...but it never leaves your life.

Cancer sucks. Period. I don't care what Cancer you get- it's gonna suck.

I am coming up on 20 months in remission and even this far out I still find myself mentally running thru a self check list to make sure anything that appears abnormal isn't cancer. Of course I can't tell if it's cancer because I didn't know when I even had it, but I catch myself self-diagnosing and making rationalizations on fatigue and sudden pain flare ups or anything else that acts up that wasn't there yesterday.

Even the sudden onset of a cold sends me into self check mode and I am running a sort of internal diagnostic to make sure what ever I am feeling isn't a symptom I had before and didn't recognize.

I am due for a check up with my Oncologist this month. My planned PET/CT scans this year are only supposed to be TWO. (as opposed to the four I had last year)...I know the routine by heart I can do it with my eyes closed.

Sometimes I even fall asleep in the machine. I am jarred awake only when the machine has to move me another few inches again. It is funny what we get used to. Before Cancer I never would have imagined I would one day have the inside of a CT machine memorized.

Or have the routine down...the IV, the radioactive isotope injection, the solitude: waiting for the isotope to travel thru my body, the gown you have to wear, the coldness of the room and the warm blankets they drape over you before firing up the machine, and leaving you alone in there.

I am a member of a club I didn't ask to join. I am in good company (unfortunately) and we each have our stories to tell and our scars to prove it. But even with my wife's support thru it all, sitting there with me in the infusion room for each and every treatment...I was the one in the chair with the IV in my chest, getting the drugs. Elbow to elbow with the next poor soul hooked up to his bag of poison. I was alone in the machine. I was in the O.R. when they took my Kidney out. I was alone.

That's the only way it can be.

Cancer is a solitary disease. We have your support (and we appreciate it) but we go thru it alone.

And with my Hodgkin's Lymphoma nearly 2 years in remission I still deal with the internal what ifs by myself. I know my wife has her unique perspective as the "Cancer Spouse" and her version of events is a little bit different than mine but just as hard.

She had to watch me go thru this and feel powerless along with me. She had to pace the hallways at St Clare's while I was in the O.R., she had to deal with my wicked mood swings and fatigue and all sorts of other crap after each treatment set in and I started feeling sick and felt worse with each infusion. It's her story that needs to be told along with mine. (if not instead of mine)

You never read about the Cancer spouse. They are the unsung heroes in all of this. They dealt with the cancer too, just differently.

I am tired of all this. The fact that Dawn is or was a Cancer spouse. That this disease turned our family and our household on it's head. I dwell on it at least once a day because it left an indelible impression on me...on us.

Again I quote the only truth I know when it comes to cancer...

"Cancer may leave your body but it never leaves your life"



Be well.