Living each day

A couple weeks ago, I was feeling introspective, and I asked you all to play along.  The question of the day was,

If you knew that you may not be here next week, next month, or next year, would you do things differently?

The answers are awesome.  Go read if you are curious, or leave your own comment if you didn’t before.  It’s really neat.

I was searching too, wondering how to balance my need to cuddle my babies all day long with my desire to leave a legacy for them, out in the world, and here at home.  I’ve always had a project to focus on before, whether at work, at home, or in the volunteer world.  It’s been kind of strange for me to have to focus on myself and my health the last few months, and it’s kind of distorting, actually.

I guess that’s why I’ve been searching and seeking a bit here in blog-world.  Starting this IBC awareness campaign.  Trying to get the word out.  Measuring with the metric of the blog tour, or media articles, as if sheer numbers would help make a difference here.

It’s been good.  But it’s also been consuming.  All cancer, all the time, except when I visit your blogs and get to hear about school days, playdates, pregnancy woes, and the little joys that we all revel in every day.  Those are a nice respite.

Last week, I went on a little trip.  I’ve been talking about it a bit, and today’s the last day I’m really going to mention it, I think, but I just want to say how GREAT it was to leave the cancer behind for a few days.  WonderDaddy really was WONDERFUL to help me along on the trip, from driving us there (and back!), to helping me downstairs to the meeting each morning and back up after lunch, to bringing me medicine and ordering room service, and all the other little bits that make up each day.

He also helped me tons when I cratered at lunch the first day.  I had a full-out attack, sweating, dizzy, fainting, nausea, cramping, spiking a fever, and all sorts of weird things happening to my body.  The chemo drugs just caught up to me, apparently, and my body revolted.  WonderDaddy put me to bed and helped me relax about missing part of the meeting downstairs.  And then he did it again the next day.  He helped me cut myself some slack.

He also helped give me the confidence to go downstairs to the meeting each morning.  It wasn’t easy, walking into a room full of (mostly) senior (mostly) men responsible for such amazing science and engineering feats, knowing that I wasn’t at my best. 

Knowing that I would only be able to be there for an hour or two at a time.

Knowing that I couldn’t get up to ask questions, cause I might not be very steady on my feet.

Knowing that they might look at me in my jaunty little hat and think that I wasn’t taking the conference seriously, that I was trying to be stylish in a roomful of “serious” scientists.

Knowing that the buff stuffed inside my hat to make me look less sick and more like I had hair under there would make my head sweat and make me more tired under the heat of the lights.

Knowing that I would be revealing weakness where I once tried to exude strength.

That was hard.

But it was good for me.

It was a first step toward something new — NOT living each day as if it were my last.

Laying the groundwork for future work.

Devising new ideas for a project that will further the goals of space science.  And my goals for the future.

Because today is NOT my last day.  And neither is tomorrow.  God willing, I will have at least a couple years left on this planet.

And if I want to spend part of my time trying to improve life on this planet or exploring other planets, that’s okay. 

Good, even.

So tomorrow I will post again about advocacy efforts, and I will throw myself into that and a new space science project, full-bore — because finally I can see beyond the present and into a future.

My future.

A future that requires careful planning and groundwork that may not pay off for weeks or months.

Because I’ll be here then.  I will. 

For a while, I’m going to try to NOT live every day as if it were my last.

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