The game plan

Have you got a piece of paper and a pen handy? Cause here's the deal. Friday Ian will go to school, but Rich and I are off of work. This allows us to meet with the lawyer and sign Advanced Medical Directives followed by some child-free quality time. Nothing sets the mood like "power of attorney" and "end of life instructions". Somewhere in there I hope to take Ms. Kitty to the vet as well. Oh, and that evening I'll be going to BUNCO!

Saturday We're getting our Investiture on. Rich and I will be invested as the sixth Baron and Baroness of Marinus. We'll have three families staying with us for the festivities. Ian will be staying at my folks' for the day, though he's not going to be happy about that. I'm literally bribing him with Thomas trains to keep him from being pissed that he can't go to the event with us.

Sunday Rich, Ian and I are getting up at dawn to head to Bowie, Maryland. We're leaving our houseguests behind to clean up after themselves and lock the door behind them. Rich's folks (Nana and Granddad) will follow along at their own pace from Richmond. Our goal is to be on the road by 7am so that we're at Beth's house by 11am when Rich has to take his Colon Blow medicine. I offered to strap him to the roof of the car like Mitt Romney's dog but it didn't seem the best pre-op plan.

Rich will set up a laptop in Beth's guest bath and be "pre-disposed" for most of the day. He's restricted to a clear liquid diet all that day.

Monday GAME DAY! Rich and I will be leaving at 5am from Beth and Steve's house. Nana and Granddad will be coming to the house to stay with Ian while he's sleeping.

At 6am Rich and I check in for surgery. He is literally the only surgery Dr. Hanna has scheduled that day, for obvious reasons. Surgery should start around 7:30am. At that point I will head the 1/2 mile to the hotel where Nana, Granddad and Ian will have eventually made it.

I'm going to find something to do with my kid that day. Maybe the train museum. We'll have at least 8 hours to use up. I can call anytime I'd like for an update. At some point I'll send Ian off with Nana and Granddad and wait for Rich to come out of surgery. The plan is for me to stay with Rich overnight that first night while Ian sleeps with Nana and Granddad in the hotel.

Tuesday and Every Day After My plan is to stay in the hospital from 9am-6pm or so. Then I'll pick up Ian from Nana and Granddad and head to Beth's. We'll have dinner and co-chill and I'll put him to bed. Then I can relax at Beth's with some company versus being all alone in a hotel room with a sleeping kid. There is also FaceTime between Beth's and the hospital so that Ian can hopefully see Rich.

Care Calendar Megan has set up a fabulous care calendar to help us schedule all this stuff. Some of you already got an email invite to be "personal helpers" but there are jobs for everyone. Key things we need in Baltimore are folks to stay with Rich so that he's not alone if I'm away with Ian, at least for the first few days. Back in Norfolk, we need folks to take our dogs for walks so they don't become (any more) neurotic. We also need folks to come visit during the day in the hospital and to prepare some lunches and snacks.

Once we're all back in Norfolk, the help expands to more food, some simple childcare, more dog attention and other things like that.

For one-stop shopping on important info and links, bookmark http://www.inabottle.org/slime. I'll be updating things like Rich's room number and the general state of things there.

I've been very chill about all this for the most part. But looking at that care calendar and seeing things turn from red to green as our friends signed up for things got me all misty-eyed. It's a graphical representation of how much we're loved.

The power of prayer

Rich got mad the other day because the pharmacist said she would pray for him. I understand where they're both coming from. One is not used to being prayed for in the course of a sales transaction. She was just trying to be nice. I can think of far more unhelpful things she could have said. But it frustrated Rich.

Granted, this was the day before we drove up to see Dr. Hanna and Dr. Sardi and Rich was under a lot of stress. He had worked himself into a fret over the assumption that because Dr. Sugarbaker couldn't do Rich's surgery (BECAUSE HE'S 80!), that no surgeon would help him. He was feeling a little hopeless already, so in his mind, prayer was what people did when there was no other recourse.

