"You mean to tell me there are ten people in more pain than she is in," John told the ER intake nurse when she told him how long the wait would be. I heard him, but couldn't see him. I had my eyes closed, willing the pain in my back to go away. We'd been dating less than two months and I wasn't ready for him to see me at my worst. Next thing I knew, he was helping me to the parking lot and putting me in his car. "We're going to a different hospital." I sat in the waiting room, silently crying, embarrassed to let him see me cry. He stayed with me while I changed into the immodest gown (although he admitted later he was just hoping to see me nekkid). He found a warm blanket when I said I was cold. He waited in the hall outside the CT room and walked beside my gurney back to the ER holding cell.
That was nineteen years ago this month. It was the night I fell in love with him. It was when I knew he'd be my protector, the one who'd have my back, the one who'd tell off an ER nurse who told him it'd be 4 hours before they could see me. It was the night I asked him to call my parents, whom he'd never met, and tell them their daughter was in the ER. It was the night he met my parents for the first time in the hospital parking lot and handed me off to them to take me home, because it was nearly midnight and we were both exhausted. It was the night neither of us could sleep and we emailed back and forth half the night. It was the night I knew I was in it for the long haul.
It seems like I blinked and here we are, 19 years later, nearing the end of our story. Wasn't it only yesterday I met him for the first time and he couldn't take his eyes off me? When we met for lunch and talked until the dinner hour. When I went to watch him at work, rapelling ROTC students off a nine story building at the University of Arizona. Even looking up from my spot on the ground, I could see his quiet strength, and the trust his cadets had in him. I'd been hurt, and nearly destroyed, in my previous relationship and I was laser focused on looking for any sign, any red flag, any reason to run in the opposite direction. I examined his coworkers, his students, his friends, for any sign he wasn't who he seemed to be.
The only red flag, which I didn't believe at the time, was when he said, "I'm going to die at 50 from cancer. Every man in my family died from cancer." I'd never known anyone who had cancer, let alone anyone who had died from it, so it wasn't something I could even envision happening. He was incredibly fit - he worked out with 20 year olds several times a week. I was fit. I had a physically demanding job and my body did anything I asked it to do. Ill health wasn't in my vocabulary. It'd never happen to us. We'd always be healthy.
When John turned 50, he was still healthier than men half his age. Despite knees that crackled when he stretched and a tempermental back, he still ran circles around men his age. No cancer here, no sir.
Enter year 56 and the ball dropped. Colon cancer. Stage IV. Mestastases to his liver and lymph nodes. Our cancer journey had begun. John had always told me that if he were ever diagnosed with cancer, he wouldn't do treatment. "The treatment makes you sicker than the disease," he'd say. "Nope, I'm just done." The oncologist laid out options...six month survival with no treatment. Chemotherapy might give you 18 months. There's no curative option. What the Hell, we thought, lets give one round of chemo a try and see what happens. If it sucks, we quit. If it works, we have another year. Chemo worked better than even the oncologist expected, which made him a candidate for radiation, which worked well, which made him a candidate for surgery. We'd found ourselves in the middle of a long range treatment plan, that if successful, could actually leave him cancer free. Eighteen months later, after three surgeries, 30 radiation treatments and countless months of chemotherapy, he was, indeed, cancer free. But the five year survival rate for his type and stage of cancer was less that 25%.
We trudged to Seattle Cancer Care Alliance every three months for surveillance scans, then every six months. With each scan, we expected a recurrence. With each scan, his oncologist said, "Everything looks good, see you in six months." Nearly four years went by cancer free. Until a "mass" showed up in his bladder. Bladder cancer killed John's mother. Nope, this wasn't a mestatasis of his colon cancer, but a second cancer. Immunotherapy treatments, which thankfully had minimal side effects, were effective in knocking the bladder cancer back. We both had a feeling we'd cheated time as long as we could. We were at the five year mark from his initial diagnosis. Time was not on our side.
It sneaked up on us. The "shadows" in the lungs on the CT scans that "we'll just keep an eye on for now." The ER visits for recurrent infections, that led to another scan, that showed an enlarged lymph node. It all led to the order for a PET scan. PET scans, in layman's terms, basically involve getting infused with sugary radioactive dye. Sugar binds to cancer cells and the radioactive dye makes those cells light up on the scan, so you know where all the little cancer bastards are hanging out.
I was sitting at my computer when the scan results popped up. Lungs, lymph nodes, and bones. John was at work, teaching, so I wasn't sure he'd seen them yet. My best friend, who calls John "Dad", was going through her own shit and I could not, would not, hand that news to her that day. I messaged another friend, "Hey, you got a sec to talk me off the ledge?" Bless her, she called me within two minutes. We knew about the lymph node, we suspected the lungs, the bone involvement sideswiped me and I came unscrewed rather quickly.
Wasn't it just yesterday we were young and healthy and untouchable? Wasn't it just yesterday when he proposed to me, even though we both said we'd never get married again? How did we get here? How will we move forward when I feel like I'm sinking in quicksand? Now I understand the lyrics "How do I breathe without you if you ever go."
It seems like yesterday when our story began. I know that the end of our story will come sooner than I'm ready. He says things like, "I gotta stick around for the George Strait concert in June." We talk about the Seahawks and I choke up, knowing he might not see the first game next season. Or he might. Right now, we'll settle for the new season of Ted Lasso, and going to a Mariner's game on opening weekend. We'll take what we can get for now, because now is what we have.
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