A Perfect Day Date

While not “technically” a makeup date because we did not “technically” discuss the fight, Andy did surprise me with an amazing, out-of-the-blue day date! And it was SO needed!

Last Saturday, a week, to the day, after the fight, Andy popped out of bed feeling much better. He usually does start to feel better on Saturdays, but this Saturday came with an unusual amount of energy! I’ll take it! He let me sleep in, getting up with the 5 year old at the crack of dawn, which isn’t that out of the ordinary, but either way it was much appreciated! So when I finally awoke and got downstairs, I smelled the coffee, I heard the laughter and I saw the two boys, my husband and my youngest, monkeying around. They had made a fort and although the living room was a complete disaster and all the chairs from the kitchen table were now laying upside down on the carpet, positioned underneath what looked like every single blanket in the house. It was a complete mess, but to my surprise, I didn’t care! It literally made my heart soar! I couldn’t believe the energy I was seeing from Andy! It was amazing. I bet he hadn’t felt that good in weeks! So when my mom called to tell me she was coming over to pick up the little monster and take him for the rest of the weekend, I was elated! I love my children, all of them, I love them all for different reasons and because of different qualities, but I also love when they GO AWAY! And that is nothing to be ashamed about. My sanity is WAY more important to me than any outdated and misdirected notion that you must enjoy your children every second of every day. Ha! That is definitely not me. There are PLENTY of times that I do not enjoy my children, especially the teenagers these days (rolls eyes) but to get a weekend off??! That is paradise!

So mom comes over and picks up crazy man, who is more excited about spending the night at Grandma’s than any child possibly should be, lol And when they leave, Andy and I wave goodbye, and look at each other with a snarky brow raise as if we’re pulling a fast one over on my mom and giving each other an imaginary high-five at the thought of being rid of the little dictator for a few days! WOO-FUCKING-HOO! As soon as they are out of view, we walk back in the house and Andy asks, Do you want to do something today? Ummm, Yes! I say, excitedly! I tell him that I want to workout real quick and then we can go after I shower. I sense that he has something planned and he doesn’t want to tell me what we’re doing, which is okay by me since I LOVE surprises! So that’s what I do, and by 11:30AM, we’re ready to head out the door.

We hop in the car and we head to an adorable part of the city called Clayton. I LOVE Clayton! I used to work there and I just loved being in that area! They have amazing schools, there is always a big, new, up-and-coming restaurant opening, there are parks, there are old houses with TONS of character and charm, there is a Whole Foods nearby!! Its like a dream! If only we could afford to live there, lol I’d move in a heartbeat! So, we hit this restaurant called Louie’s Wine Dive, which I had been to before, but never for brunch! So we start with some drinks and we actually never get to the food! Had I known we were going to brunch, I would not have eaten before we left, but oh well, I was happy to be out on the beautiful day with the man I love the most, just doing some day drinking! It was wonderful! Purely wonderful!

So as we’re sitting there, Andy pulls out this “license” he made for me. It was SO adorable and so thoughtful and just such a cute thing to do!! Its like when you are first dating someone and they do cutesy things for you. You know, you don’t really do those cutesy things anymore when you’re married, well, maybe to an extent, but this was like over the top cutesy! I was floored and I loved it so much!

So we went on to our next stop, a photography exhibit at the Art Museum that I mentioned I wanted to see! We spent about an hour and a half in the exhibit, just looking at the pictures and then roamed the museum for a while longer, until I noticed Andy starting to slow down. I asked if he was okay and he admitted that he was losing steam. Really not wanting this day to end, but trying to be understanding about his condition, I ask if he wanted to head back home (hoping he’d say no…) and he said yes.

So we walk back to the car and I’m a bit disappointed, but then I stop myself and start to think Why?? I tell myself that we just had an AMAZING afternoon together! Sure, it might have only lasted 3.5 hours, and yea, it would have been nice to parlay this beautiful day date into an evening dinner date, but Andy planned all of this just for me! He even drank a Bloody Mary with me! And so I started to cheer up and turned my disappointment into gratefulness. I offered to drive home and as soon as we get to the highway, he is out cold, lol Sleepy man. Side thought; I totally don’t get this exhaustion thing. I mean, the man had literally been in bed, asleep, for the prior 70ish something hours leading up to this day!!?? How could he still be so tired? I mean, I ran 2 full marathons, like the full 26.2 miles, and I wasn’t anywhere NEAR this exhausted after doing that. Cancer confuses me. I’ll never know. I don’t get it. Also, doesn’t matter.

