Still Waiting For Test Results

Last week my daughter had an ultra sound, which showed that her pain and abdominal swelling is not the result of powerful medication, like I had hoped and as has happened in the past and is easily corrected.

Her blood tests and the ultra sound revealed "anomalies" and a potentially malignant growth, so she was to return in three days for a cat scan, but on the day of the appointment, roads were icy and snow covered, and we were reeling from the results of her father's routine heart examination, which we expected to be normal but which indicate another mild heart attack with more damage, perhaps throwing him into the realm of congestive heart failure.

Jennifer's cat scan was rescheduled for today and her father's cat scan is a few days from now, and so we wait.

This is all familiar, at least for Jennifer, who has had chronic medical problems since birth.

In another sense, hoovering between hope and fear is something one never gets accustomed to, even if it happens once a year or two and most of those times, fate hands life and family back to me intact.
Sometimes life feels like a kaleidoscope turned so slowly we are unaware of the changes, just going around and around within, doing the same things day in and day out, until we can't for awhile, and then someone does it for us.

What seems dreadfully boring and repetitious within that circle, like sorting laundry or eating the same meals day after day becomes gloriously wonderful, and first proof of recovery when someone loses the ability to do it, and then finds the strength and will again.

My daughter said this morning, "We aren't aware how precious people are to us, and our lives until suddenly we begin to to see how it might be coming to a close. But what I think seems like end to us really is the middle, maybe of new routines and vistas and circles some where else."

If she's ill, I tell myself, it only means another operation, and then another recovery.

Right now I cannot think beyond that.