Still Counting Blessings Despite Everything

I wrote my last post yesterday, saying innocently that I was looking forward to a couple of days of doing summer-fun things with my kids while I still feel well, before I head into treatment.  Life seems, however, determined to test us.

In the last five months, my two children have broken two arms and one leg between them.  Last night, my daughter added yet another arm to this miserable tally.  It was a bad break, her arm was weirdly bent.  We rushed her up to hospital (St Luc's, the very place I have spent far too much time recently doing tests and where I will spend most of next week for my surgery), and the doctor gently told us that she needed a general anaesthetic so that they could realign her bones.  As ever, the care was outstanding and I was able to stay with her when she was eventually checked in at 4.30am for the rest of the night.  So I got to use my newly-purchased Hospital Pyjamas unexpectedly early.

It's not the end of the world, the arm will heal.  But there will be no amusement park for us this weekend before the operation, and it won't be so easy to rest and recuperate post-op on  holiday.  The cast is enormous and heavy and I expect I will have to contend with a hot, miserable child when she would normally be spending hours playing in the pool or scrambling in the woods.  I'm exhausted after a sleepless night and overwhelmed with everything and I want to scream about the unfairness of it all.

I can deal with the Cancer if only Life would stop throwing all this other crap at us.  I am so unutterably fed up with trying to look on the positive side of things and count my blessings!

I was proud of her though.  As we left today, she said tearfully,  "At least we've still got the most important thing," she said.  "We've still got each other."

Perhaps it's only when we are really tested that we properly appreciate our greatest blessings.