New Year's Day

It's 12:30PM New Year's Day and I've just lost it.

I went to work yesterday and had a pretty good day, then on the way home the old ache in my left forearm came back. I don't know whether it's related to the cancer or not, it just randomly shows up, bothers me for a few days and then goes away for a while. Whatever it is, it seems to ignore the pain medication. So it was a bit of a rough evening. I told a friend about my condition yesterday and he wanted to come by for a visit after the girls went to bed. I held it together pretty well and had a good visit. By the time I went to bed, the arm pain was mostly gone, but I had difficulty getting to sleep as every time I would lay down, about an hour in one of my legs or my hips would start hurting and I'd have to get up, sit up and stretch them for a while til the pain went away. That process repeated 2 or 3 times until I finally went to sleep for the night around 2:00.

My wife let me sleep in this morning so I didn't get up til around 9:30. I felt like I had gotten a good night's sleep, but also felt like I'd been run over by a truck, especially between my shoulders, but my morning routine quickly melted most of that feeling away.

My oldest wanted to go outside and play in the snow. She is such a miracle in that she is perfectly willing to go out and play alone if nobody else wants to go out with her. She happily went out and started doing the things that 5 year olds do in the snow. I felt bad seeing her out there all alone, so I suited up and went out there with her even though I didn't really have the energy for it. She was so proud of the snow angels that she made and the perfect snowballs that her snowball maker produced, then she asked me to push her in the swing. Once she got going, I sat down on the bench next to the swing just to watch her. She was so full of energy and life that when i saw the smile of joy on her face I nearly lost it. I keep wondering how many more of these opportunities I will have. My prognosis isn't bad at thiis point, but I've felt like such crap lately that it's hard to keep perspective. When I was single, I wasn't that interested in having kids and felt like I wasn't reallly equipped to interact with them. I never thought that I would love anyone as much as I do those girls. I often don't realize it in my day to day, but in moments like this, when I catch a glimpse of pure joy on their faces, that's when I know it.

While we were out, I brought up more firewood to the deck as our pile was getting low. Lately when I've done this, it's seemed to help my back as the activity seems to loosen things up, but this time it aggravated the pain in my arm from last night which had gone away and when I came in the house, I just really felt like crap all over. I'm not sure what's going on with me today, but I just feel terrible and that led me to this current breakdown. I couldn't hold back any longer, so I locked my self in the bedroom to get it out of my system. Hopefully my Oncologist appointment tomorrow will bring some answers or at least some positive changes.