Surviving Cancer, My Story Part 13: Cancer love letters

Part 13: Cancer love letters

 After Dan was hooked up to round 2 of his chemo we got out a deck of cards and began to play a game.  Somehow games had been a great distraction in our marriage when one of us was sick.  At the end of my pregnancy with our first baby, I was in so much pain I was pretty much housebound.  Dan would come home from work and set up a station of games around the bed and we would play for hours.  We were both competitive in nature, which kept us motivated to keep playing until we individually felt we had the upper hand at winning. Games were a good distraction for the hospital stay and kept our minds on superficial subject matter.

He finally looked like he belonged at the hospital. He was bald headed, and 40 pounds thinner.  His clothes hung on him like he was a teenager wearing his dad’s clothes.  His head became shiny, as all cancer patients do, with no stubble to take the glare down a notche.

The room we were assigned this time around was in the back of the hospital.  It was a smaller room, with a view of rocks on the mountainside where the hospital was built against instead of the cityscape like we had before.   It was dark and cold.  I didn’t want to be there, I longed for the comforts and luxuries my own home and bed provided me that the hospital never could.

 A hospital routine soon settled in for us. I would stay with Dan at the hospital with our baby until he was administered his chemotherapy and spend the night on the fold out couch. Depending on how Dan’s system handled the drugs I would leave during his nap the next day to pick up Cole from the various houses he was being passed back and forth between, spend some time with him and then head back up to the hospital for another night or two before bringing him home.

Dan soon gave into the drugs and fell asleep.  I tried to do the same but my mind raced with worry and stress.  ‘Is this chemo working?’ ‘It better be working.’ ‘How can I get the insurance company to pay for Dan’s treatments?’  ‘I miss my Cole.’ ‘I still can’t believe this is real’. My thoughts never settled but my body eventually gave into exhaustion.

One of the rules for cancer patients is that their guests are not allowed to use their private bathroom.  A high risk to infection made it important to keep everything sterile and hospital approved.  When I woke up I walked down to the community bathrooms and showers still in my pajamas. This was common in the morning, to see spouses and caretakers with wild bed hair, wearing pajamas, and bags in hand making their way to their ‘assigned areas’ for bathroom and shower privileges. It reminded me of Holocaust films where the Jews and outcasts were herded into separate sectors.

Caretakers of cancer patients bear so much more burdens than anyone ever realizes.  They also take a backseat to the cancer patient in all areas.  The responsibility of keeping everything together for the cancer patient lies within their hands. All responsibilities’ are turned over to them, emotional, financial, mental, and physical. Ultimately the sense of personal duty to make sure everything does turn out the way you promise and want it to becomes the central focus and an obsession to fulfill.  No one is ready to fail his or her loved one.

Dan was awake when I returned and we talked about the daily plans.  The chemo he was getting made him want to sleep most the time we were there.  Around five o’clock that night he was ready to close his eyes.  I said goodnight and kissed him good-bye. 

In the morning I took both boys up to the hospital to spend with Dan. It was Cole’s first time visiting.  He had gotten used to his dad looking different from all the other dads, and took on the changes as if they were normal.  He behaved as if others should feel that way too.  Broken hands were not weird to him, and he frequently held one hand with the other and confessed a fib to various strangers that he had a broken hand, and could magically pull his hair out. When we first walked in, Cole looked scared to see his dad hooked up to so many machines and colorful bags hooked to tubes filtering under his shirt.  He was aware of the sensitivity his dad felt in his body and was usually careful when around him.  Any worry he had soon abandoned his mind after he was able to sit up in his dad’s bed with him and watch cartoons like he used to at home.

We stayed most of the day.  We had been lacking in family time and although the circumstances were less than ideal it felt comfortable to be together as a family.  Something about being separated during a crisis makes everything seem ten times worse.

