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.