Surviving Cancer: My Story, Part 4: Ignorance Is Bliss

 

(Our family, the year prior to this ordeal)

Part 4:  Ignorance Is Bliss

“Are you ready to go?” he asked me while holding the door to the garage open. We left our small children with my mother and headed downtown to St. Marks Hospital. 

 The specialist recommended by our insurance company for my husband’s break had been anxiously awaiting the MRI results from the previous day, as were we.  Up until a few months prior, we looked like the picture of the young American family; a husband and wife, starting a family with the world as our oyster and general happiness our mantra. Although average and void of perfection, our problems were manageable and far from being real.  We were on our way to having a second child, and saving to buy a house.

Looking back, I compare my respective circumstances to those of my peers at the time.  We knew people around us who were in the same boat, trying to carve out a life and find their place in the world. We also knew people who had real problems, struggling, who were going through hard times.  We could empathize when these hard times would occasionally be brought up in conversations between friends, but in general these circumstances didn’t directly affect us.

Lack of knowledge and personal connections kept us safe from the ugly things in life.

 ‘As long as it’s not happening to me, it’s not really happening’.

The phrase ‘ignorance is bliss’ would soon take on a whole new meaning in my life.

The doctor finally came into the room.  He instantly drew his attention toward me, and I to him.  What had transpired in the appointment between this man and my husband the day before was something I was determined to get to the bottom of.  He sat down on the physicians chair with one foot firmly planted on the ground and the other in sprint starting position: heel up and ready to spring at the first shot of gunfire.  He flipped open my husband’s chart.  He buried his face in the notes for a several minutes. The room felt cold, and uninviting. Why was he staring at the notes for so long? My mind was already going down a list of possible scenarios of what he could possibly say. The look on his face made it clear that he had no need to review the file. He knew what he had to say, it was figuring out how to say it which he hadn’t quite figured out yet.

His eyes finally came off the paper. “Well,” he sighed, speaking in a slow monotone manner. “The MRI came back clarifying the origin of the fracture in your hand.”  He paused before he went on, “There was a small tissue mass growing near the metacarpal fourth ray.” Again he paused, looking up to see how much we were going to press him to say, “The pressure from the mass caused the bone to gain stress, weaken, and then break.”

“So what does that mean?” My husband was anxiously waiting to hear something he could understand concerning his condition. The doctor sat further down in his chair, his heel now dropped to the floor.  “It means the break was not caused by you opening a door.” This was getting us nowhere and I could see this game going on for hours. “Are you saying that this “growth” is what caused my husband’s hand to break?” I interrupted. “Yes”, the doctor answered, realizing he had a gun now pointed at his head loaded with specific questions.

I finally blurted ‘the question’ I knew my husband wanted answers to but couldn’t bring himself to ask. “Does that mean he has cancer?” I almost felt stupid asking the question out loud.  I already knew that my husband didn’t have cancer.  My husband’s eyes became fixated on the floor. “The probable presence of cancer is extremely low, almost zero chance.  I have seen a lot of tumors in the hand which have all resulted in being benign.” I recognized the word but felt little relief. Benign was the opposite of malignant. A strong urge kept me asking the same questions in variant forms.  I’m sure it was annoying to the doctor, but I really didn’t care. We were talking about my husband, and in that moment I felt responsibility to rescue him. I couldn’t stand to see him be reduced to words on a sheet of paper tucked away in a folder marked confidential.

I pressed the doctor for the next course of action. Reassuring us that it was a standard benign tumor with need for removal, he still wanted to schedule a biopsy for the very next day. It all sounded so simple, so why the urgency of all these appointments?  I suddenly remembered that the bone in his hand resembled a dinosaurs’ half eaten lunch. “What about the bone in his hand?” I continued questioning away, “Will it just grow back and become functional again after removing the tumor?”  My husband’s hand had become useless, his ring finger almost a disconnected part from his hand altogether.  The bone that secured the finger to the wrist and connected functionality was now MIA. “No, it won’t.”  It was like pulling teeth to get this so-called professional to give us the facts, and give them to us straight. Regardless of the tumor being benign or malignant the repair of his hand would be no easy task. One outcome gave us a fully functional hand after a grafted hipbone surgery and a year of therapy. With its 99.9% probability of success, considerable talk about this course of action was had before my mind would allow me to ask about the other.

