YKYW - Nursing Student Blog

Pauly’s starting a lot of trends around the blog-o-sphere right now, and this is my attempt to rip off one of his ideas:  The 10-minute update!

I’ve been really bad about updating lately because I keep getting behind on my entries.  Something new happens, and I think to myself “I cannot blog that until I blogged what happened three days ago.”

So, here’s ten minutes:

I’m so thrilled about SK’s good news.  She called to tell me about it as I was rushing around, getting ready to leave for school.  While I was excited, it didn’t really hit me until I was on my way home that afternoon.  I was listening to the radio, and heard a commercial for The 3 Day.  As it ended, I had goose bumps on my arms and a lump in my throat.  The next song on the radio?  Live Like You Were Dying, by Tim McGraw.

I started crying.  And I’m not talking about the ’single tear running down my face’ kind of crying either.  I’m talking about the ‘gut-wrenching, stomach in knots, can’t see to drive’ kind of crying.  I finally pulled over and cried away all the worry and fear that had been building up since last October.

See, when I told the story about how I met SK, I didn’t mention that I later found out part of her reluctance to go to the concert with me was that it was her first day on chemo.  When she didn’t have a drink at dinner, I didn’t really think anything of it.

The next day, as we sat in her living room, she explained to me that she was on chemo, and I learned about leukemia.

As the final tears slid down my cheeks, I picked my head up off my steering wheel and sensed that taste of fear leave the back of my throat.  It sounds like such a cliché, but I swear that a 500 pound weight had just been lifted off my chest.  I took my first full breath in 15 months.