So Andy naps on the way home and I get a brilliant idea to participate in this goofy Chick-fil-A vs. Popeye’s chicken sandwich challenge, lol Its a stupid Facebook thing that had been going around for about 24 hours. Since I’m always up for a good food challenge, I thought this might be a fun something I could do to sort of extend this day date in a home-bound way. So I drop my husband off at home and I head out to grab the sandwiches. We recorded the taste test and it was ridiculously silly! lol But it was another fun thing we got to do on our day together!

I do try to make the best of the situation and although sometimes I fall into a bit of self-pity, poor-me mentality, I really try my hardest to find the positive in the hand we’ve been dealt. I can’t change this situation. I can’t go back and make it disappear and, for the most part, I can’t effect the outcome of what will happen. So I try to live life in a positive light. I am, after all, hopelessly optimistic by nature, I don’t think this experience has changed that. I just think that sometimes reality hits you hard and forces you to evaluate or re-evaluate a lot of things.

After finishing our food challenge (Chick-fil-A won, btw) we spent the rest of our day on the couch. It was relaxing and both of us were content and happy. I had an AMAZING day and I told him so! I told him how much I appreciated what he did and that it meant a lot to me! I went to bed in a wonderful mood and I woke up the next morning in a wonderful mood! Until I realized that my husband hadn’t come into bed with me that night.

You know what that means.

He was smoking. Ughhhhh I went outside to check for ashes on our concrete patio in the backyard where he sits and smokes. And there they were. Like cold hard evidence discovered in a murder case. I immediately start fuming. I am again disgusted. So all morning I sit and stir, unsure of what to do. Do I say something AGAIN? Do I let it go? We just had an AMAZING day yesterday, do I ruin that just to say something about this? Is that worth it? He knows how much I HATE his smoking. He knows my stance and viewpoint on this. I cannot make it any clearer for him. So the day passes and I just ignore him. I do not approach him or say anything to him. I think he knew what I was upset about, or maybe he didn’t, he is infuriatingly oblivious most of the time. Either way, we go almost all day with barely a word said. In my head, all day tho, I was trying to figure out a different approach to bring this up to him. In my mind I would fabricate conversations and try to figure out what the outcome of those conversations would be. And no matter which words I used, or which stance I took, I always came to the same conclusion — it wouldn’t matter.

He is not going to stop smoking.

Not for me, not because he has cancer, not for his child, not for his life. So I decided to turn my focus inward. How do I help myself come to terms with this? I still don’t know what to do to help myself. Here I am, almost a week after that, and I wake up this morning to find my husband not in bed again. I know he smoked last night, I see the cigarette butts on our patio. It STILL infuriates me. I don’t know how to let it go, it means SO MUCH to me. But I have to stop focusing on him, and getting him to stop, and getting him to see the light, and getting him to change his ways. He has seen the light, he just doesn’t care.

I still do. I’m so stuck.

The Fight

After the failed attempt at getting chemo last week, round 3 (take 2) this week was successfully administered. As a very good friend and neighbor pointed out to me today, we are 1/4 of the way done! Wow! Great perspective, I told her, and it was very welcomed today as I’m struggling a bit through some extra sensitive emotions.

My grandmother on my mom’s side died a few days ago. She was very old and died not because of some terrible disease that she had struggled with for years, not because of infection or a fall or some awful tragedy. She died because it was her time. She was surrounded by all her children in a quiet peaceful room. She hung on for way longer than the doctors thought she would, as my mom put it, She’s a tough old bird! And she was. She was loved and will be missed incredibly, she lived a good long time. But all this got me thinking, Shouldn’t we all be so lucky? To die without pain, at an old age, after a good run at life, surrounded by those we love. Everyone deserves that.

