Half the Time as You

I’m not the youngest woman in the waiting room any more.

Okay, I’m probably ONE of the youngest women who gets a mammogram (I’m not THAT old), but I can’t honestly say I’m THE youngest any more.

On the way to my mammogram, I was more nervous than I should be. I’ve had mammograms for years, so why was my stomach in knots? I think I was more nervous about being able to pick up Emmy from preschool after my appointment than my actual mammogram. My mammogram went very smoothly with nothing to report. As I was complaining about how this left nothing to blog about, Ed told me that yes, this is what we want, remember?

After registration, which took about 15 minutes, and waiting for my name to be called, which was about twenty minutes, I was finally ushered into the changing room. (“Undress from the waist up and put the gown on with with opening in front.” Yes, I think impatiently, I know.) By this time I was getting antsy since I only had 45 minutes before I had to be at Emmy’s preschool. Once I had the gown on and was called into the mammography room, I was in and out, and was able to pick up Emmy right on time.

The ease of my mammogram didn’t prevent me from getting an age-old stress headache; the kind starts in my back and works its way up; the kind that I always used to get on the day of doctor appointments and hospital visits. I suppose I’ll never grow out them.

But I take back what I wrote before. I was the youngest woman in that waiting room!

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Words Cannot Express {Simple Moment, Bigger Picture}

I have heard through the grapevine that a college acquaintance of mine has started the journey; the healing path toward remission from breast cancer. On a mutual friend’s Facebook wall, she wrote about leg hair. That’s right; LEG HAIR! I remember telling others that while my head was bald, I still had to shave my legs. GAH! But eventually, the chemo made even that stubborn leg hair fall out.

Grateful.
I am grateful for the healing I received.
For the hair brushing my cheeks.
For the hair bristling on my legs.
(Yes, I am even grateful for the need to shave!)
I am grateful for the doctors I continue to see.
For the words I heard just this month, “Your labs look fine.”
I am grateful, so grateful, for the forty-two years God has given me;
For my husband and daughters; there are not words enough to express my love for them.
But yet, in the pit of me, a ball of fear reigns, like a tightly wound ball of yarn.
Panic’s claws threaten to unravel the ball; to pick at it; to make it–and me–come undone.
Fear’s tendrils weave through my body, threatening to stop me in my tracks.
With God’s help, those tendrils of fear dissolve. Words cannot express His love for me.
He gently winds that fear back up into a ball and weaves the fear away.
He was with me through my diagnosis and healing;
He will be with me at the end.
Fear has no hold on me.
He is with us now.
And I am thankful.

Bigger Picture Moments this month are all about Gratitude. Visit Sarah at This Heavenly Life  for more thoughts about thankfulness.

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