My Kids Are My Heroes Through It All

These five children are my heroes everyday!  I just can't even imagine life without them. They are all so encouraging and supportive of me.  Don't get me wrong...my battling cancer doesn't instantly make them perfect little angels.  They drive me crazy sometimes bickering and whining, but you'll have that. They make the messes that I have to continuously tell them to pick up. But they have been amazing through all of this. They have had to work together and make up for all the things that I cannot do right now. They can all cook and do laundry.  That doesn't mean they always want to do those things, but they can and they will.  But it is the extra little things that they do or say on their own each day that make them awesome!


Ok so I can't blame them for my hair falling out,
although they often make me want to pull it out!

We couldn't go anywhere this spring break with my weekly chemo treatments and having to work.  So my kids were home all week reading tweets and seeing photos on Instagram of their friends having fun all week.  I felt a little bad for them but we will be going on vacation this summer. 



My chemo treatment was on Friday afternoon so I told them I would go work for two hours, then we would head down to Carmel and eat wherever they wanted.  We enjoyed a delicious lunch at Max & Erma's, where I was a server once upon a time.

After lunch, we went to see the house my dad and brother built and are finishing up for the closing.  The $1,000,000+ house is absolutely gorgeous, and did I mention huge? To give you an idea of the size...there are nine bathrooms and four separate staircases.  I lost my kids within minutes of being there!  But when I finally found them all, I took them to the theatre room where I found the closest thing to a beach for their spring break finale. They were not quite as amused as I was. ;)

Finally, we headed off to my chemo treatment.  I think we scared the nurses when we first showed up.  But we came armed with 3 dozen chewy chocolate chip cookies that Lydia made and we became their afternoon entertainment. 

I felt that it was important for my kids to come with me and see what "chemo treatments" actually were, and to see other people there getting treatments too.  I hope that this experience made it less scary for them, and will provide them the strength to be an encouraging and supportive friend if they would ever need to be in the future.   

This was a true blessing, to have them all there with me as my support team for the afternoon.  The most important thing I have learned through all of this is that I have to count all of the blessings it has brought to my life. Pain can change you, but that doesn't mean it has to be a bad change. No matter how bad you think life is at the moment, you have to be thankful because someone, somewhere is fighting something worse. I have been reminded of this a lot lately. My oncology nurse's husband unexpectedly passed away a couple of weeks ago.  And I have recently heard about two different families that have already lost a child to cancer and have both found out that their other child has an incurable cancer. These are types of pain I cannot imagine bearing.  We have to count our blessings everyday!  And this is the one gift that I hope I can show and help my children understand.