“In peace, we shall find solitude and in solitude we shall find clarity.  In clarity we will gather the strength we need to succeed.”

Yesterday was abstinence day.  No talking about “it”.  We spent our first full day of not worrying about “it” or planning for “it” or thinking about “it”.  We needed a break and my wife was surprised at how easy it was to really immerse herself in life.  Kids, school, work, etc. all just seemed to be more rich. 

This morning I showed her the article on breastcancer.org which talk about how a positive disposition led to 25% less risk of cancer.  Kind of a silly article.  I’m sure more depressed people smoke and drink or have bad eating habits that are not good for you, but I don’t think it means that having a good disposition can heal you.  We do agree that when struck by such bad news that a negative attitude is not a fighting attitude.  There is no gain to our children in being depressed when hit with adversity.  Showing our children how we move through difficult times with a level head is one of the best lessons we can teach our children.

We still are monitoring our children daily for signs of stress and are keeping the conversations away from them.  We have decided that i will get them used to me or other people taking them to school so that they aren’t worried the day mommy goes into surgery and really won’t know until after it is over.  As for our social activity, we have been running ragged getting vacations and other things done as we feel like we might be limited in that way for the next several months.  But we aren’t social butterflies anyway so we have learned to start saying no to people and trying to keep our schedule pretty clear until the day of the surgery (actually the day before the surgery).  In fact people have been asking me how I can remain so calm.  I really can’t say that I am.  I’m still feeling tired during the day.  There is a layer deep inside me filled with adrenalin worrying about my wife.  I’m finding myself being tired everyday when I get home.

 I know this is a tangent, but we’ve been getting lots of inquiries about our surgery that my wife will be undergoing.  It appears that my wife’s skin-sparing mastectomy surgery is a little different.  I will be writing more about it tomorrow.