Cancer Had its Own Plans

"The house is clean, Mexican food is in the crock pots, and I'm going to wear the red wig." Whoo Hoo! I couldn't have asked for a better afternoon check-in report. "She's wearing the red wig" I told the guys, and received a round of thumbs-up. It has been a while since we've had a good family night, but it looked like we were going to have one on Christmas Eve.

By late afternoon, however, the news wasn't so good: "Entropy's not doing so well. He needs the inahler every 3 hours until it clears up, so he'll probably be too miserable to go to church," Sandy told me, "and I'm not feeling so great either. I think I tried to do too much today and wore myself out. Can we just have a night at home?" I tried to reassure her, but we were both disappointed because it's been weeks since we've been able to attend church as a family.

When I got home, Spiff greeted me at the door: "Mom's in bed with a migraine so we're supposed to be quiet and have dinner without her. Can you make something different, we don't like Mexican". Well, so much for the evening she'd planned.

That's one of the things you get accustomed to when you live with cancer: you can set your sails, but the illness blows where it will. The key is not to let it beat you, or as gamers would say, you can't get owned by it. Don't think about what you can't do, but figure out what you can do and get doing it. Own it by owning your attitude.

Out came Mario Kart and I challenged Entropy Boy to see if he could unlock a new level while Spiff and I focused on dinner. We decided to heat up a pizza; by the time we were done EB had unlocked a level and a new car. "Mom said we can open the presents from Grammy tonight" Spiff announced after dinner. I didn't quite trust, but didn't dare verify, that story, and we dug in. Yea! New videogames all around! Sandy eventually joined us and we kept the boys' tradition of watching the Grinch.

Every Christmas Eve Sandy plays a trick on the boys: she buys new pajamas and puts them on the boys while the sleep. It's so funny when they wake up and realize what happened. This year, however, she gave them to the boys because she was too sick and weak to undress them in their sleep.

Altogether, we had about an hour of family time before she needed more medication and I put all three of them to bed. The boys couldn't have been happier. With pizza, new PJ's, and early presents they were already saying this was a great Christmas. Tonight I owned cancer.

And for tomorrow? Tomorrow can worry about itself. I'll be chasing the cat with Spiff's new robot, no matter what cancer does.