I know Dan was happy to have the boys there, but he started feeling sick this time around during his treatment and became irritated at everything.  This in combination with the chemo plus eight other medications for pain, nausea, including a strong steroid made him physically ill, emotionally unstable, and mentally unsound. I packed up the boys to take Cole home and planned to return after my mom came to stay with him to help Dan during the night. He had been snappy in his tone about everything that day toward me and open about his discomfort.  He was mad at me for his being sick.  I tried to ignore it, knowing it was the circumstances making him act this way.  Tension in the room became thicker as the time for me to leave approached.  I knew Dan didn’t want to be left behind, that he prefer to just get up and come with us. Everything in his life was out of his control.  He was tethered to the hospital by machines and would remain a prisoner there for at least another day.

I remember this moment signifying the beginning of Dan subtlety pushing me out of his life.  Keeping me at a distance made it easier to attach the negative feelings from our circumstances and shift blame of the cancer onto a liable person. He began making me the enemy in his mind.

“Why don’t you just stay home tonight since you’re leaving”, he said as he turned his head away from me like a pouting child. 

I was too annoyed to let my hurt feelings control my emotions, “is that what you really want?” I asked him.   Although I knew that wasn’t what he wanted, a crying hungry baby and toddler jumping on me kept me from playing mother to his childish game.

“Yep!” he replied coldly and pursed his lips together.

I leaned over his bed to hug him good-bye.  I knew he was mad at me, and deep down inside I was mad at him.  He was making things harder on me than they already were.  He loosely threw one arm over my back with his head still turned to the side as if he were being forced to hug his worst enemy as punishment for fighting with them.  When I was younger my dad used to make us hold hands and walk half a mile down the road with the sibling we were at war with.  It was torture.  I knew Dan needed someone or something to blame for the misery he was going through. I hated that he picked me to be that ‘someone’; even though most people blame those they are closest to for things they are unhappy about.

 “Why are you pushing me away?” I whispered as I began to pull away.

He didn’t answer, but wouldn’t let go of me. He pulled me closer to him finally taking me into his arms.  His grip tightened and I felt his sincere embrace as he held me on his chest for a few minutes longer.  I didn’t want him to let go.  Nothing more between us was said before I left, just an exchange of glances that said, ‘I get you’.  I waited until I was in the car before I let myself cry.  I subconsciously felt the inner conflict Dan was adopting between loving me and blaming me for what was going on.

 I fed the kids and put them to sleep.  Before I got ready for bed I got on the computer to check my emails.  One addressed with no subject was from Dan only an hour earlier.

i wanted to send you a quick note.

i love you.

thank you so much for coming up to see me.

 sorry i was being a pain.

  it means the world to me to have you hug me. 
that touch was what my body needed, it was hard to let you go.

 felt like the old days, when we were dating,

 before we got married.

i really love you.

 i cant wait to get home and be apart of the family again.  we can
make it through this.

Dan

My mind flashed back to the time he was referring to.  Our relationship never felt perfect or without problems even then, but I knew he loved me, and it made me love him.  His email confirmed my thoughts and that we felt the same.
Dan wrote me a lot of letters before we got married. Reading the email he sent from the hospital pricked my heart reminding me how I had carefully chosen him as my mate.
My childhood broken home left me with fears about finding the right person to
share my life with.

I printed the note for safekeeping and quick retrieval for future bad days that were sure to come. My self worth was fragile and cracking. The small confirmations that Dan gave that we had each other, and we were in it together were the only things that gave me reason to keep going and act strong.  I needed to feel that same love he had for me in the beginning. I craved it, although I could feel it slowly slipping away the longer he had cancer.

We picked him up from the hospital the next day.  The boys decided to be with daddy, and brought their toys into our room so we could be together. Things felt better for the moment and I dismissed the hospital incident in my mind. 

Love is forgiving the ones you have relationships with, regardless of if they are sorry or not.  I knew by Dan’s ‘cancer love letter’ that he was sorry, that he didn’t want to push me away, and that he loved me.  I believed his letter that ‘we would make it through this’, meaning his cancer. I just didn’t suspect that there would be other things happen that we might not make it through.