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what I do

Every evening now for over a week around 10 pm, I heat up a heat packet in the microwave. Then I sit and watch the end of a show - House Hunters, Property Virgins, Holmes on Homes, Man vs Wild- with the packet on one of 7 spots of my body. Tonight it was on my left thigh, outer side. The packet heats up my skin and gets it ready for my shot. After about 5 minutes of sitting, I say, "Phil are you ready?" He says, "Yes" gets up and gets my autoject bag and sharps container. We head downstairs to our bedroom. Sometimes we forget the icepack in the freezer so Phil runs back up and gets that and wraps it in a kitchen towel.

I lie on the bed while Phil loads the syringe filled with medicine in to the autoject. One of us cleans my skin with an alcohol square that came with my syringes. We let it dry. We both agree on the spot to inject and then Phil says, "Ready?". I look away and "click", I've been shot.

I'm usually the one who picks up the ice pack and places it on the spot. Ice helps reduce swelling or something. We both lie there discussing how this shot went, did it hurt much, is it stinging a lot, did it bleed...

As I was just typing this I wondered how people would feel reading this . I thought people might feel bad for me because I'd feel bad if I was reading this about someone else. But I'm not writing this for that reason. I'm writing this because I just did all this and it's striking me how this is what I do now. I don't like it but I do it. And it's not really that painful or bothersome it's just that I don't want to do this. I don't want this to be me. But I'm much happier it's this and not me giving Maddie or Lily injections everyday or taking them to chemo or waiting for a transplant. This we can do.

I guess sometimes it hits me that life is so odd and sometimes so sad. I think about a guy on the news last night who was just charged with murder and sentenced to 60 years of prison. He was crying and pleading that he was innocent, that they had the wrong man but that he guessed their minds were made up. I felt so torn for that man. A man that has this one life on earth and sometimes it just gets so messed up. Just this one chance here.

And when I look back at my life a few months ago I just think how that was life and this is life too, it just looks so different now.

At times it sounds so good to hear, "He's got the whole world in his hands. He's go the little bitty babies..."

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