My Favorite Day of the Week, this Week!

Ah.....Sunday, how I looked forward to you all week long! Sleeping in till I feel like getting up!! It's the one day of the week that I get to do that, and I enjoy every minute of it!! 9:19, such a lovely time to wake up! My hubby is sound asleep on the other side of the bed, I hear him softly snoring. I'm so grateful to hear that sound. Can't tell you how many mornings that I put my face close to his just to make sure that he was still breathing. I also hold a finger under his nose too sometimes, waiting to feel the warmth of his breath on my finger...

I get to be here all day with him, no trips anywhere! It's good for me and him! We don't have anything planned except eating and whatever sounds appealing to us.  I watered the back yard and checked on my fava beans. It's my first year growing them, they are my babies! I harvested once already, turns out I'm not a huge fan. I think I prefer them raw to cooked!  I'm giving the next batch to my Uncle who loves them! Last Sunday I planted a bunch of seeds that I had dried myself from my favorite fruits and veges, here's to their growth and success in our garden! I planted blueberry seeds, one lucky Cutesy orange (I only found one seed in dozens of oranges), two "flat" persimmon seeds, some purple Beefsteaks, Roma's, jalapeno's, seranno chili's, some Persian cucumbers, and orange, red and yellow small bell-peppers-the pepper shaped variety. I am anxiously awaiting their arrival! I feel like the earth is my surrogate mother incubating my babies!!

All day long we bounce between relaxing on the couch watching tv, and going outside. We both have been in good moods all day. I have to thank God for that, it's a gift to be on the same page. It's past my bedtime now so I'm off to give him a back massage and put some cream under his eyes. For some reason he has sacks under both eyes that are filled with fluid. The creme seems to be settling them down. A side effect of the chemo? I'm going to read up about that. The massage helps with the knots he gets in his shoulders from the stress he's under. It helps me too, I put lotion and Reiki symbols in my hands and we both relax to the motion.

I love my husband. Thank you for healing him a little bit more today, God. Thank you for all of our blessings, and please, shower blessing of love, peace, joy, health, healing and success in their ventures to all in need.

"Procrastination is Disobedience to God"

Funny that this topic came up today while I was at a dear friends house. She had written down the title of this post after she had heard it on a Sunday morning show that we both watch, but that I missed, and shared it with me while we were discussing a good book.  :)

The funny, isn't a ha ha kind of funny, but a sense of being closely paid attention to by a loving God, kind of funny. I had been asked to write this blog quite a while back and have started and stopped, started and stopped all the while being honored, excited and scared to death about it. I have also had lots of things happen in our world that kept me distracted and or too numb to proceed.

I have thought long and hard about how to write this blog, since so much of my experience as my husband's caregiver is in our past, and yet it's also here now.  What I have decided is that I will be going back and forth between today's journey and our past. I will be referring to my journals, and will share right from those pages when I flash back to the past. I write daily as a form of reflective meditation and it's helped me immensely through sooo many dark, scary hours where all I could do to stay strong was pray, cry, write and trust.

For about four years now I've wanted to write a blog and yet didn't know what to write about, then cancer struck, then so much happened and then I was asked to be the Caretaker Blogger for No Stomach for Cancer's website. (a big honor for me) Really awe struck by how God works in our life I am clear that this opportunity was a gift, one that I was, in a small way procrastinating about getting done. When I was reading up about blogging prior to being asked I read an article that says, "Blog about what you know," well, I know about caregiving. I am passionate about it, it's a love/hate kind of thing. It's time to start!

I have needed courage and motivation to proceed with this project and today I received both! I'm not going to be disobedient any more! It certainly didn't feel good. I look forward to sharing with you as we journey on our Cancer Killing path!

Big hug!
Liz

Gifts of this Journey

It's been on this journey with my husband that I found the value of living in the moment, you can't really get a bigger prize then that. As long as I stay planted in this moment it pays out in peace, trust, love and joy, even in the dark days.

I am his caregiver, the keeper of all his medical information, the one who takes him to all the doctor appointments, who has sat for hours praying and waiting with our family members in the quiet waiting room sanctuary as he went through some horrific surgeries all for the sake of killing cancer and saving his life. I have sat with him during the long hours of infusion, and in the small waiting room while he got 5 weeks of daily radiation. I'm here for him at home in the ways that he needs me, and in the beginning, ways that he didn't need me! I am here to help him live through what seems like a series of bad dreams. We do things together, him and I. That's just the way it is.

One of my jobs as a caregiver is to take care of myself.  Both are quite big jobs, but thankfully I do neither alone. I have a personal relationship with the God of my understanding who I turn to when I first wake up and then as needed during the day. When I end my day giving thanks for all it's blessings, I sleep like a baby which is also an important part of self care. Little sleep makes me loopy and cranky. I am not pretty when I am loopy and cranky! Since this is my blog, I will be talking alot about this God guy that I love soo dearly. Please replace the word God with anything that doesn't offend you if you object to my use of it.

Thank you for being a part of my journey,
Liz

My Husband's Cancers

My husband has two completely unrelated cancers. In April of 2009 after rotor tilling our vegetable garden area, the lymph nodes under both arms swelled up like water balloons. He finally went to see his Doctor in November of 2009 and after biopsies, PET scans and a bone marrow biopsy his Oncologist told us on January 19th, 2010 that he had Follicular Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma Stage 4. After 6 months of R-CHOP, with Filgrastim injections for a week after each infusion, the Lymphoma was put into remission, however a PET Scan showed some activity in his stomach area. An endoscopic exam showed a 4 cm tumor in the entry point to the stomach. It was biopsied and came back positive for Adeno carcinoma.....Stomach Cancer.

The Oncologist believed at first that it was the Lymphoma, he told us that it is rare to have two separate cancers. Like that should have eased our panic. We were dumb struck! Why hadn't the chemo done anything to the cancer in his stomach? I saw what it had done to the Lymphoma...his small brown potato sized tumors were shrunk to nothing after 2 infusions! I later learned that chemo targets specific cancers.

The Oncologist referred us to the surgeon on his team. Our first meeting with her was on August 17th, 2010. She cut right to the chase...I will never forget what she told us that she needed to do in order to remove the tumor. She said that she needed to remove his entire stomach. A complete gastrectomy! I truly thought that she was kidding, like she was leading with that and then was going to tell us what she really was going to do. She was not kidding. She never cracked a smile. As wonderful and kind as she is, beautiful too, we learned that she does not kid around when it comes to her job. She means business. She wanted surgery to be as soon as possible, September 1st to be exact. We left her office knowing that life was never to be the same...Never the same.