Some days I just want to be bad. I want to forget about the possibility of my brain tumor growing. I want to live like there's nothing out of the ordinary regarding my health.
I want to drink red wine and eat malt balls. And sometimes, I do it. Sometimes I want to forget my winning ticket in the brain tumor lottery. But, just as some of my friends who are mothers (or fathers) of little children can never forget that they're responsible for all of the daily things in their child's life, I can never forget that I'm responsible for the life of my tumor. It's in everything I do, every food choice, every exercise trying not to push my body so hard that I have a seizure.
I'm always assessing my choices, and when I make bad choices (like eating some of the potato wedges at girls night last night & drinking wine), I get disappointed in myself. I wish that all I had to worry about, when eating, was if it would cause me to get fat. Now, I don't care about getting fat, I just don't want to feed the tumor. It has become a little gremlin in my brain that taunts me.
I often feel overwhelmingly responsible. If I drink wine, it feeds the tumor, if I eat desert, it feeds the tumor. If I eat any carbs like rice or beans, or pasta, or potatoes, the tumor grows. If I don't burn all of my calories each day, the excess feeds the tumor.
Danny recently got a job which is bittersweet. It's fantastic because it's a great job, but I'm heartsick to leave the amazing girls whom I cherish so much. Soon, he'll be moving to Seattle to start training, and we will be doing long distance for several months. Even in our professional lives this tumor dictates things. I can't miss a single moment of health care coverage, so I have to stay behind and work. As much as I wish I could change it, our lives are completely dictated by this tumor.
I was talking to my mom about the whole tumor debacle this morning, and she said, "Sometimes I get angry. I wish you didn't have a tumor and that you didn't have to go through this." I told her that I'm not angry, I get disappointed by the fact that I have to make so many changes, changes that I don't necessarily want. But, I'm not angry because the end of my story hasn't been written. If there's anything I've learned from this tumor, it's that you can never predict the things in your life. I have no idea where the twists and turns in my life will take me. I'm certainly surprised by where I'm at today. I guess the only guarantee is that life keeps moving forward, so, as my dad likes to say, "Keep your knees bent!"
