Not Sure How Much More I Can Handle

I'm really not sure how much more of this I can deal with.  I work all day, and then I spend the rest of the day/evening doing yard work and other stuff that needs to be done around here.   I'm exhausted.  My tendinitis is killing me, and I wake up crying out in pain almost every night.  My entire body hurts when I wake up in the morning.   

Greg does as much as he can, but lately, even riding the lawnmower is causing his feeding tube to bleed and leak icky fluids.  He has the memory of a gnat, and that makes me crazy, too.  I will ask him for something, and he'll go outside to do something else, and when I go out to find out what he's doing, he looks at me like "what do you want," completely forgetting what I just asked him to get/do.  It's not something he can help, it's called "chemo brain."  That's not a joke.  It's a real thing!   Just about every person going through chemo will joke about having "chemo brain" but like I said, it's a real thing. Chemo really affects your short term memory.  It's not something he can help, and I can't help it if it drives me nuts, and then I get mad at him, and then I get mad at myself.  It's horrible.  

Today, he managed to knock into one of my shepherd's crook plant hangers and not only knocked the plant off, but broke the pot and the hanger.  This is the second time that's happened.  I'm human.  I got mad.  It's not like he did it on purpose, but I still got mad.  It was just more work for me to do to fix it (and it was one of my best growing plants!).  What can I say.  Ya, I'm just mean.   How many of you have been married to or lived with someone fighting cancer?  I'm guessing there's quite a few.  Now, how many of you have been married to or lived with someone fighting cancer two or three times?  How about adding congestive heart failure to the mix?  How well would you handle it?  Greg seems to have the super power ability to beat cancer and he makes it difficult for me to remember that he's sick, so when things go wrong, well, they go wrong in more ways than one.  

I can't tell you how many people have said "let me know if I can help" and when I do ask for help, there's no one there.   I'm not in a good mood right now, so I'm just going to come out and say this:  If you're offering to help someone just to make yourself feel good, and have no intentions of actually helping, don't bother offering in the first place.  This is not just about me, it's about everyone that is struggling and needs some help.  Hollow offers of help are just that, hollow.  If you really want to help, don't offer, just go over and DO something.  If you're offering to help, you must know the person/family fairly well.  You should know what they might need help with.  There is always something that needs to be done in any household. 

When Greg had his transplant, I remember coming home from the hospital one day to find the grass had been cut.  It brought me to tears.  Seriously, I stood in front of my house crying.   I found out it was my 80 year old neighbors that cut it!  They saw a need and took care of it.  They didn't offer, they didn't ask, they just DID.   My kids' babysitter would oftentimes send me home with a casserole when I went to pick up the kids.  That way, I didn't have to worry about making dinner after a long day at work and at the hospital.  Other folks did other things.   My sister came over and did 10 loads of laundry for me!  Again, none of these were asked.  It was just people who saw a need and took care of it.   

If you see yourself in this and are starting to feel guilty, well then I guess this blog entry did it's job.  Now, I'm going to go shower and wash off all this grass and dirt and grime from all the yard work I did after I got done working all day.  

Take care, 

Julie