I’ve been meaning to sit down and write for a while now but I just can’t seem to find the time. Or I should say that I prefer to sleep! But I do have good news to report. I’m at the start of week 4 of round two and my platelets dropped into the mid 30s last Monday but have remained stable since then. My white count is also holding up well. It was still dropping today but was at 2.3 which means I am not neutropenic. Thus, I will probably make it through this round without needing any transfusions and no neutropenia. This is how it is supposed to go. Now we will just need to wait and see how long it takes for my platelets to get back up to 75,000 to determine my long-term schedule. I will either go every 6 weeks or 8 weeks. In the meantime, I only have to go to the hospital once a week now so that’s making things a little easier.

Overall I have been feeling great. My energy level is up and I’ve been noticing improvements in my workouts. I tried my second run today and it went a little better than the first one. I think I was so surprised by how difficult it was the first time out that I was beating myself up over it. Today I went out with the idea that if I make it to the end of the street, that’s an accomplishment. Just so everyone knows, we have hills everywhere where I live, so making it to the end of my street is a decent little run uphill. I didn’t quite make it this time but was close. Rather than feeling bad about it, I’m looking at it as a goal for next time. Baby steps.

I’m actually approaching many things in my life these days with “baby steps.” I have gotten to a really great place in my mind, a really peaceful place, where I am learning to let go of old behaviors that increased my stress levels. But this process has been long and challenging. My entire life I have been someone who focused on whatever is next and never really took the time to enjoy what is now. Even when I was trying to enjoy a moment, my head would spin with thoughts of work, relationships, money, anything. By constantly being preoccupied with the “what-ifs” and the “to-dos,” I was never really fully present in what I was doing. I catch myself when I do that now. And it’s very simple to snap out of it. Simply think to yourself, “what’s more important? contemplating whether or not I’ll pay off the credit card and tallying numbers in my head or laughing so hard with my kids that our bellies hurt?” If I wasn’t here tomorrow, which one really matters? I don’t mean it in a morbid way, but that’s how we all should live – focusing on what really matters and not wasting energy on the things that don’t.

As one of my favorite books, The Happiness Project says, “the days are long but the years are short.” The HP also defines this important rule for adulthood: “What you do everyday matters more than what you do once in a while.” Hopefully I will be here for many, many, many years to come but for now I go to sleep each night knowing that I gave my kids as much love as I could that day and that’s all that matters.