T'was the Night Before Chemo...

So it is the night before my next round of treatment begins... the last night of my break.  Jay came home from work, we had a nice dinner then he bathed and put Miss Katie to bed and took James downstairs to watch videos on how things are made (the kid is going to know more than me in about 5 seconds if he keeps this level of curiosity up) and I decided to take a bath.  A nice long bath with the jets on and a Lush bath bomb.  I even took my book that I'd forgotten I didn't finish with me.  And I finished it.  After I got out I realized that I had spend more than an hour and a half in the bathtub!  It's amazing I didn't shrivel up.  But it was wonderful and I feel ready to take on tomorrow and the next 12 weeks.  I have enjoyed my break and found it so easy to shed the daily ritual of shots and medications.  I even started feeling really good and getting energy back. It is surprising how quickly you can fall in and out of a routine.  I'm glad for this little break as it helped me realize there is light at the end of this year long tunnel, and I will eventually return to my old self.

The book that I finally finished was Eat, Pray, Love, and no, I haven't seen the movie yet.  But I did enjoy the story about finding yourself and some wisdom that I can apply now.  The last paragraph of the Final Recognition and Reassurance (I always read the acknowledgements) particularly hit home for me.  It says "In the end though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives.  In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices."  I keep saying how I can never repay everyone for their kindness and generosity, but I can promise to pay it forward.  While I continue to pledge that I will continue to be community service oriented and stay involved in the activities and organizations that I am already a part of, I felt a relief almost in reading this paragraph.  Relief from the realization that people are not helping me because they expect me to pay it forward, or pay it back one day, or anything else.  The miraculous scope of human generosity is helping me and my family from the goodness of their hearts. 

Funny Story Sidenote:
Funny story about the Lush bath bombs that Jay will tell you if he ever gets a chance, he thinks it's hilarious.  The first time we went to London was the summer we got married.  It was a fabulous summer.  I ended the school year about the middle of June, we got married June 29th, we went to St. Lucia for our honeymoon for a week, came home for about two weeks and then Jay had to go to London for business so I went along.  I had this Lucky magazine that I brought along with me as it had a whole shopping section about London and all the places you had to visit.  Lush was one of them.  Turns out we did not stay in London proper, but were about an hour and a half or so outside of London, in Swindon.  Minor details, right?  Not a lot of shopping in London, when you are really in Swindon.  Anyway, we spend the week in Swindon and took the train into London for the weekend.  Now I was going to get to do some shopping! My new husband, wanting to be supportive of what I want to do asks where I want to go.  I say Lush!  He says where is it, so I show him the map in the magazine.  Turns out it's in Covent Gardens (I'll never forget it because it is a beautiful place) which is nowhere near where we are on the tube, but Jay figures it out and we eventually get there.  We find Lush, I am super excited, we go in.  Jay spends about 30 seconds in there before his allergies go haywire and he has to run out, leaving me, the overspender/shopper to fill my backpack to the brim with Lush products.  45 minutes later I emerge, backpack heavy with all the cool stuff I have purchased.  I declare I am done and we can now do whatever he wants to do.  So, we hop back on the tube to go see all the touristy things in London we wanted to see.  For the rest of the weekend we pass literally 15 Lush's.  They are like the Walgreens of London.  They are everywhere.  With each passing Lush, it gets more hysterical and Jay makes the joke, look honey, there's a Lush, I am so glad we rode on the tube for 45 minutes to find that one Lush that exists in London.  To which I point out the magazine didn't say there were multiple locations.  The punchline to this whole story is that at the airport coming back home, we are wasting time while we wait for the plane, and yes folks, there is a Lush in the airport.  I lugged around 15 pounds of bath products for an entire weekend, when I very well could have bought them at the airport.  I did the only thing I could do.  I went in and bought a few more and stuffed them in my carry on.  A few years later, Jay and I went into the Oak Brook Marshall Fields to do some shopping and guess what they had? A whole Lush shop. I promptly pointed out how cool we were because not only did we know about Lush before it came to the states, but we had gone out of our way to visit one in London.