Joyride

'Tis the season to count your blessings . . . and all that crap.

It's not that I don't recognize all the many things I have to be thankful for - I do. But sometimes you just have to acknowledge the shit sandwiches and move on, right?

Thanksgiving passed at our house as mostly a non-event this year. The hooligans became very vocal the day before Thanksgiving about what they would not be eating for Thanksgiving dinner. Thank goodness the biggest effort on my part was to wait in line at Marie Callender's to pick up my pre-prepared Thanksgiving feast. Those kids have a way of knocking the wind from my sails sometimes, I tell ya. This being a chemo week, Michael spent a lot of time in bed this week, including on TG. Somehow the food didn't taste as good as in years past . . . maybe it was the general funk permeating the house. Anyway, I was glad to have an obligatory holiday behind us.

The week was capped off by Michael developing a fever yesterday and landing in the hospital. That's the short version. The longer version is that he developed a fever, and not thinking it would be wise to mess around with or ignore it, I made him call his oncologist yesterday evening. The on-call doc told him to go to the ER (groans and sighs ensued from Michael, who I think just wanted to take a couple Advil and climb into bed). Kevin was at a sleepover at a friend's, so I couldn't have him stay with the other kids, so M drove himself to the ER and called me a while later to tell me that they were admitting him. He's got some kind of infection, likely his PICC line, and it might have to come out temporarily. Ahhhhh, setbacks. And we're finally soooooo close to the end of all this - he's only got two more cycles of chemo to go. But he's got to get better, and right now that means relaxing (haa!) in the hospital for some unspecified length of time. Maybe they'll release him later today, maybe not until tomorrow.

Could be worse. Especially if I didn't have such a tremendous sense of humor about all of this, right? (I kid, I kid.)

Don't bother praying for us - if there is a God, I'm convinced that we're on his shit list.