This week has been a rough one. My sons 5th birthday party was such a success, but I don’t know if I can adequately describe the fight my husband and I got into the night before the party. I admit it, my emotions run high during holidays and birthdays. Add this on top of the cancer treatment and the passiveness I’ve taken on over the past 3-4 weeks in an attempt to keep everything very calm and not create any undue stress for my husband. I hit an inflection point and I knew I was going to blow my lid. Not just that, but the fact that I still can’t get my husband to talk to me about any of this! I am still convinced he is in deep denial, and as I’m trying to work through this, he remains unphased and completely disregards any real or raw emotions I try to bring to him. Do you know how unbearably maddening it is to have the one person who understands exactly what you’re going through just up and refuse to talk about it? He makes me feel like I’m a complete lunatic! While he remains calm, joyful even, as he is making appointments for chemotherapy (poison) and scheduling all this shit that NOONE should be happy about. He just happily whistles a little tune and carries on like everything is fucking fine. Meanwhile, I am trying my best to maintain normalcy and pretend (for him) like things are fine. Well things are not fucking fine. And I just couldn’t take it any more. So that night, the night before the party, I let it all out. All the dirty laundry that had been piling up for weeks, I was airing it ALL out. The vitamins that he was refusing to take, but was blissfully still smoking cigarettes. (While on chemotherapy. For cancer.) The fact that he adamantly denies he’s in denial about all this. (Isn’t that, like, the most classic symptom of denial?) The fact that he WON’T talk to me or listen to me about any of my emotions. He is SO disconnected that when I attempt to have an open and honest conversation with him, he tells me I’m making it all about me, and gets up, and literally walks out of the room. It makes me feel completely disregarded and insignificant and like an absolute basket case because I NEED to talk about this! Then I’m left second guessing myself, like, Am I making this all about me? I mean, yes, I am an asshole some of the time, but I feel like I’ve truly turned a corner in that regard. And, while I admit, I am the one that needs to talk about this, and he might need something different. Even so, this is definitely not all about me. But it is also not only about him.

It was late at night when this all erupted. In that moment, I was literally fuming. We had actually had a pretty calm conversation earlier in the day as I could feel I was almost at my boiling point. We sat down across from eachother, he talked, I cried, he attempted to listen, and when it was all said and done, we had a list of to-do’s. I had had a conversation with a friend a few weekends back and she mentioned something to me about asking him how I could help him. This all came about because I beyond frustrated that everything I was doing in an attempt to be helpful and useful was being met with resistance or was being thrown by the wayside in some form. So my friend asked me if I had asked him how I could help. I had not, but I thought it was a good enough idea and decided I had nothing to lose. So I asked, and out of that came this “to-do” list, so to speak. It consisted of him agreeing to try to be more aware of when I was struggling and taking initiative to offer me reassurance during those times (for example, him seeing me struggle, coming over to me and saying something like, I see that you’re struggling, how can I help?) and me, agreeing to ask more direct questions on topics or feelings I’d like to discuss (for example, me asking things like, If you were to tell someone who was just diagnosed with cancer how chemotherapy felt, what would you say?) So now, although I have no background as an investigative journalist, I somehow have to become an expert at formulating the right questions and asking them at an appropriate time just to get my husband to tell me about how he is feeling. Ughhh Whatever. I was not happy with this setup. Just more of the mental load for me to shoulder. Why was it solely up to me to draw this out of my husband? Why couldn’t he just offer this up to me like some little glimmer of a normal reaction to a stage 4 cancer diagnosis? Nope, I don’t get that. That is not my life.

Yea, I was not happy with this setup. So, as we were running around getting the birthday cake and picking up last minute decorations for my sons 5th birthday party, it stirred in me. All I could think about was that he just gets to live his life like normal, and if I wanted any sort of connection with him about this, it was up to me to make that happen. I was furious! How could he do that to me! I have literally given up EVERYTHING to make him comfortable! All my energy, all my time, all my brain power, all my focus, every effort I put in to researching doctors and hospitals and vitamins and procedures and creating a log of medications and his reactions to each. The backseat that I’ve taken at my job, with my own children, with my friends. Literally EVERYTHING has been put on the back burner and all I ask is for a bit of real vulnerability from the one person who I love most in this world, the one who knows exactly what I’m going through! I couldn’t take it any more, I was completely done. It was ALL weighing on me.

And I let it out.

Have you ever heard the saying that no good conversation happens after 10pm? Its true. It was probably midnight, I was outside screaming at him in our backyard, likely with neighbors listening. I didn’t care. He was chain smoking cigarettes, and that was just the icing on this shit cake. I told him everything. All the things he didn’t want to hear. All the awful statistics that he refused to read or know about. I told him that the reason I was SO upset was because I didn’t want him to die. And I didn’t! I DON’T! That is the absolute truth! I told him that I didn’t want him to fall into the 62% statistic for those who are dead 5 years after this diagnosis. I told him that all these things I was doing, all the research, all the vitamins, was because I wanted him to LIVE! And he was taking all that and just throwing it out the door, and SMOKING on top of it. Which, if you don’t know, is AWFUL for anyone with cancer, not to mention those that are actively on chemotherapy. Srsly. I told him that he deserved to feel like crap after his chemotherapy treatment and I hoped he did. And I meant it.

