Thanksgiving / Cancer Epiphanies

Did we have a great time over Thanksgiving at AD's place in MN? Yes, we did.
Was it tempered by what was happening in Bombay and with my sister? I am not really sure.
It was like I was living two lives - one where the boy & I connected with my A.D and the boy connected with my childhood and saw where I came from, and where we picked up so many relationship / household tips from the A.D & her wonderful husband.
The other life was spent talking to fam every day, keeping vague track of blood counts, getting used to the idea that my little sister is starting chemo, CHEMo, getting one precious chance at having almost normal conversation with Annmol, talking to the Sammon on his way home.
And watching those heartbreaking things happen to Bombay - it all seems rather surreal.
I can't get used to this life where I am going through a multiple of emotions in the span of a day and wondering what my sister must be going through.
I was reading somewhere that AML usually affects more males than females, is more prevalent among adults over 40 and is relatively a rare disease.
So is the type of Muscular Dystrophy she has.
What are those chances ? What are the chances of two rare diseases striking one resilient person that is my sister?
I keep looking at the photographs around our place of her and I and her and Sammon at various stages of our lives and wondering - was it then? that her bone marrow started fritzing out? or was the cancer always lurking around?

I have had two epiphanies around this issue.
One came when I was randomly praying/yelling about how all that jazz about God having a purpose & the thought came to me that maybe this really isn't the worst that could happen.
Maybe a combination of leukemia & MD is not the worst possible thing that could happen to one.
And that's when I read the gruesome story of a disgusting human being who had raped his two daughters for 27 years - surely that is worse.
And then hearing/watching/reading about the Bombay blasts - surely it is infinitely worse to have lived the lives of those terrorists - the hate they were taught, the reckonings their souls have to face when they came to terms with the magnitude of the lives they took.
This train of thought hasn't brought me any peace or any great consolation.

The other was - you can't bargain it out.
I started with asking that my life be taken in exchange for her cancer being eradicated.
And then on our flight back in the small carrier we hit some bad turbulence and in that second when things rattled in the overhead compartment and the plane went up and down and my motion sickness went into high gear and my fear enveloped me, I screamed internally that I didn't want to die.
So strike that. In the real, cold analysis I am not willing to die.
And in the midst of all that internal dialogue, I thought it'd be such irony if I did die in a plane crash. Well, not irony but one of those 'oh can you imagine the luck of this family - one daughter diagnosed with leukemia, the other dies in a plane crash' sort of thing.
Morbid much?

Then I bargained that if she did recover, I would never ever push her.
That in exchange for being cancer free and living a healthy life and dying of old age, if all she ever wanted to do for the rest of her life was to veg in front of the TV and not do a single thing or be the worst daughter/sister/companion/friend, I would indulge her.
But then when I spoke to her, I blustered around, spewing, in my most ineffectual way, random optimism and trying to keep her upbeat and in effect, trying to change her yet again.
I don't think I can ever not be her older sister and ever not push or ever not make her want to have a more comfortable, better (according to ME) life.
uhmm...

So, epiphany no. 2 comes to this - barter of lives & promises, even in this most desperate of situations, not as easy to carry out as they show in movies.

Epiphany no.3 (I guess I've had 3)
My sister is so strong. So much more strong than any person I know
For so long, I thought of her as the person in my shadow.
But now, I can see how she was always the stronger one. Always laughing at all my lame jokes to make me feel better.
Our running joke now is that she is so going to get into that Ph.d program at Harvard, hell, how could they not, eh?
Making everything look and sound normal when it wasn't and isn't. Being blase about the big things and small and on and on it goes.

The Sammon is now in India and will be home in a couple of days.
And I, as the Sammon suggested, am starting to work out and eat healthy, so that our marrows will be all healthy and sparkley if she ever needs it :)
I think the only thing that is keeping us going in this THIS-couldn't-possibly-be-happening-to-US-I-mean-we-are-the-
MEFAMily-
-forfrackssake situation is our ability to laugh at it.

As always the post for ideas for her care package is here. Please let me know if you have any thoughts/comments/ideas on what to get her.