Defeated

Alright, I need to vent. I feel like I am on overload and nothing is going right. This is my place, my blog. Please know that I am trying to stay positive. I'm trying with all I have, but right now, I need to let it out.

I think it's pretty obvious that cancer isn't easy. I also know that at times, I make it look easy. Maybe that sounds silly or vain, but it's true. I started this blog as a way to update friends and family and it morphed into a way to share my journey. It works well for me, but I don't think it always gives a true representation of what we go through. I mean, how could it? So much of this journey is personal. I share a lot more than I thought I would, but there is so much more that I don't want to share.

This journey isn't glamorous. In many ways it is downright degrading. We are constantly struggling to juggle our limited resources...energy, money, patience, hope...Overall, I think we do a great job. I mean, I'm pretty sure I've never shared on here before that my current 5 year survival rate is a whopping 15%. Yup, that's it. Think about that for a minute. Try to put yourself in my shoes. How would you feel if you knew your chance of living to 2018 is 15%? Or your chance of getting to see your kids turn 9 and 7 is 15%? I'm guessing it would affect how you live your day to day life. It has for me.

Don't get me wrong, cancer isn't all bad. I've said this before and someday I'll write a post on all the ways cancer has been good...The silver linings if you will. I would never have known how many lives I have touched without cancer. I have never felt as loved as I do now. I have never felt as supported as I do now...but sometimes I feel so alone, more alone than I ever have before. I know that no one else has walked in my shoes. No one else can really understand all the choices I have made or all of my fears. I know that no one else can predict my future.

I'm lucky to have Geoff. He understands most of it. He's going through most of it too, but we both still have our own perspectives and stories. I worry constantly that if I don't recover I will leave him in financial ruin. I know it's not really true, but there is some truth to it. I don't even know how it got to this. When we bought our house we made the decision to only buy what we could afford off one salary. We didn't ever want to be house poor.

Life has a way of tricking you into a sense of security. Over the last couple years we unconsciously adjusted our expenses to the life of a double income. Then this past year I haven't come close to earning what I used to. Combine that with added childcare expenses and a sick dog and whatever the crisis is of the week is and suddenly we are worrying how we are going to  pay all the bills and still afford basic necessities.

I don't know what we would have done without all the support from our friends and family. I get phone calls all the time from organizations asking me to give money to people fighting cancer and usually politely decline telling them I'm battling cancer myself. I always feel guilty and look forward to the day that I myself can proudly give, but recently I've become more jaded. I have stage 4b cancer. I have 2 really small children. All of our family has struggled to help us this year and yet, where are those organizations for us? Do I need to be on my death bed for them to help us? I guess I don't understand how it works.

Back in March when the cancer came back and spread, we were fortunate enough to have an outpouring of people offering us trips. My aunts offered to send us to Disney World, someone else offered to send us to the beach, someone else their luxury condo in the mountains, and others still their cabins and retreats. We carefully considered all of these offers. In all reality, we drooled over all of these offers, but we knew we couldn't afford to accept really any of them. Geoff already takes off work for all my chemo days and big appointments, he couldn't afford to take a week or two or three off for vacations. We couldn't afford the travel expenses or all the extras such as pet sitters/kennel/food for us. We have a deal that we will reconsider this if things get bad, but even then it's a double edged sword. How do I add that kind of financial strain for one last family trip? On the other hand, how do I deny my family the opportunity to have one last somewhat carefree family vacation with me?

That's the biggest problem with all of this...because I share on my blog and because we have accepted help from everyone it opens us up to judgement and we know it. We are always in a position to have people ask us why don't we just get rid of our pets or why don't I just drop out of school or why don't we <fill in the blank>? Sometimes these questions are innocent enough and just based out of genuine curiosity, other times people try to inflict their viewpoints on us. We try to let it go and we tell ourselves that it really isn't anyone else's business, but it's not always that easy for us...Especially when it is someone really close to us.

