Chapter 2: part 3

continued from chapter 2; part 2

Cancer. The fear of the disease is one kind of burden, but actually dealing with it is another. How many times have I heard friends say they would never allow a doctor to “butcher” them to remove the tumor? Or, they’d rather die then suffer the indignity of a colostomy? Funny thing, if the unthinkable becomes reality, the desire to live longer overshadow those bold statement made from a position of good health.

We spent a few days using the “C”word until it was no longer a stranger. This was a necessary first step to get out of the way before preparing our battle plans. Try battling an unknown, unseen enemy. It takes strategy, imagination and information. But we knew its name.

There were subtle differences in our lives now, though. We stopped rehashing the past months of not knowing what was wrong with him and Hal took job assignments once more. We took long and longer walks to build his strength and he began having pre-dinner drinks again. I was fearful of what this was doing to his already beleaguered liver, but kept this fear to myself.

Already I was noticing that Hal changed the tone of the doctor’s remarks so that a stranger would believe Hal had just had routine appendectomy. He convinced himself the doctor had changed his mind about his “less than 40% chances.”
I wasn’t about to burst his bubble, but besides that huge denial there was, buried just beneath the surface of my mind a nagging worry. What are we supposed to do now? What is the cancer doing to him? Why didn’t anyone tell us what to do next? How could the surgeon simply release him without seeing that he was monitored daily or weekly? Should he be?

On one of those back-to-normal mornings as we sat together at breakfast, the permanent lump in my throat threatened to strangle me or at the least, embarrass me into bursting into tears, I felt so helpless. I took a deep shaky breath.
“Shouldn’t we be doing something?”

“Yeah, I think we should.”

He knew what I meant. We weren’t seeing a cancer specialist, at least until our in-the-future appointment was arranged; we had no idea how fast the cancer cells in the liver were growing. I woke up and went to bed with a feeling of panic and can only wonder what was behind Hal’s calm façade. The children were calling and expressed joy that Hal was bouncing back but still, I kept imagining those pervading cells invading deeper and deeper into his body. We needed some guidance.

“We’ll be seeing the surgeon next week; what’s wrong with waiting for him to tell us what’s next?”
“No, I just know we have to start helping ourselves.”
My inner voice kicked in.
“I’m going to phone the Cancer society and ask for some advice. At least that’s a start.”

to be continued in chapter 2; part 4