Finally I asked, “What happens if the biopsy comes back malignant?” I wasn’t prepared for the brutally honest answer I was about to hear, “Then he will lose his finger.” Spontaneously a moment of silence had commenced and continued to linger until we left the office.  The nurse set up the biopsy for the following day. The elevator doors closed and sound of our breath returned.  Blood came back into our faces restoring a normal color to our cheeks. Gazing at the metal doors I announced that the doctor was crazy. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about……that would NEVER happen.”

Now calm, my husband responded with confidence, “I am sure that is what will happen…..I am going to lose my finger.” We continued to disagree with each other as if we were talking about how the ending of a movie would turn out.  The seriousness of what we had just learned flew out the window for the rest of the night, although our discussion about it did not.

There was no way that they would just cut his finger off. 

The ridiculous notion abolished all my fears of a cancer diagnosis. Still my mind couldn’t refuse to ponder the possibilities of ‘what if’. We were living in the 21^st century. You just don’t get your body parts cut off. These thoughts replayed themselves over and over again in my mind. Even if it were cancer, there would be a way to repair the bone. Simple math, A + B = C. My brain, hard at work, had resolved the problems dancing around in my head. The skills of the right doctor could piece my husband back together again. After all, 15 years earlier I had been injured in a ski accident and my blown out knee didn’t leave me without a leg. It was repaired with materials that came from other areas of my body. My surgeon informed me that the body has spare parts, and most any break or complication could be repaired. Dan’s hand would just need reorganization of materials. If there was a will, there was a way. My denial began to set in. The remainder of the night was spent playing with our children.  I would not allow myself to be consumed by tumors and chopped fingers.

Before the biopsy we had lots of time to wait, think and talk.  From there on out we spent every appointment together as a team.  My husband seemed nervous. His cast had been off for two days and he had already begun coddling his damaged hand. The hospital gown made him resemble an old man, as he had undoubtedly lost weight in the last month. We nervously joked back and forth while we waited, only engaging in small talk as if we were on an uncomfortable first date. Soon the surgery was underway and I was left alone. The waiting seemed to go on for such a long time. I memorized the hideous pattern on the wall and the counted the stains on the ceiling. Hospitals are so gross in addition to being extremely depressing.

(Dan, shortly after his tumor biopsy)

His doctor came in and told me my husband would be awake in an hour and ready for me to take him home.  He told me very little after that, except that testing would be done in a lab and the results would not return until Friday. We would have to wait. Two days shouldn’t seem like a long time, but when your life depends on it, two days seems like eternity.  I had never seen my husband in a hospital before, or in any kind of real pain for that matter. The tables were about to be turned from the year he had just watched me go through pregnancy. For my body, pregnancy was its own form of cancer. Throwing up for a full 10 months, an 80 pound weight gain per kid, and a 10 pound tumor (the baby) of my own torn out from inside of my body left me emotionally worn and physically changed forever. Women are strong. They have babies every day with little sympathy and consideration from their husbands as to what it must really be like. My husband in particular, couldn’t fathom how hard it was for me to reclaim my body and identity, and I felt very abandoned by my partner in my time of need.

He should not have gone back to work the next day, but was desperate to be ‘normal’. He lied to his co-workers about what was really going on. I hid out at home with the kids, telling no one but select family members what we were experiencing.  

We were almost embarrassed, as if we would soon be told that we had a nasty case of cooties. No one likes the kid who had cooties.

No, we would keep it a secret for now.

Appearances are everything to those who can’t accept that they are imperfect. 

 As long as we kept those appearances up everything would be okay.

Surviving Cancer: My Story, Part 3: Cancer is an ugly word and nobody likes saying it

Part 3:  Cancer is an ugly word and nobody likes saying it 

My husband came through the door with a well constructed cast on his right hand, and wrist. “30 days!”, is all he said. 30 days to having a fully functional husband again. “That was a really quick doctor’s visit" I said somewhat puzzled.  "What did he say about how you broke it?” I asked inquisitively.  He had only seen the doctor for about 2 minutes total. “He came in and asked me how I broke it, glanced at the X-ray briefly and then ordered a cast for 30 days. He didn't even looking directly at me, or my hand, and then left me with the nurse to wrap it up, he seemed in a hurry", he explained, as if it were normal procedure.

"That seems odd", I thought.  I was forced to dismiss the nagging questions I had.  I wasn't a doctor, and if they weren’t concerned, why should I be?  Yet I was experiencing the same uneasiness in the pit stomach as I had before–a force that had led me most of my life– telling me that I should not dismiss the nature of this break.  

This time I did not listen.

