Good Things Coming

Do you believe in signs? I don’t think much about them, but this was kind of interesting. The other day my mother had an MRI to see if her lung cancer had spread to her brain and I blogged that finding the test results might be like opening Pandora’s Box.

For those of you not up on Greek mythology, Pandora was tricked by Zeus, king of the gods, into opening a box that contained all the horrors of the world – death, disease, poverty, sadness – that came out like moths that stung her, but the last thing to come out of the box was a beautiful dragonfly named Hope. (You can read the full post here: Pandora’s Box.)

Anyway, I’ve been back to the grind of being a caregiver. Next week she will start physical therapy three times per week, radiation five times per week, and chemotherapy every Wednesday. This will last until around Thanksgiving. Plus I have all those regular mom duties like dinner, laundry and helping with homework and bookkeeping for the family business.

Some days it’s just tough staying positive, especially for my mom. She’s the one facing cancer; I’m just driving her to appointments. She’s the one who had to pack up and move from New Jersey to Texas, a bit of a culture shock to say the least ma’am, and sell the house she lived in for the last 45 years. When the oncologist told her that the median life expectancy for someone with her stage of cancer was 12-18 months, it just hit her hard. How could it not?

Yesterday, between scheduling more biopsies, taking more CT scans, and doing physical therapy exercises, she met her radiology doctor for the orientation session. He showed her the CT results and discussed the protocol. I asked him what the goal of the treatment was, expecting an answer like, “halt growth” or some similarly guarded statement. His answer surprised me.

“Oh, we’re going to kill those tumors, for sure. That’s not to say the cancer won’t come back, but these tumors will be blasted away.” He spoke with such enthusiasm and authority my mom actually sat up and said, “Finally, some good news!” He also told her that since she was losing weight so fast he wanted her to start drinking milkshakes and eating ice cream. My mom said, “Really? Are you sure you’re not my grandson? He thinks ice cream cures everything too.” The doctor laughed.

Waiting for my mom to finish up some more tests, I went into the restroom and was startled to see this:

A statue of a blue dragonfly. Perhaps it was random. Perhaps it was a sign of good things to come. But it felt wonderful to feel hopeful again.

Here are some other good things I’m excited about:

Neon Dash 5k is giving away one entry fee to a lucky ShesLosingIt.com reader. Just tweet, post, and/or comment you’d like to run the Neon Dash by Thursday on my blog, Twitter account or FB page and you have a chance to win! (Here is the post: Neon Dash Giveaway)
Prevention Magazine selected me to be a VIP blogger at their wellness event on October 17-18. I’m looking forward to learning some new things and writing about the latest in health and fitness trends. More info about that coming soon…

How about you? What are you looking forward to?

Lisa