It has officially been six weeks since Delaney’s leukemia diagnosis. One of my first thoughts after they told me was, “She can’t be sick, she did an entire Insanity workout with me just yesterday!” For you older folks, Insanity is a video workout equivalent to your Jane Fonda or Jack LaLanne. It’s a tough workout, but it didn’t stop Delaney from doing the whole thing, all while yelling at me to “lift those knees up” and to “dig DEEPER!!!!” I literally asked the doctor, “I really don’t think she is sick, could this possibly be a mistake?”
By now most of you know how my little pebble I call a brain bounces around, so I’ll share two other early thoughts from that first night that really have nothing to do with this post. We were just given the diagnosis and were waiting in our ER room to be transferred to be admitted to the cancer floor. A woman came in, another doctor that hadn’t been part of her initial examination, just to tell us that she was, “Really sorry.” In retrospect, I know she was just being nice. However, at the time, it angered me. Sorry? Sorry is what you say to somebody that just lost a loved one. Besides, my daughter wasn’t even sick, this whole thing had to be some sort of mistake!
The other random feeling I remember experiencing was almost a sense of shame. My wife and I asked each other, “Do we tell anyone? Maybe we should just keep it to ourselves?” Like it was something we did wrong or that the fact that our daughter was sick was some sign of weakness of ours. We’ve obviously got past that quickly, but on the note of weakness, let me get back to the original topic of this post.
This past Saturday a very sad Delaney asked, “Mommy, can I talk to you in private?” Uh oh. As every father of girls knows, somebody was about to be told on. And as every father of girls thinks, I was hoping it was on one of her sisters and not her dad. D’oh! It was me. Stacey shared later that Delaney was just sad because I had worked out with her sister and that was always our thing (if you ask me she always took it a little too far and would say things like, “If you are going to eat that candy then I am going to lock you in the basement for hours!”).
During the past six weeks there wasn’t much exercise going on for any of us. Even when she wasn’t in the hospital, she wasn’t feeling well enough and we never knew if she was about to get sick, so nobody really did much of anything. Since she has been feeling better the past few days, and we seem to get be getting back to “normal”, this morning I asked her if she wanted to go down in the basement to work out with me. Not only did she reply with “sure,” but she did the entire workout like a champ. I even took a quick three second video of her doing her favorite exercise, the football drills (shocker for this little tomboy, I know). Because this blog won’t let me attach it, I’ll try to put it on her facebook page (www.facebook.com/CancerCanKissMyStache) so you can see Delaney DIGGING DEEPER!!! Have a great day everyone and just because I can’t say it enough, thank you for all the love and support!!!