ad astra per aspera

We’ve been at the hospital for about 3 hours for his lumbar puncture aka spinal tap procedure. He’s in radiology right now either getting it done or waiting on the dr to finish another procedure and get to him. After the procedure he’ll have to lie flat in his bed here for about 4 hours to make sure he’s ok to go home. Laying flat helps make sure the insertion area closes so that spinal fluid doesn’t leak out.
The potential side effects from a spinal tap are similar to those from an epidural: headache and back pain. He may develop a mild to severe headache that may last for several hours to several days. That side effect is a lovely kick in the pants since he already has near constant headaches from his TBI.
As of yet he has no roommate in the room we’ll go back to upstairs and hopefully it stays that way. Thankfully this wireless access lets me ramble on facebook and later I’ll attempt to learn the calc I’m missing today and get some online homework done.
It feels like so much is just reporting the serious but mundane events of our new lives. My brain is still adjusting to all this. I still can’t connect the words “cancer” and “leukemia” as something in my husbands body and dominating our lives.
I’ll allow myself moments of sorrow when I’m alone in my truck on my way to/from school & work. Thankfully my job consists of sitting in a giant room of about 2,000 computer cubicles where we little minions key mail for the post office. So I can crank my i-pod, wear a hooded jacket and cry if need be and not be disturbed. I can take my 12 weeks of unpaid FMLA leave per calendar year in hour increments to stretch it out and if I need a chunk off they’ll set up a leave of absence for me instead of using up the FMLA.
I’ve said the stupid word “lymphoblastic” so many damn times I’m sick of it. I’m tempted to come up with some other word besides “cancer” because that words seems so intangible to me. Maybe “my husband has body robots”. I constantly feel like I’m babbling/rambling when I do talk about this.
I withdrew from the fall semester and told my Physics advisor I will not be back in the fall. She told me she’s a bone marrow donor and that she’ll come up with some good physics books to distract me in the upcoming months. I don’t know when I’ll get back to school to finish up my Physics and Electrical Engineering degrees but that’s pretty far from my mind.
My brain is trying to process that something that I very recently had no knowledge of is now going to be a constant in my life. Leukemia does not have stages. It’s classified as untreated, in remission, or recurrent. For the rest of his life he will always be at risk for a relapse once they get him in remission. There is no cure.
I should have brought tissues. Crying in public makes me feel like a gross spectacle. Sympathy and looks of pity make me want to crawl inside myself. I don’t want cancer to be the center of my life and all that I talk about. I will not let myself see my husband only in terms of the cancer in his body. I will do my absolute best to not let him see me upset by this. I will not let my son see me upset about something he can’t even understand. Hearing Magnus say “daddy’s sick?” is at times unbearable.
This is the end of this broadcast of the new series called “I don’t even know what to fucking call this”.