It’s Com­pli­cated, Part 3

This is part of the It’s Com­pli­cated series.

Thank you, every­one, for the incred­i­ble out­pour­ing of love and sup­port. This ordeal has already been such a bless­ing in that it has shown me the warmth and com­pas­sion and friend­ship of the peo­ple I am sur­rounded by. I do not want to sound like I was ungrate­ful before, but I had no idea that you guys were this incredible.

There has not been a sin­gle day the last year that I have not been struck with how lucky I am. The peo­ple that touch my life, every sin­gle one, are show­ing me how much good there is in this world.

We spoke to T’s radi­ol­o­gist a few days ago. We did not have an idea of the sever­ity of things and I had been yelling at peo­ple to give us some answers. T has stage IV metasta­tic breast can­cer in her brain. That is about as bad as it gets. Her oncol­o­gist will sur­vey her for other areas where it may have metas­ta­sized later; for now we are scram­bling to make a dent into the brain cancer.

I asked for T’s prog­no­sis and the radi­ol­o­gist said “not good” and I clutched T’s hand and felt numb­ness wash­ing over me. I am con­stantly sur­prised that when you think that you can’t pos­si­bly get any num­ber than this, you are hit with a wave that out-​numbs even that. Is it ever going to stop? Is there a bot­tom to the chasm of numbness?

All through our con­ver­sa­tion the doc­tor care­fully avoided terms that implied suc­cess­ful treat­ment. It was all about “con­trol­ling” and “slow­ing down.” She even said, “We’re not going to wash our hands of you; we’ll con­tinue to treat you.” In other words, she did not say “die” but she cer­tainly danced around it.

We are cur­rently doing whole-​brain radi­a­tion treat­ments daily for two weeks and then after a month we will see if the can­cer is respond­ing by doing an MRI.

We are both scared but I try my darn­d­est to not show it to T. I con­tinue treat­ing her the same, bust­ing her balls and not let­ting her get away with things “just because” she is sick. It is just so hard to have to stand on the side-​lines and not be able to do any­thing to fix it. I am an engi­neer, I am a fixer; I fix things. That is what I do. But now I am pow­er­less. And it sucks.

I started my new job after hav­ing been laid off for 2 ½ months the very same day T had her first brain radi­a­tion treat­ment and just two days before learn­ing about the sever­ity of T’s sick­ness. I have already had to take time off to get her to her treatments.

Yes­ter­day I met with an HR rep­re­sen­ta­tive to fill out my ben­e­fits enroll­ment and it all came crash­ing down on me when I had to make up my mind for spousal life insurance.

I have always just checked the box for what the employer is pay­ing for and noth­ing more, but this time I added sup­ple­men­tary insur­ance on T. It was gut-​wrenching to watch my hand check that box. I also remem­ber absent-​mindedly won­der­ing who I should put down as the ben­e­fi­ciary of my life insur­ance in the future.

I know that peo­ple beat can­cer all the time and that is what I tell T. I am not let­ting her give up. I just hope she can­not sense my own moments of despair and weakness.

It’s been a long week.

Update: Please see It’s Com­pli­cated, Part 4.