blooming!

From Hadrien's window I can see all the green around me, in just over 20 days brussels became green and especially the cherry trees are blooming everywhere around our house. On my drive to the hospital to remove the powerport catheter from chest (ouch) and a few nevi for science (thanks Brigitte ma chou chou for driving me) I was just in green land, sunshine and trees all the way from home to Braine where Olivier and his mega-surgical team got all done efficiently and pleasantly.

Arriving home from NKI thursday was easy in a practical sense but "being" home is taking time, what is my place? who am I here and now?

Practically: my house has lots of stairs - so I calculate each up and down move - I realize there is a big distance between how "I want to feel" and "how I feel".  Mindfulness helps me keep the gap smaller....but my brain is often on a holiday here so even meditation can be tricky. The breath in and out is the only one I can do.

Lucky for me Alex is the one who holds the house together as always only more now (grocery shopping, cooking, washing, cleaning, kids to school, homework, plus his own work and deadlines!!!!! did I mention came to take care of me and drove around and about to Amsterdam....and the house if full of greens and flowers everywhere) because even if I wanted to help him I could not. Of course you see him and "close to burnout" would be a good word to describe his current state. Those who are carers would recognize this state of hyperactivity where you do not even get a space to "feel" your own bloody stress, let alone the fear of losing your loved one, and I feel bad not being able to do anything...But this too is part of our learning I guess. My parents arrive on the 7th from Australia and I hope they can take off some of the load especially with the kids and taking care of me.

The kids are being wonderful after the "OHHHHHH" and "ARGHHHHH" of seeing me bald. They said I was ugly but not as ugly as through skype and yesterday they even said lucky your face is the same (whatever that means).  So they made me model a few looks of hats and scarves I could wear.

Even the cat looked at me with weird eyes like "who is that?" I wanted to cuddle him but then remembered all the advice I got before the released me about infections etc:

1) for the next 3 months I am at very high risk of getting infections which could land me back to hospital and so avoid crowds, movies, big auditoriums, public transport and sick people and kids....I am a mother, take public transport every day with the sardine rush hour people, and teach in big auditoriums...lucky the academic year is over. Will buy some masks for the tram that will surely help with keeping the kids away :(

2) for the next 2 weeks I will still be extremely tired and often need to nap and rest, my loss appetite and nausea (from the chemo and just conditioning to bad food at hospital) will also last a few more weeks, small meals of anything that appeals rather than trying to force a normal meal - so lucky me I had gained so much weight these past 2 years I can finally fit into my clothes again!

3) take time, take time...and take time.

No advice was given with how to deal with the mind, the psychological part of TIL, by that I mean the tumors are melting away day by day.....I am just in awe of the immune system at work, have gone from horrible pain to zero pain, regained full mobility of arm and visibly the areas where huge tumors where growing in arm and neck line and freaking us out around easter are regaining a "normal nothing ever happened here" appearance.

I really catch myself just saying "here for now it is like that", I remind myself to not become too attached (intellectually I can) but part of myself is just jumping up and down of joy integrating that for now the cancer is going away and continues to go away daily...

And none of this would have been possible without all of YOU, so do you see it now?

BLOOMING!!!!!