Last year, on my 49th birthday, I am now sorry to say, I was not very "happy." I woke and said to myself, "and so I begin my 50th year on this earth." I felt my banged up knees crick as I got out of bed, groaned at the lines on my face when I looked in the mirror, and railed at the effects of time and gravity on my body as I put on my bra. I was old, and growing old was not going down easy for me. I was pretty sad about it. I spent most of the ensuing summer wrestling with it. Playing tennis, my knees were rickety, my shoulder ached, and I just didn't have the energy that I used to. Angry and bummed, I didn't want to accept getting old and I wasn't sure I could do this whole growing old thing.
Then on Labor Day I banged into a door jamb and broke my arm. It was the eve of first day of school, so we waited until morning, put the kids on the bus, and Justus, my husband, brought me to the Emergency room. The X-rays showed a lesion (tumor, growth, whatever you want to call it) in the bone, right where it broke. The emergency room doctor was afraid to come back in and tell us, but a very brave and kind hearted physician's assistant took a deep breath and explained what the X-ray showed. I knew it wasn't good. He tried to be positive, but I knew. We knew.
It turned out I had multiple myeloma, a rare blood cancer that usually appears in people much older than me. I thought about dying, leaving my husband, the man I adore, and my beautiful boys. I thought about my boys growing up without their mother and I was just sick! I thought about all of the things I still had to do. And finally I thought, "hey! I'm only 49!" Suddenly I wasn't so old anymore. Suddenly growing old wasn't such a bad thing, it became something I wanted more than anything. Everything had turned around on a dime. Or more accurately, on a fall.
I've spent the time since, doing everything I can to stick around for a few more years. This year I woke on my 50th birthday happy to be alive, getting good morning kisses and happy birthday hugs from all of my boys, (young and "old") the loves of my life. Though Justus and I spent the day at Sloan for more tests, X-rays, and another dreaded bone marrow biopsy, it was also filled with phone calls, text messages, inboxes, and Facebook posts from friends and family sending love and birthday wishes from around the country.
When we came home we found to my delight, gifts from my wonderful friends! The fig tree that I had been researching, obsessing over, and vacillating about for the past few weeks and a planter box full of my favorite herbs! If you know me, or have been to my house, you know I love plants, flowers and gardening! One of the bummers of my recuperation this year, is that I can not receive flowers, dig in the dirt, nor plant or tend a garden.
In the planter box was also a pair of gloves that had a name scrawled across them that we couldn't quite figure out. After puzzling over it for a while, and being the hipsters that we think we are, we finally decided that "phui" must mean phooey, kind of like "phat" is "fat", right? I try the glove on and look at the attached tags. Know what they say? "Peace, love & mud"! I turn the gloves around and now I can see it! Laugh my ass off, clear as day, they say "mud" once turned in the right direction! I laugh and laugh at how we could have missed that, and then I start to cry thinking about how lucky I am to have a such great friends and family, and finally, just to be alive.
It's all about perspective, isn't it?
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