Tender Mercies

Life has a way of reminding us we cannot always control our circumstances. The plan was to have chemo on a Thursday, recover over the weekend and continue on with work and school the following week. Isn't it great when we try to make plans without actually understanding what the heck we're dealing with? As determined as I was to not let this cancer impact work, family and my efforts to graduate in May, I've found myself fairly humbled by my own ignorance this past week. As with most things in life, we do not personally realize how clueless we are until we experience situations firsthand.  

Being Tired: My chemo cocktail of Adriamycin & Cytoxan (AC) treatment itself was fairly bearable; it just felt like I had the flu. The nurses were awesome, the nausea was manageable with medications, saltines and ginger ale, the steroids made me bloated and puffy faced, and a shot of Neulasta to stimulate new white blood cells in the bone marrow the next day made my bones ache like I was eighty years old. Easy peasy, right? Not so fast lady. What I was not prepared for was the incredible level of exhaustion. This is something entirely different from being tired after having each of the kiddos or being sleep deprived when studying for finals... this is a type of exhaustion I have never encountered in my life. Forget the fever spikes, swollen joints and not being around others because of the high probability of picking up bugs... this is an entirely different ball game. Blood draws verified the chemo is doing it's job, but my body is not reproducing white blood cells fast enough. Soooo... What can I do, eat Wheaties? Drink protein mix? Nope; turns out there is nothing I can personally do to help my body catch up or mass produce white blood cells other than rest. Tim officially grounded me for the weekend and I guess it paid off because I finally have the energy to write something tonight.
Chemo Brain: This is a quirky and real thing. I watched it happen with my dad last year as he struggled to grasp his thoughts as they floated in and out of his mind. I saw his frustration as he attempted to express himself with words that wouldn't come. It is completely surreal to feel it happening to me. A silent prayer of appreciation to my dad; he made the best of it until the end and I feel him cheering me on from the other side... 'just relax Therese; it will come to you.' While attempting to work on my ten-page prospectus research paper this week, I had all my notes laid out, my outline, my paraphrased quotes...everything except that nothing I wrote made any sense. A tender mercy from my professor who reassured me that she's going to work with me on this and give me extra time. Maybe she saw in my prior work that I can actually be coherent, but for whatever reason, she is taking pitty on my foggy brain and I have decided to love her forever.
Other Tender Mercies of the Week: 
1) Holding the sweetest angel baby & spending time with Trea. My niece Kabria and her hubby welcomed sweet Emma to the world - how lucky am I to get to hug her before they move back to Rexburg next week and see my rockstar sister who stocked our freezer and reassured me I was not losing my mind. 
2) Kind words from sweet family and friends. Thank you for the cards (any mail that is not a bill brings euphoria) and small gifts of support; it means the world to know so many are thinking and praying for us. I completely stink at thank you cards... do emails count? I will try to remedy this weakness because my heart is filled with gratitude and people should know how much these small gestures are appreciated. 
3) Jake came home and we took some family photos before I start to lose my hair. Thank you Barb & Brynn! I will post them publicly eventually... I just need to savor a little. 
 4) Wiggin' out with Josh and Trea. Thank you to the American Cancer Society for the free wig trying-on session. Trying them on was the most depressing and fun thing I did all week and almost made up for the lady at the wig shop who told me I have an abnormally large head... or did she say I have a larger than average head? Either way, my head is big... I have a big freaking head. Who says that to someone about to lose all her hair? Trea tried to ease the blow by reassuring the lady it was because I'm so smart, but really, I just wanted to punch out that well-meaning lady and her iddy-biddy proportionately sized wrinkled-up head. So, yea, that thought is bouncing around in my mind.... which is apparently floating around in a melon of a giant sized head!  Here are a few photos: the Hermione Granger is totally my favorite. Just sayin'... 

5) Pew sitting with our entire posse last Sunday... words can not express. God grants us His tender mercy when we least expect it... sometimes it is when things seem grim... other times we receive these mercies like a flood washing over our hearts that all is right in the world. The trick is to humble ourselves enough to appreciate His sweet and tender mercies however they arrive... just savor them. I am not a scriptorian; never have been, but Ether 6:12 points out that humbling ourselves helps us receive these mercies. "... and when they had set their feet upon the shores of the promised land they bowed themselves down upon the face of the land and did humble themselves before the Lord, and did shed tears of joy before the Lord, because of the multitude of his tender mercies over them." I am so very blessed. Being tired, chemo brained and big-headed are completely irrelevant compared to the many tender mercies God has placed before us this past week. I am savoring each and every one of them.