Furthermore people don't know all the truths...We have gotten so much help from our animal loving friends. We have gotten hundreds of dollars of credit at the kennel for our dogs which came in very handy when I had my hysterectomy. We have gotten hundreds of dollars of credit for doggy daycare...much of which was donated by the actual employees of our doggy daycare. We are so grateful to them. We have gotten hundreds of dollars of credit for dog/cat food which has kept us going for a long time. Another wonderful friend of mine took care of all of Aggie's (the horse) spring vaccinations and vet visit. Someone else has been generous beyond words and refused to let us pay any of Aggie's board payments for months.

All of this combined with the cancer cell sale is what has kept us going. Of course there are people who have given to us outside of the cancer cell sale, especially family. My aunts continue to spoil us with housekeeping and other support. There are so many things that people have done that I feel terrible that we are still struggling.

I know I physically cannot work and do clinicals at the same time. It worked out perfectly that I could do clinicals while I am on my summer break, unless you consider the financial impact. At the same time what was I to do? Go back to floor nursing for the summer? I can handle an 8 hour clinic day, but my 12 hour on-call shifts kill me. With clinicals I get to make my own schedule and call the shots. If I drop out of school right now, I have student loans that will come back to haunt me and worse yet I can't pick back up where I left off when I go back. I would have to at the very least repeat my week in Kentucky...something I really don't want to do (I had a great time but it was a once in a lifetime experience for me).

Nothing is ever as straight forward as it seems and everyone has their crap. I know this. We all want to talk about our problems, but rarely do we really understand each others problems. I am very aware of this too. My problems are too complex even for this post.

Today all of the things I already have talked about were exacerbated by a few other things...Esther got severely dehydrated over the weekend and now she is at the vet clinic for IV fluids. She's been there since yesterday and will hopefully come home tomorrow. She is eating and doing well, but I knew when I wrote my update about her the other night that something still wasn't quite right. I wanted to be positive and optimistic, but Monday morning it was time to be realistic. I left for my on-call shift crying the entire drive into Madison because I wasn't sure I was going to have a pup when I got done with my shift. Instead it turned out to be better than I originally thought, but we have no idea how we are going to pay for 3 days of doggy vet care.

This is ironic because I have always felt that you shouldn't have pets or children if you can't afford them. So much for that theory...Then while I was a few hours into my on-call shift on Monday I got an email from school telling me that the credentialing they do for all my clinical sites fell through with UW Health clinics. I'm sure it will get fixed, but in the meantime I am not allowed to spend time doing clinicals in my clinic sites. This complicates things in so many ways. The biggest is that I was in clinic last Thursday and I was going to be in clinic again this Thursday and Friday so I could hopefully see some of the same patients. I need to have continuity patients that I see multiple times throughout their pregnancy and I even need to have someone that I see multiple times, am present at their birth and I see again at their 6 week postpartum appointment. This week was critical for making that happen and now it's doubtful that I will be able to be in clinic by Thursday or Friday.

There is always more...we had talked to our mortgage company about options for our situation. They encouraged us to apply for financial assistance...We started this a couple months ago and finally heard back. We can get a whopping $60 off our monthly payments, but take a credit hit. Um, no thank you.

and then there are all the other little things...our housekeepers didn't come last week and the house is a mess and neither of us have the energy budgeted to scrub toilets, wash floors, and vacuum in addition to everything else. Also, I used the printer and realized that a couple of the cartridges are almost out of ink and I don't have the funds budgeted for new cartridges. It sounds silly, but it really is always something and today it was enough somethings that I felt defeated.

Oh and finally...I have a huge hematoma on my butt. I walked into a cat tree or a dresser last Friday as I was backing out of the bathroom and running for the phone (I know it probably doesn't make sense, just trust me..). Of course my platelets were low from chemo (this means my blood doesn't clot like normal) and voila! huge bruise. As if that wasn't bad enough now it has a huge, hard lump and it is painful to sit down. I've tried icing it and I've tried heat and both just seem to make it worse. Finally I caved and asked Geoff to use a Sharpie and trace around it so I can keep track of whether it is getting bigger or not.

Luckily for me, tomorrow is another day. I know it will be better. It has to be. Tomorrow I'll go back to trying to overlook all the uncertainties and focusing on making sure that I'm one of those 15% that survive.