And I felt awful.

Guess I am still an asshole after all. It was another one of those moments that I am not proud of. It was a hard night. Its been a hard week. This whole thing has been hard. We both said things that we regret, well, at least I know I said things I regret, we haven’t actually talked about that night. I have a feeling we’d both just rather forget it happened and move on. Sometimes sorry just isn’t enough.

So we got the chemo box off today, and right on schedule, my husband feels like crap. The diarrhea is back with a vengeance and his energy has completely tanked. At least when he’s so exhausted, he’s not on the toilet! There’s a bright spot, lol He’s had a bit more nauseousness this round, no actual puking yet, but he just feels queezy. That’s not fun. This is only round 3. I cannot believe we’re ONLY on round 3!! Why do I feel like time is just creeping along? I feel like we may NEVER get to the end at this pace! We might kill eachother before then.

Just kidding of course!

An Oncologist and a Patient’s Wife Walk Into a Bar…

I think I’ve heard that one before. It was funnier when it wasn’t actually my life, lol But legit, I ran into Andy’s oncologist in a bar last weekend! No, I didn’t say anything. If you recall, Andy and I don’t really love her, so no, I didn’t say anything when I saw her. But I’m 100% certain it was her, lol I wish that story had a funnier ending.

As I predicted, we went in for Andy’s chemo treatment #3 on Monday and his absolute Neutrophil count was again too low. It was 0.8 this time, we need it to be at least 1.0 to be eligible for chemo. I hate it when I’m right about these things. –No I dont. I actually love that I can predict and anticipate what is happening here in reality while Andy frolics in lala land. In some weird way, it feels like some sort of credibility or something. Cancer street cred.

Yea, I’m cool.

Anyway, Andy received the Neupogen shots. He had his first shot on Monday, second on Tues and he finished off the series today. He crashed Monday night, Tuesday he attempted to cut the lawn after he came home from work, but came in half way through saying he was exhausted. (Yea, dummy. Why did you think you could cut the lawn? Just another project started by my sick husband who thinks he has the energy to do things as normal, but fails miserably at follow through on just about everything he begins these days. Add finishing the lawn to the top of the list after cleaning out the garage, power washing the driveway, replacing our front door bell, mulching the landscaping and staining the deck. … Guess who’s left to complete/clean up/finish all these projects he begins and is too exhausted to end? Yep, me. Guess how I feel about that?) So today he came home from work and went straight to bed. Lovely. Another night alone. Just me and my glass of wine! At least the dog is content with my husband being in bed 75% of the time. Note the bruise on the backside of his arm. That’s from the Neupogen shot. Since he has no white blood cells, he bruises really easily and anything he brushes up against turns into a bruise immediately. So a needle poked into his arm? It’s a bruise. It’s awful, but it’s reality.

I should stop complaining because really, things have been okay recently! We are happy to have another week off of chemo, tho I was concerned about these Neupogen shots, just another unknown, but they haven’t been that bad. The side effects are just more exhaustion than physical symptoms, which I will take 100 times over seeing my husband in pain. I cannot take it when he’s in pain! But now that we are through the shots, I feel like I can breathe a little bit. We have our 4 year olds 5th birthday this weekend, (side note, I guess I’ll have to stop calling him “the 4 year old,” lol) so I’ve been deep in party planning mode for about a week and a half. I LOVE planning parties! I feel that small details make all the difference and I try my hardest to make birthdays special for the kids! Even the awful teenagers, lol Our almost 5 year old (see!!??) is very much into Mickey Mouse right now, so I am planning a Mickey party!

I’ve been trying really hard to keep busy. I finished a window casing project that was on my really-want-to-do list for about 3 years, and then I had a wall stenciled to top it off! I mean, it looks AMAZING! And I look at it everyday from my office chair, so I really get the opportunity to appreciate all the hard work I put in! Every time I glance that way, I get this warm smiley feeling. Since I work from home, I see a lot of my house, so small changes in the mundane scenery make a HUGE impact on my entire sense of well-being! Might be bizarre to hear, but, my dining room makes me SO happy!

