Hope4Peyton

I had a whole post ready to go and I really did mean to write something funny and poignant about the holiday….but I left it hanging on my screen while the family went off to Christmas Eve service and to get all unwrap-y on some gifts….and now it’s gone.

GONE.

GONE GONE GONE.

*ARRRRG!*

I quit.

So, you get this craptastic nothing post about nothing but me complaining about how my post disappeared.

I suck.

This is all I got.

Merry Christmas.

Oh, you know what? That’s not so bad. THAT’s my Christmas and it’s pretty darn special.

I hope all of you are loving your families and being blessed by God on this most special of days.

With love,

The Mayhew family

Maybe you’ve tried to make a deal with God.

Perhaps your negotiations took place on the bathroom floor, swearing that your lips would never touch a drop of tequila E.V.E.R. again if God would only let you live through the night.

I seem to recall I swore I would never even look at Peter again if God would only get that big headed baby OUT.OF.ME!

And I remember the many prayers, promising my everything, if only God would take the cancer from Peyton’s body.  I begged to take it from her.  I threw Pete under that particular bus as well.  I SWORE that I would make it my life’s purpose to be an advocate for childhood cancer.  I would raise awareness for these kids, I would honor each child that touched my life by raising funds, I would find a way to give back to all those who gave so generously of themselves to help us through.

We’re done with the chemo. (There’s a whole other post for another day to go with that statement.)

I feel like I should be FIRED up!  I should be swept away on the momentum of accomplishment and just full of motivation to do MORE, be MORE, make MORE happen.

All I feel is tired.

Some people were able to walk away from the cancer life and turn their back on the memories without worries of the future. I’ve seen those that take up the heavy burden of being a support system to those still fighting, never turning a blind eye to the struggles of those around them, opening themselves to the hurts and pains of others.

Part of me just wants to hide.

I want it to be over.  I want to not think about it anymore. I want to put those worries and fears behind me and my family. I want to stop thinking of all the what-ifs and just concentrate on the now.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

But I remember all too clearly what it feel like to feel alone and helpless in the face of something so much bigger than me.  It doesn’t take much to bring back all that anguish and terror that came with the truth of her disease. I won’t ever forget what it felt like to have someone reach out and hug us with compassion and understanding.

How could I NOT want to do that for others?

I DO.  I feel like God had a purpose in having us carry this load. In my heart of hearts, I don’t think I could just NOT stay involved, wherever we are.

Yet, SO TIRED.

Peter and I are neck-deep in plans for our move to GA.  We have a launch date and by March we’re hoping to be in a new home in the land of peaches.

I’m torn about how to feel about the move in terms of what I’m going to do with my promises.

I know it’s going to be so easy to feel distanced from the world and the people who have been a part of our day to day life for so long.

The clean slate.

A whole world of people who won’t associate us with cancer, we don’t have to be THAT family if we don’t want to be.  We don’t have to be the crap-meter by which others measure their lives.

Nathaniel and Rachael can just be “Nathaniel and Rachael”, they don’t have to be “Peyton’s siblings”.

We can be a normal family…whatever that is.

But I don’t know if we can go back to just being a normal family.  I think we’re all scarred in our own ways by this experience.  Some of the scars are small, barely noticeable and will fade with time…others are huge, a daily reminder of what we’ve been through…a warning of what could lay ahead.

I wonder if continuing to be a part of the cancer community breeds worry in my kids, should I just let them forget?

I feel the need to hold it close, selfishly, in case I need that network of support to fall back on.

It’s been such a huge part of our lives for the past two and half year, do you just leave that behind?

Maybe the move is what we need.

A chance to recharge and start fresh.

Regroup.

Find a new path.

Right now?  I need to rest.

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Don’t miss my first video review and a giveaway for a Build-A-Bear AND a B-A-B gift card!

I read a lot of blogs (although I’ve been bad about reading anything lately, blogs or books, because HEY! Christmas is the season of leaving everything to the last second and those little elf haters can all just bite me for planning all throughout the year) and the majority of them are written by women.  And then….there are the men blogs, the daddybloggers…and there are a handful of them that have swept me away on a tidal wave of daddy goodness and show how the game is played from the dad’s side.

Sci-Fi Dad is one of those awesome writers that amuse and entertain on his blog Tales from the Dad Side…oh see how craftily I managed to weave his blog title into my other paragraph?…I am writing genius! HEH.

*ahem*

I read the post where Avitable interviewed Sci-Fi dad and I dared him to interview me.  Which, of course, because he finds me to be terribly fascinating…in a butterfly stabbed through the heart and stuck to a piece of cardboard kind of way…he did.

So, here are the interview questions and my answers.

1. Other than the story I cannot ask you about, share an embarrassing story from your youth.

One of my first jobs was working as a telemarketer, which bordered on the far side of hell. The only thing that made it remotely bearable was the ridiculous infatuation I had with the guy who sat next to me. So, in between calls we would chat and flirt and after we started dating, we’d throw in a little innuendo and…er…friskiness.  What I totally forgot about the process is that each and every call was monitored so they could listen in and see if we were giving the pitches properly and if there’s any way we could improve.

