I found myself returning to the hospital today to have last minute paperwork completed by my health care providers there. These last minute finicky details have had me grumbling, wishing back my small company of a few months ago...they didn't have nearly so many checkpoints such as these...but then I look at the twenty-one grand-bill my butt has charged and remember that there are perks to those large companies that provide kick-ass benefits.

Dad took me there to the hospital...I cannot drive, really. Stupid place for a boo-boo. It's hard returning to the UW for these things...that was Mom's hospital. That's the Cancer hospital. With my chosen HMO, I should be going to St. Mary's...but my doctor still feels I need Cancer experts working on my case. I'm scared out of my wits.

I received my packet from the geneticist the other day. My oncological surgeon made certain to refer me to the very same geneticist who reviewed Mom's case in 2004. Brenda kept a file of all their 2004 findings, and reviewing them yesterday, found the odds of Mom's illness recurring among her family members to be 1,000,000 to 1. Yet, my doctor tells me she's no longer willing to believe what they know. Nick thinks I ought to take up gambling...the odds looking to be in my favor and all.

Not that life comes with guarantees or anything, but it would be so lovely to receive a clean bill of health...to know that the ache of recovery is leading somewhere pain free. My grandmother is in the hospital right now...a UTI that's spread to her kidneys and who knows where else. She keeps falling...Dad's talking assisted living. Great...the badness of luck has spread to the other side of the family...woo! Aunt Debbie says come New Year's Eve, she's going to guzzle a whole bottle of Asti and celebrate the end of the worst year on record.

My grandmother feeds on drama, she love people calling her hospital room and visiting her...feeling sorry for her. I happen to be the opposite...the less people who see me at less than 100%, the better. I don't want phone calls while I'm in pain...I don't want to make small talk when it hurts...I don't want people to visit because whether I'm up to the task or not, I'll put on the exhausting face of nonchalance and good health.

I get that from Mom...that booger. I've always been proud that I inherited my mother's softness, sweetness, and love of expression...but I got the other junk too. Thanks a lot, Mother. That trait of hers that irritated me so...she never let people know how badly she felt, and they never knew how rapidly the disease was spreading. Her sister saw her in early January, and chided us for leading her to believe that Mom was dying and soon. She was angry at our urgent call for a final visit—she thought we were being overly dramatic. Mom passed away two and a half weeks later.

Dad and I discussed this earlier today, and he put me in my place as only a parent can do. "That was your mother," he said, agreeing she was both bullheaded and heroic up until the very end. He agreed that he, too, was very afraid where my road of health care was headed. But he reminded me of time's cruelty, too. "She didn't want to meet Nick until she was better, remember? She was determined she was going to pull through, and she didn't want him to see her down...it's sad that he never got to really know her." Yes, and it will always be one of those great regrets...that I didn't force the meeting...I guess a part of me wanted to believe she was going to pull through, too.

For a person who doesn't believe in regrets, I seem to be swimming in a lot of them lately. I found an old email from Mom last week:

03.20.05
It is Sunday night and I am home alone. I just got home from Debra and Brenda's. We had a nice birthday dinner for Debbie. I was just looking at websites to hats/scarves. Go to headcovers.com see if there are any there that you like. I don't quite know what to do - get a wig (seems like a pain), get a hat or two or get scarf, or go without anything. Isn't it funny how we worry about how we look so much. I should be ashamed. But, I'm too busy being scared right now to be ashamed.

I love you so much...and I miss you. The house feels emptier with you back in North Carolina...come home again soon, ok? I need my best friend.
Mom

And I'm led to wonder why I ever moved away. My dear friend, Sarah, once cheered to me, "I am so happy for you...this is the only thing you've ever done JUST for you!" And years later, I feel like the most ungrateful, selfish child who ever graced this life. I didn't know that after I moved away the fairy tale would be irrevocably broken. My time in NC enriched me personally—I fulfilled a lifelong dream of escaping Wisconsin and Winter, after all—but it wasn't until I left that the ache for the Midwest began to take hold of my heart. I had three years of feeling completely homeless, yet my patience (read: stubbornness) prevented me from returning to my home state sooner. Was I wrong? Did I know what I had before I left? Damn that hindsight being 20/20!

