Countdown

Wow, I'm close. I'm less than 48 hours away from surgery.

I know all of you want to know how I'm doing, how I'm holding up, how I'm feeling. I'm honestly a bit of an emotional kaleidoscope right now, changing my colors every minute. One minute I'll be on the verge of tears, the next minute I'm focused - ready to wrap up loose ends at work and just move on with this.

The one thing I've been struggling with over the past week is that I'm tired, in all sense of that word. I'm physically drained, I wake up each morning feeling like I just went to war in my dreams and am still fatigued when I drag myself out of bed. I'm beginning to think that the past month of research, anticipation, worry, preparation, etc are starting to take a physical toll on my body. Perhaps I'm finally coming to grips with the fact that the first big step in my cancer annihilation is about to happen, and my body is finally accepting this and telling me to slow down the next 48 hours. I'm also emotionally tired. I'm tired of holding myself together, breaking the news to people, trying to decipher how others are reacting to my news, and keeping a strong and positive attitude about the whole situation. Don't misinterpret this as raising my hands in defeat. On the contrary, I feel it's probably just part of the process, and as the surgery date gets closer, my brain is slowly lowering it's guard and trying to accept and understand everything that's been thrown at it, and re-focusing it's energy on me.

So what do the next 48 hours hold for me?  Here's the breakdown.

- I'm finishing up at work, trying to transition everything I can possibly think of so the team is in a good place while I am gone.
- I'm staying healthy, holing myself up in my office, dosing up on vitamins and Emergen-C's, gargling with salt water, bundling up to stay warm, keeping my body strong with spin classes and stomaching the aftermath of Jon's experiments with his new best friend "the juicer" (actually, not as bad as I make it sound!) so I'm at my strongest during the surgery.
- I'm mentally trying to calm myself down, seemingly the easiest item on this list, and 100% the most difficult for me to do.
- I'm packing my overnight bag with cute new pajamas (front buttons required as I won't be able to lift my arms!), entertaining movies, magazines, electronics and books, and all the post surgery meds prescribed to ward off the pain and keep the germs at bay.
- I'm trying to straighten up our room for potential visitors post-surgery to keep me entertained (hint, hint!).
- I'm oozing love and affection to my dogs, who unbeknownst to them, will be seeing a lot more of me over the next 6 weeks, and have a special effect of bringing my blood pressure down and easing my mind when it's racing.
- I'm cuddling with my husband, who has a similar soothing effect on me as my dogs!

Speaking of husbands, I am handing over my blog password to Jon while I am in surgery on Friday (I forgive him in advance for grammatical and spelling errors), so we can keep all of you posted. Stay tuned, stay fierce.