I wanted to relish in our new baby, and new beginning for our family, instead of being borderline mommy figure nagging my husband to get to the bottom of something so minor.  A broken bone?  So what.  Everyone gets a broken bone in their lifetime.

There were warning signs that we didn’t recognize. The following 30 days consisted of a lot of complaints from Dan. His hand was sore and he was tired a lot.  I remember rolling my eyes when he would attribute needing to nap almost every other day to his broken hand, while I was living on new mommy fumes, never getting the rest I needed at night, let alone a nap every day. But I went along with it anyway, sometimes joining in on the nap, or just taking down time with our boys. His coloring had changed quite a bit which my subconscious dismissed to the lack of sun we were seeing because it was wintertime.  His skin had taken on a subtle greenish hue, recognizable in the family pictures we had taken later that month.

We continued on with every day life for the next 30 days.  Our baby would be getting blessed at church, and our extended families would be in town.  We were happy to be spending time together, and life went on like normal. The time came and went quickly. On his way to the 30 day appointment Dan was relieved to have the annoyance removed from his hand. The cast was finally coming off. That morning I had kissed him good-bye and went about the daily tasks of laundry, and planning out the day. Several hours later he returned. Immediately an alarm went off in my head when I saw his face as he walked in from the garage. Concern, disappointment, anxiety, and fear consumed him as he entered the room, and hastily walked passed me down the narrow hall to the bathroom. “What’s wrong,” I asked, immediately following him.

He hadn’t stopped walking until he reached the bathroom, and silently locked himself inside. I heard sobs. At the base of the door his shadow confirmed he was sitting on the floor.  My heart sank, and my knees buckled.  I found myself sitting next to the door that was now between us.  I was confused. Ten minutes of silence passed before I knew he had stopped crying. He knew I was there but hadn’t said anything. I finally got up the courage to ask him to open the door. “No!”,  he said. “Please……let me in. Tell me what’s wrong. What happened,” I replied as softly as I could trying to convince him to open the door. “You don’t understand.”

I finally convinced him to open the door. He sat there with his head in his hands sitting as he crouched on his knees. I moved inside the door and positioned myself right next to him. I had no idea what was going on. Something had happened and it was obviously serious.“Did something happened at the doctor’s office?” He only replied with the word yes.“Well what was it? I can’t know how to help you if you don’t tell me.” I tried to reassure him that whatever it was couldn’t be that bad. “There is something wrong with me”, he finally blurted, “and there’s something wrong with my hand.” He finally looked me in the eyes. Thoughts were exchanged between us, but no words were spoken. My mind raced over what he could be talking about. Maybe the bone healed wrong and he would need surgery, I thought.

“I don’t know what it is”, he tried to explain, “All I know is it’s bad.” I had never seen him react like this before. I was used to seeing a lot of emotion from him, but never as scared as he seemed to be then. He seemed broken, and genuinely scared.  Even though I was trying to counter-balance his fear and uncertainties by staying positive, I attribute my lack of real worry to being somewhat naïve.

He told me the details of the visit. Upon arriving at the doctor’s office they took off the cast and did a routine follow-up x-ray. The nurse left him in the waiting room for the doctor to come in and give the thumbs up confirming that the bone had completely healed.  He sat in the patient room for a considerable amount of time before anyone came back.  It wasn’t the doctor. The nurse had come in to get some supplies from the drawers. “So how did the X Ray look?” He said breaking the silence…..in an almost joking manner with a grin on his face. “Am I all better?” She averted her eyes from his direction and answered, “Well it looks like it hurt pretty bad….the doctor will be in soon to talk to you about it.”  She seemed eager to leave the room without anymore discussion.

My husband, now nervous, was anxious for the doctor to return. With the new x-ray in hand the doctor opened the door with the news that an MRI was needed, and possibly some further testing on his hand and the break. There was some discussion, and then my husband questioned ‘why’.  He recounted how the doctor seemed more nervous than even he was,  as he used medical textbook explanations. Dan finally told the doctor he didn’t understand what he was trying to say.  Sighing, the doctor finally stood up, and switched on the light to the x-ray box where he plunked the image from his hand against its light.  He pointed at the spot of interest–the bone that was once broken.

