Perspective

We've been home for 48 hours now.
Not quite back to 'normal', but definitely the closest we've been in five weeks.

Five weeks.
January 18th to February 18th.

That astonishes me.
Five weeks felt like five months.

Every single day the first thing I thought about was cancer when I woke.
Cancer when I closed my eyes at bedtime.

Dreams unlike any I'd ever experienced before now, dreams I pray I never experience again.

When my friends and family posted photos on social media of their fun events and happenings, I wanted to scream, "My daughter has cancer! How can you be so inconsiderate!"

When I checked out at the grocery store and the cashier asked me how I was, I wanted to spill my sadness all over the register, talk about my daughter's pending cancer tests and treatment.

Every moment, of every day.
My daughter has cancer.
It was written in my mind, on my heart and sat on my lips.

I knew I was struggling.
I knew no one else did anything wrong or spiteful or malicious.

But my heart was hurting so badly that everything I saw, read or experienced just hurt me more.
Bruised deeper.
I couldn't control my feelings, they raged beyond my heart.

Yet, I made it.
My boys made it.
Brooklyn my Warrior Princess made it.

And in the darkest moments, I gained perspective.

When my anger boiled over Brooklyn's incision infection, the  night nurse told me a story about a family admitted for nearly three months due to raging infection in their newborn.
Perspective.

When I wanted to scream on day seven, that we were still admitted, Brooklyn's surgeon shared that she had been walking the wards trying to find a room for a little wee boy who's surgery was about to be cancelled for the second time due to lack of beds.
Perspective.

When, on day ten, Jay and I sat in the play room watching Brooklyn.
When I wanted to get into the ring with all of the negative thoughts still lingering in my brain.
When I wanted to lose it on the doctors for suggesting we 'wait and see' one more day.
When I could feel the literal boiling of my blood.

A husband and wife team carried their daughter into the playroom.
Sick from treatment, without any hair, feeding tube in her little nose.
She could do nothing but sit.
Stare.

Opposite my daughter, moving about in the little play kitchen, attempting to bend over and find new plastic food to feed her baby doll.
So much perspective.

Now, we are home.

My body is no longer running on adrenaline.
It is intensely achy, throbbing at times and struggling to stay awake.
My brain is foggy.
My legs are weak.
My eyes hurt.

I quit my teaching term.
I pulled our wee man from day care.

Life, as I know it, is only a fraction of 'normal'.

But I managed. I breathed through it. My body held my spirit together.

For the first time in years, I am proud of my body.
My physical self carried my spiritual self in a way I didn't realize was possible.

Perspective.