You go through life with lots of twist and turns, my health, my kids health, my partners health, but you alway seem to get through. The one day out of the blue you are dealt a card which saying the word out loud are scary to handle. Your rock, your side kick, your true love has been diagnosed with cancer. Stage 3 ewing's sarcoma, you listen whilst the specialist is sat explaining to you that your husband has cancer, you drift off in your own world, the words of the doctor just like a small mumble, your listening, but your not there, your mind wanders to a place of severe panic, severe desperation that you are not hearing those words, they have got this all wrong it cant be the C word, this only happens to other people, not us.
I sink into a shell of myself, not knowing what to do or say, trying to stay strong for my husband,for my family, but deep inside I just feel numb. I hold his hand still staring at the doctors who is is waffling on, nothing is going in or out, I just cried and cried and cried. I have just lost a good friend from cancer, I've lost many friends, I cant remember any friends who fought for their lives, for many years, I wish I could disappear and hope that this all goes away.
After the tears have fallen and I have pulled myself together. I go into plan mode, its my way of coping, needing to know the ins and outs of what is going to happen when its going to happen and to be prepared, but deep down knowing this man you have been with for most of your life has not only to learn to walk again due to spine surgery to remove some of the cancer has the next 12 months of chemotherapy and radiation to content with.
Having my own health issues I suddenly go into auto pilot. Ok so when is chemo? how long before he looses his hair? I need to help with the business as we have employees to keep in jobs they have bills to pay too, they will be feeling this too, but live has to go on. stand up tall, pace myself take in a great big breath and let do this. Lets kick cancer right out of his body and hope it never returns, as we need this man in our lives, we have got many years of life to live yet. but the next 12 months is going to be rocky.
The first day of chemo, watching them attach the black thick bag of liquid, on to his port into his chest, feeding him whatever is those bags, they must be hard core as the nurses wear PPE to administer. Ok first round over with lets go home and see what happens. Watching my husband go from an independent man to needing me to shower him, to help him clean his teeth, this was hard, but I was up for anything, anything to make him well again.
Then one night as he sleeps I hearing his breathing, very different to what I normally can hear, I sense their is something wrong. He is struggling to get out of bed without getting out of breathe, he heads for the toilet still struggling to sit there. He says it will pass its just the chemo, I say no this is more than that, your breathing and heartrate are far too high and you cant attemp to even stand up, you must go to the hospital I sensed their was something just not right. After persuading him to go to John Flyn hospital, sat waiting in the hospital with his father, he was told it could be an infection so bloods are taken, and they asked him to stand up, he nearly fell so they thank god decided to do a chest x-ray, then there it was two large blood clots on his lungs, growing waiting to move around and maybe head to the brain. Ok straight to ICU he was sent and put on blood thinners hoping this will dissolves the clots and they hanot moved any where else. What a hell of a time, if its not one thing its another, but this time this was serious, if these clots had not been found in time then I would hate to think what would have happened.
After recovering from the clots then came the chemo again, which caused an abscess in his bottom of all places, surgery was carried out yet again to drain the abscess. This is good for a while then the abscess didn't heal properly so back to the hospital it was again for another surgery. This was all with a few weeks. Can anything else go wrong.
Then day 12 just like they said his hair started to fall out, not just little amounts big clumps, this made it all real, so I shaved his head trying not to cry, but I couldn;t the tears came flowing down my face, we are really going through this, and this is only the beginning.
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