I feel like the days are D R A G G I N G by so slowly…………. Tomorrow will be a family event. My brother, Chad, my sis-in-law, Emily, and myself will all accompany my sister Kelli to her first oncologist appointment. We will get the results of all of the tests that she had last week, and receive the plan for what they will do to attack this cancer. It seems like years ago when we first received the news. Has it only been a week? It feels right that it will be all of us, together.

This isn’t Kelli’s first health issue. In fact, Kelli has spent an overwhelming amount of days in hospitals, on crutches, surgery after surgery, pain, injuries, so many medical problems. The first surgery Kelli ever had was when we were just kids. Her hip bone slipped off of the growth plate. She had several surgeries for this injury. The doctors said she wouldn’t walk normally, possibly ever. She was in bed for weeks in major pain. Me, the kind and loving sister I was back then, complained to my mom and dad that “she better not get allowance, because I was doing all of her chores and she was just sitting around doing nothing!” Yeah, filled with compassion and love, that’s for sure who I was back then. I tend to still have to work on that compassion, but life is sure changing me, changing my heart.

Sometimes I feel like we are all still just little kids. When did we all grow up? Kelli and I teaming up to pick on our little brother. Making him “marry” the little girl next door, pestering him, teasing him, telling him he has “garments” on his back, while he screamed off to tell mom. Me, the big, mean sister that bossed everyone around, controlling the situation, ordering rules and regulations at them. Kelli, the funny girl, making everybody laugh, entertaining us all.

Remember when we shared a room Kel, and I put tape down the middle of the room, dividing it up into “your side” and “my side”. The door was on my side, and you had to ask permission to leave the room. Remember how we spent our summers swimming, getting so tan, picking strawberries out of the garden, playing house in the clubhouse dad made us, kicking the soccer ball in the courtyard, picking grapes off of the vines that hung from the fence, swinging on the swings and making up circus acts for our parents to watch, drinking the nectar from the honeysuckles, making bird’s nests and eggs out of mud, jumping on the trampoline, playing Monopoly, and singing songs from “Annie”.

Tomorrow we will all receive the information that the doctor gives us, together. Unified, supporting one another, supporting you Kel. I’m hoping between the four of us, that we’ll all come away with MOST of the information. I think we just might record it on my iphone, just in case.