Saturday morning...

    It's Saturday morning and it's still relatively quiet in the house.  Martha is babbling around me, talking about this, that and the other thing.  Looking forward to our possible trip to Ikea and to the RBG to visit Pablo, the turtle, her best friend.  Best friend status tends to be a fickle thing in our household lately - I find mine rescinded quite regularly whenever I say no to something "you're not my best friend anymore!"  Uncle Mark and my sister's dog Mitzi end up claiming best friend status the most of all but Ava's starting to work her way into the best friend position.  Martha truly loves her little sister and is in general very gentle and friendly with her.  So this is the company I have this morning, along with the gentle lights of the Christmas tree - probably the last day for it to be up - I'm pretty sad to see it go this year as it has been a great tree and has been so cozy in the early hours of the morning or last hours of the evening. 
     It's pretty cold outside, I hear neighbour's cars crunching through the frozen winterland and I'm not really looking forward to being out there but it's good too to get out of the house - I end up feeling pretty housebound lately.  Getting out for doctor's appointments seems to be the only occasion to grab a breath of fresh, albeit cold air.   The cold air is definitely hard on my lungs, especially with the pneumonia from last week.  It tends to make my throat spasm which is pretty scary and makes me break out in coughing fits which is rather uncomfortable as well. 
     The thoughts are not really coming the way I'd like this morning... perhaps it's the three year old leaning against me wanting desparately to do some typing or the baby restless in her basket in our room or thinking of how this day will go, how this month will go, how this year will go.  So many thoughts roaming around the wilderness of my mind and kicking me out of bed early to think them over.  Thinking of friends who are dealing with cancer, thinking of our dear family, thinking of work, which I do miss, thinking of the season which has just passed and which we did enjoy, thinking of the messages we heard in church and how to work our way into this new year.  So much thinking is liable to make my brain get kinda frazzled. 
    My original thought for this post was to focus on hands... on how much mine have changed, how the chemo and pregnancy and unwellness in the spring really had an effect on my hands.  I'll share a few pictures of my hands and nails so you have some idea what I mean.  The chemo is tough on fingers with a terrible cold sensitivity, although with this last round of chemo, the dose has been reduced - partly due to the numbness in my fingers and partly due to the neutropenia from last cycle - neutropenia means a low overall white cell count and since white cells are what fights infection, if they are too low, it's dangerous to give chemotherapy as they might not recover well and leave the patient vulnerable to any infections.... hard to avoid at this time of year.  The chemo also can leave my hands feeling like they've had a very bad sunburn and turn bright red and swollen.  Once again, with the reduced dose, that is also better this time but with reduced doses, comes fears about what the chemo is doing, is it doing enough?  We can't let up on fighting this monster!

You can see my nails are severely dented and misshapen - this is something called Beau's lines...
They are also much softer and more prone to hangnails and breaking easily.

My palms are not as red as usual but they are sensitive still...I feel that they feel too big for my arms sometimes....

     Hands... what do we need them for?  Caring for our children, caring for ourselves, washing, drying, changing diapers, driving, brushing hair, making bottles, doing dishes, reading, writing, playing games, making beds, doing laundry, hugging and caressing and a million zillion other things.  Now imagine that doing any of those things is difficult due to the symptoms I talked about - it leaves you feeling very vulnerable and feeling kinda useless.  Doing this or that causes damage or side effects and then nothing gets done and I feel like I can't care for my family properly.  I hate this - the debilitating part of this chemo, this cancer, that makes me feel like if we keep going with treatment, my hands will just get worse.  It's scary and yet we must plunge further into our treatment plans... trusting that the doctors know what's best, when to hold back, what's safe and and trusting too that God, the ultimate physician, knows the plans and keeps us safely in His hands...as He has promised to do.