When will I ever learn? One of the many important lessons you learn with cancer is that you take each day as it comes with no expectations for tomorrow. You cling to that on bad days; you tend to forget it on good days.
Rich has had a few good days in a row. I forgot the lesson. Reality hit hard on Sunday. As a nurse I have seen pain—real, imagined, dramatic, subdued, and artfully acted. For the first time in over a year he experienced the return of the stomach pain that grips him hard, fast and doubles him over. I can deal with a lot, but watching Rich suffer grinds me up. Pain meds don't work for this—there's no warning, it's intense, and by the time oral meds get into the system, he's on his third or fourth attack. Even then it doesn't help anymore than tylenol would help labor pains. After a dozen or so of these episodes, he's pretty wiped out. Then he gets frustrated because it feels to him like the cancer is winning. Then he gets depressed because the daily struggle is now ramped out of control, and what if this is our new room in hell with no way out?
The first one took us both by unhappy surprise. We were both devastated, we said nothing. I hold onto him and try to breathe him through it. You want to believe it's a fluke. Then they kept coming. He endures them in silence and I respond in kind. After each one we recover and try to make light of it in our usual way of “showing no fear”. By mid afternoon flip quips fell to the wayside and we focused on silent comfort.
I would like to scream that this IS SO NOT FAIR!!!
But I resist stating the obvious because “FAIR” is a festival with food and music that is happening somewhere else, and I am SO not there at the Fair.
One would think that this far into the journey (Oct 31, 2010 was Day 600) I would know better than to drop my guard. There's a fine line between optimism and resignation; hope and reality; faith and stupidity; Today and Tomorrow... I feel that I am constantly walking that fine line and the winds never stop blowing against me. Do I surrender to what Rich wants or do I insist on what he needs? Do I surrender all decisions to his doctors or do I listen to my gut? Every battle I face challenges the line between being his wife and being his nurse.
If I think about any of this too long and hard I accomplish nothing and crave a nap.
So, okay, yesterday sucked. And today was Monday and I had to leave him and go back to work. He asked me to call off, for no other reason than he misses me and wanted me with him. I suspect he was afraid he'd face another day like yesterday and was hoping for comfort. I had to remind him that we can't do anything to risk my employment, and at this point, calling off for any reason would result in a write-up.
These are the days when that 45 minute commute is so mentally and emotionally exhausting that the Voices carry on without me and by the time I pull into my parking place I don't quite understand how I got there. I walk from my car to my work space trying to orient myself to where I am and where I'm going, while calculating how much effort over how many hours will get me to the end of the day.
I just have to put a smile on my face, keep putting one foot in front of the other and walk the line.
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