I woke up this morning and felt a sense of “oh boy, it’s Tuesday”. Tuesdays have been special days for years, but not always in a way that you’d want to celebrate!
Philosophically, each day is special, but Tuesday’s claim-to-fame in our family has been that, over the last few years, it was the auspicious day that Cailyn has received her chemotherapy. When she started chemo again in 2012, we went to the hospital on Mondays because that was the day that Cailyn’s oncologist had her clinic days in London. Within the year, our hospital days changed to Tuesdays, as our oncologist moved her clinic days.
It has been over a month since we stopped our weekly trips for chemo, and yet the idea that “Tuesdays are chemo days” lingers. The first few weeks after stopping, the fact that we weren’t pointing our car in the direction of the hospital, didn’t seem odd at all… likely because we were caught up in the excitement of Cailyn’s foot surgery, hospitalization, healing process, and school re-integration. However, today was a different story… I woke up dreading this day… forgetting that Cailyn is getting a break from chemo.
Over the last few years, our trips to either Grand River Hospital or London Children’s Hospital have interrupted the “normal course of things”. And then, the after-effects of these trips would interject themselves on the normalcy of life for the next few days. [Although there really is nothing normal about a journey that involves weekly trips to a hospital for chemo!] They say it takes 21 experiences to create a habit… well… I’m confident that’s true. What is fascinating to me is how easy it is to both revert to normal, where Tuesdays don’t include chemo, AND to fear the abnormal, a return to the drama.
I’m aiming to break the habit!