Ladies and gentlemen, we have had two weeks of nonstop excitement from birthday parties to sleepovers to Wii time to pool dates and, lo and behold, the tics are back!
Introducing, the squeaky gulp. It is happiest when interrupting Stink’s sentences at a rate of 20 times per minute, but it will make its appearance during quiet times, reading, chewing and teeth brushing.
While it is doing its best to unnerve me – and trust me – it’s doing a great job of it – I am hanging in there. I make no apologies for having my husband read bedtime stories to my little dude, wear ear plugs when needed, or just go for a walk (or 10) when I find myself losing it.
I refer to episodes like these as ”Silver Bullet Denied”, for while I had hoped that the Intuniv would just blast these suckers away all together, alas, such is not the case. It is what is.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the tics I cannot change, change the tics I can, and have the wisdom to know the difference.
And really, although I’m entitled to my pity party, I have so much to be grateful for. Just three hours earlier, my friend of 40 years asked me to visit her in the hospital.
“What can I bring you?” I asked, happy to finally have a chance to visit since her diagnosis two weeks ago.
“Bring your sharpest scissors,” she asked.
“Um … why?” I asked, not thinking she was planning on doing anything drastic, but it sounded odd.
“You’re giving me a haircut,” she said. “My hair will be gone by the weekend anyway, so at least get it off my shoulders. It’s so dry. I hate the clumps.”
“No problem!” I said.
One hour later, and a few snips that lasted five minutes due to her increasing chemo-induced headaches, she proudly sported a very short flapper hair cut.
“You’re like the Betty Paige of Leukemia,” I quipped.
She smiled and said she was tired, but asked me to come back Thursday.
I said I would and started to hug her goodbye.
She braced herself against the bed, and then I realized, “Oh, yeah. I can’t hug her. Her immune system is still too compromised. You’d think the surgical mask on my face would remind me. But no. Like thinking I can cure TS, I’m a slow learner.”
Moms and dads, a cancer ward is not fun, but if my friend can name her chemo pumps Penelope and Kujo and dance on good days, we can get through TS. She will survive this – I know she will — and so will we! And so will our kids!
