Another Challenge

The day before we left UT for Canada, I got a phone call from Chris' doctor about the results of the biopsy/surgery they did last week. Turns out, Chris has cancer. Specifically Hodgkin Lymphoma, nodular sclerosis. To say the least, we feel crushed. I feel about 50 lbs heavier (I think at least a tenth of that is quite literal thanks to all the vacation food etc).

Its been rough, but we're thankfully moving beyond our first impressions: numb shock and wary sadness. I felt the latter only lightly because I knew that's what we're supposed to feel. Actual sadness has come little by little as it slowly starts to affect our lives.

I actually don't feel like rehashing all my emotions out now, but I'll back post a blurb I wrote but didn't post the day of the surgery since I couldn't find my journal in whatever box it got placed.

Currently, we're in Edmonton! We got in last night and already we've viewed 2 places to live (1 of which will hopefully work out) gotten a Social Insurance Number for Chris and his University of Alberta ID, and a Canadian Bank account. We've just got to settle out a place to live so we can get an address so we can apply for insurance so we can get a family doctor so we can get a referral for an Oncologist so Chris can be seen and obtain an order for a whole body CT scan so we can find out what stage his cancer is in so we can map out a chemo therapy treatment plan so we can beat this. Let me repeat, SO WE CAN BEAT THIS. Hear that Mr. Golf-Ball-Sized-Lump in Chris' neck? We're going to win, so you may as well stop trying to wreck our lives.

Still here

Its been a while. Its been crazy.Its been busy. Its been stressful, tear-filled, unknown. Its been waiting and praying. Its been incredible and full of love from family and friends. Its been LIFE. That includes packing up our house, driving to Utah for my and Chris' first trip away and for a family reunion camping trip, flying back to CA to load up our moving truck, clean our house, turn in our keys, and for Chris to have surgery and then driving back to Utah to spend a bit more time with family before making the trek north to Canada on Tuesday.

I just crave normalcy. I crave feeling at home. It'll come. Hopefully in a few weeks.

too many tears

My head hurts. I've been crying on and off for a good few hours and I think I might explode. Chris had surgery today to remove a portion of an inflamed lymph node. After the surgery the doctor expressed concern that this doesn't look normal based on its large size and the number (a lot) of nodes involved, although the range of possibilities for diagnosis still extends to being completely benign.

I don't really feel like talking because I burst into tears the moment I see a kind face or think about calling family (and they all so deserve personal/detailed updates but I just can't talk anymore about it. I don't want to cry anymore. However, I also feel like I can't process things well enough to move on mentally until composing my thoughts into words. And "move on" I need to do in quite the literal sense.

I've felt numb all day. I knew the surgery today was a bigger deal than I was preparing for, yet I didn't know how else to act. I guess I was thinking today would seem more like a doctors visit, like the fine needle aspiration biopsy was two weeks ago. Wrong, wrong, wrong. We had plans to order Indian Food and eat it with friends and celebrate one of our friend's birthday upon arriving home. In reality, the whole experience took about 3 hours longer than we thought and involved prescriptions and pharmacies and insurance issues and the like.

The biggest wild card was how Chris was going to react and recover and it turns out he's REALLY exhausted and sore and uncomfortable and emotional. I think in terms of the strictly medical side of recovery he's doing well, but is also pretty out of it. I want to comfort him and help him and focus on him which is turning out to be easier felt than done because I feel like my hands are tied. We're moving tomorrow and I've still got Gwen to attend to. I couldn't even find a cup to pour juice into so he could have something to drink down his pain meds with. I found a plastic bowl in a box that was just folded down, not taped, and handed that to him with an apologetic grimace that just got bigger as I watched him try to sip from it laying down, resulting in a wet shirt and pillow.

He can't lift or carry anything thats over 10 lbs for a few days and shouldn't drive for at least a day or two. The moving trailer is being delivered tomorrow and we have 1 day to load it and get it picked up so we (I guess, mostly I) can drive back to Utah on Friday to be with our boys again and help my sister host a bridal shower for my little sister getting married in a few weeks.