“Ok, you see this?” he began, pointing at the image, “this is where your broken bone was.” Dan was staring at what looked like the remnants of a bone that had been chomped off in the middle by a dinosaur. The bone was almost gone, dissolved, with only fragments left on either side. “Ok", he replied, sounding as if he were trying to follow where this story was going. “Something has happened to this bone in the last 30 days.  It’s gone".  Dan sat stunned. There was very little he could think of to say.  Being a professional at avoiding problems he wanted to pretend like he hadn’t heard what was being said, and that it wasn’t real. “What do you mean the bone is gone?” he asked. The doctor was evasive at best, not giving any information away. Dan was not an ideal communicator, and had no other choice to follow the doctor’s orders to make an appointment for the following day. He got in his car, and came straight home.

“What if it’s cancer?" came out of his mouth, still staring at the bathroom floor. “What??? It’s NOT cancer!” I instantly replied. Barely in my 30’s I’d only personally known older people to get cancer, or serious diseases, and just a few cases at that. Surely my young husband in his prime of health didn’t have cancer. “You don’t get cancer that way, not from a broken hand.” The foreboding feelings I had dismissed only 30 days prior crept back into my mind, and gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Why didn’t I listen? I planned to go with him the next day to the doctor visit knowing it was the only way to get real answers concerning this situation.  There was no use borrowing problems at this point. We would soon find out what was really going on.

He seemed to let what I was saying calm him. The doctor didn’t say the words cancer, tumor, or disease. But my husband still knew by the look on his face, the urgency of these tests and appointments. Whatever was going on with his hand was very serious.

Surviving Cancer: My Story, Part 2: I think I just broke my hand

Part 2:  I think I just broke my hand

 Dan had just started back to work after taking a few weeks off to help with the new arrival of our new baby. He was tired, I was tired, but there was nothing suspicious about the level of fatigue in our house.  We were excited about the baby and enjoying the newness of it all while getting to know his little personality and establishing routines. Someone once told me that the birth of a baby brings many blessings into a home and family and I was certainly feeling them. We were eager to share him with everyone so we drove over to my parents house who lived about an hour away.  

It was winter and there was snow everywhere.  Sprout 1 helped grandpa shovel the walk while grandma bathed the baby.  It was relaxing and we found it difficult to pack up and leave and make the long journey home.  There was a strange calm before the storm.

We arrived  home late that evening and began unloading a car full of bags, toys, kids and groceries.  I took charge of the kids and started to get them settled while D brought in the last of the groceries. 

 Suddenly, I heard the door slam shut as he cursed in pain. “I think I just broke my hand!”  Nobody breaks their hand opening a door, I thought. “Well, what happened? I’m sure it’s not broken–it can’t be,” I said trying to reassure a man who had never had a cavity let alone a broken bone.  He obviously had no measure of pain and his tolerance was low.  

In his rush to get the car unloaded, he slipped the weight of the grocery bags down to his two bottom right fingers so he could turn the door handle.  He then pushed the door open without having to set anything down on the ground.  I was sure it was a pulled muscle at best, but he insisted that he felt a pinch and a small snap around his ring finger.  My sympathy was meager after a resume of two knee surgeries, a tonsillectomy and most recently, a painful stitch job after a cesarean. I didn’t trust his judgement and I had so many things to deal with let alone a sore hand that could be managed with some time and Advil. 

“I’m sure it will feel better in the morning. Sometimes a pulled muscle can feel as painful as a broken bone.” I was tired and urged him to get some rest for work the next day.

Things between us had started to seem better since the arrival of the new baby.  I began to feel closer to him.  The previous few years had been rough on our marriage and left a distance between us, contention in our home, and a void of the happiness we felt in the beginning.  Yet, we had always worked out our problems big or small and were determined to honor our commitments to each other and our children.  I grew up in a broken home and knew that I never wanted that for me or my family. I had a deep love for him and as his wife, my basic existence was completely dedicated to making sure he was happy and that his life was the success I know he wanted.

Three days passed and his hand was still very sore and painful so we decided it was time to see someone.  Our family doctor took an x-ray and confirmed the news that he had indeed broken his hand.  He called me as he walked out of the office to say, “I told you so!”  I was a little stunned.  Ok, a lot stunned.  Red flags were raised. How in the world could a bone be so fragile in such a healthy person?  I felt bad.  I had minimized the severity of the situation a few days earlier and my judgement was off.  

He returned home that evening with a copy of the x-ray and a referral to an orthopedic surgeon.  He was told that breaks in the hand sometimes require surgery and need to be properly set to heal and so we made the appointment for the next day.  Stunned and exhausted, I resolved deal with the inconvenience of a broken hand and possible surgery, in addition to the baby, but nothing would prepare me for the forthcoming news.

