Less than two weeks ago I sat in this very same seat and thought that I was sitting in this room for the last time. The very next day we received the news that we hoped we'd never hear. The cancer was back. Today, I am sitting in this seat having just been told that the cancer is gone. Sara's lymph nodes are clear. Everything is going smoothly.
I want to believe that I'll never sit in this seat again. Believing that isn't necessarily healthy, though. It sets us up for possibly devastating disappointment like the one we experienced last week. Rather, I think this time I'll just hope.
Friday, August 15, 2014
Friday, August 8, 2014
Time
It's been a year since Laura died. It's not that she was my "best friend" or anything like that. It's that she was family. She was someone I trusted. Like, really trusted. Like, the kind of person you don't censor yourself around, at all. I know that I always knew she was close, but I don't think I ever really thought about it until after she was gone. I remember talking to her on the phone through so many different phases of both of our lives. She would be in college, I'd be in the back room at my office at work. She'd be in Charleston, I'd be walking down the street in San Antonio talking to her through one of those crappy corded earpieces. She'd be in Florida, recovering from an injury and attempting to fish for alligator with sausage. I was on the phone with her when I got the news that I was being deployed to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She was the last friend I talked to before that shitty adventure.
It's hard for me to miss people. Not actually. I mean it's hard for me to miss people publicly. I don't want to paste anything to Laura's facebook page because it's filled with people from her life all over the world, from her lives all over the world. Most of them I know nothing about. It doesn't feel like the place for me. That's not where our friendship lived. It was between us. And so how do I carry that, when it's just me?
Today was a hard day. We were back at the hospital for a bone and CT scan. Won't find anything out from either of those until Monday. Surgery is likely to happen next week. I'll keep you posted, internet.
It's hard for me to miss people. Not actually. I mean it's hard for me to miss people publicly. I don't want to paste anything to Laura's facebook page because it's filled with people from her life all over the world, from her lives all over the world. Most of them I know nothing about. It doesn't feel like the place for me. That's not where our friendship lived. It was between us. And so how do I carry that, when it's just me?
Today was a hard day. We were back at the hospital for a bone and CT scan. Won't find anything out from either of those until Monday. Surgery is likely to happen next week. I'll keep you posted, internet.
Round 2
We are less than 24 hours away from receiving the news. The cancer is back. Sara had surgery on Tuesday, which was supposed to be her last, to finish up the final phase of her reconstruction. At that time, they removed some tissue that everyone thought was scar tissue from the last surgery. It was sent into pathology just to be safe. It really wasn't even on our radar. But the call came in yesterday that it was, in fact, cancerous.
We're here now. At the cancer center at the University of Michigan. Again. Sara is in the back in imaging and I am in the waiting room. I believe that my first job is to get over that feeling of how incredibly unfair this is. It's just that, when we were here before part of the deal that you make with yourself is that you can go through all of this, that you can handle anything, because you'll never have to do it again. It's been over two years since I was in this room. It really is too soon. It feels like I was just here last week.
I'm not sure when I'll publish this. If I'll publish this. We haven't gone public yet. This is going to suck.
I don't know how scared I'm supposed to be. The first thing Sara's surgeon said yesterday when she called her back was to tell her that this is treatable. Apparently it was on the underside of her skin and this is a common place for a recurrence. So maybe this is just some more shitty luck with incredibly good timing in that we caught it when we did. Originally Sara's surgeries were supposed to be done a year ago, and we probably wouldn't have caught anything then, so this is kind of fortuitous. On the other hand, this comes after a mastectomy, chemotherapy, and hormone treatment. And so I'm terrified.
I don't want Sara to have to go through this again. She's worked enough. She's suffered enough. I just want her to have a good life. goddamnit.
I know this post is a bit of a downer. Luckily, it's not going up yet. Hopefully, by the time it does it will have some good news and a more positive outlook attached to it.
We're here now. At the cancer center at the University of Michigan. Again. Sara is in the back in imaging and I am in the waiting room. I believe that my first job is to get over that feeling of how incredibly unfair this is. It's just that, when we were here before part of the deal that you make with yourself is that you can go through all of this, that you can handle anything, because you'll never have to do it again. It's been over two years since I was in this room. It really is too soon. It feels like I was just here last week.
I'm not sure when I'll publish this. If I'll publish this. We haven't gone public yet. This is going to suck.
I don't know how scared I'm supposed to be. The first thing Sara's surgeon said yesterday when she called her back was to tell her that this is treatable. Apparently it was on the underside of her skin and this is a common place for a recurrence. So maybe this is just some more shitty luck with incredibly good timing in that we caught it when we did. Originally Sara's surgeries were supposed to be done a year ago, and we probably wouldn't have caught anything then, so this is kind of fortuitous. On the other hand, this comes after a mastectomy, chemotherapy, and hormone treatment. And so I'm terrified.
I don't want Sara to have to go through this again. She's worked enough. She's suffered enough. I just want her to have a good life. goddamnit.
I know this post is a bit of a downer. Luckily, it's not going up yet. Hopefully, by the time it does it will have some good news and a more positive outlook attached to it.
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