I just want to tuck Chris in bed with his favorite pillows and pajamas and make him some chicken noodle soup, popcorn and apples. Yet we have no food in the house except for the instant macaroni meals/soups and crackers I found at the pharmacy earlier today. I just want to eat some dinner myself and then sleep off this migraine I feel coming on now that Gwen is down for the night and Chris is asleep. Yet I need to sort out my feelings, read the scriptures and a small part of me still feels the need to finish packing.

Alright, this is helping, I think. But enough with the hardships and depressing thoughts. I think I need to find the Lord's hand in all this in order to actually feel the comfort and support I've been craving.

First thought - what a blessing my friends here have been! Instead of wondering why I'm feeling support from friends but not the Lord, I need to realize my Heavenly Father put those friends into my life in the first place.

Second thought - our families have been praying for us and thinking about us! Instead of stressing over keeping them all updated without wanting to talk, I need to thank the Lord for their concern and love.

Third - I need to seek comfort and love from Christ through prayer and reading the scriptures. Its too bad we've been on vacation/camping/family reunions this past while since it makes it so hard to maintain regular scripture study, but still I believe had I kept it up, I would have felt more peace today.

Fourth - Todd and Jared gave a nice blessing to Chris last night before we flew out this AM and he was impressed with how confident and good he felt about Chris' overcoming this.

Ok. Now, enough babbling, I need to get out the scriptures and welcome their peaceful spirit into my empty, now dry, self.

Get Away

For our 7th anniversary this year, Chris and I had our first get away trip. We drove to UT, left our kids with Grandma and Grandpa Dixie and drove down to Southern Utah. We stayed at a fun Bed and Breakfast, Amid Summers Night, for 2 nights an a Cedar City hotel for the third night. We had planned to stay a bit longer, but when we found out about Chris' biopsy we decided to cut back a bit, to have less time away from the kids.

We saw 4 plays at the Utah Shakespearean Festival: A Mid Summer's Night Dream, Noises Off! A Glass Menagerie and Richard III. So fun to be there, and so fun to have the Bard Card and buy lots of treats. We went to a session in the St. George temple, did a small amount of shopping at the outlet stores there, ate at yummy restaurants and hiked up in Cedar Breaks.

One day we drove out to Zion's National Park. I convinced Chris to do Angel's Landing with me. I wanted to do something we wouldn't have been able to do if we'd had kids with us. It was AWESOME! And not as hard as I thought it would be, although it was actually a bit scarrier than that I thought it would be. We hiked it FAST, like an hour total, or something. Chris got to the part where you needed to hold onto chains because the drop off on either side was SO FAR and the rocks you were standing on were SO NARROW. He hiked through it for a quarter of a mile or so, and decided he'd experienced enough and found a nice little shadey tree/ledge to wait on while I went to the top, yay, the very tip of the outcropping.

I was more scared hiking by myself without Chris in so perilous a spot, but I saw other hikers for most of the time and they were all kind and noticed I didn't carry any water with me (I left them with Chris so I could move faster) and shared a sip or two with me. Anyway. It was a really fun thing and I'm grateful Chris let me do it and even did it with me!

We ate a picnic lunch by a river before heading back to check into our hotel and see one more play. I was excited about the pool/hottub at the hotel and was quite distraught when a glass bottle slipped out of the bag I was holding, dropped on the doorstep of our hotel room and shattered, slicing Chris in the leg. He was brave enough to let me do a novice tape job and after a short rest, sat by the edge of the pool dipping a leg in so I could still take a dip myself.

We did well with eating treats but not over doing it and making ourselves sick and we so enjoyed some time away alone together. Although I was surprised at how no kids doesn't equal marital bliss. Not that we had an awful time, it was really great, but it wasn't an only-Zen-like-happy feelings-all-the-time kind if romantic get-a-way like I foolishly dreamed up.

