The Penultimate

Tomorrow (well today, technically) I get the news about my biopsy about my tumor. What exactly those "suspicious" cells are. I am not really terrified or scared. I'm sure I will be when I get there tomorrow with my entourage of Mom, Daddy and Braden. I have been jittery all day.

After a lot of bad days (for example, yesterday was pretty much non-stop pain and crying, despite the fact that Mom and I were shopping all day for relief), today I was actually quite happy and perky and energetic. Which is strange because I had a bought of night terrors last night, which my mom witnessed for the first time. Braden has seen them a few times over the last 6 months. They are not really night terrors, but more "disoriented pain and anger and fear." It's not mental, it's physical. It's like when you wake up in the morning from a dream and you are groggy and it takes a while to realize where you really are. For me, I'm sleeping peacefully and all of a sudden I awake to pain on an 11 on the 10 scale and I scream or moan or cry or start yelling. Last night, because we had to to wait so so so long to hear back from the biopsy, I was a ticking time bomb. And I was so angry that I had only slept 3 hours. I just wanted more sleep and no pain. I was disoriented, sleep-deprived and lashed out at my mom in a psychotic manner. She was scared, and rightly so. Braden had to come over at 4am and medicate me. It's embarrassing, I haven't really told anyone about them and they've only happened half a dozen times over the past 6 months and usually no one is in the room with me, I'm on the couch or something. But I guess I just cracked.

But now the day of results is upon us. And I guess that put me in a happy mood. I went to visit my grandmother, Honey who I hadn't seen in over a month and since we heard of my diagnosis. My mom and grandma have a very co-dependent relationship, and my mom takes care of her frequently, several times a week, despite the fact that Honey has a caretaker, Fatmata (who I am convinced is an angel. Some people just have a beam of light around them, and she has it.) But when Honey found out I was sick, she told my mom to solely look after me. We were all really surprised...but in a way it makes sense. She understands what it's like to take care of an ailing child.

My mom has spinea bifida and you wouldn't know today, but until she was 18, she was constantly ill and in and out of the hospital. When she was born, they didn't know if she would be able to walk, if she would be paralyzed, if she would be slow and so many other things. She's had dozens of surgeries in her lifetime. At age 17, she had a major surgery that fixed her spine, colon and urethra and made her just about as normal as everyone else. I did not know this till I was 20. She never wanted to burden me with her disability. I was blown away when she told me...I remember just not being able to comprehend that my mom spend her childhood disabled. She claims to walk with a limp (I've never noticed it) and she uses some special instruments for her lower extremities. But she had me naturally and basically she is healthier than me or my dad. She gets it. Both Mom and Honey are two of the strongest women I know in a health crisis. The Crouse-Adams women have strong blood.

So I decided to visit her today and talk about what was going on with me and how I felt. Sometimes I get weary around the elderly. Part of it is I move really fast and am a bit self-absorbed and talk a lot and it's hard for me to slow down and just listen. But because of this ailment, I've HAD to slow down. And it was nice, just to sit there and talk to her, just me and her and listen and watch her take everything in. She is an 86 year old woman and she is frail but she is 100% lucid when she is on her medication. (She does have some long time chemical mental problems...like so many of us....) She's sharp and she's not going to last forever. I think I want to spend more time with her, getting to know her better. I'm always around her with my mom and they have a very love-hate-up-down dynamic and I want to spend time just her and me, hearing about her life and wisdom before she goes. I guess I've always been a little intimidated of her. She was, in her prime, a Type-A version of my mom. A southern Martha Stewart, with some loopy mental problems. And she's always been loving and generous, but she's not warm and fuzzy like my other grandma Barbara was.

So I felt good visiting her. Then I went to visit my aunt Jane and uncle Rick, Happi's parents, who live down the street, to fill them in too. And again, I don't get to spend a lot of time with them either with anyone else around, since they have 4 kids and my mom and dad or someone is usually around. I really love them, we're very close and they have a wonderful spirituality, conversation skills and sense of humor. I really enjoyed talking to them...I didn't want to leave when they had to go to work. I think in my youth they thought I was this self-absorbed, super anxious, artsy kook...which I kind of was. But now I feel like they really respect me and my life choices. And of course, I'm glad to have them by my side during this ailment.