Waiting

Both the pregnancy and my mom's cancer have truly tried my patience. I used to consider myself a patient person. I can play with babies and kids all day and not get (too) bored with some of the silly, mindless games they insist on playing over and over. At my last job, I was charged with training several new employees, and a few of them were ridiculously slow and difficult. They drove everyone else crazy with maddeningly repetitive questions, taking forever to grasp concepts we all thought they should get. While it was hard, I never lost my cool or showed my frustration to them, and was commended for my extraordinary patience.

But everything to do with this pregnancy has tried my patience and stressed my nerves. First, of course, is waiting to test. They I had the morbid wait to see if perhaps it was just a chemical pregnancy. Now that we're clear of that possibility I'm waiting impatiently to go to the doctor and have a medical professional confirm that I didn't imagine those 10 (okay, 15) positive pregnancy tests, that I really am pregnant, and that the baby is growing healthily in there. Every day is filled with worry and doubt, I question every symptom, or worse, lack of a symptom and pray that I'm being ridiculous. I try to reassure myself that if 10% of pregnancies end in miscarriage that means that 90% do not, but it doesn't stop the anxiety.

And if any of my waiting and anxiety seems intense, it's nothing compared to what my mother is going through, waiting for test results, waiting to talk to her doctor. Waiting to find out how the chemotherapy affects her body. Waiting for her hair to start falling out. So through all this waiting and nervousness, we spend time together talking, laughing, trying to talk about something else when all we can think about is our own personal worry. And now I realize that while I may be able to play peek-a-boo for hours, or politely explain how to open a Word Document 90 times without raising my voice, I really don't know what true patience is, but this experience is certainly teaching me that it is important.