The weekend after

To recap, Friday was a stressful, cancer-scare roller coaster that ended with good news:  the breast MRI showed nothing abnormal in my lungs or chest wall.  The excessive amount of radiation I recieved is to blame for the continued increased metabolic activity in those regions.  Hopefully that activity will fully subside before the next PET scan. 

What does a girl do after a day like Friday?  Rocks the heck out of her weekend.

After I got the results on Friday at 5, it was hard to say whether I felt like curling up on the couch under an afghan or putting on my tall boots and going out.  I opted for tall boots.  Thanks, Ian, for giving me a night off from the kids.

I drove to a bigger city and met my sisters, aunts, and step-mom for a night on the town.  It was fantastic.  Even the drive was therapeutic, both because it was valuable time to decompress and because I got to listen to whatever I wanted to at whatever volume I wanted.  Turns out that I like to feel the bass in my chest, and I hadn't listened to Outkast's Speakerboxx in a really, really long time--the kids aren't big fans.

 
(the only relevant lyrics here are "can you feel that B-A-S-S bass".  Don't try to decipher the rest.)

We went out for dinner and we went dancing.

I slept in on Saturday.

I took the girls to spend the night with their cousin at Aunt Jacque's house on Saturday night.

My dad called to invite Aunt Jacque to a basketball game, but since I was there she decided to pass.  Is it wrong that I scarfed up the ticket and ditched Aunt Jacque?  Yes, it is, but that is what I did.  It's not every day I get a date with my dad.  And oh my goodness did I pick a good game to attend.  We won in triple overtime, against the best team in the conference!

I didn't get to sleep in on Sunday because my ladies never sleep past 7:30, but there's more to life than sleeping in.  We packed a picnic and had lunch at the botanical gardens.  The sun was shining, flowers were blooming, and fishies were ducking the coins that my girls pelted at them.

To cap it all off, my mother-in-law made us homemade pizza tonight.  It was a splendid weekend.  The only part of me that remembers Friday is my shoulders (still a bit tense).  Hopefully yoga tomorrow night will relieve some of that.

You know what's funny?  When I got the crappy PET scan results on Friday morning, my first two thoughts had nothing to do with death or pain.  They were about fatigue and vanity.  I said some version of, "BUT I NEED A VACATION!  I'd better go on a vacation right now so that I don't have to spend my vacation time on being sick again."  Then I said something like, "BUT I HATE MY HAIR AND I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO GO THROUGH THIS AWFUL GROW-OUT AGAIN!"  Isn't that something?  I surprised myself with my shallow and irrational reactions compared to the very serious possibilities of cancer treatments and aftermaths.  I later apologized to my oncologist to demonstrate that I recognized my misplaced values.  She was very understanding and said that I had a right to be frustrated and irrational.

I continue to be intrigued by my reaction because I feel like I do a good job of simply wanting to live (this weekend is Exhibit A), and yet when confronted with another threat to my longevity the first thing I did was whine about my hair.  It really is a terrible hairdo for me, but it doesn't hold a candle to any of the other cancer side-effects.

Lunch is packed, blog is posted, and now it's time to squeeze in a few minutes of relaxation before visiting the sleep fairy.  I hope you all have a great week!