Speaking of work, I’ve been included in our bi-weekly leadership meeting. Possibly by accident or with the intention of it being temporary, connected to the P1 initiative, but my invite hasn’t been revoked, so I’m happy to get some face time with the big dogs! I work with some SMART people. Like, literal NASA rocket scientists, and I am humbled to be included in that mix. I’m not of the school smarts background, but what I do well, is people. I’d put my people skills up against any of our top AE’s or PM’s in my company. I have a way of connecting with people, regardless of their background, and finding a common link to launch a relationship off of. I can also fake the talk, not really “fake,” but I don’t actually have a full technical understanding of a lot of the things my company delivers, but I know the jargon, and I know when and how to apply that to a conversation. And that, my friends, is what makes me a good people person! Regardless, I’m including myself in the leadership team and I am going to seize every opportunity I can to inject myself into the conversations and projects that come up. Until I am told to leave, I will stay and prosper! We’ll see how long this lasts, lol

I’ve also been keeping up with my macros and my exercising. This really keeps me grounded and helps my anxiety tremendously. I wish there was some way I could convince Andy that exercise and eating healthy are important for him, along with taking his vitamins … which, he has recently been refusing to do. Its infuriating beyond explanation, but I’ll spare you the 2 hour conversation that I’ve subjected my best friends to about vitamins, and leave it at this; I will not stop trying. I can’t. I care too much, I love him too much to just throw my hands up and say Fine. You win. Nope. Because doing that would basically be asking me to go against everything that I am. So nope. That’s not who I am. That’s not who I want to be. That is not what I will become. I will stay the course. I will fight against all the odds for my husband. I will spare no expense so he can be well. I will exhaust all options. I will continuing researching relentlessly to explore ways to minimize the effects of the chemo or to find other treatment options if need be. I will not rest until this whole situation is just a bad memory in a series of amazing life experiences that we look back on when we are 85 years old, sitting in our rocking chairs, on our front porch, watching the grand kids play.

That is our future.

Chemo, Round 2. Take 2.

Last week was supposed to be Andy’s second round of chemo, but when we went in, his white blood cell count was too low. Fun fact: you have 5 different white blood cells that make up your white blood cell count, the one that is most important is the Neutrophil count. The Absolute Neutrophil count, or, ANC, to be exact. This is the one that makes up about 60% of your entire white blood cell count. So when that one falls off a cliff, the rest of them don’t really matter. A normal count is between 6.4-10.6. Prior to chemo, Andy’s was already on the low end of normal at 7.4, but when we went in for his chemo last week, it was at a dismal 0.4. The minimum threshold needed to administer chemotherapy is 1.0, so we were sent home and told to reschedule the chemo session for the following week. This was disappointing to say the least, but we tried to put a positive spin on it, rationalizing that it was a welcomed extra week “off” from the chemo. This was a lie, of course, but we were both happy to ignore the fact that this was likely a problem we were going to have to face over and over again. Dr. Galsgow totally called it when Andy was in the hospital with his bowel obstruction. He mentioned that his ANC was really really low. At the time, I was just taking note of it, but now, its a thing. Its a whole thing.

Lovely.

So home we went, happy to have a week off, frustrated that all we could do was wait. MORE waiting! Ughhh I hate waiting.

So we waited, and it was actually kind of nice! Things were pretty good that week, Andy felt great! We went out to dinner, Andy took our 4 year old to the movies and to the magic house, we got ice cream. It was just really nice! Everyone kept asking me if my husband was too weak to do things or if he was in some way bedridden because his white blood cell count was so low. No. That’s not how it works. But I can’t blame them, I would have thought the same thing if I were in their shoes and not mine. These little details are not really something anyone knows about, nor should they be. People think that just because he has cancer that he should be “sick” all the time. But, he’s not. He’s just, normal. He is taking it easy, yes, but that is moreso because of his ongoing tummy troubles which have little to do with the chemo whatsoever. –Okay, the chemo is exacerbating the tummy troubles, but the origin of the issue is not the chemo, it’s the right hemicolectomy. So we just carry a lifetime supply of Imodium AD and Lomotil on us at all times, lol It’s really not that big of a deal. It sucks, sure, but this is our new normal.

