Reality check...

"All heroes have at least one thing in common. They don't run away from their fears. Heroes are just as afraid as the rest of us, but they have learned how to confront and walk through their terrors. Quite simply, heroes aren't afraid of being afraid. When faced with difficulties, a true hero is able to make courageous choices and decisions. He or she is able to say: "This isn't necessarily what I want to do, but it's what I have to do." Heroes have learned to give themselves to life..." Lama Surya Das (thanks Sherry)

While I do NOT consider myself a hero, I think the quote is appropriate. I was going to touch on this earlier, but things just kept getting in the way or I would forget about it because things were going so well, but the events of the past few days and Katie's post made me realize that I need to make y'all aware of something. While Katie & I wish that all of our posts could be "upbeat" or "positive" or even just plain old boring updates, that just isn't possible. It all boils down to one word: reality. While most of the time we have positive things to report, the reality is that there are going to be days that really try our patience or just really frustrate us. Not everyday will be positive. Not everything we go through will be a success. We will experience temporary setbacks. We will have days that just put us at our wits end. We have decided that one of the things we can do to help us is to post everything that happens with us, both good and bad. That includes telling you about the things that don't go so well or telling you about the things that just make us want to jump up and down and scream.

At first I didn't want to post the things that were not good, because I wanted to only focus on the positive and put the "negative" things out of sight, but the more I thought about it and the more I talked to people about it, the more I realized that it was normal for us to feel these things. I realized that it's ok to get frustrated, angry and scared. I have learned that these feelings are normal and we shouldn't hide them from anybody. We shouldn't allow them to be the way we feel all the time, mainly because that is NOT how we do feel all the time, but to just completely ignore them is just as bad. You can't run from the negative, you have to face it head on.

Why would we want to post the not so good or extremely frustrating things, you ask? Well, it's simple, the people reading this all have one thing in common, you care about us. We want to be honest with people and not hide anything. You're our family and friends. You deserve to know what is going on with my treatments and how things are progressing. When we post about a successful day or a frustrating day we're letting you know how that day went. We're not going to sugarcoat anything or not tell you anything to try to spare anyones feelings (including our own).

This is a battle that will be full of ups and downs. Successes and disappointments. You're important to us and we want you with us every step of the way. In order to enjoy the victory you have to endure the hardships.