On a Friday, when they usually made us listen to successful pitches and ones that stunk to high hell, they played back one of our more private conversations…TO.EVERY.EMPLOYEE!

Yeah.

Could die?

Oh, you betcha.
2. Does living in Florida seem like your existence plays out in a retirement home?

Not so much where I live now, because Tampa is less of a hot spot for the snow birds and whatnot.  When I lived in Daytona we used to joke that we lived where old people go to die.  The only two places it ever really bothered me was driving behind or near the elderly who so obviously should NOT have a renewed license and on the beach…where the elderly SO OBVIOUSLY should not be allowed to wear thongs.  Seriously, those things should have an age limit.
3. Write a haiku summarizing one of your experiences giving birth.

Agonizing pain

Epidural epic fail

It’s so worth it though
4. Do you think that Peyton’s challenges have brought you and your husband closer, pushed you apart, or a bit of both?

Oh my.  A bit of both.  It sort of went in waves, amazingly we would pull closer when things were rough and then we’d have time to vent the stress during the downtimes and that’s when we’d fight and argue and try to take each other out at the knees….might have been more ME doing the take down, just saying.  We were really shocked to find out that 80% of marriages that face a life-threatening illness end in divorce, so we were hyper aware of that statistic throughout her treatment.  I think knowing that we didn’t want to end up with a healthy child and a destroyed marriage made us work harder to be nicer, more compassionate to each other, more understanding to what the other was going through.

I think it pushed us apart some too because any experience like that changes who you are, it grows parts of you and inevitably you grow in different ways. So we are definitely not the same two people we were going into it.
5. Who does Karl sound most like when he’s singing karaoke?

I have to say that Karl does a completely ROCK ON version of “Come on, Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners and blew us away with his “Creep” by Radiohead…so anyone who can put those two songs into one karaoke experience gets mad props for talent.  Who does he sound most like?  I think it’s more important to think of who’s trying to sound like Karl. Justin Timberlake?  I think we all know who really brought the sexy back.

“Want to be part of it? Follow these instructions:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

**6.  I’m adding my own rule to this one that I’ll do interviews for the first 5 bloggers who jump on it…otherwise, there’s the possibility that I’ll spend the next week writing interview questions.  Of course, I may totally be overestimating ya’ll interest in spreading your dirty laundry on the internet…however, we ARE talking about bloggers here.

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Don’t miss my first video review and a Build-A-Bear giveaway!

This whole post was supposed to be about Peyton’s surgery.  Her port was scheduled to come out and I had planned to spend an anxious night, dreading and worrying about all the possibilities.

But the surgery was postponed because Peyton developed pink eye.

Yeah. Pink eye.  We can get through cancer and chemotherapy, radiation and infections…pink eye brings us to a stand still.

So, surgery has been put off until January, but it will happen soon.

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I’m going on SecondHand Radio tonight with my new bloggy pal Karl Erikson for…..something….I’m not entirely sure what we’ll be talking about.  I can tell you this, with Karl, it’s sure to be pretty darn funny.

So, check us out tonight at 10 PM EST. You can listen in to our special brand of chaos and add to it by calling in and asking questions or heckling us madly.

Once upon a time there was a girl.

A young woman. A college student. A generous, lovely, amazing person.

She met a little girl who had cancer who lost her battle and it changed her life.

This young woman began a crusade to make the lives of cancer children better if she could.

She began the Kid’s Cancer Crusade.

She sent out boxes full of gifts to cancer kids, their brothers, their sisters. She followed their stories and always sent encouraging emails and support.

She reached out to cancer families and made their journey a little brighter by letting them know people care.

Then she met a total douchebag.  A douchebag by which all douchebagdom will be measured. The douchebag had bought the business (NgiNeThemba Designs & Domains) that registered her domain name for her website…where she helps the kids with cancer…THAT one.

Douchebag told the young lady that if she didn’t pay him $2000…all the money she had for her gifts and cards and goodies for the sick kids…he would sell her domain name out from under her charity or WORSE, he would just redirect the domain name to send people to a porn site.

YEAH.

DOUCHEBAG.

After consulting lawyers, there was no way she could get around paying the douchebag for her domain name.

She gave the douchebag all her charity money so that there was no chance that a cancer family trying to find her website would find a naked-girls-NOW kind of site.

She now has no money for her kids.

BUT she has the chance to get her money back due to a petitioning process. She found out that if she can get enough petition signers to support her claim to the domain name, a court can rule that she has rights to it and the douchebag has to pay back the $2000.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take the time to sign the petition.  It’s already reached it’s goal, but we want the judge to be overwhelmed, we want no mistakes of how strongly we feel about a douchebag that would send families looking for cancer help to a porn site.

If you are inspired by this young woman’s mission to help families, she can always use donations to provide thos boxes full of love and compassion.  Consider making a donation of any size to her crusade, in honor of Peyton or another cancer child or just in thanks for the healthy children you know.

I never directly ask, but if you Stumble, Twitter, Digg this post, we can get the word out as far as possible to help Jennifer.

Thank you ALL!