It's time for me to write again, because there has been SO MUCH to process and much more still to examine from the years between my first attempt at blogging and now. I do not desire to whine or clamor for attention, but I do desire to be honest and real. So, if you are sure you want to bother with someone else's muck, here it is:
My husband was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in December 2010, just two months after I started this blog. Throughout the cancer battle, the relationship between my husband and I ebbed and flowed. He battled all the emotions and fears that come with a diagnosis and treatment while I struggled to find the boundaries between being a wife and caregiver. I can't help but feel even though he survived, we lost a piece of him. He's not who he once was, (who possibly could be) but now he is a shadow of his former self; a distant stranger, struggling to find normalcy. Maybe I'm just projecting. Maybe I'm the shadow. It has become my theory over the last few years that life does not allow just one tragedy at a time, but several. It is a necessary evil, which, when carefully managed, just might be used as a springboard for tremendous personal introspection and growth.
2011 was filled, no, make that laden with trials and opportunities for growth. My dearest Nana died a about a month after my husband's diagnosis. It's always haunted me because I never was able to say goodbye. I had to be home, supporting my husband, not able to grieve or mourn her loss. Being with him is exactly where I belonged, but someday I must find a way to get some closure of her passing. Aside from the loss of my grandmother, we started out the year making endless trips for endless appointments, radiation, chemo, surgery, etc. It was nonstop and leeching us in every way. Life's greatest stressors have a way of testing relationships and revealing cracks and weak points. The day after returning home from major abdominal surgery, a rift that has yet to be fully mended was thrust between us and my husband's mother. It was more weight to heap upon the already weighty circumstances. Somewhere in the midst of treatments and trials we did manage to squeeze in a much needed trip to Montana and later in the year I was blessed to be a doula for the birth of my sister's 3rd baby. Those were lights in a storm, to be sure. The same year, while still fighting and recovering from my husband's cancer battle, our oldest son was diagnosed with Aspergers. I suppose to most this diagnosis alone would be enough to make anyone's head spin. To us it was just one more "thing" to pile onto the ever increasing pile of impossible things to deal with. Autopilot got us through the emotionally and physically exhausting year.
2012 was littered with medical emergencies and surgeries. Whenever we felt as though we could let our guard down, another medical issue would rear it's ugly, unwelcome head. I spent much time that year reading and learning about digestive health and whole body wellness while trying to figure out how to manage the emotional loads that kept washing up on my weary heart's doorstep. I know that year we attempted to live life as normally as possible, but deep down, both my husband and I were hurting and broken from all the battles. On the same day as the school shooting in Connecticut, December 14, 2012, my Grandma Susie passed away. Once again, I was unable to attend, leaving another hole that must be mended.
2013, while medically speaking, was an easier year, it brought new pain and trials to our lives. My Bear (Nana's husband and my grandfather) passed away in February of 2013. My aunt was brutally murdered just five months later. Then, in November of 2013, my husband was almost blown up and witnessed 4 other men violently die in front of him. We have had to say goodbye too many good men who have passed earlier in life than they ever should. Deaths from war and deaths at home... Add PTSD to the list of issues to deal with. In short, it wasn't my favorite year. All the tragedy was beginning to physically take it's toll on me. From an outside perspective, most would think we were all doing well, but on the inside, everything still felt miserably weighty. It's funny how easy it is to put on a show and make everyone around you believe that everything is hunky dory. I almost convinced myself it was.
