Sometimes I still ask WHY!

I feel like I have been a bit on the quiet side lately.  As I have mentioned before, even when one's life seems full of uncertainty and chaos, it doesn't mean that life around you stops moving.   My world has been like that lately.  I have problems that I don't want to have and often would like to pull the wool over my head and just pretend that everything will just go away.  I am even happy to knit that wool into something that  fits over my head!  Unfortunately that isn't going to happen.

  A few years ago, my niece was very sick with a childhood cancer (Whelms disease) and we all rallied around, doctors debated, and she was able to have a life saving bone marrow transplant in Toronto.    It was horrific on her body, on her parents emotional well being, and on the whole family's idea of what a child's life should be.   But, we were rewarded with a miraculous recovery, and she was able to go back to school after years of treatments, radiations, and numerous hospital stays.  We all cheered and breathed a sigh of relief.    Good things do happen........for a while.

Recently, I found out that the cancer is back for her too!   I have just not been able to face this reality so I haven't dealt with it.   I know that I must, and so today I attempt to write about it.  This is not easy and I may decide to stop without warning.   It is hard enough for someone my age to deal with such a horrible illness, and to feel that life is unfair.  But for a child to have to live with this situation is beyond imagining.   My childhood was not perfect (like most I would assume) but getting the measles was probably the worst thing I had to deal with at least until late teenage hood.   I was able to attend school, not that I wanted to most times, and very little was out of my reach athletically, recreational or even just basically in  friendships.   For her, she knows none of this.  She has been battling this disease for over five years (since she was 8) and so normal school days is beyond her imagination.   I don't get it.  I really don't get it.   How does a child deal with this and even have the potential to grow up with some sense of security and safety?    All she knows is that any thing could happen from one minute to another.    Most of us live as if we will be here forever and whine when we can't do everything we want exactly when we want to.

I guess, it is an opportunity to take a minute and to count our own blessings whether we are sick or not.  Have we lived a pretty good life?    Did we make it to adulthood healthy and basically happy?    Can we get up each day and go to work, school, or some other place without really thinking about it?   I am going to try really hard to appreciate the health that I do have, as tenuous as it is.   I have lived many many years, had great experiences (some lousy ones too) and don't have much to regret.    Maybe, my life isn't so bad after all. 

Please keep my niece in your prayers....she will need lots of them this time as she seems to have used up  all the science that seems to be available.   I will still have to sit with this news before I can totally accept it.  It may seem funny to some that I would publicly talk about something that I have trouble dealing with on a private, personal level.   I need to voice my thoughts, and sometimes just writing them down makes it easier to force the truths into my soul.      Would someone please find the cure to this awful disease..........