Today is the first day of the rest of my life...or just the first day of my blog

Why would I want to start a blog? Well I made a list this morning of everything I had to do today and it was so ridiculous that I ended the list with four things... cook dinner, save the world, start a blog and lose 20 lbs. So being an insane listmaker and being on the hyper end of my thyroid condition I felt the need to complete the list. Needless to say I did not complete saving the world or lose all of the 20 lbs but maybe the blog will save the world and all I will have to do is stop eating little Mounds bars every night.



So again why the blog? Someone I know started a blog and I have to say we are a little bit obsessed with reading it everyday. Reading it is a way to keep up, to get to know what someone really thinks of themself. I am known as a talker. Ok really if you know me you can stop laughing now. I have a lot to say. All the time about everything. I wouldn't consider myself opinionated or a know it all. I just love to discuss things and tell stories; which is why I started the blog really.



I have always wanted to write a book about my life with my kids and my family. A friend at work would tell me to write a book or a sitcom about my life because it was so unreal. It does seem to get ridiculous at times but there is one thing you can be sure of. I never ever lie. I embellish when I think I need to make my point. Like I will say someone was 800 lbs when they were like 300 to make the point that they were really big. Or I say all the time that people are 12, when they are really like 25 because when I want to make a point that they are young I need there to be a visual, like oh my god he was 12.



A little bit about me... I am like 40, old I know. I think of myself as about 22 though. I am not your typical 40 year old. Long story but that will be another time. I have four daughters, 21, 20, 15, 13. I know you are thinking... yeah um how could you be 22 when you have a 21 year old. Yeah um if you can do math I did have my first child at 19. I was married at 18, had my first child 1 and 1/2 years later lots of stories and lots of blogs to fill.



I will start with one story now that hopefully will make you want to read more.



Ok when I started dating my husband I was 16 and he was 18. We went to the same high school and I had actually known him since 8th grade. He was cool I was not but that is not what this story is about. He went into the Navy, another story for another time , and he hurt his hand in boot camp. So for years the military claimed his pain was in his head, and they let it go and go and go. Years of pain and suffering. Finally someone agreed to cut it open to see what was wrong with it. Surgery #1 the military doctor operates and pulls out a large mass. He goes on vacation just hours after the surgery. He leaves no instructions. Common sense says that my husband will have pain killers and have his bandages changed but this is the military so no orders means no action. I arrive after leaving my 6 month old with a stranger just to visit him because there are no phones there and he is screaming in pain. You don't know him but he would never be screaming in pain ever if he wasnt in the worst pain ever. So he is begging for pain killers, pacing back and forth, crying, yelling, screaming and the officers there say " You need to address me as Sir" It was so insane that it is unbelievable but it happened that way. This story continues but I am fast forwarding 6 years later.



I give birth to daughter #3 and the pain in my husbands hand is so intense that just days after I give birth he has to go to the doctor. He is out of the Navy now and weirdly ( or not if you believe in fate) we go to Lamaze classes with our doctor. So we have our baby blah blah blah, he goes to our doctor who we have just shared these weeks of intense breathing and panting with and tells him about the pain. Our doctor has just sent his nephew to a hand specialist that he is friends with so he sends us there. He had just been at his sons Bris. The hand specialist thinks there is just a lot of scar tissue from 3 botched Navy surgeries. He thinks through surgery and physical therapy he can improve his pain and also his ability to use his hand again.



So he operates, crazy story there for another time, but he calls me at home after the surgery( I had to go home to nurse my 5 week old at this point)(hubbys dad is with him until he feels good enough to come home) I say how did it go? he stutters , he really stutters not just here and he is saying hard to understand things like mass, and margins and irregular shape and I am like are you saying there was a tumor in there? Side note,,, we had gone to StonyBrook Hospital years before , they never did as much as an xray and injected steroid shots into what we now know is a tumor.



Who has a tumor in their hand? And it can't be Cancer because this has been going on for almost 10 years at this point. Cancer kills you way before that right? Wrong Wrong Wrong!



We wait for the pathology report and we don't think much of it really. So we go for the checkup and I am nursing Number 3 in the car and hubby says he is going into the appointment and I am like No wait for me and he is like no big deal meet me in there.



The doctor wants to know if I am there. My husband says yeah in the car nursing number 3. He wants to wait until I get in but my husband is like No really whats up? The doctor is crying. Not a good sign by the way. If you ever see your doctor crying before they give you news, run away, join the circus, eat lots of Ben and Jerrys and never see a doctor again. You wont have long to live but you will enjoy your last days.



So its cancer, synovial sarcoma, a rare and deadly soft tissue sarcoma. In his hand... and it stays dormant in your body for years and then it spreads and kills you. We didnt know at what stage we were at. The dormant one or the say goodbye to daddy girls one.



I calmy say " Oh you are not leaving me with these 3 girls alone. I forbid it." And then I become superwoman. In my head I guess. I had a 6 year old, a 5 year old and a 6 week old at this point. We were at Sloan Kettering in 3 days. The crying doctor actually called from the office while we were in there. And his cancer is so rare at that point there were only 8 other people in the world with it in their hand like that.



Wow this story is longer than I thought and this is only my first blog so I will continue this story next time. All I can say is I dealt with the scariest moment of my life with humor and I had some sick Cancer jokes. It helped me get through the day and some days it was hard to laugh but laughing is cathartic and it really lightens the moment. My favorite part of the story is after his next surgery we were driving to pick hubby up at Sloan Kettering, me , my dad and my number 3, Being a seasoned mom of three and knowing we were just driving into the city and back , maybe 3 hours tops I brought no diaper bag, just one diaper, sadly with a child who was just waiting to explode on the ride there. So I change her in the bathroom and she is just in a diaper and I cared more than I should of about that being I was picking up my husband from having two of his fingers amputated.