Thursday, December 16, 2010

With uncertainty comes hope

Last Thursday was a bad day. I woke up to find an email saying that a family friend - Rob (my best friend's brother) had had an accident and had just come out of his first of 2 surgeries. One week later, he's still in a coma but hanging on. Another lesson that no one needed about how precious life is and that everything can literally change in the blink of an eye.

Later that day I went for my 3 month check up to find out that I needed some further tests to determine if my world was changing. I have been having some increasing pain around my ribs and so went for an ultrasound the next day and then a full body bone scan this week. The good news is that the ultrasound was fine and the bone scan didn't show anything of concern where my pain was. It did show some "uptake" (from the radioactive stuff they put into my bloodstream) on my left 2nd anterior rib. So the doctor called to discuss if I'd been in a car accident or had any other trauma to the area that might explain what they thought was a fracture. Which I hadn't, so off to x-ray.

Today they called to let me know that the x-ray was "unremarkable". In cancer terms, this is good. Although my brother quickly reminded me that I am very remarkable....what a smart a**. It's still unknown why this little rib is lighting up, so they will repeat the bone scan in 3 months to see if it has changed.

So the last week has been a bit draining. It actually feels like a month has passed and it's not until I go to sleep at night that I realize how draining carrying stress around with you actually is. I know that the news I got is good, but there's still that glimmer of uncertainty which continues to follow me around. Just enough to remind me that life is short and unpredictable, so make sure to live the life I want. It's time for me to figure out what that is and take some action towards it.

What has finally sunk in from Rob and my recent scare is that we don't have a whole lot of control over the big things in life. So we just have to try and enjoy the ride - whatever it is. But at least with uncertainty ... there is still hope. And hope is what keeps us all holding on at the end of the day - isn't it?

3 comments:

  1. Good to hear from you Tasha - you and Talyn are often in my thoughts . . . it's such a tough time of year. Try to remember to be gentle with yourself.

    Things like that often remind us to take pleasure in the little things too. I HATE that I lost Elias and would take him back in a heartbeat, but as did you and Ryan, we all learned a lot about life in the process (though sometimes I would happily take back the ignorance too . . .)

    Hugs to you both,
    ~C~

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  2. I am soo very sorry to hear you had that scare . Thank God you are still in the system and looked after so well . That fear is a layered fear , so I hope you can feel that you can breathe again now . Sending you many wishes of love , joy ,peace and beautiful old and new memories .

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  3. You are such an inspiration Tasha... I wish you the warmest holidays filled with much love. I also hope Rob gets better and has a strong recovery.

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