I'm Outta Here

Now that I've spent 30 minutes digging through Tumblr trying to find an animated gif of the spinning license plate from Back to the Future, here it is. And guess what? It's not relevant. I only thought of it after I wrote "outta" in the title of this post and really wanted to use it. Mission accomplished.

But maybe it is relevant, because I'm writing this from the past; you're reading this today, but I'm writing it yesterday.

Anyway. I'm on my way to Ohio! Yes, I've mentioned this upcoming trip for a while now, but I haven't gone into much detail.

If you're new here or you've missed it, we found out at the end of November that my mom has breast cancer. Since my dad died, my mom has been living very independently and from what I gather, she's really enjoying it. Being that both my childhood dog and cat died the summer before my dad did, my mom has nothing to worry about at home and is free to travel and stay out late or do whatever she wants without concern for anything at the house. This has been great for her until now.

Now she's having a double mastectomy with reconstruction, and while she's looking forward to having perky new boobs and subsequent tummy tuck to make them, the surgery is scary and the process of healing is going to suck. I don't think my mom would have flat out asked me to come take care of her (I get my independent streak from her!) but she didn't have to. As soon as we found out that she'd have to go for the mastectomy instead of the outpatient lumpectomy, I had already decided I'd go. Jamie was also on the same page as he spoke about it as if it had already been decided when I brought it up to him.

So I'm on my way. Her surgery is on Monday at the Cleveland Clinic. She'll spend between 2 to 6 days there depending on how her initial healing goes. It's about an hour drive from Geneva, but luckily, I won't have to make that drive if I don't want to since Hannah lives out that way and works at the Clinic. I'm sure I'll be taking advantage of crashing at her place as well as taking advantage of some fantastic local eateries to get my tourist on at night. After Mom gets home, I'm sure it will be a lot of napping, reading, movie-watching, and maybe game-playing.

I'm not stoked on why I'm going, but I'm still looking forward to being there!