Surviving Cancer: My Story, Part 1: New Baby

Part 1:  New Baby

I had just had my second child, another little boy.  He was sweet, and quiet, and brought love back into our home, where stress and contention had become the norm between my husband and I.  My pregnancies were hard, and unforgiving.  I was still trying to recover from a nasty stitch job from my C-section, and a ten pound preemie.  I slept as much as possible, and tried not to disrupt my stitches in an effort to heal quickly.  A lot of that first month was a blur to me…but I do remember certain unsettling events leading up to our cancer diagnosis that were ominous, to say the least.

 

One stands out more than any other, The Trolley Square Shooting.  A teenage boy walked into an upscale mall and shot 11 random people, resulting in 5 deaths before he was shot and killed by an undercover police officer dining in a nearby restaurant.  The event remains vivid in my memory because I was there, in the midst, and middle of it all, the very store that he killed 5 people.  I remember him walking into the store, seeing his long black trench coat, holding guns in each hand. I was scared to death, frozen from the surreal nature of what I was forced to watch. I eventually began running toward the back door to a dark parking lot where my husband and two babies were waiting for me to pick up toddler bed parts at Pottery Barn Kids.  I always seemed to be in the wrong places at the wrong time, yet somehow managed to escape.  It was a combination of spiritual protection and inner drive to survive that minimized my risk, and potential crisis.

We started our outing with a plan for my husband and the kids to window shop the adjacent stores while I was running my errand.  As we approached the mall I had a nagging feeling in my gut that we should just go home and forget about the errands. I was tired, and in pain.  Despite the promptings, I decided it was best that my family wait in the car while I quickly ran in, cutting our family shop time out. My husband was annoyed, and tried to convince me that we should all go on in. I couldn't shake my uneasy feeling about him going in, so I leaped out of the car and ran toward my destined store before any more discussion could take place about it.

“Hi, I’m just here to pick up the bed parts that were ordered for a toddler bed.  I got a message saying they arrived,” I told a woman at the register.

“Yes, it looks like they are here in the back, let me go get them for you”, she said.

I waited at the counter, thumbing through their new catalog.  The store was full with lots of little kids discovering the kitchen play sets, and books.  Suddenly, without warning, there was a large crashing noise.....BOOM!  Everyone in the store paused briefly.  I exchanged glances with a lady standing at the register to the side of me.

“That was loud!” another customer said as she walked past us following her child to the book section at the front of the store.

The echo of the noise made it seem louder than normal, almost if a large window display was being hung outside the store, and had been carelessly dropped.  Everyone went back to shopping, dismissing the crash.  Less than a minute later the cannon like noise came again, followed by another, and another in a constant stream.  This time, everyone paused and all eyes began scanning the room in a panic.  Although it was one swift moment, it will be forever ingrained in my mind in slow motion. Everyone shifted their attention to the back storage room. Then there was running.  A woman pushing her green stroller with one hand, was dragging her young daughter in the other, and crying as she moved as fast as she could to get away from the commotion.  Right behind her was the source of the noise.  A tall, thin man in a black trench coat began shooting a large barrel shot-gun directly at the running crowd, children, as well as adults.  I stood paralyzed at the register watching the scene unfold, the voice in my head repeatedly telling me to “RUN!”  I saw people running in the opposite direction of the shooter as he fired one shot after another.  I had to get out.  I finally snapped back into reality, engaged, and dropped all the items in my hand as I instinctively ran to the back door leading out of the shopping center.  I was afraid of being shot in the back, but I took the chance anyway. I got to the door and tried to push it open but it was jammed. I started to cry.  I remember a calm feeling had come over me for a brief second, and a soft voice say, “pull”.  Screams and shots continued to pound less than 100 yards away.  I pulled the door open and was free. 

I ran to find my husband, but the parking lot was dark and I couldn’t see our car.   Fear and chaos lingered in the air.  He had been circling the parking lot keeping the kids entertained and pulled over when he saw me.  I ran to the car and opened the door.  I got in and shouted, “GO!  Get us out of here.”

I was in obvious shock and unable to immediately recount the details of what happened.  Fearing for the remaining customers, I called the store and was told they were all hiding behind a locked door in the office.  Several people had been shot and the shooter was still in the mall.  It was confirmation that what I had just experienced was real. I instantly remembered the promptings I had earlier. Had I not listened, my little family would have been in the direct path of the gunfire, and would surely have been harmed. The news coverage of this event went on for weeks, and the trauma remained in my nerves for a long time after.  As horrific as it was, I could never have imagined that something even more traumatic in my life was right around the corner.