Like everything, our first vacation without children was a fun and good learning experience. Something we need to do more often and we're both really grateful for Dixie and James for watching our kids and letting us take a break.

Packing

Packing, packing and more packing. It just never ends. Should we take this box?

(almost) Embarassingly, All About Me

My birthday was this week. We are in the middle of packing and dealing with other stresses, but we still managed to have a fun day. I came back from the gym to find all my kids at the table waiting for me to come home to eat breakfast (German pancakes!) all together. I LOVE eating meals together, especially breakfast since it doesn't happen all that often with either Chris or I exercising.

Also my friends and Chris organized a last minute potluck for dinner so I didn't have to cook anything and we ate yummy Mexican fare. To top it all off my good friend and I wanted to make one last ice cream cake together: five layers - chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, chocolate cake mix cookies, cookies 'n cream ice cream, chocolate cake and a chocolate gnanche frosting. WOW. it was A LOT of chocolate and still so good. I loved it.

Not related to my birthday in ANY way, was a Girls Day the Saturday before. Over the past few months with Chris having been gone so much to conferences/ job talks etc, I asked for a day off sometime. Now its July and we realized that we would have to do it soon if I wanted to do it with my good friends here, and even then it was pretty sudden and not many dates to choose from that we didn't get to do it with everyone I would have liked to do it with.

Those things aside, it was a wonderful day. Really a WHOLE day, all devoted to enjoying myself. It felt a bit extravagant and was so. much. fun. I think almost my favorite part was being able to tell my kids, "Go ask Daddy" anytime they wanted something from me. Chris was such a trooper to do this for me. Especially since he just few in from Spain the night before. He never even complained and really seemed to just be happy for me. I'm not sure I could've done that had the roles been reversed. He's amazing.

MY DAY

We started with a 5K run, with a time goal to beat 9:00 miles. We smashed it!! We did 8:30 min miles which is really fast for me. It was hard and felt so great afterwards.

Next up was a leisurely shower at home and then off to breakfast at a local fancy place, Mayfield Bakery. Then one stop at home to feed babies, followed by shopping at the Great Mall, with mall pretzels to boot! Retail Therapy? Check.

Then came horse back riding. We went on a trail ride for 1 hour. I kept feeling these two extremes: loving the peace, space, quiet and motion and then feeling quite anxious and wishing it all to just be done. My rear was pretty sore for a few days but it was worth it. Adrenaline high? Check.

Then more shopping at REI and smoothies at Costco followed by a quick stop at home to feed the babies before going out for deluxe pedicures and eating out at an AMAZING local Mediterranean place. One word - Baklava. I love Baklava. Pampering and Gourmet food? Check.

We planned to finish the day with a movie, projected at my house but we all fell asleep and turned it off to go to bed. Did we over do it? Not at all. It was perfectly relaxing, exciting, exhausting and rejuvenating. I really truly really love my good friends here and will be sad to leave them.

So Big

Gwendolyn is really acting so big since turning 1. She's starting to let her personality show and complains when she doesn't get to do what she wants to. Its cute to see her demonstrating her opinion about life. She'll tease Charlie and take away whatever he's playing with and then run over to me to protect her with this grin on her face! She'll offer to give it back and then take it away at the last second and laugh at Charlie's protesting howl.

She's tough and persistent in climbing on things, falling down, and getting back up to try again without much of a fuss. She particularly likes to stand on a stool or potty but doesn't quite know how to get off from that position and will make grunting noises until someone comes to rescue her.

She's in the process of being weaned and doesn't like it one bit! Neither do I to be quite honest, but I know that I do not want to take her on a get-away/anniversary trip that Chris and I are planning in 1.5 weeks. She doesn't really take a bottle and she doesn't much like cows milk, but I'm trying to trick her into liking it by giving her Chocolate milk and slowing diluting it. It worked with Charlie but I guess we'll see how it goes with our little Gweny.

She loves to take baths and be outside. She likes to wear necklaces and sit in cars or on scooters. She has a big sweet tooth and adores her older brothers. What fun.