Goodbye 2012.....HELLO end of treatment 2013

This has been a long time coming.  I have several very good reasons for not doing our Christmas letter or end of year letter or whatever people like to call it.  One being, we have been incredibly busy and steroid week happened to consume the first two weeks of December, and the second being, my netbook died. It was such a sad sad moment.  I wrote 2 books on that thing and took it to Memphis with me on every trip.  It was like an attachment of my body. When it died, I mourned.  In fact, I still have it sitting next to me now.  I cannot bare to part with it just yet. I am quickly adjusting to my new friend and writing tablet, chromebook.  And it does have a bigger screen and better keyboard for typing, but there is something about your first love and what I wrote my first book on.
And as I mentioned before, steroid week has turned into weekS, plural.  I swear each pulse gets worse and worse.  We are chronicling the next one.  From the first dose to when it finally seems to leave her system.  It really is amazing.  Just one pill and you see the change.  And she doesn't sleep, so we don't sleep.  And it takes both of us to get through the pulse, and nothing gets done around the house but making food...lots of food, and lots of holding Lucy and watching movies.  I do not know how single parents do the cancer gig.  I need lots and lots of antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds to get through it.  And Zach and I tag team it.  Hell sometimes we are both in the ring at the same time and then take turns crying when we get a down moment.  We only have 3 more of them to get through, but when they last 2 weeks, that is a lot of time of your life consumed by a drug.  As you can imagine, we have our last pulse marked on the calendar!  And that is a funny thing too.  While we are so excited to be done with steroids and treatment all together, we are scared shitless.  This is the end of a new life we JUST now learned to adjust to, and the end of the chemo. The life saving chemo.  The cancer preventing chemo.  The vile poison that we put in our daughter's body to save her life.  That is irony.  We are afraid of the chemo, yet we are in love with it.  What happens when she is done taking the chemo?  What prevents her body from making leukemic cells?  Or what if it does?  What is there to stop it from spreading?  And then of course, all of the fears I had in the first two weeks of treatment are starting to come back and haunt me.  The fears that I had to put aside because I had to deal with one thing at a time.  The fears of the side effects of what we just did to her little body for 2.5 years all come flooding back.  I start to recall the statistics and side effects and secondary cancers, and short term memory loss, and all the other shit that was thrown at us while we were signing a million papers that first week.
Oh and did I mention that first week is also coming back to me?  Funny...I blogged about it, but yet I managed to block it from my memory.  Repressed is more like it.  And all of a sudden......here it is! Staring me in the face.  We just had our 2 year cancerversary, and that is when it hit me so hard.  I thought I was ready for it, I took months to prepare for it, even had to do some counseling sessions over it.  And the day it came- BAM..knocked me on my ass.  It was the day after Christmas. And I am not going to lie, I had a fast heart beat the entire day.  I tried my best NOT to think about that day 2 years prior, but I couldn't.  I couldn't stop looking at pictures, and Zach and I started remembering things that we hadn't before.  We laughed, and we cried, and we remembered.  It was horrible and yet it was much needed.  2 years of living with cancer and yet it really seems like yesterday.  Its still scary, and it has forever changed our lives.  It has changed who we are or rather who we were.  Our outlook on life has changed, our priorities have surely changed, our friends have changed, and even how we act/react to people has changed.  We no longer have a filter (which wasn't real good to begin with), so that affects relationships for sure! ha! And of course what we thought was life and living, was not.  So we had to make some adjustments to that and we still are.  And now, we ease back into our old lives as we prepare for Lucy to be off treatment, and you know what....we don't want to go back to our old lives.  We longed so much for it, and now that its here, we realize our shitty it was.  We worked all the time.  We spent little time with the kids and each other.  We worried too much about money and getting "things" . We were doing what we were brought up to do.  We were so wrong.  So how do we go back to life the way it was without falling victim to going back to life the way it was?  hmm...... I don't know the answer to that yet...
ok..so after rambling on...let's get to the year in review ;)  I don't remember anything! hahahaha  I know Lucy started preschool.  I know we got a new dog.  I know we got to go on an amazing vacation for a long weekend to Branson, which was MUCH needed. Jack had a wonderful "normal" birthday party. We started a new business!! Weber's weenies!! I wrote a book.  We raised so much money for St Jude! I am so proud of it.  I think we are in the 10,000 range as far as total raised.  Which for one family and a garage sale....is pretty damn good.  Oh and of course our outlook on life has changed dramatically.  Our life goals have changed.  And our bucket list is no longer a want to do list, but is quickly becoming a "I did this" list.  And we keep adding to the list ;)  I LOVE our new list.
It is odd that as I sit here and try to "recap" our year, my mind goes blank.  I cannot hardly think of one thing cancer related.  It is like that is everyday, so nothing sticks out. Not like our first year when EVERYTHING stuck out.  And I wonder if that is why I am so nervous about the end of treatment coming. Its not just about that, its about us having to change our lives AGAIN.  And this time, we know more.  We want more. And we don't want to go back to our old "normal". We want a better "normal" than BC (before cancer).  You know, my psychiatrist says that I have PTSD.  He says Zach and I are an interesting "study" because he has wrote books and did most of his research on Vietnam war vets with PTSD, and he is astonished at how similar our actions and reactions are.  And there are some new studies out that have found most parents of cancer patients tend to end up with PTSD.  Its a new concept.  Interesting and scary, and yet I am glad people acknowledge what families go through.  That didn't used to be the case.  And like many other people who experience PTSD, people around you will never know how you feel or "get" it, or even be able to show empathy.  We have to learn to adjust to that.  We have to remember not everybody has been in our situation, and that is a good thing.  We forget. So when somebody fails to show empathy, we tend to be assholes to them. Just being honest here!  And the filter I mentioned that we do NOT have...yea...that tends to come out.  I guess since we have been through what we have, I feel as if everybody needs to take a class on empathy.  I have a lot more of it now, and it doesn't necessarily mean I have experienced the same "things" as the people I feel it for, it just means I can respect their feelings and not judge them based on them.  A lot of people need to look into that.  It would make the world a more caring place.
As I say goodbye to 2012, I say hello to a new life in 2013.  We have 6 more months of treatment.  wow!! After 2 years....all I can say is wow.  I am speechless....and that NEVER happens.  Wow!

