a lie to shut them up. We all do it, it's fine.

In the last post you will notice that I held back quite a bit. The effects and affects of that first treatment were horrific beyond print. It's psychological sting ran too deep for mere splattering of words onto digital canvas and too extensive for the casual reader. I'm sure those dark thoughts will be locked into a dungeon within the folds of lard that make up most of my brain. Not most of brain, that'd be an understatement. So be honest, most of my senses also are mainly lard based, but I guess that isn't for here... Yet. 

We are a month in and two treatments down. After next Tuesday, we will be in the single digits for how many treatments left and mentally that's a relief. Chemotherapy is a head game, and for awhile there we were losing that game. I don't know if you know this, but cancer? Well, he's a real jerk. And you know chemo? Well he's an awful friend who does you ONE favor and after that he just walks all over you. Borrows money, hits on your girlfriend, grabs your sisters ass, and every time you tell him to knock it off he just brings up how he bailed you out that one time. That one time. Remember kids, Chemo, not even once. 

Well that somewhat fragile relationship gets strained easily. The symbiotic link between patient and chemo quickly goes from grateful to regret in a split second and it's as painful to watch as it is to live. As a bystander the only hope is the fact that most people talk about the time afterwards as though it went quicker than they thought it would. I do hope that is the case, otherwise the strain both mentally and physically could too much to bear. Although, to be fair, it is the summer and that means a lot of school work for me to be done before the school year starts. Which means I'm pulling down 60 hour work weeks until Aug 14th. Yay. It also means that I am so tired that I can't help out as much as I would like to. I am so. Damn. Tired. I don't wish these grueling hours in the southern utah heat like this. The checks may be nice, but I'm not impressed. I'd rather have the ability to help Vickie with her day. Carry on, however, carry on.

As for now, I await Tuesday, another round of treatment and a long week of work. 

Yay.

The Big Update. Part 2

It took awhile to wrap my head around the first dose of chemo before I could write about it. After the first week of treatment was over, it felt as though six months of my life had been taken away. Like I had been put into the torture device from The Princess Bride and Christopher Guest was just leaning over me saying "I have just taken a year from your life, tell me how you feel."

After the first day Vickie was fine. It seemed like maybe this wouldn't be so bad, that we could manage this pretty easy. The next day after Vickie felt the same and she was up doing things, feeling tired but okay. The day after that it began. The pain started creeping up on her slowly, like a mountain lion stalking a hiker with three loud children covered in bits of trail mix. Luckily she had plenty of pain medication, right? Well yes, she had a lot of anti-nausea and a pain killer that took the edge off, but never really alleviating any pain. So as Vickie didn't really rest as much as she should have, thinking it wasn't going to get her down, the pain came slowly but when it arrived it took hold and didn't let up, like an extra from Reefer Madness.

Vickie got her first dose on a Tuesday. Thursday the pain started and by Friday at lunch I came home from work to find her sobbing in bed from the pain. What the hell do you do? You can't shout at the damn cancer. You cant fight it. You have to learn to deal with it. Well we were failing at dealing with it, so we needed to do something different. By the time we realized that the pain killers weren't pain killing Vickie was in dire straights. She called about getting a change in medication but by the time we changed it up the pain had taken over. The new pain medication was no match for the mountain it needed to overcome. On Sunday night I had taken my kids over to my grandfathers community pool. I usually don't go swimming on Sunday but when it's over 103 degrees outside, well all bets are off. When I was driving home I got a call that my Mother was driving Vickie to the ER. I dropped off the kids as quick as I could and drove out there to relieve my mom. We ended up at the ER because Vickie was not only in pain, but a fever had flared up. When you have a fever while on chemo a 100.5 degree fever in actuality is a 105 degree fever. I got there and Vickie was already in a room, in pain. The Doctors had to wait until they did a bunch of tests before they would give her any heavier medicine. Luckily that only took around 4 hours. It was 4 hours of massive back pain for Vickie and hours of getting whatever I could for her. Or at least getting the nurses to get her whatever they could. FInally after hours of waiting the tests were in and she got the pain meds she needed to get the back spasms to go away.

It seemed like a nasty government psychological test to see how much the human brain can withstand before it turns on itself. 

The next day we got Vickie a full body massage and a neck adjustment. That seemed to do the trick. But we were still kind of perplexed to why she had such a bad reaction to the chemo. It seemed more harsh than what the doctors told us it would be. After her massage the dude said she has quite a few knots and perhaps the chemo made her nerve endings more sensitive. This sensitivity made them ache with immense pain. Or whatever. Who knows? The doctors also said it may be that Vickie had "fallen to the communists" and it was wreaking havoc in the inside of her. Makes sense. During that time women's hormones and body chemistry are going mental, take that with the chemicals of chemotherapy and that can only be a cocktail of disaster. 

Now it's over. the first dosage I mean. She's gone through a second dose with not nearly as bad of a result. Time will tell how nasty it will get...

The great big update. Part 1.

So many things have happened since the last post that I have to break it down into three separate parts. Part one is titled 'Chemo and your kids: what happens when they overhear you call chemo poison and then think their mother is going to die.' It's more of a working title. 

So Isabella, the six year old, over heard me talk about chemo in a very disparaging way. She caught just a few things, one of which accurately describing chemo as a poison that just kills you enough but not all the way to get rid of the cancer. Well that didn't 'sit well' with Bella and we saw a change within very core. We didn't really realize what was happening with her, we just knew she started acting out.

Now I noticed an uprising of tantrums and fits. She basically froke out over any little thing that wasn't going right. I mean, any time something wasn't going 100% right. So that narrows it down to 98% of the time things are shitty so 98% of the time Bella is crying or yelling. The other 2% usually invoked what you do in the bathroom. We  thought she realized that Vickie was sick and she was regressing to another time life was stressful, back in a black mold infested home. It was bad enough that Vickie and I were trying to get our heads together we didn't need our daughter joining in. She didn't deserve any of that.  It got so bad that we were talking about getting her professional help. I really didn't want to do that to a six year old who just wanted to have fun and be happy. I didn't want her to need such serious meetings so young. Instead I just sat her down and asked her what was wrong. She started to tell me about the toy she wanted and couldn't find so I had to dig deeper.

    "Are you worried about anything?" I asked her. She just nodded her head slightly. "What are you so worried about?"

    "I'm worried that the poison is going to kill Mom." She said in a quiet tone. 

Man, that ripped my heart in two. For two reasons. One, she understood and knows how sick Vickie is and two, it was my fault that she thought that way because she overheard something that I had said. Vickie took over and explained that it wasn't poison but magic stuff that is going to help get mom better. The magic stuff is really good for her, but leaves her really tired and we have to be extra clean so it doesn't make mom sicker. 

This worked for awhile. Bella became herself once more and all was right again, but soon after she would act out and throw fits and argue and yell. Luckily, all we had to do was sit her down, ask her what she was worried about and remind her that the magic stuff is her to help and to trust that it will. Now she doesn't worry anymore. Now she just has fits normally (you know when something really goes wrong like the rest ofus not  wanting  to watch 'the littlest pet shop' or some other show where nothing is spoken but rather screamed towards one to another. 

It is easy to not realize what we say can effect those around us when you are trying to come to grips with the crap life deals you. So be careful. 

Up next, part two. The first chemo session.