life interrupted

Good friends of mine are pretty much living at Children's Hospital while their 4yr old daughter undergoes treatment for leukaemia.  

IT_FUCKING_SUCKS

I feel like I've been here before. When my friend Karen died of breast cancer many years ago I wasn't sad, I was super freakin' angry.  Angry that an amazingly smart woman who lived a super healthy life and was a new mom was sick, and then was gone. I wanted to lash out at anyone who was complaining about petty things, to yell at them, punch them in the face.

And this is now how I feel about their daughter having cancer.  Not only is she a pretty fantastic kid, but she has pretty much the best parents I know.  Why is this happening to them?!  

When I visit them at the hospital I try to be upbeat, to talk about other things besides "how's she doing?".  Her dad and I joke about my latest gear purchases (although he has yet to harass me directly about buying a puffy jacket for my dog….wait for it….), talk about Natasha, who he's quite close with, and generally avoid any potentially weepy, touchy-feely topics.  But I feel his sadness in his hugs when I leave.  I want my hug back to say "she's going to get through this and we're all going to go camping and hiking and skiing together again really soon."

Then I leave and generally cry the whole way to the truck, narrowly avoiding punching anyone who might complain about their coffee from Second Cup (oh wait, that was me doing that last time) or the price of parking at the hospital (oh wait, that was also me).  Heaven help me if I ever run into the anti-abortionists that sometimes protest in front of the hospital….

Last time I was there Natasha was with me.  A few times when she and the dad were talking I looked at the little form curled up in the institutional hospital bed and tried, in some kind of hippie-dippie psychic way, to send healing energy to her. I'm a scientist, I know that's dumb, but I don't know what else to do to just_make_her_better.  It's times like this that I wish I was deeply religious and could believe that it was higher power that was screwing with us and there was nothing I could do except have faith.

I don't

When I made soup for them I tried not only to use the best ingredients I could, but tried to think positive thoughts the whole time I was making it.  Yes, I feel quite stupid writing that now but at the time it seemed like it couldn't hurt.

Her illness, combined with my Dad's recent death, me going through a career change and sending Natasha off on her first solo trip has me feeling like my whole world has completely turned upside-down. The only thing that gets me through it all is the hope that as this all shakes out, I'll take time to appreciate life more. To be more passionate, and not in that cheesy #YOLO way.  That's the hope anyways.