Merry Christmas

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Ours was good...no great because we were home. We spent Christmas Eve at my parents house having homemade chicken noodle soup...my family seldom does the can stuff unless we are in a hurry. The girls love to be around their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Natalia can't run around and play so having Pia and Preston out of her sight was hard on her but they both made an huge effort to reign in their energy and play in front of her...not to mention all the really, REALLY bad knock knock jokes. I guess you have to be 4 and 6 years old for some of them to even make sense but they laughed their little butts off. It was wonderful to see them all playing together. My great nephew Preston is only 5 months younger then Natalia and they have always been thick at family do's. It was amazing to see how gentle and attentive he was to Natalia. She lasted far longer at Mom and Dad's then we expected. Expanding lots of energy trying to keep up with everything going on around her tires her so quickly that we only last about an hour at most events. Even just walking around the mall wears her out.

Christmas morning...wonderful gifts, bright happy faces and tons of mocos. What did the girls and I bring back from San Francisco? Head colds! Pia was finally getting over her head cold (she had it for a week) when we rushed to UCSF. She had generously shared it Natalia and I. Between a small cold, little sleep and high amounts of stress by the time our bodies relaxed at home we had massive head colds going. We were supposed to go out to my brother Tony's for Christmas Day. The girls love going there. They have horses, dogs, cats and tons of room to run. Did I mention the trampoline? It is kids paradise there. We held out hope until about 2:30pm but Natalia's cheeks kept getting redder (a sign her body is not doing well) and the coughing had begun. Natalia has seasonal asthma on top of every thing else that seriously flares when she has a head cold...out came the inhalers. Pia's eyes had dark circles under them and she just wanted to lay in bed a watch her shows. My head felt like it needed to be removed and washed out. Edgar and I spent much of the afternoon trying to convince Natalia that she desperately needed a nap but she fought it all afternoon and instead constantly blew her nose. A good thing because by 6pm she was feeling and looking a little better. We still have the dumb colds but they are on their way out the door.

Natalia and Edgar head back to UCSF tomorrow. It will be a follow up to the hospital visit, regular clinic and chemo visit all rolled into one. Once Christmas was out of the way, I began to focus on this visit. It's not that I am freaking out but I am feeling some tension about this visit...the same kind that I get before an MRI. I feel good about how she is doing but I have spent the last few days on the web looking for blogs about people going through the same experiences we are. All of the support that we receive from you all is awesome and makes me feel incredible but there are times that I just need to know that someone else out there knows what we are going through. That all these emotions that I keep feeling aren't a sure sign that I am slowing going insane. A few of them just irritated me and a couple truely touched me. The words "you're such a strong person for being able to carry on" no longer bring comfort...the numbness has worn off and those words just tick me off now. What do honestly think you would do if it happened to you? Crawl under a rock and hide? NO! Not just NO but HELL NO. When you are a parent part of the job description is you carry on and try make your child's life, no matter what they are going through, the best it can be. I read a lot of different children's stories over the past 2 days and been up until 1-2am doing it...major thing for a person who is usually asleep by 10pm. I learned that yes even going through cancer there are some people out there who wax on in their stories about the peace that their God has brought them during their child's illness. That also irritates the bejezzers out of me. My God has given us trials that need to be faced on a daily basis and they are not fun and they don't always bring understanding...but they do bring growth and awareness, which leads to moments of peace before the next battle begins. Do Edgar and I fight more often? Yes, because who else knows the pain we go through on a daily basis? Does it bring us closer together and are we learning from these experiences? Yes, we are! I think without our occasional battles and yes some of them are epict proportion we would break rather then bend with all that we handle. It was comforting to know that I am not the only person feeling and handling the battle this way.

Thus finishes my tirade...Love to you all and thanks for listening, Roni