Cancer Sucks, or Watching Your Husband Go Through the Fire....and You Can't Even Find a Firehose!

I apologize, Dear Reader, for taking so long to post another blog. I have no excuse, other than I simply have not had the energy, the patience, or the first blessed inkling of what I wanted to write about.
Lately, I have been thinking (and praying, and crying, and whining) about what my husband and I have gone through in the last three years. July of 2007, our entire world was not only rocked, but turned upside-down, spun around, and set down slightly off-kilter. Imagine a beach house in a hurricane....the winds and the waves rush under it, lifting it off its foundation, tossing it about. The insides are trashed, the furniture's wrecked, but the house miraculously stands. When the winds die and the waters recede, you find your home sitting halfway on a foundation...only maybe it's not the foundation it was originally on. And you know your house is never going to be the same. Yeah. That's it. That's the feeling we had when we sat on the other side of that big desk in the doctor's office.
Many things have transpired since then. My daughter graduated from USC, aced her LSATs, and made it into USC School of Law on her first try. My son graduated high school and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He leaves for Parris Island in January. OOOH-RAH! We are so proud of them. God has blessed us with wonderful children.
My mother-in-law has had a series of strokes that has left her with dementia and a new hatred for her daughter-in-law. My husband's brother has increased his idiotic behavior by tenfold, a feat I would have thought impossible. I digress. The in-law blog will wait. If I write it now, I would spew. I don't like to spew. I like to flow. So let's flow.
One day in June, my husband Gerald mentioned to me that for the last 2 or three mornings he'd been having to get up at night four or five times to go to the bathroom. I am a nurse by trade, so I immediately set up an appointment with a urologist in a week. Gerald was 42, had just had a complete physical 6 months prior, and the only health problem he had was hypertension. I thought maybe he had a urinary tract infection, or prostatitis. Honestly, prostate cancer never even entered my mind. From July 2007, however, it has never left.
My husband called me after he met with the urologist that day. "So what did he say?", I asked. After a couple of seconds of silence, his voice, quivering, replied, "He says he thinks I may have cancer." I could not bear that I sent him to that appointment alone. I will never, ever forget how his voice sounded over the phone. God help me, if I would have had an inkling of what was actually wrong, I would have moved heaven and earth to be there. What I thought was a routine appointment turned out to be anything but. Looking back, I can see this is where we stepped into the coaster car, secured our valuables, and were mindful to remain seated at all times. I told him how much I loved him, and we would get through this, and we would talk about it at home. I cried all the way home that day, tears blinding me so that I wasn't sure I would make it home without wrecking the car. I prayed, I begged, I bargained, I railed, I screamed about how unfair this all was.
When I got home, we sat in the living room without speaking for what seemed like hours. I finally broke the silence by saying, "So what do we tell the kids?" We decided to keep the "maybe it's cancer" part our of it, and told them the doctor was treating him for prostatitis (which was the partial truth; he wanted Gerald's prostate to be as "clean" as possible before he did the biopsy).
Ten days later, I drove Gerald to his office for the biopsy. A few days after that, he called Gerald and said, "Please call your wife and ask her to meet you at my office this afternoon." When we arrived, we were made to wait in the lobby and make small talk with the receptionist. I comment to my husband that I think it's atrocious to make people who have been specifically called in to talk to the doctor WAIT longer than a couple of minutes. He's too anxious to reply. So much for small talk. We sit silently in the waiting area, each of us in our own thoughts....I didn't know what Gerald was thinking that day; I've never asked. But I was thinking, "what if, what if, I should've, I could've"...I was a nurse for Pete's sake. I should have asked the doctor to do a PSA at his last physical 6 months ago. But he was only 42, with no family history of prostate cancer....I didn't know....God, I didn't know....I should've watched for signs more closely....I could've educated him better about the symptoms of prostate cancer....but, he really had not had any. You get the point. Round and round I was going in my head, trying to see if there were other, more subtle signs I should have picked up on. I ran through every sneeze, every cough, every ache, every complaint he had ever made over the last six months.
Just as I had almost convinced myself I was a terrible nurse and should quit the practice, the doctor's nurse ushers us down the hall to his private office. The walk down that hallway felt like a walk down the hallway in every horror movie one has ever seen; it was long, more narrow at the other end, and seemed to go on for infinity. My legs were wooden, my mouth was dry. Here's where we've started to feel the rise of the first hill of the roller coaster. Palms sweaty, heart pounding, up, up, up...the sheer anxiety of the climb exuding from every pore. We sat down in two chairs across from the doctor's desk, which was empty. I was furious. I looked at the nurse, who must have read my mind (nurses are good at reading each others' thoughts) and said, "He'll be right in." I hate that. I despise that. I have worked for several doctors in several offices and I NEVER told anyone the doctor would be right in if he wasn't. And if you, dear reader, are guilty of that, stop. Stop now. Just tell the truth. Most people are intelligent enough to know you're lying anyway.
