The Portal: Portal-ity Thoughts

A Room With A View . . . My corner for the morning - a warm blanket and peanut butter & jelly toast . . .I'm all set Yeah.  Being facetious.  I can see some treetops!  The cancer center is BUSY!  Everyone is getting their after Christmas dose of life-saving poison and the nurses are trying to keep up.  I thought I’d bring you with me today, dear reader, (⬅️ Morgan 😂) and show you what a day in the life of this grieving, and now, cancer patient, looks like.   My appointment was at 8.  8:30 . . .I had my port accessed and headed back to the waiting room.  I saw the Doc about – 9:30.  He listened to my heart, squeezed my ankles, and asked how it went on Round One. I told him it went really great.  Then I shared my genetic results with him.  I'm BRCA 1 Positive - so this is definitely inherited and genetic.   His reaction was a little shocked, and he confirmed what Mayo said about another surgery.  So, after chemo is all done and I've recuperated, I'll have the bilater

Pick your poison.  That phrase has been turning around in my head for a solid 24 hours now.  Sometimes you don’t get to pick your poison, but you end up taking it anyway.  Did John pick his poison in this case? I suppose he did. When the nurse mentioned I'd be getting fentanyl on Wednesday my heart about stopped.  Can I choose?  That particular drug killed my son.  FENTANYL. I know there is a place for it in the medical world – in the world of pain, but how do you respond to a nurse telling you that you will be given fentanyl for your “pain” when they place your chemo port on Wednesday.  Wait, what??? I felt exactly the same when they offered it to Kate when she was waiting for her epidural . . .she declined.  Do I?  Can I decline that any more than I can decline the weeks and weeks of poison that I am willingly signing up for with Chemotherapy?  It sure makes me think.   Honestly.  I feel like cancer has ruled a good portion of my life.  My mom had breast cancer three times, my si

As the year 3 mark approaches – I find myself in a quiet and melancholy place. Year one was shock and horror, people, appointments with the DA – almost a blur. I learned how to listen to books to put me to sleep – as I couldn’t read, and I am still struggling to finish one book the old fashioned way, although I’ve started many. Brain fog, disbelief, searching, what-ifs. It was a year of people not knowing what to do with us, of mountains of tears and extreme emotions.  Of anger and profound sadness.  A year where food lost its flavor and coffee became all that tasted good.    I avoided people, places, and questions.  It was a year that I couldn’t talk about him without crying, where I dreaded any kind of get together because of the questions that were asked and because of the reality of the lives we were living.  I said no.  I know it hurt people’s feelings, but how could they possibly understand how a wedding or a graduation party ripped our hearts out?  How we felt like a black c

September 11 th , 2020.  Let that sink in for a moment.  What comes to mind when you remember that day in 2001?  Living in rural America, we saw it all unfold on television.  People running away, fireman, rescue, and police rushing towards.  Chaos and horror.  Planes crashing and buildings turned to rubble. Disbelief and death – stories of lives lost and terrorism.  We felt, maybe for the first time, vulnerable and attacked.  But we came together.  We stood strong and our patriotism was a beautiful picture of unity and love for the country and for our fellow man.  Stories of heroism, of protection, of last phone calls, of the men and women who gave everything to serve, protect, and save.   2020.  Almost twenty years later, where are we?  CoVid 19, pandemic, shutdowns, masks, an election year, riots, disunity, defunding threats, quarantine and isolation, chaos and again . . .horror.  It’s a year we are all ready to move on from.     And yet, amidst all the arguing and fighting and tensi

I lift up my eyes to the mountains where  does my help come from?   My help comes from the  Lord ,  the Maker of heaven and earth. Psalm 121 Yesterday, I wrote an article and submitted it to an online magazine.  In it, I made no reference to my faith – just grief.  I usually always end my writings with a positive faith-filled message.  But I didn’t.  Why?  Because someone commented on a piece I wrote, saying that it was "great up until the religious part."  Friends, without the religious part, the faith part, the actual reason for our hope part – it’s just words, in my opinion. So I wrote a sad piece on grief and what to expect, without sharing my hope. I'm about to correct that now. Because my hope, my faith, my Jesus? They are everything to me. I don’t understand a world where things just accidentally fell into place. Where there is no Creator, no author, no God of the Universe.  How does beauty come from chaos?  How would the human body with all its

The darkness clouds my mind, my heart, the very atmosphere I breathe, even on a beautiful sunny day.  The hole you've left, the black one, the void, it's always there.  I think that's the thing you can't comprehend.  Hearts are fragile, and when it comes to your children, and a breaking or rending, a tearing, such as this . . .well, how can that hole be filled with anything other than you?  For the part that is missing is you . I keep trying to learn about Substance Use Disorder {SUD} and how it affects the brain, the emotions, the life of its victim - and as I struggle to live without you, it becomes more and more clear how delicate the balances are.  When I took the free Harvard opioid class, I learned some things - but one really stuck with me.  The limbic system.   It's the part of the brain that controls emotions, pleasure, relaxation, and contentment.  Well, when those opioids hit that spot and the feeling washes over you - it takes away all the

Instead of a single rose from you this year John, I had to search the internet and find “Cemetary flowers” for your grave. You see, son, the world has gone crazy and a pandemic has hit. I couldn’t go to Hobby Lobby and put together a long lasting bouquet for you, but had to order one online. They are beautiful, for fake flowers, and they remind me of the times you brought me a single rose. Or wrote me a note. I miss you. This is an article I wrote my first Mother’s Day, (2018) but never published. Two years later and a lot of editing down to a “kinder gentler” article, and I submitted it to Still Standing.  Here is an excerpt: {“You know what the day is going to bring. Mom posts will abound. Happy families, tributes and photos of flowers and gifts, and an occasional post about a mom who is a little disappointed in her day.  She had high expectations for what she thought her day should look like, and somehow her children came up short. Try not to comment, or punch any

DAY 847 Dear John, Dad and I went to Israel.  You would have loved it.  You would have wanted to stay and join their Army.  They looked sharp in their uniform!   I know people think there is so much danger and unrest, at least us here in the US, but it’s not like everyone thinks. We are all guilty of a lot of assumptions as to what a place is really like.  Weird, really, when you’ve never experienced it for yourself, and it’s all based on the opinions of others and the media.  I felt that way before I went to New York – and it wasn’t at all what I thought it would be.  It’s like anywhere else with people, sites, food, and daily life.  How different would life be if we could all see the truth without all the haze that blinds us? Anyway, I wanted to tell you, John, that I have a whole new appreciation for Mary.  When we visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and stood in front of Mary’s statue, there is a sword plunged deep into her heart. What an accurate depiction of losing a