Friday, June 10, 2011

My Rollercoaster


I already told you about my rollercoaster feeling.  It's that feeling like your stomach is dropping out of your body, like going down a really fast steep hill on a rollercoaster. At the beginning, it happened to me every time I thought about my new diagnosis and especially every time I thought about telling my friends and family.

On the plane home that next day (after a Florida day of lunch outside and then pool time with the whole family) I had that feeling almost constantly thinking about what was to come back at home.  I think I also soaked through the shoulder of my hubby's shirt with a few tears (just a few...).  We were planning when to tell our best friends because we knew we would need support at home.

Now that I am a few months away from that time it has gotten a little better.  The rollercoaster feeling is much more mild and not as frequent. But I still remember exactly where we were when we told or best friends and family.  You heard the story about my family so here are a few other rollercoaster feelings:

My in-laws heard the news via the phone while on vacation in Hawaii. Talk about ruining a vacation...

Couple #1, our friends and my cousin: we stopped over on our way home from the airport and were sitting in their living room.

Couple #2, our great friends and parents of our goddaughter: at their house for dinner, sitting in their family room, after she was asleep.

Couple #3, our close friends: after a dinner with couple #1, we were walking home together and asked them to stop at our house so we could talk to them.  In our living room.

Friend #1: in our living room before dinner

Friend #2, college roommate: over the phone in a hospital hallway corner

Other college roommies: via email. It was just too hard to make that many difficult phone calls (and the west coast time change is a major pain!)

By now we have told more people, but it is still a struggle to figure out who needs to know and when to tell them.  This is such a personal thing but I am starting to feel like it doesn't need to be a secret.  Not  that I plan to shout it from the rooftops.  My hubby made one decision easy last weekend when we were at a wedding.  We were talking with friends that we hadn’t seen in months.  He brought up that he had just learned someone we knew used a surrogate.  I am sure these friends had no idea why we would care about surrogates but it led to the discussion of why.  I had wanted to tell them but wasn't sure a wedding weekend should be the time!  That brought on the rollercoaster feeling, but much more mild than last February and March.

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