If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong

It never fails that after a long period of activity there will be a fluery of chaos at the end, like the final sprint for first place at the end of a marathon.

For all you athletes out there, it's like jonesies or suicides in training where you jog around the field or to each line until you escalate to sprinting every length or every line and back until you're huffing, puffing and heaving, praying you don't pass out, throw up or both.

 I've almost come to depend on this happening.

It happened the weekend I had my BFFs and their families from college over for a crazy festivity filled two days only to have j come home sun afternoon when I was exhausted and ready to cry and beg for a nap with a torn achilles heal. 

It happened in 2007 (yes, this is how long the luck has held. If it wasn't for bad luck, i'd have none at all.) when I'd finished my 9 months of chemo and transplant to make it clear to the other side only to have my lungs inexplicably fail. 

That was certainly a bodily marathon when I thought I had suffered through the worse.

It happened again. 

X had vacation last week, and we celebrated it by hanging out with friends and family having nightly sleep overs. We did a Chuck-e-cheese day and toys 'r us. He had baseball opening day. It was kidfest.

I did this after getting treatment Thurs. and Friday the week before and then treatment again the following Monday and Tuesday, forgoing my normal daily naps and my full comatose day that I need for recovery weekly.

My body was feeling it. I was dragging. I started day dreaming about our daily routine when X was in school, longing for the days when I had time to recover as I needed.

Of course, After a week off from school full of fun and festivities, X started complaining Sunday afternoon of nausea and an upset tummy.

We were suspicious. This is the child that broke a thermometer at five trying to make it read he had a fever. We called him a faker and told him no matter what he was going to school.

That was until he woke up screaming at 1 am Monday morning grabbing his ear and praying to God.

You can officially take me out of the running for mother of the year.

Not only did X have a raging ear infection, the tube placed in his ear drum last year was hanging on irritating his nerve.

I had an ear infection in 2007. It hurts. I took morphine. It compares to any cancer pain I've experienced.

The crying and screaming kept going until 4 am when I remembered we had tylenol with codeine stashed away from his tonsillectomy a year ago.

This allowed us to sleep peacefully until 9am when I could get ahold of our Doc.

In those hours, I was on auto-pilot. I knew I was in the final stretch. I knew relief would eventually come. I kept reminding myself that there was a reason for this. It was survivable.

That's why I've been MIA these past couple days.

I'm beginning to wonder why and how I keep going. Sometimes I keep going because I know I've come so far all ready. I keep telling myself that a conclusion is near or that the rewards will come.  

My life, somwhere womehow, has turned into one big final stretch, a daily push towards the end with events that sometimes require me to  push even harder. 

I just need to keep my game face on. 

I don't know what the reward for my life will be (On Monday it was X snuggling and loving me), but right now its building a lot of character. 

As if I need more of THAT.