Day 4, Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Finally a full night’s sleep…except for poor Tim who chose to stay the night and had to sleep on the couch and might as well have slept straight on the floor…but he was a trooper and misses sleeping next to me so he “sucked it up buttercup” for me…He slept maybe three hours total last night so I sent him to my mother-in-laws at 7 a.m. to get freshened up and rest on a real bed before he sits with me for the rest of the day.

Sometime in the early morning my assigned RN had written that my goal for today:

RELAX…

I got a phone call from Dr. Shah at 8:30 a.m. and he explained that they were going to push back the scheduled PET scan pending the final results that should be in tomorrow since they had enough evidence based on all the different CT scans to not worry that the cancer has spread to other others yet.  One more night and hopefully tomorrow I will have a final diagnosis.  Patience has never been a strong suit for me…so not knowing…not being able to google and research is driving me up the wall! So I spent the better part of my morning trying to self-diagnosis myself through Mayo Clinic and American Cancer Society…and going down the rabbit-hole of chemo and radiation side effects…

RELAX….

The MRI I was supposed to have yesterday was accidentally scheduled at the Ontario Campus so they had to change the order for me to get it done here in Riverside.  So when Tim came back he shut my laptop down and we spent most of the time napping and watching TV- bliss in lieu of the tornado that has been the last four days waiting for my MRI…we learned that we really love watching Flip or Flop and Chip & Joanna Gaines…that Tim memorizes e v e r y single line of e v e r y single Star Wars movie since today they decided to show a Star Wars marathon…and we learned that we really enjoyed being quiet…no words needed…just being close to each other being bums and recharging our low marriage batteries.   A beautiful bouquet of flowers was delivered to my room (Thank you Padget, Eldred and Lazo family!)…and the smell was so overpowering that I literally HAD to stop to smell the flowers…At 1:00 p.m., we got a surprise visit from church family…who gifted me a snuggly blanket that is sitting on my lap now (Thank you Kelly & Van!)

At 3:00 p.m. I was wheeled to the MRI building.  If you’ve never had an MRI — it’s pretty gnarly.  You feel like you are walking into Cerebro (if you don’t understand nerd speak then we can’t be friends….).

“Avie, did you remember to remove your bra and any bobby pins in your hair? We don’t want the bobby pins flying and piercing your head…”


Awesome! Have you ever really seen that happen?!?

They give you two cheesy, yellow stale marshmallows for earplugs to hopefully drown out the sound (it doesn’t) and then they strap you down by the head and tell you not to move.  Then you lay on a flat bed that wheels you into a tiny, tight tube where the wallsarethisclosetoyourface…and for forty five minutes you feel like you are stuck on the  inside of the dryer with a loose wrench…I spend the first 10 minutes pretending I was in the movie Contact with Jodie Foster…the next 10 minutes pretending I was at a horrible dubsmash concert and I was trying to make up tunes to match with the clang-clang-whomp-whomp-ehhhhh beat…and rest of the time practicing “mindfulness” meditation exercises that I learned in my MFT program before I started having full on back and forth conversations with the voices in my head I hadn’t visited with in a while…finally I feel the bed moving out….

“You did great my dear! Now I’m going to shoot you with the contrast through your IV and stick you in there for another 10 minutes, ok?”


Well, considering you have my head and arms strapped down, I don’t really have a choice, do I?

“You’re going to feel a nice warm feeling wash over your whole body, Avie..hold tight!”


OMG OMG OMG I just peed my pants!!!

“Nope, that’s the contrast dear…you’re fine…”

After 10 more minutes, it’s finally over and I feel like my head is going to explode.  Definitely my least favorite test so far…

Back at my room, Tim and I get to spend time with one of our favorite families, the Laws and take up the entire time just enjoying each others company…and trying to figure out if there is enough space in my room so that we can practice some jiu jitsu moves…

The kids are feeling sick and my mother-in-law sounds exhausted on the phone so I sent Tim home despite his protesting…I think being away from home has something to do with them feeling crummy too on top of getting spoiled and getting lots of sun with grammy and papa this weekend…

“Truly, my soul finds rest in God my salvation comes from him.”
-Psalm 62:1

It’s quiet now, in my room all by myself and my heart is full.  Before this weekend, I found myself longing for some downtime…I never had time to do things that I wanted to do because I was caught up with getting things done errands, chores, grocery shopping, work….but today reminded me that in the simplest of things, napping with my husband, watching TV, getting a new blanket, smelling the flowers, truly being present in the company of friends who feed your soul was one of the most relaxing and restful days I have had in a long time and it wasn’t anything extraordinary or extravagant…I’ve been caught up too long in the MRI noise of the world…but what I need to do is relax….

Got it God…I’m hearing the message loud and clear now that you are forcing me to sit in the quiet….RELAX…

“Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?”
—Luke 12:22-26

This post originally appeared on Breathing Again. It is republished with permission.