Sunday, August 19, 2012

"i'm wide awake, i'm wide awake....i wish i knew then, what i know now....thunder rumbling,castles crumbling, i am trying to hold on, God knows that i tried,seeing the bright side....i'm wide awake, i'm wide awake. " Wide awake, by katy perry

sometimes i waste time wishing that  i had discovered my thyroid cancer earlier. if i had gotten it earlier, it would ( maybe) not have spread into my lymph node, or two of my parathyroids. i could have been a stage one or two instead of a three. but what good does this do? i have always believed that you have to play the hand you are dealt in life and who knows ( besides God, of course) what that will be. i am always trying to look on the bright side of things,though, and gather positive things from my experience.

but it is hard! it is difficult going about- o.k. i said that i would not be using the phrase the"new normal". now i have to come up with a phrase of my own. let's see- how about my ELE ( enlightened life experience) . i do feel sort of enlightened. i feel that i have been let in on a little bit of life's big secrets. you know the ones, the ones that are right there in front of you but you can not see them because you are focusing on all the wrong stuff. now instead of rushing all around, doing my chores, working,etc, i try to actually take a few moments to breathe and look around me.

the other day on my way to work, i saw a great blue heron flying over a small stream  near town. now,herons  are not too rare out where i live, but it is unusual to see one in town. i bet though, that i was one of the few people who saw the beautiful bird. people are rushing to work, rushing to school, rushing, rushing, rushing. i am making an attempt to slow my life down a bit. to notice people- say hello, open doors, that kind of thing. i also try to appreciate the beauty around me. not easy to do, i will admit, especially when i am at work.

my husband just had vein surgery this past week, and has been recovering. i got to take care of him for a change. he has been, and still is, so good to me. i guess now we both realize how fragile life can be, and how you need to appreciate every moment with someone special. i sure did not think about this when i was newly married and in my twenties. i felt invincible then- hardly ever sick, that kind of thing.

one of the things that my husband and i did this weekend was to see the new movie, " hope springs" with meryl streep and tommy lee jones. it was a really good and funny movie about marriage in your "later years" and how you need to nurture and take care of your relationship. i swear, we were some of the younger people at the movie theater though. the folks in front of us, and this is no joke, came in on walkers( bless their hearts and good for them!)

i also got to remove the bandaging from my husband's leg. he still has the steri-strips ( instead of stitches) and has to wear a compression stocking, but all of the bandaging( from his thigh to his foot) had to be cut off. we get ready to do it, and i had some bandage scissors- i thought that  i was  pretty prepared for this. i said, " honey, do you think that we should put down a towel on the bed?" he says, horrified, " A TOWEL? DO YOU THINK THAT THERE WILL BE BLOOD? " i was laughing so hard that i was crying. of course i did not cut him, and when i got past a certain area, he was fine. humor goes a long way if you have had cancer, or if you have a spouse, i guess.

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