Tag: cancer

2022: A year in review

~ Linda ~ Leave a comment

I honestly can’t say that I have ever done a ‘year in review’ as a blog post.  To be honest, I often forget I even have this blog until the annual payment for its domain hits my account.  I used to thrive in blogging, I loved the anonymity of it and all that it stood for. I joined different blogging groups; it was new and shiny and everything the new technology world promised it would be.  Now, some 15+ years later, it’s lost its lustre and seems more of a time passer than anything groundbreaking; but I digress.

A year in review.  I see so many around the web and wonder if I have ever reflected the way others seem to do over the year.  Sure, I look at the close of one year and curiously peek at the prospects of the next year encroaching, but I’ve never made a list of objectives I wanted to accomplish and checked them off or (what would undoubtedly be my case) moved them to a new, clean list for the next year because that task didn’t get accomplished. 

I think the annual list I would have would simply say “survive” at the top and that’d be that.  Is this a generation thing?  I didn’t think to look at some of these posts to see if they were swayed towards the millennials or generation Z.  Either way, I have never made a list for a year.  I make daily, weekly, and even monthly lists, but that’s as broad as I go unless we’re talking about 5-year plans.  Then, I suppose we’d be reading a lot of 5-year-plan in review and those don’t seem to exist. 

This year has been a compilation of every possible rollercoaster ride at Six Flags combined into one enormous, gut-wrenching, thrill-seeking, vomit-inducing ride.  I wish I could say this was an exaggeration or a comical approach for a dramatic flair, but sadly, it is not.

This year started with a random, unexpected email from my husband of 23 years asking for a separation.  Yep….an email.  He ended up taking a travelling Paramedic job across the country for a couple of months and never really mentioned it again.  I guess that was the separation he needed.  That email was followed by the passing of my beloved grandmother.  Boy, she was an incredible woman with a history so rich and full, that I admire her immensely and will forever be grateful I had her in my life for as long as I did (maybe I’ll post something in a couple of months for the anniversary of her passing and share her incredible story). 

All seemed pretty stable after February as we waited for our youngest child and second son to ship off to Navy Bootcamp.  That day came and went and while I thought it would be easier since he was the 2nd to leave the nest to serve our country, I was so empty when he left.  I missed his booming laugh and the enormous light he spread with his dynamic, larger-than-life personality.  Luckily, those weeks passed quickly and we were soon on our way to Chicago in June to watch him and his beaming face, full of pride go through boot camp graduation.  We spent a couple days with him and then a couple more just exploring the city we didn’t get the chance to explore the first time we went up for a Navy graduation.  It was peaceful, it was fun, and luckily it was not cold. 

Just before we left for Chicago my brother-in-law was released from prison.  He was sentenced to 30 years to serve 13 but as our prison system works, he served about a third of that and was out in a little over 4 years.  Because my husband is so close with his only sibling and for a myriad of other reasons, he persuaded me to allow our home to be the place where he acclimated back into society.  Someone: remind me never to sign up for that again…and if you’re looking for advice on the subject – don’t fucking do it. Ever. 

After Chicago, we noticed a cough my husband couldn’t shake and so in June he went for a visit to the doctor which led to his diagnosis of High-Grade B-Cell Non-Hodgins Lymphoma after a month stay in the hospital due to a botched biopsy that very truly nearly killed him at the ripe age of 45 (read the previous post for the details).   

He was finally released from hospital in August and he began monthly chemo treatments. They were tough, not as bad as many I have heard about, but bad enough that it was hard on all of us.  But I researched the foods and drinks and supplements to help counteract all the chemo poison so that he was able to cope with the recovery.  During these months I still worked, cleaned, cooked, dealt with the family nonsense (for example the loud, obnoxious, brainless, alcoholic, convict brother-in-law that can’t seem to get his shit together at nearly 50 years old), and trying to keep everything afloat. 

His last chemo treatment was the last Monday in November and we were very happy to close that chapter.  Because of the rarity of where his cancer started, he has another month of radiation treatment, but we hear that’s not nearly as bad with regard to the side effects as chemo was.  He won’t start that until after the New Year which kept our December nice and normal-ish. 

December proved to be a much calmer time of the year when we simply tried to live, shop for Christmas and prepare for the holidays.  My youngest son was due in on Christmas Eve and I was excited that he’d make it home for Christmas.  To my overwhelmingly ecstatic surprise, he showed up about a week early and we are able to have him here until after the New Year.  If only my brother-in-law could have found a new home before then, all would have been right with the holiday.  To be honest, if that’s my only complaint after a year like this, I think I should just be grateful and stop complaining.