'Twas the Night before Steroids

Twas the night before steroids, and the Webers were numb
They were trying to sleep, to prepare for the storm to come
The sausage was stocked in the fridge with care,
In hopes that only sweet Mary would be visiting there

Jack and Lucy were nestled all snug in their room,
having no idea  of the pending doom
And Shawna with her xanax, and Zach with his scotch,
Had just prepared their brains for the week of the steroid launch

When the morning came and the first dose was took,
Taco and Clark quickly  ran from the flying book
Our sweet little Lucy is changed with just one pill

It turns her to Dexter with intent to kill.

As the day goes on, the food consumption increases

As mom and dad rush to fill her plate with mac and cheeses

Then it happens, one makes a mistake….
They make direct eye contact for goodness sake!

With a curl of her lip its over and done,
I knew in a moment it must be an evil one.
With the shrill of her voice the demands came
And mom was trying to figure out with Lucy it was by name!

"Was it Dexter! Lucifer!  or, Nellie or Mary!
Oh how the family wished the pill made her not so scary
At the top of her lungs from room to room
The stomping of the feet was going boom boom

As she threw her fit and let things in her room fly,
the parents went to the kitchen to prepare food and stand by.
Soon the fit would be over along with a personality change,
With kisses and hugs you will be able to stay within range.

And then, in a twinkling I saw in her eye
The prancing and dancing of Lucy went by.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Along to the Kitchen sweet Mary was found.

She was naked and hungry, but happy as can be,
What kind of food would she want now, we shall see.
Without making the mistake of making eye contact,
I sat down a plate of food and then stepped back.

Her eyes-how they twinkled! As she looked from her seat!
Her cheeks were like roses, due to the dex induced heat!
She ate her meal and cleaned up her plate,
A relief, a sigh, came from her parents after the wait.
One meal down, one fit done,
but you can be sure there is more to come.
As she takes the doses each day,
It’s a drug her body needs, but a price her body pays!

The dex pushes out the cancer that may be living in her marrow,
So the chemo can kill it before it controls her body like a pharaoh
As each pulse begins, continues and ends
We try to prepare for what to expect and what it will lend

We had no idea the impact of how this drug would work,
And hope the side effects don’t make stay and lurk.
As soon as the pulse is over and she takes her last pill
The following week is nothing but pain filled

She lays on the couch and cries over the pain in her leg
Every once in a while, she’ll have a head  “egg”
But as the pulse passes, and the end is sight
We only have 3 rounds left, so there is a shining light.