Well, as I predicted weeks ago, the last 6 months just ka-boomed on me. As things are starting to wind down, my brain caught on and decided it no longer needed to use all my adrenaline or run on empty and my body crashed hard. I’ve got a double ear infection, sinus infection, fever thing going on – lovely, just lovely. I’m on the mend now, but it’s been a crappy few days.
Tom was frustrated and remarked “I hate seeing you so sick – I just want to make you better.” I lifted my head and said “Multiply that by 100 and that sums up the past six months of my life.” Tom has said through this whole thing that he would rather be the patient versus having to be the person that has to helplessly watch/care take and keep it all together. I take the other stance, the entire time we were going through this I would say I wish I could do this for him so he didn’t have to suffer. Certainly there isn’t a “right” answer, but I do find it interesting that we both wished we could be in the other person’s shoes for the sake of each other. Both positions are incredibly different, have different levels of risk/danger, and each have their own challenges. I wish we hadn’t needed to experience either of them – but we did, and I think we did quite well.
Tom has been such an amazing patient through all of this, though in this conversation he admitted there were days were he may have had a fake smile on so as to not worry me. My reply was “I did the same”. I can’t tell you how many times I cried in the shower or cried in the car – the same for him. Not because we were trying to hide any feelings from each other but because sometimes we were processing everything going on and not wanting to bring the other one down with us. I had terrible and great days, as did Tom, but by our count we only had one day were both of our terrible days landed on the same day. We needed to balance each other out to make it through and we did. So regardless of role during this whole fight our roles now are much more similar – husband and wife living life cancer free.
Tom is feeling great and getting stronger each day. He gets on the treadmill every day to help build back lung capacity and pushes himself to do a few minutes longer each day. It’s not an easy task for him but he knows it will get better and better each day. His scars are also healing quite well and we both were shocked at how faint it will likely be when the scar finishes healing. There are parts of the large incision that have already had the glue come off and it looks great – or as great as a scar can look. Tom is still working on the harrowing tale that he will tell about his scar – originally he was thinking a shark bite but the line is far too straight for that! :0) More to come….
Tom was frustrated and remarked “I hate seeing you so sick – I just want to make you better.” I lifted my head and said “Multiply that by 100 and that sums up the past six months of my life.” Tom has said through this whole thing that he would rather be the patient versus having to be the person that has to helplessly watch/care take and keep it all together. I take the other stance, the entire time we were going through this I would say I wish I could do this for him so he didn’t have to suffer. Certainly there isn’t a “right” answer, but I do find it interesting that we both wished we could be in the other person’s shoes for the sake of each other. Both positions are incredibly different, have different levels of risk/danger, and each have their own challenges. I wish we hadn’t needed to experience either of them – but we did, and I think we did quite well.
Tom has been such an amazing patient through all of this, though in this conversation he admitted there were days were he may have had a fake smile on so as to not worry me. My reply was “I did the same”. I can’t tell you how many times I cried in the shower or cried in the car – the same for him. Not because we were trying to hide any feelings from each other but because sometimes we were processing everything going on and not wanting to bring the other one down with us. I had terrible and great days, as did Tom, but by our count we only had one day were both of our terrible days landed on the same day. We needed to balance each other out to make it through and we did. So regardless of role during this whole fight our roles now are much more similar – husband and wife living life cancer free.
Tom is feeling great and getting stronger each day. He gets on the treadmill every day to help build back lung capacity and pushes himself to do a few minutes longer each day. It’s not an easy task for him but he knows it will get better and better each day. His scars are also healing quite well and we both were shocked at how faint it will likely be when the scar finishes healing. There are parts of the large incision that have already had the glue come off and it looks great – or as great as a scar can look. Tom is still working on the harrowing tale that he will tell about his scar – originally he was thinking a shark bite but the line is far too straight for that! :0) More to come….