Just a Little Scare…

Today while I was teaching my lovely kiddos about loving yourself just as you are (The book I’m Gonna Love Me by Jamie Lee Curtis is just awesome for little kids)…I started itching my arm. Then when I looked down a minute later, my arm was red and bumpy like a rash. By the end of my book, I looked like I had poison ivy on my arm! I had Dena, my other half in the classroom, and my supervisor take a look and they both said I should probably have it looked at because of everything going on right now. As I made my appointment for after school, I worked with a million thoughts running through my head. Then a billion more on the way to the doctor. Unfortunately, I thought the bad thoughts first. Mono was one thought, more tumors were another. I heard that sore throat and rashes can be signs of mono. That would be awful if that ever happened during treatments. And my rash was the first sign of my cancer. I was doing so good, how can I be back sliding, I thought. Also, I called Andrew and told him I was going to the doctor. I bet his first reaction was that the doctor was calling me in because of my CT results, so I’m sure I gave him a heart attack for a second. As I sat in that doctor’s room again, the room where it all started in, I just thought about the past three months. I’ve had ups and downs where I have been optimistic and down right mad. Today was a mad day. I looked at my arm and flashbacks to last year started. It was October when the first sign of my rash appeared. I was getting frustrated, thinking my body wasn’t kicking this thing. At that point, I was not liking me. And it didn’t get any better when I heard the doctor say the bittersweet word…dermatitis. NO!!! is what I thought. I’m glad it isn’t anything worse, but that word to me is just another way of saying…not quite sure. I’ve been down that road before, remember? I went through 9 months of people telling me dermatitis when it was really a good sign of Hodgkin's Lymphoma. So I came home and cleaned. Like hard core, cleaned my house with Lysol in a bitter rage of needing to feel healthy. I was not going to be around anything anymore that would get in my way of chemo this Friday. Cleaning, like usual, helped calm me down…I felt like I accomplished something. I saw progress visually and it helped me feel like I won. I want to win this battle with my health. But here I am again, de ja vue, sitting with cream on my arm. I can’t do the oral antibiotics because of chemo so soon. Please pray that I won’t get any sicker than this awfully annoying runny nose, the start of a scratchy throat again…and stupid dermatitis :) I gotta remember what the book said today…I just gotta like me, no matter what my current block in the road is. And F.R.O.G Fully Rely On God. Not just in my little health situation...but in the many bigger health situations that are going on with my friends and their families right now. God is bigger than this phase in time...I always get through the moments, I pray for the others who are sick right now to have the faith to get through it too!