After the shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007, Harry wrote "Prayer does not always result in the outcome you want, but it always results in the strength to deal with the outcome you get." (Yes, I dug that up out of the ILLiad-L archives.) Somehow over the years, I paraphrased that into "we pray not to get what we want, but to better deal with not getting what we want."

I've always found it strange if people ask if it's okay for them to pray for me. It's not like they expect me to come to their house and participate. It does me absolutely no harm.

Rich told me the other day that he had figured out something. He said that he didn't necessarily need all the well wishes - the cards or the prayers or the ribbons. He said he just needs me. It reminds me of my father saying he didn't need to talk to anyone about being depressed because he had Mom to talk to. No one asked if perhaps then Mom needed someone to talk to about Dad being depressed.

This whole cancer situation is a giant pyramid scheme. Rich only needs me. But I need approximately a million people's support in order to be there for him. Julie commented today that caring for someone else is a full time job with a lot of overtime and I believe it. I'm happy to do that for Rich. But any and all help is appreciated.

So pray away! Light a candle, talk to God directly, lie in the grass and visualize all the green slime leaving Rich's belly leaving behind nothing but goodness and light. Add three more smiles to your day in our honor. Pay for someone's Starbucks. Send us a postcard. Wear slime green and orange on Monday and post your picture to Facebook. Make signs like they do for runners in marathons.

When we told the barony that Rich had cancer and we would need to go to Baltimore for surgery, I explained that we don't go to church but chose to participate in the SCA instead. This medieval motley crew is our support network and it was time to break out the casserole dishes and rally around our banner. But I also extend that to each of you reading these words. You're our posse and were it possible we would all have team jerseys and a fight song.

Perhaps your fight song comes out of the hymnal. I'm fine with that. Just don't be quiet about any of it. You all are the foundation of the structure holding us up, so paint your faces and get loud. Praise be.

There is no "i" in cancer

We were heading to whatever meal is at 2:30pm (it was after lunch but before dinner but we hadn't eaten in hours). Ian had just finished losing his mind over the indignity of having to wear shoes bring shoes with us out of the house. And Megan called to talk to me about the Care Calendar she's setting up. We had planned on talking on the phone about it and it should have been fine. But as she went over the various options within the calendar (yard work, housekeeping, food, child care, transportation), I felt my stomach getting icky. We continued the conversation as I ordered my lunch/dinner (yeah, I was one of those assholes on their phone) and finished up shortly after sitting at the table. I hung up and Rich and I just looked at each other across the table, both of us feeling kind of icky.

Mind you, Megan did nothing wrong. On the contrary, she has been doing all kinds of things right. She's volunteered to be the consigliere for this operation through the calendar app so that I don't have to field a million calls and texts. The real issue was that she was asking me what help we were going to need, both in Baltimore and once we get home. We aren't very good at asking for help.

We come by it honestly, as neither of our parents are particularly adept at asking for help. Mom had a mastectomy and reconstruction with only Daddy to help her for the most part. The idea of having a neighbor mow my parents' lawn or do their dishes is laughable on a number of levels. Megan was asking if we should have "backup" caregivers for Ian to assist Rich's folks and my first thought was they themselves would have to be hospitalized before they would call someone 45 minutes away and ask them to come watch our kid, regardless of if that person is an approved kid watcher.

So it's hard. Being positive in the face of cancer is way easier than considering the idea of someone else taking out my trash or walking my dogs. Megan talked about the help we would need once we're home and I thought, "but we'll be home then. We can just do our thing." Except that Rich will have a 27" seam down the middle of him and we'll have a busy three year old and I'll have some sort of work thing I'll have to do at some point. So maybe taking one or two things off our plate might help a little.

It all just seems like a lot of little things. But at the same time, if a lot of little things are divided up amongst a lot of people, it's far better than one person (me) trying to do them all.

So I'm hereby promising to ask for help. Megan is coordinating an entire web site structured for that very purpose. I will let everyone know what you can do to ease our load, regardless of if you're in Virginia, Maryland or Hong Kong. And let me be the first to say thank you for all you've done already and what you will do. We are all on Team Stryker and it is a pretty kick ass team.