A Beautiful Mess

Life is too much of a beautiful mess for me to let go of the practical optimist within … even the sad parts are not so bad when you become real and honest with the whole thing. Reality seems to be the best teacher these days. Humor and laughter have a strange way of abating intensely distressing situations – while it can be acknowledged as a coping mechanism, I think it’s one of the best ways to find a sense of release.

Medical Update:

The most recent lab values –

White Blood Cell Count: 3.2 (normal range – 3.4-10)

Red Blood Cell Count: 3.69 (normal range – 4.0-5.2)

Hemoglobin: 11.2 (normal range – 12-15.6)

Platelets: 66 (<— dropped significantly from 138 in a matter of DAYS. What is going on here?)

My doctors are on high alert because while everything looks like it’s recovering nicely from six rounds of chemotherapy, my platelets are dropping significantly. They are the most highly sensitive in terms of cells in our bloodstream with the shortest lifespan. If they don’t rise to at least a 100 soon, a bone marrow biopsy will be conducted to investigate the matter closely, because there’s only so much that can be revealed medically from blood draws. I’m somewhat behind a few days on starting chemotherapy Round 7 out of 8. Since there is such a strict and aggressive protocol to follow, we want to act fast and be able to catch things early on should leukemia change its course.

Let’s face it – I am really tired of worrying. The paradoxical nature in all this is that while I strive for perfection in the healing process, I actually have to surrender myself into realizing that it’s okay when there is ambiguity and uncertainty. This probably sounds like an easy task, but for me – it’s unbelievably difficult. It’s a certain type of mindfulness that I’m only beginning to understand and practice on a cognitive level.

My nurses and friends have been wonderful. When things seem to go wrong or I seem to drift off into a sea of self-doubt, they rein me back into normality. They seem to accept me for who I am, regardless of the overwhelming number of flaws I possess. They embrace the crazy me within! And I’m equally gravitated to how crazy they seem to be. We’re all beautifully crazy

So we’ll see what happens. I’m just too exhausted with being afraid all the time anymore. It’s liberating to be able to write this all out. It’s nice to free myself from worry and to just enjoy life sweetly as much as I can – to simply live in the present moment.