waiting

(beautiful trip to Madison's Olbrich garden's this week but forgot my camera so please excuse the iphone photos)

It's been 4 weeks since Andy's surgery.  He is feeling well and we are soaking up spring like sponges (an apt metaphor for the continual spring rains around here), but still we are waiting.  Sometimes the wait feels heavy.  What will the genetic tests from Andy's tumor show?  Will they show an obvious match to some trial that has local availability?  Will they show no match at all?  Will he match to a treatment that is more tolerable than the last, or will it be just as tough?  Will we need to travel/relocate for a trial?  Will he just have to fall back on some drugs that are FDA approved for sarcoma without much in the way of strong response statistics?  Will our entire summer be filled with treatment and recovery, or will we be able to camp and take some of the trips we'd like to plan?

I'm a planner (no big secret) but I've learned ways in the last 2 years to curb that habit.  For one it doesn't do a whole lot of good because we've learned life's biggest lesson already:  What's around the next corner is unknown. The stories we tell ourselves about the future will have more variables that we can ever imagine.  

And secondly, I'm much more contented and peaceful when I'm here in this moment, rather than relentlessly thinking about the future.  I think this would be the case with or without cancer.  Yes, with cancer the future can look scary, but we can still make ourselves crazy thinking about the future when we are perfectly healthy.  Believe me, I did plenty of that for years, so this is a lesson well learned.

But in ways I miss that planning, maybe more so in this season than any other.  The plain truth is, my littlest self gets envious sometimes.  This is the season when friends and family plan their vacations, sign their kids up for sleep away camp, invite each other to weddings and summer solstice parties.  When people ask what we are up to this summer, I have to say "I don't know."  Because I don't.  We have NO plans.  Yes, the kids are signed up for day camps and swimming lessons but with the knowledge we may need to pull them out.  I haven't signed them up for the week-long family music camp we long to go to because I don't know if we can, yet.  We haven't mapped out a boundary waters trip or put camping weekends on the calendar.   I'm not venting this for sympathy but rather for perspective.  Honestly I am so thankful that Andy is here in good health facing treatment.  But these weeks of waiting are strange, we both commented this morning that it feels so weird to not know what the summer will bring.  Will Andy be in the garden or will he have to stay out because his immune system is tanked?  Will he be biking?  Should we get that long-eared pup I am longing for or do we need to hold off because we might not be home much?  Iris asks and asks and asks for her riding pony and I softly explain that we need to wait and see.  "Why?" she says.  "Because we aren't sure how Papa will be feeling this summer and I just can't take on another thing."  I hate that answer.  But it's true.

So we wait.  Within a week or two we should have some answers, but it seems never as many as we expect.  Information always brings more questions to ponder.  

But I still have this long view. Meaning that I can look back on today and know that it was good.  I noticed most of the moments, so the day felt long and full.  Not exhausting, just full.  Tomorrow will be another one of those days.  These moments right now, while I sit trying to find explanations and listening to the girls playing in their room and watching Andy chasing calves around the pasture while the night air grows cool and dim, are beautiful and almost infinite if I pay close enough attention.

So for now. This.