Finally, in 2014, it all seemed to finally being slowing. This might actually be the year life could begin to return to "normal." Life had other plans. We were met with the news that my husband would be deploying again in the fall of 2014. For me, it was insult to injury. Sure, he was (mostly) healed, but what about me? I had been shouldering the burden of maintaining the family through those years (and all the prior years filled with deployments) and now I was to shoulder one more deployment. The whole year was hard on me with him training and coming and going. I felt so disconnected and alone. Was it too much to ask for one year to build my marriage with my husband? I was trying to learn how to be me and not let all of the last few years take me down. That summer I began gaining weight like crazy and feeling like I couldn't complete the most simple tasks. I could stand in my kitchen and forget why I was in there. I would stare at the sink and try and remember what step came first in doing the dishes. Everything was off. In October, a month after my husband had deployed, I began to feel insane, truly insane. My anxiety was through the roof. I became paranoid, to the point where I was ordering supplies to get us through a biological warfare attack. I would stay up at night shaking from fear and dry heaving, knowing there was something wrong, but not knowing what and fearing the worst. I was afraid of everyone I passed in public, sure they had nefarious intentions to harm me. I knew I was going crazy, but getting the doctor to take me seriously was an (ironically) insanely hard battle. It took me over 2 months of visiting doctors on a weekly and almost daily basis to finally be given a diagnosis just 10 days before Christmas. All through October and November I suffered, feeling completely alone. I couldn't seem to get anyone to understand how close to the brink I was, partially because I was afraid to show my friends just how nuts I had become. It was the loneliest and most scared I have ever been. I would beg and cry at my doctor appointments. I would wail that I couldn't go on feeling the way I did. I would gravel. I would demand. I would come in armed with scientific studies and action plans I had devised on my own because no one else was taking the time to devise them. In my desperation, I made a visit to the ER. I remember the nurse practitioner smugly telling me the mono results had come back negative and I just needed to rest. When I told her my darkest fears, what diagnosis I felt she was missing, she almost laughed in my face. It was humiliating and so incredibly isolating. It was these weeks in November that it truly felt I was living minute by minute and breathe by breathe. I could feel, almost quite literally, death's icy stare from the corner of the room. I had dreams of a dark figure slitting my wrist and laughing gleefully as I bled out while screaming for someone to help me. My body was failing me, my mind was failing me and I still had to feed, clothe, care for and teach my children. It was too much. I had reached my breaking point. My sister called my friends and they came swooping in, caring for my children and staying by my side through the long nights. My dad flew out on the next day's flight. I knew I had reached rock bottom. After making a hail-mary phone call to one last ENT, I was given an urgent appointment. The doctor immediately sent in an order for a biopsy. On December 15th, I walked into a cold, stark room and had a needle inserted into my thyroid. Just minutes later the technician walk back into the room and told me she would not biopsy the other suspicious nodule because the first biopsy had given clear results. I had thyroid cancer.
You would think, in that moment the whole world would come shrinking down into some pinpointed, dizzying moment, ears filled with blurring white noise and the chest strangely aching a stabbing shock, the same way it did when I was told of my husband's diagnosis. It was, for me, completely opposite. It was the most calm and quiet I had felt in, well, forever. I finally had an answer! I wasn't crazy. In fact, I was so very right! I wanted to run, screaming and laughing through the halls and find that stupid ER nurse who had thought I was a paranoid freak. I was right!!! I knew, to my very core I had cancer and now no one could make half amused, half annoyed replies about how I was just stressed and imagining the worst. Being validated, even when the validation is that you do truly have cancer, is a wonderful feeling. No longer was I stuck without answers. It was, for but a brief moment, a gift.
I am grateful for that moment because what followed after was a mad flood of events. I don't really even remember the next four days. My family rushed to be with me. My husband was sent home from deployment and everyone was by my side on December 19th when I was wheeled into the O.R. for surgery. That day will forever stand out in my mind. I was so very scared of what the future would hold. I barely had a chance to knowingly acknowledge the existence of cancer in my body and here I was, just days before Christmas, getting a vital organ hacked out of me. I wasn't so much scared of the surgery, but fearful of what life would become after my thyroid was gone and acutely aware of how little the doctors would respect or support my new journey. If you're reading this and you still have your thyroid, take a minute to give it a little pat (it's under your adams apple and above your collar bone) and say "thank you" for all the hard work it does. It is, in many, ways the kingpin of every other function in the body. It aids digestion, hormone regulation, adrenal function, skin health, lung health, heart health and brain health. I knew I was giving up something that made me me. That little organ that makes minute adjustments depending on stress, sickness, hormonal cycles and metabolic function would never again be there to aid me. I was and forever will be vulnerable. Without medication, I die. So there I sat in the waiting room that day, feeling hollow and fearful of the unknown. I remember my sweet daughter's soft hands touching me with care. I remember gratefully resting my heavy head on my husband's strong shoulder and understanding him on a whole new level and relieved to anchor myself in his presence. I remember my mom's eyes sad but caring eyes and my dad's nervous loving smile. I remember singing, out loud, no holds barred SINGING and not caring who heard me. For all I knew, I could wake up a few hours after surgery and never again have vocal cords that allowed for song. I might not wake up at all. So I sang. It started as a small, soft hum and grew in strength. I sang over and over the verses of a song.
You call me out upon the waters
The great unknown where feet may fail
And there I find You in the mystery
In oceans deep
My faith will stand
And I will call upon Your name
And keep my eyes above the waves
When oceans rise
My soul will rest in Your embrace
For I am Yours and You are mine
Your grace abounds in deepest waters
Your sovereign hand
Will be my guide
Where feet may fail and fear surrounds me
You've never failed and You won't start now
So I will call upon Your name
And keep my eyes above the waves
When oceans rise
My soul will rest in Your embrace
For I am Yours and You are mine
[6x]
Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever You would call me
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Savior
Oh, Jesus, you're my God!
I will call upon Your name
Keep my eyes above the waves
My soul will rest in Your embrace
I am Yours and You are mine
Finally, after many delayed hours, it was time for me to put my money where my mouth was and venture into the great unknown. I kissed my family goodbye, felt the cold chill of the OR and then, blackness...
To be continued
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