Saturday, March 23, 2013

Just A Random Update

My sister, Gina, is doing well. She hasn't had her surgery yet; they rescheduled because she had a sinus infection and a day later she found out it would've been moved anyway-all non-emergency surgeries are being rescheduled because of the antibiotic resistant strain of Staph that our area has apparently been hit with. She isn't doing any radiation or chemo right now, they've decided to put her on immune suppressants and just keep an eye on the spot in her lung and throat. Now that she's not struggling with the side effects of those two treatments she's feeling better, although the immune suppressants create their own set of issues for her and some days are worse than others.

It's harder to write about her than I expected. It's too difficult to write about how I feel about her illness, but I thought recording my memories would be easy, that in doing so I would be able to cope better. There are some truly funny times that I would love to talk about, some rough times, some happy times. Some moments that are just memorable for no real reason at all. But when I set out to write about things like that it feels like I'm giving up in some way, like I'm focusing on the past because I'm worried there isn't a future. Which I know isn't true, and it's a little silly to think like that, but I over-analyze everything and can't help but feel that way when I try to write these things down. I hope to get over this soon, since most of these memories are fun to talk about regardless of why I initially thought to record them.

Now that she's feeling better most days, Gina has signed up for a 3-day, 60-mile walk to support Susan G and breast cancer research (we've found almost no lung cancer awareness programs outside of stop-smoking support). She has started walking again, she was able to do 5k's as late as last fall but the last few months she hasn't really been able to run much, so having to restart with just walking is a little disappointing for her. I always say I want to walk/run with her, we used to do a 2 mile jog 3-4 times a week when we were younger-then I got a serious boyfriend and wasn't nearly as interested in jogging at 9pm anymore! Anyway, last week I finally decided to quit making excuses and I walked her home. It's ~4 miles and took us an hour and 15 minutes. It was rough-if I had remembered that it was all uphill, I probably wouldn't have quit making excuses to get out of it! The quality, one-on-one time with her was great though, plus I was finally able to get a picture of the tree I moon over every time I drive by.


We're supposed to go again tomorrow. Wish me luck :)

2 comments:

  1. I hope you had a good walk today! Glad to hear your sister is doing well, and how wonderful that she signed up for the walk! Still sending positive thoughts and hugs your way.

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  2. The walk was great-we ended up going Monday night instead of Sunday, one of our cousins is visiting on Spring Break so Gina took her to San Francisco to walk the Golden Gate. The three of us walked from Gina's to my house and even though the walk was a little easier because it was downhill, it felt like it took a lot longer, even though we finished 10 minutes sooner than the first time-so weird! Thank you for thinking about my sister and me, I truly appreciate it Sandra.

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