Digging Deep

Have you thought with any seriousness about what your life would look like without you?  Like, for real imagined yourself gone from every day from now on?  It's a dark and dangerous fantasy to see the gaping hole left behind.  For me it's all about not seeing through what I started.  It somehow seems on pause.

Marriage.  Kids to raise.  My business.  Our home.  Travel.  Wanting to be an Aunt.  The darkness chases me through the day and not because I'm thriving on the drama but because fear is a dangerous dance partner.  Always wanting to dip on slippery floors.  The words "body scan" make me want to run away only I mostly hate running.  I feel the fear rising like a cup filling up over the day.  It's emptied mostly by crying so far.  I have yet to strategize other cup emptying methods but for now - waterproof mascara.  Wine.

Endless gratitude for partnering off young and jumping the gun to start a family and buy a home.  So many years filled with love and babies and firsts.  So much gratitude that those years have been mostly filled with healthy kids and food on the table and vacations and fulfilling work and friends and family.

But also anger that there were not so great times and I get that not all of life can be a parade (if you like that sort of thing) but I'm mad we spent any time at all under the dark cloud of my dad's mental illness.  That we wasted time in fear and now we are seeing more fear and it's a days work to prevent it from consuming us.  That we spent time worrying about things that don't matter in the long run.  Things that will mean nothing in the end.

I keep going over in my mind the details so I thought I would put it out here to be clear for myself as I mostly feel in a fog and dumping it out here might help:

Mexico January 2014: vacation!  baby 3 coming!  ...felt a lump in my throat
February 18, 2014: Ultrasound to see what said lump is
February 21, 2014: Family Doc calls to say it needs to be biopsied - panic
June 3, 2014: Biopsy
June 12, 2014: Biopsy shows benign lumps Dr. Chan recommends ultrasound again in a year unless it grow - hooray!
July 19, 2014: Sebastian born and healthy - pure magic
April 15, 2015: Appt with Dr. Chan because lump is growing - ultrasound confirms this and we decide to watch and see what happens in 3 months
July 31, 2015: Trillium Ultrasound
August 14, 2015: Results that lumps are growing and decision is made for partial thyroidectomy given that biopsy showed lumps were benign previously but lumps are too large for biopsy now to be accurate
November 23, 2015: Partial Thyroidectomy
December 2, 2015: Both lumps confirmed as papillary carcinoma

I'm not sure why that makes me feel better but it does, some clarity or control of the dates.  Who knows.

I don't recommend thinking about your kids growing up without you and the amount of money you should set aside for their therapy.  I am a fan of embracing the options so we will play out all of them which means clinging to each other in the night promising to never let go and vowing to hang on tight until it's over, whatever "it" may be.

This is a lonely walk and it's a walk you walk alone with so many shouting love and encouragement from the sidelines.  I see this now.  This winning the lottery of cancer is tricky.  I'm hoping these words sound twee in the Spring and I can come back and delete my dramatic footprint.

So much to leave behind when the time comes and if it comes early man, at least I have an inbox full of people who love me.  A partner who will never let go and some serious shit started that I'm going to fight damn hard to finish and there is some serious joy hidden under the fear in all of that so I'm digging down deep.

One of the sweet things I started