Looks like someone has a case of the fuck-its.

I really do swear a lot, don't I?

Oh, I'm just so cranky today.

We all are, aren't we?

It's hard to want to write an I'm-just-so-cranky blog entry when A) crankiness on a Monday is nothing new and I'll sound awfully whiny going on about it and B) I'm annoyed at you for calling me whiny.

More concerning still is that when I explore this crankiness I find that it's not really crankiness at all; it's dread and stress and fear and fatigue and worry and all sorts of emotions that I would just like a break from for today. Just for today I'd rather rest in the comfort of financial panic, social outrage and the sweet chorus of curious voices inside my head.

Where's a girl get some good old-fashioned mental illness when she needs it? Oh, how I miss the simplicity of depression...

Instead, my braining is sizzling and popping with dilemma fried in unknowns and powerlessness (seasoned with heartbreak and anger).

It's chemo week again. I'll be heading down to Rhode Island first thing Wednesday morning to make it to my mom's appointment with her oncologist and then on Thursday the party begins.

For the first time, I don't want to go. I want to go. I mean I want to be there, I want to hear whatever will be said, I want my mom to feel supported.

But I'd rather hop a flight to California and spend some time getting drunker than I've ever been in my life. I'd even do some drugging if it would take me further from this place.

There's no move right now. It's sit-and-wait time. Manic downtime where there's nothing to do but sprout growths of clustered wonderings to your root questions.

My mom had a MRI last week in order to see if the cancer spread to her brain as she has been complaining of dizziness that is likely due to all the chemo-related meds. (The terms spiders in my lady-parts is less scary to me than the words "cancer spread to her brain.") Although we were told this MRI looked normal (as in brain-tumor free) another message on the machine later told us that they would have to wait until this week to be totally certain of these results (read: ass-covering) as they want to compare the recent MRI images to ones taken in February just after she was diagnosed. I know it's only a MRI of her fucking brain, but would a little certainty about one fucking thing, kill someone? Can't someone tell us one thing for fucking sure?

And I know they can't. Nobody knows anything for sure. They can want what's best for her, they can believe they're doing their best, but nobody knows what's best. As far as I can tell, cancer is not a science. And, the fact that nobody really knows what they're doing where it concerns the life of someone I love so much, could make me (is making me; has made me) crazy.

This is because: What if we're doing something wrong?

And you sit and you stir with that thought day and night. Is there something else we should know? Something else we should try?

My mom has felt sicker since starting chemo than she ever did before. I knew that was going to be the case---you get worse before you get better, they say---but is still unnerves me and seems so counterintuitive. What if you get worse before you get worser?

You think and think and think.

I'm worried about this next chemo session.

I'm worried she's going to lose her hair and it's going to kill her spirit.

I'm worried the next CAT Scan will show that the treatment isn't working.

I'm worried that even thinking like this (never mind writing it...) taints my hope and puts energy into the universe that will affect her negatively.

And I'm worried about my mom because if I'm so consumed with all of this worry, what could she be feeling?

How do we keep her afloat?

I was in the car with her when she got the initial all-clear message about the MRI. I heard her repeat what the person on the voicemail said, "MRI is normal." But when I looked over at her thirty seconds later she was weeping.

"What? What is it, Mom?" I asked, panicked and trying to split myself so that I could both comfort her (I was sure she had misheard the message and on a second listen learned that they had found something) and keeping us on the road.

But they were tears of release, she explained. She had been terrified that the MRI would say otherwise and could only release her fear now that she was safe (so to speak).

Her fear had been cancer in her brain. What could that possibly feel like for her? What does that fear feel like when she's awake with her thoughts at night?

Something other than cranky, though sometimes it comes out that way for her, too.

And then sometimes it is crankiness. And I feel annoyed. And it's the normal stuff of family.

Other days, it's the stuff of brain tumors. And not a thing feels normal anymore.

Not even a Monday.