THIRD THURSDAY

Thank you for allowing me to share a snapshot of this journey. I will return to writing about other things next week.

I went to bed Wednesday evening before the third Thursday after the “C” diagnosis much as I had the prior Wednesday with a couple of exceptions. My soulmate was scheduled for a PET scan to see if cancer was present in other locations. As we were winding down with tea, he began, in a moment of thanksgiving, to recall a diagnosis, surgery and recovery from a tumor that few are fortunate enough to have diagnosed before it is revealed in an autopsy. With his memory engaged, he also remembered the miraculous disappearance of a blood disorder after taking medication for years. His doctor had said it was a lifetime disorder and treatment. As if on cue, my phone pinged with a text from a niece. She sent encouraging words and a link to a song with the refrain, “He will do it again, again, and again,” a timely confirmation for my husband’s memory. Ready for sleep, I reminded myself that tossing and turning had produced one thing – sleep deprivation. I went to sleep until I wasn’t sleep anymore.

At 3 AM every “what if” scenario imaginable started a loop in my brain and continued until 5 when sheer exhaustion finally won, and I slept until 6 AM.

The feeling of anticipatory anxiety hung over our drive to the imaging center like dark thunderstorm clouds. I dropped my husband at the entrance and began the challenging search for a parking spot in a crowded parking garage.

I am writing this on October 26, shortly after my husband went in for the scan. Finally, the anxiety seems to be dissipating and calm is settling over me. It is almost palpable. The calm may have started in the parking garage.

Although crowded, I knew I would eventually find a spot and I did. “A crowded parking lot is my reality for the foreseeable future,” I thought. It represents the many challenges to be faced. Finding the right parking spot after searching represents the decisions made and the next for us.

“Nothing compares to the next,” I had read a few weeks earlier. As I sat in the greenhouse like atrium, it occurred to me that we could not get to the next without the now. There weren’t any shortcuts. We would search for the right parking spot (our next) a lot and we would eventually find it. We would find spots, as I did in the garage, which seem to be the right fit only to discover when we tried to park, they weren’t. That thought calmed my frayed nerves even more.

Reading my ramblings in preparation for posting, I affirm the accuracy of the parking lot metaphor. The last few months has been overcrowded with doctors, decisions, conversations, and cancer googles. We have always found the right parking spot (decision) for us.

Has anticipatory anxiety returned? Yes, on more than one occasion. Each time the inner guidance received on October 26th has arrested it.

Our next (right parking spot) begins the day after this is posted. Hubby is excited about the start of the proton radiation treatments. I am feeling a bit of the anticipatory anxiety but leaning into “He will do it again, again, and again.”

Matt.6:34

PONDER THIS THOUGHT—One achieves “the next” after living “the now.”