More good news about bad news

My wife finished her radiation treatments yesterday. It was a cold, windy day but we were so happy. Of course, Cindy has had the worst of it but it has affected all of us. Cindy's mother (my mother-in-law) also finished her scheduled radiation treatments last week. She had to endure higher doses of radiation for a shorter time period. Cindy and her mom said it seemed like it was a job that they had to go to every day - except they weren't getting paid. The twenty mile drive was not made easier by construction along the way and the snow we've been getting. But that's all behind us.

Also, during the treatments, I was leaving the office to work from home in the afternoons. I enjoyed this and found I was more productive in a lot of ways because there were fewer distractions at home. Notice I didn't say "no distractions at home." But there were fewer interruptions and the distractions were quicker and easier to handle than the ones I would get at work. At work, someone was always stopping by for a "quick question" that would inevitably take a long time to answer fully. Everyone (myself included) thinks that a problem that someone else is dealing with will take no time at all. We only see the looming twists and turns of a problem when we have to deal with it ourselves. But one problem with working at home was that I often found that a book or folder I needed was still at work. I tried to bring everything I needed with me each day but something always turned up to either be at the office or at home when I needed it in the other place.

Besides being at the office only half-days since right after Thanksgiving, I've been on vacation since Monday, December 20. So, starting on Monday, January 3, I'll be working full time at the office. It will be hard getting used to being there all day. It will be hard not seeing my wife and children and my mother-in-law as often as I have for the last month. And yes, it will take some getting used to working at the computer without a cat in my lap and a dog poking me with his nose me to remind me to let him out.

We're so glad the cancer treatments are behind us. But I have a feeling that we'll never feel like this episode of our lives is completely behind us. Now the horrible specter of this disease has been raised in our lives. You hear so many bad things about it. Even with the tremendous advances in diagnosing and treating cancer, the mythology of the disease lingers in our minds like the warnings of our parents not to cross our eyes or they'd stay that way. Or the fears of terrorism that are always in the back of our minds. Cindy will be getting increased care to look for recurrences of this and every time we wait for test results, we'll be a little more wary than we were before this all started.