The Proposal

The backstory is that Andrew is now 12 And A Half and he feels strongly that he should have say in his hairstyle. What he doesn't know is that I have absolutely no problem with this within some reason - which he appears to still have. If he wants to go extremely long or get a hot pink mohawk we might need to discuss it first but really, in the end, I'm a pick your battles mom and I'm just not sure hair is something I'm willing to draw a line in the sand over.

His shorterish hair has grown out over the summer and his sideburns are getting close to being able to be braided so I mentioned that we might need a back to school cut soon. I could sense the panic. He doesn't want the standard 2 on the sides and 4 on top that his brothers still blindly go along with and he's once again started working me over to get to keep some length. So, I play along. Sure we can keep the top long, but not too long (**wink, wink**), No, you don't have to get the sides buzzed but I think we need to hack back those sideburns, etc.

A few minutes ago, he came to me with a proposal. "It's a win win, Mom. You have to hear me out." Sure. "You let me keep a little bit on top and a little bit of bangs. I'll get the back and sideburns trimmed a bunch and I'll give you this pen that Dane (a friend) gave me! See? It looks like a highlighter but see the hole in the middle of the highlighter part? If you twist the barrel, a pen come up through the middle. Isn't that so cool? You can have it if I don't have to cut all my hair off!!"

It is pretty cool... Thank goodness hair grows. I wonder what other cool things he's hiding in his room?

Not Ready Yet

At the beginning of April, we found out that my almost 60 year old, workin out every day, getting a full physical every June, doing everything he can to be healthy father has prostate cancer. All through the series of exams and tests and biopsies he had we played the "it will be nothing and he'll be fine" game. Except we lost. On the prostate cancer scale, he was an 8 out of 12.

Because he has a fairly minor, but still there, heart condition, he's not a canidate for surgery. Because of a medication he is on, he's not a candiate for a different treatment. On June 6th, he started his radiation treatments. 42 treatments that concluded on Tuesday. And now we're in the 2 week wait. We give the last treatment time to do it's thing and then they test to see what's left in there. They said the test would take probably another 2 weeks. And we wait.

And we play the game again. But I'm losing faith in the game. Everyone is all smiles and optimism on the outside, as am I. But on the inside, I'm holding my breath because if I don't I'm going to scream and cry and puke all at once. I don't like my options for how this game is going to end. Either, they will say he is fine and we will hold our breath some more (for the next 100 years) wondering when it will come back OR the radiation will have not worked and we will begin our saying good-bye. Because the options that are available to him are limited, my dad as already spent a long time pondering, soul searching and discussing with his dr. They both feel that if he wants to maintain any kind of quality of life, that radiation was his only treatment option. My dad has absolutely, positively decided that this is it. All or nothing.

I don't want to play this game. I can't force my hope to rise to the top only to have the bottom fall out again. Cancer sucks.