Cheek

Thank You's, and Fresh Starts, and Other Stuff

First--thank you so much for your words of comfort, for your advice (not so assvicey) and your virtual hugs. It's been really, really hard here these past few days. During the two weeks when we didn't know what was going on (something on my mom's kidney, but they weren't sure if it was encapsulated or not, then thought it was and they'd just remove the kidney), I was doing okay--fingers in ears, blinders on, lalalalalalalalala. Once we heard that the tumor wasn't encapsulated, that it was possibly in her lungs, the fingers plopped out of my ears and all of a sudden I was on the Train To Hell. Every stop produced more and more horrible thoughts and I couldn't get off it no matter what I did--all I could think about was all the horror that we'd be in for, and it just got worse and worse as I went further into it. But I threw myself into teaching regardless (seniors in high school have this funny way of making you temporarily forget your problems--most of them are so funny and awesome), and I threw myself into the kids (so when MP woke up crying because she couldn't find her "red top"--which turned out to be the top to a bubble bath container, I.E. "garbage" she had reimagined as a toy, I simultaneously thought "you're CRYING about GARBAGE while my MOM IS SICK???" and "THANK GOD you are crying about garbage." 

Anyway, my father just became a US citizen after 43 years of living in this country, my brother is visiting my parents, and my mother seems to be doing a bit better. I sent flowers and chocolate and all of my love, and on Monday she'll go for a biopsy and hear the results late next week. So I'm learning to breathe again till then. And hoping against hope that those spots in her lungs are just bits of scar tissue from the pneumonia she's had. Thanks again for all of your lovin'--it reminds me why I still keep this here blog.

As for fresh starts, I'll be making one soon. My brother designs websites now, and he's offered to design mine for free with a new Internet address, the whole shebang. The new address will be www.gotcheek.com, but you'll be redirected there from here. I'm not sure when it will launch, but once it does I expect I'll be posting more and resurrecting my balls from the cold dark ground where I buried them two years ago with the closing of NO. I'm tired of censoring myself, of caring what other people think so much. My writing has suffered because I'm not blogging more, and I quit just as things were getting good for me. So I'm going to try a comeback. Heh. Such as it is.

In Other Stuff, MP is a freaking awesome big sister, Chloe is 5 months and still nursing, although we've added veggies, fruit, and rice cereal to her diet, since she's a voracious little thing. This has not affected how much she nurses, like the doctors said it would. She loves to eat. She loves to nurse the most, and I am obsessed with it and slightly maniacal now--the little huffing panting sound she makes when I get ready to nurse and she knows nummies are coming, the way she frantically sucks if she thinks I'm going to pull her off after a bit of inactivity, the way she clutches at my bra strap----melllllllllllllllttttt. MP is learning her letters--she can identify all of them--and she's loving and sweet and funny and so, so smart. And she has an incredible memory--if you say she can have a jellybean in a week if she's good she'll hold you to it all week long. I have to pinch myself every day--I am just so lucky in the kid department.

Thanks again for sticking around. I plan on getting back into the Blogworld, reading more, commenting again, all that good stuff, too--because there are some of you that I really, really miss. The break's been good for me but I need to come back.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. And thanks again for being here.

An Update I Wish I Wasn't Making

Today I found out that my mother is very sick. We've known for a few weeks now that something was wrong in her kidney--they found a tumor there. But it looked like the tumor was confined. Now they think it's spread, possibly to her lungs--there are spots there. This would be Stage Four kidney cancer, then. They've scheduled more tests, but the doctors apparently said (this from my dad, who couldn't stop crying) they don't even know if taking out the kidney will help at this stage.

I am, as you can probably guess, not doing well. My parents live far from me, and I'm trying to figure out when I should go, for how long, what to do about work, all that stuff. I need to suddenly be the adult here, be the one asking questions and holding everyone up, because they aren't doing well. I'm very close to my parents, and they are falling apart before my eyes, and it's the scariest, most terrifying thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

I've lived these past few weeks in a daze of kids and house and preparations for Christmas, not letting myself ask the question "what happens if." My brother just asked me that question. He said, "Karen, what's going to happen?"

I don't want to know the answer to that if this thing has, indeed, spread to her lungs.

I'll know more soon, because I couldn't get a lot from my dad. He was barely coherent, and then I suppose I asked too many questions, because he hung up on me.

And somehow I have to find it in me to be a mom--a functioning mom--around my kids. How do you hold up their world when your own is crumbling into pieces around you?