the worst part

My wife has cancer.

It's so surreal. Even saying those words doesn't seem to fit. As though I'm using them in entirely the wrong fashion. It is precisely the opposite feeling of adjusting to calling her my wife for the first time, instead of "girlfriend." At first it is totally alien and then each time I try it on it gets more and more familiar until, at some point, it flows off of my tongue naturally. I don't want it to ever flow off of my tongue naturally. My wife has cancer.

We only found out last Monday. That was eight days ago. Which means that nine days ago our lives were normal. Crazy. I mean, sure, we knew there was a lump. But that didn't really sink in with any serious gravity. At least, not for me. There was a lump. People get lumps, don't they? All the time and they turn out to be nothing. My wife is only 28. Her family has no history of breast cancer. She was a little worried, in the same way that I often worry that every chest pain is an undiagnosed heart problem and that every tinge of pain in my nether is a hernia. I sometimes worry that I'm a hypochondriac, which is exactly the sort of thing a hypochondriac might worry about, really. But every time I get any of these little worries checked out, they inevitably turn out to be nothing. This is the luxury of youth. Not anymore.

So yeah. I didn't think she had anything to worry about. And I wasn't worried. I wasn't even really worried when they told her to come in for a biopsy. People get those all the time, too. There was still a huge chance that it was nothing. It was when we got there that I started to worry. Sitting in the little waiting room (they don't let you go back with the patient) listening to horrible elevator music reading awful People Magazine, that's when the first pangs of worry began to settle in. This is where lives change. This is where your life is going to change. I wanted to ignore that voice, but I heard it then. Before any results. Waiting to find out, that was the worst part.

But it didn't stay the worst part. I had left her sleeping when I headed out to work Monday morning. I was probably only in the office for around a half hour when she called. I saw it was her on the caller ID and I swiped to accept the call and nervously put the phone to my ear. I knew that I would know from her tone before she even said anything as to what the answer was. I hoped for the best.

I couldn't understand her words through her tears, but I knew what she said. It was positive. I told her to sit tight, that I would be home as fast as I could be. I was. She was sitting on our back porch when I came home. I opened the gate and came around the fence and she greeted me with a sobbing hug. We were both crying. That was the worst part.

I was surprised by Monday afternoon at how quickly we had seemed to come to terms with our new life-altering predicament. The tears were gone. The first cancer jokes were not long to follow, and we faced the fact that we really didn't know a whole lot and would just have to wait until our first doctor's appointment the following morning. Waiting was going to feel like an eternity and that sucked. And then I had to call my mom and tell her and that really sucked. I thought I was handling it just fine, that we were all done with the emotionality of it. And then I had to say those words for the first time. I had to hear myself saying them. I had to deal with the reaction of my mother hearing them for the first time. That was the absolute worst. And then, as the days went by, as we became more and more used to the idea that we were living with cancer, we still had to tell our friends and other family. And no matter how used to the idea I may tell myself that I am, hearing the shock and sadness in someone else's voice, or seeing it in their eyes, keeps taking me back to the first time I heard it. And it doesn't get any easier to tell someone.

And now here we are. Called back for another biopsy because the results of the MRI were "troubling," and we start this whole process again. Because you know what's worse than cancer? More cancer.

So it turns out that the truly worst part is that it's all so terrible, that every new experience is worse than the last one, and that we haven't even left the gate yet.

Somehow as I write this I realize how awfully pessimistic it all sounds, and I didn't mean for that to happen. I'd say that overall we are quite optimistic, even grateful. I'm grateful that I have a job with insurance, and that we are married and she is covered (more on how unfair that really is later). I'm grateful that I get to be there for her through this, as odd as that is to say and it's hard for me to figure out a way to explain what I mean. I'm grateful for her, for how strong she is and incredible really. I'm grateful for all of our friends and the support that they have offered up and will undoubtedly have to muster in the future. I'm grateful for our marriage. It gets stronger every day.