A short story about how little things help.

I’m headed to Sibley this morning to map the sarcoma that tripled in size in preparation for radiation. Mapping isn’t painful but it is uncomfortable and highly undignified. This sarcoma isn’t in my lungs, thankfully. It’s in my breast tissue — which is far preferable. If a tumor has to triple in size, it may as well be in a useless area of my body. It does mean the position for mapping will be awkward, especially for someone as physically modest as I am. 😕 Plus, although I might not need more tattoos, they’re not sure. If I do need them, I find those to hurt!

All of this, plus struggling with what it means to now be the patient trying things outside the box as it were (Keytruda only has a few studies with sarcomas so it’s not an official FDA approved use), meant it was a tough morning. My anxiety and sadness were super high and a physical weight on my chest.

Normally you wouldn’t think Twitter would be calming, but it opened up to #SlateSpeak tweets from ministers talking about grief. One quoted a favorite saying about grief being an expression of love. They hit me hard and I sobbed. I read a blog post by a deacon about living in a liminal space and I sobbed more.

It was healing though. It was good to cry and express my fears for the future and my grief over not being healthy and whole to be a better more giving (less temperamental) wife, daughter, sister  and friend. I then remembered a Deanna Troi line from  Star Trek episode we watched yesterday: “It’s not false hope, just hope.”

I started to calm and Jarrod came out from his ablutions and brought me tea. I calmed down more as the scent of freezer biscuits wafted through our home while he cut up peaches to serve alongside with cream. A friend I look up to tweeted back to me that she doesn’t believe our worth is in what we accomplish. That helped even more.

On a whim I looked up the stable where I used to ride and saw a Groupon for a 2 person semi-private hour lesson for less than $90. Not that we regularly drop that on a day’s entertainment but horseback riding has been on my mind intensely lately. I’m even considering applying for a grant for sarcoma patients to find their happy place and saying my happy place is on a horse.

We bought the Groupon.

Little things that were not created for calming me down helped me this morning. Don’t underestimate how you might be making a world of difference for someone.