So, to wrap it all up in a nice little bow – my 2022 was a fucking mess, but I survived.  My husband survived.  My children survived.  My marriage survived.  Had I started my ‘list of things to accomplish in 2022’ and had I put on there to simply survive, this would read as a very successful year.  In truth, I have to say it was a successful year, not one that was easy, not one I’d wish on anyone, sure as shit not one I want to repeat, but one that taught me a great deal.  Many people had a much better year than I did.  Many more people had a much worse year than I did.  I’m learning that it’s all perspective in this life.  Learn from it and live it.  Be happy within your soul and remove obstacles that try to fuck that up.  Some people have it better, some people have it worse, but everyone…EVERY SINGLE PERSON has a path they are on and we’re all just trying to survive.

Wishing everyone all the best in 2023, Cheers!

Time is fickle

~ Linda ~ Leave a comment

This year has been a great deal harder than I anticipated and not because of the plaque and the world trying to navigate its way back into the swing of things, but because heartache, failure, illness, and grief are just so fucking difficult.

I have been lucky in that the company I am blessed to work for has allowed us to maintain a work-from-home liberal hybrid environment. This year has proven that allowance is critical in my life. Just a few posts ago I wrote about my 20th anniversary and how lucky we both were. Every marriage and every relationship undoubtedly has issues, big and small, to contend with and work through, but I daresay our marriage has seen more than its fair share.

In January this year, my husband sent an email to me asking for a separation. Sure, we had our differences, and we had our ups and downs, but nothing could have prepared me for that. After many, many years of supporting his various job changes and career changes, financially supporting him during times he needed to take off work due to the strain from being a Paramedic takes on oneself, and even raising our three kids (alone for a year so he could better his career 200+ miles away from our home). It was a slap in the face, the wind was knocked out of me and my life turned on its head in a single email – not a face-to-face conversation but a fucking email! I wasn’t what he wanted any longer, I wasn’t who he needed. I was devasted beyond words.

A month later he was offered or applied to, I’m not sure which because he began making decisions without including me, a traveling Medic job that would take him to California for 2-3 months. He accepted, without hesitation, and off he went. We really never discussed us or where we were heading, not entirely. We spoke each night or morning, depending on his schedule and I pretended all was well. He came back at the time our youngest was heading off to basic training so we put on fake smiles and tried our best. We went up to Chicago to watch him graduate from basic training and my Medic decided it was time to finally find a job locally as the travel jobs seemed to be drying up.

While home, he developed a cough and it kept getting worse. I persuaded him to go to the doctor. Fast forward a month of testing and waiting, we found an 8.5×11 mass on his left lung. A blow even I couldn’t have prepared for and fast forward a few more weeks we had an appointment for a bronchoscopy biopsy scheduled. That 45-minute biopsy that turned into 2.5 hours was failed, botched (the doctor stated “the mass oozed and the bleeding had to be controlled”), and ultimately led him to become septic, develop post-operation pneumonia, caused the eventual collapse of his left lung, kidney failure, and respiratory failure all within a week of the biopsy. He spent the next month in the hospital fighting for his life all the while we had no diagnosis of the mass in his lung. I spent each night dutifully in the hospital recording every note that came from a nurse or doctor (of which there were dozens) while working remotely from the hospital. During week four after he was stabilized, but not before he had to have a chest tube to drain the sepsis from his lung, we finally had a diagnosis. High-grade b-cell non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in his left lung.

He’s completed half of his R-CHOP chemotherapy treatments and had a mid-treatment PET scan done which we learned yesterday that the original 8.5×11.1 mass had shrunk to 4.3×2.8 – GREAT NEWS!!! However, during all this commotion, his older brother moved in with us after being released from a 4-year stint in prison. This brother has turned our lives even more upside down if that’s even possible. You see, during his diagnosis, I researched everything related to this treatment, this cancer, and all the foods I could prepare to help him through this journey. After all, I’m no doctor, but I can cook and cook well. I learned about nutrient-dense foods that were critical to his getting over the initial treatments that he undertakes every 21 days. This is not a sob story for me and what I’ve been through, though I admit it’s the hardest thing I’ve dealt with to date. I recognize my hardship pales in comparison to what my husband has undergone. However, this is a vent to the zero people who read me that I am absolutely infuriated that my brother-in-law believes me to be a controlling bitch who refuses to allow my husband to eat fried chicken, pork chops, steak, and drink shots at every chance he gets. Worse, even, he’s convinced my husband of the same thing. For the last 4 weekends, I’ve spent that time in my room trying to escape the negativity that follows this man and who he is turning my husband into.

Time is fickle. Just 10 months ago my husband asked for a separation and it appears he will soon be asking me for that again. Only time will tell, but call it a woman’s hunch. We both walked away with a new perspective on life after he got sick, the problem is I think our perspectives are polar opposites.

Likely in January, one year after the first time, his perspective will reveal he wanted a permanent separation after all. I say January because that will be the time when his treatments are over and my services will no longer be needed. As he has given me every reason to believe this, it’s just a matter of time.

That’s the thing about time. You exert your energy giving your time to others and they either use it, waste it, or destroy it. Time doesn’t come back though, so tread carefully how and when you give it.

Time, y’all. Time is an interesting, horrible bitch, much like Karma.