PapillonRoseBleue's Journal

After the venting I did in the previous post, it would not be fair to fail to acknowlege the people who are moving mountains and making huge sacrifices so that I will not be alone when I am at Mayo Clinic. It is humbling. Its a domino effect. There is a delicate machinery like the gears in a watch that seems to be weaving together in orchestration. A young woman in the state of Washington and her husband serving in Iraq are using their savings for her tickets to fly her to my daugher's family so she can "nanny" her children whom she loves as if they were her siblings. My daughter and son-in-law can trust her and have confidence in her. Her next nanny employers are willing to wait at least a week after they expected her for her to start work for them so she can do this.  In Kentucky, my longtime and very dear friend is doing extra jobs chauffeuring the Amish people so she can earn the gas money - originally to try to be with me in Mayo - now planning to come help me at home once I come home. There are a myriad of small things, that all mean big things to me when I feel so incredibly overwhelmed, that my colleagues at work are doing to help me - even something as simple as dropping off a couple of boxes in my classroom to help with the packing. There are people who are trying to keep me thinking positive. Thank God for all of you. A French friend sent me a lifetime's collection of postcards that gives me a vicarious voyage to all sorts of places the world over and lets my mind wander far away from here and now. An online friend in New Mexico is sending me daily emails with a countdown to when I'll be a new woman and feel better. I hope I can remember to do that for other people too.  My 71 year old mother who doesn't like to drive a half hour away and will not fly was plotting a way to come to Mayo and fretting about me being there alone. There were some people who were going to drive with her. My son was going to take time away from studies and a new full time job and his family when there is precious little time for anything, including sleep. Instead, he and his wife are helping buy my daughter's tickets so she can go. My daughter. What an amazing sacrifice a lot of people have to make so that she can be there. She has to have substitute teachers at 2 different schools and substitute coaches at I don't know how many places. That is a tiny fraction of what she needs covered. The schedule she keeps to run her active family with 4 children all involved in sports and scouts and church activities is phenomenal. If someone had to follow her around for a day and try to record what she does in one day it would exhaust them and if they did it for a week they would demand extra time off to recover and extra compensation. She manages to try to keep tabs on so many people at the same time and reach out to them and make them feel special and loved. She's amazing.