Conflicted

Do you ever feel like things in your life are conflicted? Like in one circumstance, there are two contradicting options or answers. For example, I remember watching an infomercial one time at the gym a few years ago for the skin care line that Cindy Crawford sells. I was riding the elliptical machine thinking, I need to order that. It gets rid of your wrinkles, it has the nectar from a special cantelope in France, and her skin looks the same as it did when she was 20, so I really should order it. I neeeed it. And then I wake up the next day with a pimple. Seriously? Can you have wrinkles and pimples at the same time? So now do I need Pro-active? The people who use that acne medication all have really nice skin too. I think God is just trying to keep me on my toes (and maybe giggling a little!) To a more serious extent, we are constantly conflicted with choices we make these days for Brooklyn. We decided to keep her home two weeks ago so that she would stay healthy while we were out of town and because her blood counts were low, but last week, we sent her back to school even though we hadn't had another blood test to know if they had gone up or not. On one hand, we think maybe we should keep her home all the time to try to keep her healthy, but on the other hand, we want her life to be as normal as possible. The doctors even said that we should try to keep things normal for our family as much as we can, but that is so hard to do when we know how quickly she can get sick and how different that looks for her than for the other kids. A normal cold for a healthy kid can quickly turn into pneumonia for Brooklyn, which means another hospital stay and serious complications for her. We let the kids all go to that breakfast with Santa at my parents' golf course, but we haven't gone to see Santa anywhere else or gone shopping together because we don't want to expose her to so many other people with their germs and risk her getting sick. It is hard to try to balance what we need to do to stay "sane" and what we need to do to keep her well. She had a great time at school last Tuesday, but Thursday she was more tired and sat on her teachers' laps a lot. Friday morning I took the two little girls to a birthday party for a friend of ours. It was such a fun party and just right for us because there were very few kids there, and they had donuts and played for about an hour and a half and then it was time to go. I was so happy to get to take them out and do something "normal" like that. However, Saturday night, Kelsey came down with the flu. She had a fever for a couple days and was just tuckered out. We were so worried that Brooklyn would come down with it too because they are constantly together, but thankfully she never got it (and neither did the rest of us!) Yesterday, Brooklyn had her appointment with the oncologist and got her monthly chemo in the infusion room. She did great, as always, and got to spend the rest of the afternoon with my mom so I could get some last minute shopping done and take Kayla to her gymnastics performance. This morning she had a spinal tap. It has been a few months since she has had one, but we still have our routine down. We had to be to the infusion room by 8:00 to get her port accessed and then headed over to the hospital. We brought goodie baskets for all of her nurses and they were all so happy to see her. After her procedure, she woke up happy but wasn't feeling well on the drive home, complaining of a headache and dry heaving. She bounced back after a couple hours and was running around outside and making a fort inside. I was sitting with her before bed tonight and she found the bandaid on her back from her spinal tap today. She peeled it off and said, "Who put that there?" I kind of paused and said, "Dr. Ducore did." She asked me why and I said, "Because he poked you." (That is what we call it when she gets blood drawn or chemo through her port because it is all done starting with a needle.) She said, "When I was asleep?" "Yes." "Did he count first?" (She always wants her nurses to count to three before putting her needle in.) I said, "yea, he did." It blew me away that she had no recollection at all of her procedure this morning. I wonder what she thinks we do when we go there. She is awake and talking to all of her nurse friends and then falls asleep in my arms on the table in the operating room and then wakes up in recovery and we leave, but she never questions what happened or why we have to go. It is a blessing, I think, that she doesn't know. She has to take chemo every night at home, had a chemo infusion yesterday and a spinal tap today, but for all you'd know, she is as healthy as can be. She runs around and plays all the time, and just occasionally says she isn't "teeling" well. I know that is partly why it is hard for us to remember to slow down and not do so much with her, because she seems like she is just fine. It's another crazy contradiction because I want so much for the next year and a half to fly by so she is completely healthy again and cancer free, but I don't want to wish away her childhood. When she's done with treatment, it will be time for her to start Kindergarten, which is really great timing-wise, but we have been through so much just in the past year, I know we will want to hang on to her for a little longer. I think that we face conflicting & contradictory decisions throughout all of our lives, it is our faith and trust that gets us through those times. It is fine to need both Clearasil and wrinkle cream. :)