After what to us seemed like hours, although the minute hands had barely moved, the doctor arrived. "Mr. Atkinson, Mrs. Atkinson, I have some tough news. 11 out of the 12 biopsies we did came back positive for cancer." Well, he gets credit for not beating around the bush, that's for sure. We were almost at the top of the hill. "Can we cure it?", Gerald asked the question I was too frightened to ask myself. "I'm not sure", the doc replied. Then came the mad rush down the highest hill. My heart went to the pit of my stomach, then dropped to the bottom of my feet. I was lightheaded, dizzy, and nauseous at the end of the first drop. "I want to schedule you for a CT scan, a bone scan, and surgery". Now through the loop-the-loops we go.
We scheduled the CT scan that day, the bone scan for the next day, and surgery for the next week. We were ushered out of his office as quickly as we were ushered in. It was as if once the doc got through the process of telling us the news, once the band-aid was ripped off quickly, his work was done. And we were numb, all the way to the hospital to pick up the contrast, all the way home. Except for holding Gerald's hand in mine on the drive back, we could have been in separate cars. The silence was roaring in my ears. I guess I was getting ready for the next hill to climb in that rackety old coaster car.
That was three years ago. We are still on the coaster ride. We climb, we get told oh, you'll probably have about two years. We rush down at breakneck speed, white-knuckled, breathless, eyes squeezed shut. On the road to the Medical University, we're climbing again: anxious, holding our breath, praying. Sitting in the tiny exam room is almost unbearable, the tension so palpable you can see it shimmering just outside the corner of your eye. Dr. Golshayhan walks in (NOT the jerk physician we began with, by the way)tells us things look great, everything's stable, let's keep doing what we're doing. Here comes the relief that follows the rush of flying downhill, then slowing down. No instant healing, no "looks like all the lesions we saw in the beginning are gone" but at least he gives us hope. He sees the coaster car we're in and he's trying his best to shore up our brakes, slow down the ride, and get us off. That's all we've wanted. He tells us he has many options for us to try if the current one starts to fail. He sits with us, makes us feel like he's got all the time in the world, and if he ever is late seeing us, actually apologizes for making us wait.
I have spoken of hurricanes and roller coasters, dear reader, and they both leave you feeling like you can't quite grasp what has just happened. It takes a while before you can remember back and see it clearly.
The "fire" analogy I mentioned in the title refers to how I feel at times. My husband is the strong, silent type of man. To add another metaphor to the mix, he is the kind described as walking softly and carrying a big stick. He's not much on talking about his "feelings" or discussing his illness. Because the type of treatments he takes target hormones more than the actual cancer itself right now, he doesn't "look sick". This is what people say to him when they see him after learning he has stage IV cancer. "Wow, you look great! You don't even look sick!". He says he's not sure how to respond to that, except to say a humble, "God is good". He says sometimes he thinks people must think he's lying about having cancer. As if anyone would lie about that. He's actually the one going through the fire, and I'm the one that has to stand helplessly by, watching him go through this. No fire hose, no water bucket, no wet blanket to help him. All I can do is try my best to help ensure the burns will heal. Oh, he will still have scar tissue, but maybe over time they will fade, and he can point to those scars when he's talking to others who have similar stories and say, "I earned every one of them, and they have helped make me who I am." How I long for that day. You say, "you're going through it with him," and you're right. But I'm not the one that's been told I only have a couple of years with my wife and kids and family and friends. I'm not the one who worries about leaving those people behind hurt and broken for having to go through this. I know he thinks about these things, and there is very little I can do to help that. I will stand by him, I will help him in any way I can, but it's still HIS life that hangs in the balance. It's heartbreaking to see him struggle through the emotion of trying to tell me these things. That he's not afraid of dying, he's just sad when he thinks of leaving me and the children behind, that he hates his treatments are putting us into debt, that he's sorry for causing me to lose days of work while coming with him to his appointments. All I can do is be there, be the voice of reason when he has his "bad days" and enjoy his company every day.
We still don't know what lies ahead of us fully. We aren't promised tomorrow, none of us. But we are still shocked when we're told we may only have a few years left. My husband is not even supposed to be here now. But he is, and he's strong, and loving life, and living life. What more could you ask for?