The Long Way to Where We Want to Be

Yesterday the oldest daughter, the youngest son and I took an outing to IKEA where I needed to look for some picture frames for a church project.   Despite the rush hour congestion and about 10 necessary apologies of "Sorry, I'm from out of town" as I cut across 3 lanes of traffic numerous times, we arrived at the store safely.

When we returned to the car for the journey back to the hospital it was beginning to get dark and the traffic was still heavy.  The oldest daughter was pretty sure she knew how to get us back and so we started on our way.

We were following the road signs that directed us to get in a certain lane for the road we wanted, but when we actually got to where we met up with that road, we were not where we needed to be and we ended up going north instead of south.

Despite the son's insistence that we were lost, we weren't too worried.  We knew where we wanted to go and knew how to get there.  We would just travel north, take the next exit, turn back around and head south.

The next exit was quite a ways down the road.  Just as we started to exit we realized that we could only travel east on the road from this ramp.  To go west we should have stayed on the freeway a few more yards.

That was OK.  We would just turn around when we got a chance, head west and get back on the freeway headed south.  We could do this, it would add a couple of minutes to our trip, but we were still fine.

We found a place to turn around and were once again going the right way.  I moved into the left lane to get back on the freeway, feeling pretty good about how things were going, and sailed past the freeway entrance that someone decided should be on the right instead of the left.

Not a big deal.  We could just turn left, take the surface streets back to the "G-named street" and get on the freeway there and that's just what we did.

Once again we were headed in the right direction.  The son put on some calming music (it took a few tries, but we finally agreed on what was calming), the daughter passed me a Lindt chocolate,  I took a deep breath and down the road we went.

Now it was really dark and the traffic was still heavy.  I was a little nervous driving the unfamiliar road but the daughter knew where we were going and we were confident that we would get there,  a little later than expected, but most likely in one piece in spite of the youngest son's views on my driving skills.

A handful and a half of wrong turns, missed exits, one way streets, differing ideas and mis-interpreted road signs later we finally reached our destination.  Our pizza for dinner was cold, our nerves were a little frazzled, but we were where we wanted to be.

This long-winded story perfectly describes my thoughts and feelings about this cancer journey we are on at the moment.

There is a plan.

There is a time table.

We all know where we want to end up and have a pretty good idea how to get there.

However,  sometimes the road is dark, and unfamiliar and even a little scary.

The path is filled with contradictory voices, lots of back seat drivers, detours, one way streets, hard to remember street names and surprising turns.

Sometimes we feel like we are headed in the wrong direction and we probably are.

Some may even insist that all is lost,
but I have faith that eventually we will reach our destination safe and sound.

It just may take a little longer than we would like and I think I'm going to need a whole lot of chocolate.

Today I am thankful that

Shad was able to move from the PICU to the regular pediatric ward. This is a positive sign and a step toward going home, plus his room is a lot bigger and at least one parent gets an actual bed to sleep in.

a by-the-book doctor let her heart be soften by a cute smile and brought Shad a whole take out container full of pickles from the galley for his hospital hamburger.  Whoever thought serving zucchini that resembled pickles and a pickle-less hamburger for lunch today is not a nice person.

At first glance these may look like pickles, but they are NOT pickles!

You'll be happy to know that he ate a few bites of hamburger with all those pickles.  

today's ultra sound technician seemed to know what he was doing and managed to do his job with as little trauma as possible to the grandson.

the youngest son bought pizza for dinner.