So we went in on Monday this week for round 2, take 2. Luckily, his white blood cell count had come up to 1.2 which is just above the threshold to allow them to administer the chemo, so he was able to receive treatment, but just barely. This makes me nervous. We really only have one choice if his ridiculous ANC doesn’t start to figure this shit out. Neupogen shots, a series of 3, given over 3 days. These shots stimulate the bone marrow to rapidly make white blood cells — you know what that feels like? The flu. Yep, side effects from the Neupogen shots are bone pain and flu like symptoms. Chills, aches, bone pain, cold sweats, low appetite, drowsiness, lethargy. You know, the fucking FLU. They give these to him on his off week. So here’s how this 2 week cycle would go:

Monday–> Chemo starts, chemo pump hooked up, steroid (feel good) shot
Tuesday–> Chemo pump in full force but otherwise a good day
Wednesday–> Chemo pump disconnected, IV fluids administered, starts to feel awful
Thursday –> In bed all day, feeling awful
Friday–> Starting to feel a bit better
Saturday–> Good day
Sunday–> Good day
Monday–> First Neupogen shot, feels like he has the flu
Tuesday–> Second Neupogen shot, feels like he has the flu
Wednesday–> Third Neupogen shot, feels like he has the flu
Thursday–> Recovering from Neupogen shots, feels like he still has the flu
Friday–> Starting to feel a bit better
Saturday–> Good day
Sunday–> Good day

rinse. repeat. for 20 weeks.

How’s that sound to you? How would you feel if you knew that in the next 6 months, you would only feel good, like a normal human should, for about 40 days? 40 days out of 6 month time frame. 30% of the time you’d feel okay, not even good, just okay, the other 70% would be awful. How would you feel if you knew that? It makes me nauseous that my husband will have to endure that just for the opportunity to be able to receive POISON. Maybe I’m being overly pessimistic here, maybe I’m just trying to deal with the crazy amount of loneliness that all this has thrust upon me! Because while my husband is going through all that, sleeping for days at a time — what am I doing? Life. That’s what. Back to school shopping, lunches for the kids, dealing with tantrums from the teenagers and the pre-schooler, chauffeuring the kids around, working full time, picking up, dropping off, cooking, drinking, spending most evenings watching TV. Alone. Doing all of this alone. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do love some alone time, but this cancer business? Its lonely work. And its not just that, its the fact that even my closest friends cant fill the void. And, to make it worse, there is nothing I can do to make it better. I can’t lay with my husband and cuddle (would you want to be cuddled with when you have the flu?) I can’t give him a pill to help him feel better, I can’t cook him something, I can’t say anything, I can’t do anything, I just have to sit back and watch him suffer. And with this round, he is suffering. His tummy troubles have been extreme this time. Nausea is starting to become an issue as well. The nephropathy has definitely reared its ugly head. For example, Tuesday morning, he went to take the trash bag out of the can in the kitchen, a silly, mundane everyday task, something he’s done every week for years because Tuesday is trash pick-up day, and I could see him struggling to get the bag out. He was trying to grip the bag and kept clinching his fingers up, pulling back, because it was painful to touch anything with his fingertips. So he was using the insides of his fingers and his knuckles to grip the bag, wrap the tie around it and pull it out of the can. I wanted to offer to help, but I also didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, knowing all this had to be weighing on him too. So I didn’t let him know that I saw the struggle. He managed, of course, but it was painful just watching him attempt this simple task. So there’s that, along with the cold sensitivity and bone pain, which he already has. Every time he bites into food, he gets this intense pain in his jaw and he has to chew very slowly. It lessens after the initial bite, but it’s still a struggle. The exhaustion, sure, but that actually has not been that bad this time, but the diarrhea, ughhh, the diarrhea! Obstructive, invasive, sudden, explosive, life altering, embarrassing, dehumanizing, stomach churning, uncontrollable diarrhea. It has worsened, and his stomach is constantly in some state of upset-ness. That’s the worst part. I would be okay with all of this if he wasn’t in pain, but he is, and that makes me feel absolutely awful. And helpless.

On the up side, he did go into work this morning. He is convinced that since he felt good on Friday for his first chemo round, he will always feel good on Fridays. Well, not necessarily, lol But I’m not going to be the one to tell him that! He lasted about a half day, and is at home now in bed. My husbands outlook on all of this amazes me! Its such a change of place for us, me, holding it down here in reality, while my husband is blissfully optimistic about everything! All our lives its been the opposite. Being a realist sucks, I hope it passes with this cancer situation.

So now I’m looking towards his next round of chemo. I am finding it so hard to be optimistic about his ANC numbers. The reality of the situation is he went from 7.4 to 0.4 in round 1. This round, he didn’t start at 7.4, he started at 1.2, so who knows how low his numbers will be when we go back?? This terrifies me! I do not want him to have to go through the Neupogen shots! Our oncologist did say that sometimes the body does find a way to regulate itself, so all hope is not lost. But I feel like with our luck? That is just not what will happen here. But who knows?