Good advice for any situation

'Member when I was all happy earth child in my approach to this new year? Promise yourself gifts, make Mondays fun, bed the paperboy, etc.? Well, that was before I knew that 2010 was going to be such a mother fucking mother fucker. (Literally? Sort of?) After spending the day in Boston for my mom's adrenal gland biopsy on Thursday, Dan and I then got a call at 6am Friday morning that his mom---who had been recovering suspiciously slowly from gall bladder surgery---had called 911 and gone to the ER in the middle of the night. By the time we got down to Connecticut at 11am, she was going in for a further procedure due to complications from the initial surgery. My mother-in-law is 78-years-old; complications are scary. She's still in the hospital and will be there for a bit longer before moving to a rehabilitative center where she'll stay until she has completely recovered. The doctor said she's "out of the woods" (to which MB, my sister-in-law who got on a plane from London as soon as she heard her mom was in the ER, said, "She was in the woods?")

We stayed down there through the weekend and slept in Dan's old bedroom. I love this room with the trophies still on the shelves and sports pennants on the wall. I like picturing boy Danny in there jumping on the bed (which never could have happened because the ceilings are so low that as a teenager he stuck a tag on the wall from one of those old-school label makers that said, "WATCH YOUR HEAD" that is still there today). It's neat to scan the bindings of all the old high school reading list books that are still in their place and see his high school diploma (Class of '86!) mounted on the wall.

We didn't get back home to NH until after eight last night (thus my blogging absence) at which point I crawled directly into bed with my Oprah magazine. Dan is worried about his mom but glad to know she's in the best place for the care she needs right now and also on the mend. While we were down there he washed and folded all the clothes in her laundry basket, made up her bed with fresh sheets, had copies of her house key made for himself and his siblings, made lemon jello---her favorite kind---to bring to the hospital since she's barely eaten anything since the surgery and stocked her house up with some non-perishables so there will be food in when she eventually gets home. If I ever decided to shoot out a kid, I hope it has some Dan in it (and not the paperboy). (I think I'm too old to make schtupping the paperboy jokes...please take comfort in the fact that we don't even have a paperboy.)

Despite all the seriousness in the air these days, we did have a bunch of laughs with MB and Dan's brother and sister-in-law and niece and nephew who also came into town. If you're doing these things right---celebrating life even at its most frightening moments---then I think there should be a lot of laughs.

Not that I'm feeling especially light-hearted about tomorrow's appointment with the thoracic surgeon when we will find out the results of my mom's biopsies and learn exactly what type of lung cancer we are up against. We could have probably gotten the results of the first biopsy (of the lymph nodes around the lung) already but my parents decided that they wanted to get all information at one time; a decision which was initially hard for me to understand but not in any way up to me. My brain, which in a world of vast unknowns would like to squirrel away as many knowns as possible, wanted the results as soon as they were available. My mom and dad figured they would find it out all at once during tomorrow's appointment because what would they be able to do with the information in those few interim days anyway?

And this is where I realized they were probably right. Because the fact is, even though I will be able to come home tomorrow and narrow my research and thus dig deeper, there's really nothing more I will be able to do. Then we will just be waiting until the chemo starts. And then once the chemo starts there is still nothing to be done. Then we will just be waiting for the next appointment to find out of it's working and then the appointment after that and so on. I can busy myself with studying this subject for a while (and am still determined to do so) but I will be no closer to knowing about the specific cancer that is lurking inside my mom---it is uniquely hers---or how it will behave or respond to treatment. There is no way to know this.

That blows.

But I will have to learn to find comfort---or at least the ability to get through the day---in a state of unknowing. Not exactly, as Dan would tell you, my strength. Though, even as I write these words I find myself dreading tomorrow's appointment and it is ignorance-is-bliss-flavored dread. Hungry as I think I am for information, all of it seems too much to swallow. Sometimes, despite my knowing about the benefits of earlier intervention, I find myself wishing we didn't even know about the cancer; that we could go back to the complete unknowing. And ridiculous as this sounds, I also find myself feeling guilty for the fact that we do know. The only reason my mom had the CAT Scan which showed the cancer is because her Ear, Nose and Throat doctor ordered it after seeing something suspect on her chest x-ray. The only reason she went to the Ear, Nose and Throat doctor is because I pushed her to do so. My brain knows that this logic is off, that we are better off knowing, but I can't help but think of the peaceful ignorance before the knowledge of this cancer came into our lives. (Other than back pain which may be caused by the adrenal tumor, my mom had no symptoms of lung cancer. In fact, she cracked herself up as she said, "I'm too chubby to have cancer!" I wonder if she ever feels similarly about unknowing about this cancer.)

But we do know and on we go. Barring bad weather (FU wintry mix), I will be heading down for the appointment before morning traffic hits; another 5am morn. Then on Wednesday I'll shoot to RI, picking up Memphis-dwelling sister, Katie, at airport on the way. After that, well, we'll see where life takes us. We'll want to get to Connecticut at some point soon to check in with Dan's mom who, since I started writing this entry, has started eating more which is what we had hoped. Between my sister (and chunky eight-month-old niece) visiting, Dan's mom, my mom, trips to Boston, etc. I don't really know how long I'll be away from our apartment (though I should always be within range of a wireless signal).

Last night as Dan and I drove home, we discussed our schedules for the upcoming week. Next Sunday he'll be running a company ski trip about two hours north of us in Maine. Usually I attend this annual trip---if only to hide out in the hotel room and play traveling writer---but I'm thinking, in light of Katie's visit, that I'll sit this one out (unless I decide by that point that I really need the getaway). Dan will be driving from New Hampshire to Rhode Island to Connecticut and then all the way up to Maine between Friday and Sunday. The week after that, who knows?

"The next few months are going to be hard," Dan said in the car last night, regarding all the hometown traveling we'll be doing as his mom leaves the hospital and enters the rehab center and my mom's chemo starts up. "Let's just remember that we love each other."

I will forget many things in these coming months, I am sure---phone calls, birthdays, dentist appointments---but I will never forget that. (Though I did just pick a fight...I'll never forget how to do that, either.)

P.S. Keep your fingers crossed that we hear some promising news tomorrow. (Something along the lines of, "Those weren't tumors...they were masses of gold that somehow materialized inside your body. You're healthy and rich!")