Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Theme Schmeme

It's been so long since I posted anything on this blog that I'm not sure where to start. So many times I've thought to myself "Hey self, you are experiencing an interesting experience - why don't you go blog about it a little?"

But after I'm done doing Wii Zumba, the only real workout I'm likely to get all week, I'm moving on to some other chore or important Thing, and never get back to describing how I broke into tears just as a physical release and an overwhelming gratitude that I am healthy enough to do Zumba, even if it is in my own living room. With Wii. (don't judge)

Or when I'm feeling so powerless over the past few months since I've been learning about all these new cancer drugs in development at my company - wishing the next miracle drug were HERE already for my beautiful warrior of a step-sister. That topic deserves a whole post about cancer drugs and what I'm involved with to target drugs to the right patients with better diagnostic tests and how much that could help the world.  But my aim is true. It has been a pretty small scope I've been obsessing over for weeks. And as of last Friday, December 14th, my small selfish obsessions became completely meaningless. We lost my Warrior Sister in battle. Shit.

How about the angst I felt walking down the street from yet another evaluation/appointment for Wild Thing to figure out the best way to help him navigate a world he isn't quite conforming to. His brain is wired a little differently. He is so sensitive and intelligent and hilarious and beautiful. He also has a lot of anger sometimes, and a lot of hyper behavior, and an inability to tolerate too much noise or "weird" tastes, textures, feelings. sigh.

I'll spare mention of Teen Wonder for the moment, since she's doing well with college and navigating it pretty much as well as I had hoped and expected. But I still worry...  And I'll spare Mr. Wonderful, who is my partner and co-pilot on this crazy turbulent flight of life. He too is deeply flawed like the rest of us in our house.  Marvelous, interesting, loving people who are all deeply flawed around here.  At least we're not boring.

But let's end on a happy note. This is the first Christmas season since 3 years that I've been healthy and able to go to all the events, trim the tree and decorate the house, bake cookies (well, I WILL bake some before Christmas gets here, I swear it). I even took a business trip to Basel the first week of December, and I didn't get sick there and stay in a strange clinic for a week only to be flown home in a Lear jet by MedJetAssist (buy their insurance btw). And I was able to go at all since I haven't had an "episode" since I got home from the Stanford hospital in January.

That's worth a lot.