I'm a big believer of the "bigger plan" theory...everything does happen for a reason, even if we're too small to understand why. It drives my loved ones bonkers, but it keeps me going. So many now, so many intimate with the details of my bad luck chain of events, have suggested that something big and great is coming my way, and I've needed a couple years of misfortune to appreciate whatever it may be. I remember Nick talking to my pastor during Mom's visitation...saying how bad he felt that really my mother's impending death is what enabled him to come to know me. Her illness caused me to leave NC, added to why Miles left, and left me needing a shoulder...I was blessed to find so much more. Pastor Doug creased his eyes and mumbled, "God has a plan..."

You kind of need to shake the world up, like a gigantic snow globe...turn it upside down, then right side up...only then does it look as it should...I'm ready to be righted—and I don't know about you, but I'm getting awfully dizzy with all of this shaking going on.

So, your girlfriend is taken to the hospital because they've determined she has a presacral tumor...they perform a somewhat rushed surgery to drain a rectal abscess of 50 ounces of fluid from a monster infection of this tumor (that they still have to track down and eliminate).

She's trying desperately to regain her strength and youthfulness, and lifts a balance ball behind her to gently strengthen her triceps—she has, you must understand, come to depend on her arms for a lot of her maneuverability...when the lower half ain't workin'...well, you get the picture. The body compensates.

Now, a good boyfriend in this position—and granted, Nick is the best nurse around, and he's been bending his schedule more impressively than a contortionist to fit my needs...but still—would applaud her efforts toward recovery...encourage, cheer, and even celebrate. Nick, on the other hand, captures an innocent moment wherein it appears as though she is pulling a giant growth from her butt.

Good God, I feel attractive.

I am no longer on prescribed medication, having swallowed my last horse-pill-ish antibiotic just this morning. It was a big moment for me. Prescription medication seems to have a lot of nasty side effects...at least with the strong stuff they give you when you've had an abscess in your backside drained of a liter and a half of fluid, anyway. As I was being discharged (and note that I was BEING discharged...let's not have a repeat of Nick telling a coworker as we were completing the final parts of my hospital stay, "She's discharging right now.") my surgeon said the antibiotics they were putting me on were most probably overkill, but she just really wanted to make sure my inner-ugly was dead and gone forever.

Now, the next leg in my journey is filling my time. Jeff and Kara stopped by last night and dropped off several seasons of South Park. Now, I clearly remember telling Mark in December that I would never, ever watch South Park...ever. Moreover, I clearly remember rolling my eyes at Sarah and Jason, back in the day, when they would quote the darn show. I guess, being that I've climbed the ladder of evolution in regards to my lacking tailbone, it's time for the head to regress a touch...even the score a bit, so to speak:

I don't think I ever fully appreciated what Mom's recovery must have felt like. I feel so imprisoned...my mind is racing, active, absorbent, and hell-bent to join the land of the living again...but the body just isn't willing. I feel like I'm wasting my days, and so help me God I will never understand the life of a couch potato. I want to run and jump and be like all of the rest of the kids!

Simple tasks that I know I should be able to do leave me sweaty and dizzy, and I'm frustrated that I can't force myself better. And, I'm land-locked...no where to go but the couch... or a few feet over, the kitchen...I limit my use of the stairs after a klutzy accident on Monday that sent me head-first into a wall...I joked with Nick that I was just relieved it wasn't the other end.

But really, it's a bad moment when you realize that you cannot outsmart the cosmic forces of nature, the supernatural, or the divine...strangely, patience isn't a value that I typically lack. I think I just want to run away from this mess, from the memories, from the implications, from what the future may hold. I just want life to lighten up already.

That being said, I won't look a gift horse in the mouth...my family's received some good news as of late...for the moment, they're calling me Cancer-free, my aunt's breast tissue biopsy came back benign, and my father's sinus problems have cleared, thereby cancelling the surgery they were scheduling. I really have no reason to complain...I just have a brain with too much time to think and too little to think about. I want my body to accelerate and hopefully catch up some day very, very soon.