. . . from Evan and Ryan.
Evan (16yo) had made a point this year to once again make the headmaster's list in school for each of this years' tri-mesters. Between the usual teenage angst, friendship concerns and my cancer, he's already started to show some chinks in his armor. He's a strong kid, but he doesn't have many strong friendships where we live with all the moves we've had to make due to jobs changes over the last 7 years. They all came at that critical time when the strongest bonds of friendship develop.
Ryan (12yo) also showed a bit of worry. Two weeks ago was his middle school's parent open house. All the kids were supposed to write something about themselves; their likes, interests, who they admire, what they want to be and what they want out of this year.
I was the one Ryan said he admired the most. Not a sports superstar or a musician. Me - even though he's almost 13, it's still me. When Janet asked him about the rest of what he wrote, like what he might be interested in doing when he got older; "I think it would be cool to learn to fly", he told Janet he was just making things up just to get the assignment done. He's a pretty quiet kid and doesn't share his feelings much.
As Janet pressed him for a bit more, she noticed his eyes welling up. He said he wished I didn't have cancer. It's the first time he's exposed any emotion since we first told the boys almost three weeks ago.
I want to spend as much time with them as I can just doing some fun things with them and hope that they will both open up a bit to me so they aren't holding anything in and getting more worried than they need to.
Ryan is going away for the weekend for a church retreat with ClubJV - the middle school youth group. He seems to have some small issues with going, but I think I've been able to let him know it's OK for him to go and that he should just have a blast with his friends.
Now that there's a scheduled surgery, some of this may become a bit more real for them and it may be a bit more difficult for them in the coming weeks.
We haven't heard much of anything from Jason for a few weeks - not even for money. :^)
We've only seen him once in the last month, even though school is only about 40 minutes away in New Haven, CT. I know he's busy with balancing his school work and the rehearsals for the fall shows at SCSU. I just don't want his coping mechanism to be "staying out of touch", but I can certainly understand and won't make an issue out of it.
With surgery 3 weeks away from today, I'm even more anxious to get on with all of this than I was before. I think the wait is going to bother me more than anything else. When the doctor said there was no real need to wait any longer, Janet laughingly asked "Can we do it tomorrow?". If the doctor's schedule was open, and they had done their own confirmation of the cancer diagnosis from the biopsy slides, they would get us in this week.
Unfortunately, due to hospital insurance reasons - and a recent incident at another NYC hospital where a surgery had been performed, the patient's initial cancer diagnosis was wrong and the prostate was removed when it wasn't cancerous - they need to confirm the cancer in their own lab.
In our meeting with the surgeon, he did let us know that one thing that we should expect is a higher level of pain during recovery. Though my age is a bonus for recovery, younger patients experience a higher level of pain with this surgery than older ones mainly because of the fact that our mobility isn't as limited as an older patient's might.
I just re-read this and I'm starting to ramble a bit, so that's all for now before you're any more confused.
Thanks for stopping by.
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