Friday January 19, 2018. The sun was shining today; I needed this. The weather has been unbearably gloomy as of late, and the blue sky was a welcome reprieve from the grey doldrums of winter in Southern Ontario. It's funny how the colour blue is used to describe a melancholy state, but a sky that's coloured blue can make us feel wonderful.
The last month of E's treatment has been wearisome. We had a 6 day hospital stay over Christmas when E had a fever, and his counts were low. Almost immediately upon returning home, our eldest, J, was home sick for a week. Two days after J returned to daycare, we took E to our satellite hospital for regular bloodwork. At home, he was fine, but by the time we arrived at the POGO clinic, he had a fever.
So we were admitted for another hospital stay.
This time, we were only in for 3 days, but it's a big disruption in your regular routine. My mom was kind enough to come and stay with us for a couple of days. She assisted with shuttling J to and from daycare, and helping with a number of things around the house, so that we could focus on E and the hospital.
I've been feeling quite low during the past month. We've been quite isolated as of late due to E's immune system being down due to Delayed Intensification. All around us, friends and family are down with sicknesses. We dare not take E out in public places, or to visit anyone, because a simple fever would mean another hospital stay. He's going through enough as it is; we want to keep him illness free as much as we can. I've been trying to write a post about some wonderful, generous people we encountered at the hospital over Christmas, but the words aren't coming out properly. I want to get the tone right, but I feel that I can't get in the proper headspace to do it justice because I'm feeling so awful. I don't remember the last time I shaved. I feel like I'm scruffy and unkempt, but I really don't give a damn. Some days I'm feeling a lot of anger. Other days, it's sadness bordering on tears. There's been a few days where I feel like I just want to crawl into a hole and die. One thing that's been quite pervasive has been an utter lack of patience. I'm down, I'm exhausted, I'm not sleeping well, and I don't always have the patience for J. Overall, he's a good kid, but he needs an abundance of refocusing so that he's not hurting his brother or getting into mischief around the house. Eventually, my patience will run out, and I'll raise my voice to him more than what is needed. Then we're both upset, and in addition to the stress and anxiety I'm carrying around, I take on a load of parental guilt. I don't want to yell at him; I don't want to feel this frustrated all of the time. I'm spread too thin, and I just don't know what to do.
I don't know that there's a solution to what is going on right now. Things should lighten up, things should get better. We just have to get through the rest of Delayed Intensification. It helps a bit to write, hence this blog, but there's not always time or energy for that. I think that everything I'm feeling is probably normal given our situation of having a child with cancer. But I guess that's one of the reasons why I started this blog; the hope that another parent going through the same thing may stumble upon my ramblings and have a moment of normalcy because they can identify with the struggle.
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