Live Free

Clayton's journey has changed me so.  My insides no longer match my outsides, I've aged both in ways people can see and in ways they can't and I have seen horrors of a certain kind to fill multiple lifetimes.  The effect this has had on me was both unforeseen and unexpected.  But it is one of the best things about this journey.

You see, I reached this point of exhaustion where I stopped caring about the wrong things and just wanted to live for the right things.  

I saw this quote from Meryl Streep a while back and saved it ever since.  In many ways it describes how I feel.  I know there are some people that have a hard time grasping this concept, but living this way works for some people...for many people...and its unimaginably freeing... Not only that, living this way is possible for anyone.  It's kind of like using the good china everyday because who the hell knows if they'll have tomorrow and you love that frickin' china or doing your bucket list now because you can and why the hell not.  It's freeing.  It's realizing that that person/people in your life who is always negative and critical...they aren't necessary...even if you love them, you don't have to give them a chance to drag you into their hole.  It's realizing appearances don't matter and a hypocrite is a hypocrite no matter how they disguise themselves.  And generally speaking you are under no obligation to buy into the bullshit our society tries to feed us by the boat load.  It's breaking free of anything and everything necessary to just be and just live all of your days on this beautiful gift of a planet our amazing God has put us on and filtering out all of the crap.  We all have a choice and I choose 110% to filter out all the things/people that stress me out or bring me down and that/who are generally just toxic.  

I have ONE life and it isn't guaranteed to be long.  I choose not to waste it on that which doesn't matter.

Unbelievable...

Seriously unbelievable... I am not grasping some of our latest news.  We did an ultrasound on Clayton in August and I got the results about a week and half ago, but haven't posted because I don't know what to make of the results.  At first I wanted to be sure the new nurse who delivered the news was not somehow confused (because she has been before), so I verified with our veteran urology nurse.  Sure enough, same news and she read me the radiology report.

Somehow and I have no idea how, Clayton's kidney showed no signs of hydronephrosis (fluid on the kidney leading to decreased function) in the most recent ultrasound.  No test EVER in his life has had those results.  Seriously.  Not one single test in his entire life has ever shown his kidney without hydronephrosis.  Some tests show a little more and some a little less, but never has there been NONE.  I have not gotten to speak with the doctor yet to hear from him what this means for everything, but I will soon.  Until then, I'm just in shock.  I don't know what this means for the future of his kidney and to go from the doctors preparing to put him on the kidney transplant list last December to where we are now is CRAZY.  So this is crazy, but good crazy and despite our shock and questions, we are trying to be grateful for these turn of events and hope they are here to stay.  So THANK YOU for all of your prayers for his kidney health, they did something!
We do cancer scans in the next couple weeks and that CT will further confirm or debunk the results of the recent ultrasound.  So I am definitely going to be pacing waiting on those results.  These scans will also be his 3 year post chemo scans.  That's a milestone.
Otherwise things have been good.  We have been working hard on finishing projects around the house.  That's the thing not everyone realizes when I said we were building our house.  We didn't pay someone else to do everything for us we have literally been doing it ourselves.  And we slowed way down on projects after we moved in, but got a little fuel in our tanks recently and have been doing some things.  We have been caulking and painting (the whole house exterior, by hand), covering our back porch and touching up paint inside.  The exterior is finally coming together which I am thrilled about.  I also like keeping busy on projects, because it keeps my anxiety at bay.

My anxiety has been doing better.  It comes and goes, but much less than it use to.  I hope over the coming months on this medication, it comes less and less.  Still liking the medicine though.