Jumping to the Daylight

For the first time in years (decades?), the switch to Daylight Savings Time last night was seamless for me. Usually I wake groggy and stumble around all day in a fog, cursing the stupidity of moving the clock an hour ahead. But today, smooth sailing.

The difference between this year and all the other years? The myeloma in me. Don't get me wrong. This is not a new announcement about my crappy health. I am stable. But what "stable" means and looks like at 14 years out is very different from what "stable" means in other contexts. The sensation of myeloma, the distinct feel of it, if you will, is something I live with now pretty much around the clock. That feeling typically recedes when I am involved in something, such as a round of attendance mediations, but reasserts itself when times are quiet Accompanied often by fatigue, the myeloma is the reason I have cut back steeply on evening activities, joining friends for coffee, traveling, and the like. It is an increasing reason I read a lot (A LOT) because I can read without having to leave my chair (and my comfort zone) every evening.

There is no quieter fort me than when I go to bed each night, so guess what? The myeloma wakes me up in the deep night, sometime just enough to remind me it is here, sometimes for a long, whiney chat. It is an annoying alarm clock that I cannot set to the time I need.

But this morning it did me a favor. When it went off around old 4:30 a.m., we were already at 5:30 a.m. And it was easier (okay, marginally) to wait out another hour before getting up for the day.

Lots of people comment on my positive attitude as I move through this disease to its inevitable conclusion. I don't know about positive attitude. I think rather than a positive attitude, I am pretty realistic about what this is and what it means. Accepting that I have an incurable, progressive cancer that progresses even when it is stable allows me to savor the time I have and move through my days a little (a lot?) more easily. But today, I will go so far as to say "okay, myeloma, that was a gift."

I take them where I can find them.

And speaking of gifts, Orlando has been in the world and part of our family for a little over three weeks. Three weeks! Time flies. Ramona is very much the big sister, reading to him nightly per reliable reports. That makes me smile extra wide; I was in first grade (like Ramona) when my baby brother Mark was born, and I read to him all the time. (So much so over the years that he jokingly blames me for his being a slow reader because, as he puts it 56 years later, "I didn't have to learn. You read to me all the time!") So here is our Ramona (dressed up for Read Across America as Charlotte's Web; her top half is Wilbur, her bottom half Charlotte), Orlando in arms:

Now that is a gift.