Chemo-Sabe

Monday was Andy’s first chemotherapy treatment. He was exactly 9 weeks post-op from his HIPEC procedure. For some reason 9 weeks ago LITERALLY feels like a lifetime right now! I, of course, was tossing and turning all night Sunday night, living in anxiety hell. My husband, on the other hand, cool as a cucumber, sawing logs all night long. Regardless of sleep or not, we were up bright and early to take our 4 year old to preschool before heading to our appt at 8am.

We get there and I can feel myself getting really nervous. My legs are twitching (more than they normally do, lol) my palms are sweaty, everything about me is uncomfortable. But at the same time, I’m also really eager to get this show on the road. The Friday before was Andys port installation. If you didn’t know, the chemotherapy (poison) is too strong to go through a normal vein in your arm, so they place what they call a “port” in your chest, and its basically direct access to your heart. Literally. They use an arterial vein, the superior vena cava, which feeds directly into the right atrium. So they place a tube in the vein and then put, what looks like, a cap under the skin. You can sort of see it sticking out in the pic, but its under the skin on the right side of his chest.

The port placement took me for a bit of a ride as everyone I spoke with kept telling me it was no big deal and he’d be in-and-out in a jiffy. Lo and behold, its this hour and a half long procedure in which he is put under with anesthesia. Its just more tubes and more surgery and more of this nightmare that I can’t seem to get ahead of. It just creeps up on me everywhere I go! That day I was completely overwhelmed! We went in for what we thought would be a small procedure. We honestly thought we’d be in and out in an hour. What we got was this long, drawn out, 4 hour ordeal that I was just NOT prepared for. I blame myself for my under-preparedness. Its just literally EVERYONE I spoke with told me that it was no big deal, so I went into it thinking it was no big deal. Well, it was a big deal. I should have done some research. Lesson learned. It’s just I HATE continually seeing my husband in this position. Hooked up to tubes, knocked out from drugs, vulnerable, barely lucid. It’s too much for me to bear. That was a hard day for me.

As a side note, including this port placement procedure, my husband has been in surgery, under some form of sedation, for a grand total of 14.5 hours in the past 3 months. What the actual fuck. This cancer shit sucks.

Anywho, back to the poison that is going directly into my husband’s heart. Not passing GO, not collecting $200, just straight to the heart. At this point, I just sort of wanted to get this over with. Tho, admittedly, I was a bit intrigued to see how they were going to use this port situation. So when they came over to get things started, I perked up a bit. How it works: They use a small needle which gets pushed through the skin into the middle of the port, and that is what delivers the chemo.

So we get there at 8am and wait a bit, we pay our copay ($100 every time we go. $50 bucks to this specialist, $100 to that one…oh, another $100 to this doctor — the copays never end, ughhhhh) and get registered. They bring us back to another waiting room, where we sit for another 20 or so mins. Finally, we get into the chemo room and we take a look around. My husband and I both look at eachother and just burst into laughter! We both knew exactly what the other was thinking! Andy is the youngest one in there by AT LEAST 3 decades. I mean, come on. Add insult to injury, all these folks have lived a long healthy life and got the short end of the stick towards the end of the line — but us?? Nope. We get the short end of the stick now. We just have to laugh at our situation sometimes because really, WTF? It was likely not the best reaction we could have had when first entering the chemo room, but, what can you do?

Once they had Andy’s port hooked up and working, they did all this “pre” stuff. His iron was low so he needed an iron infusion (something I also blame myself for as I kept meaning to order the iron supplement along with all the others I’m having him take, and just completely forgot, face-palm.) Then they gave him a steroid which would help with the absorption of the 5FU and would also give him a needed energy boost for about 48 hours to get through the bulk of the chemo, they gave him some antibiotics and benadryl which would help if there was any type of reaction to the poison cocktail they were about to give him, a massive amount of anti-nausea medication, a dose of Tylenol and also some amino acids. Half way through all this “pre” stuff they switched him from saline solution to a sugar water solution because the chemo doesn’t play well with salt apparently, so they needed to have a decent amount of the sugar water in his system before starting the actual chemo.

While we were sitting there, we decide to check to see if Andy’s blood work they did last Friday was back. And it was:

CEA: 1.4 (a 1.8 drop, normal is 3 or below)
CA125: 9.9 (a HUGE 47.9 drop!! normal is 30 or below)

We were elated to see that everything had dropped! Even tho his CEA wasn’t high to begin with, it was still such a relief to see it lower. And, my God! The CA125 dropped more than 40 points!! He is now FIRMLY in normal territory! All this was a welcomed bright spot in this day.

Fast forward to around 11:30am — its finally time for the chemo to begin. In the same way it was weird watching him go willingly into surgery, it was weird watching him receive this chemo. In your head, you imagine people kicking and screaming and being taken against their will, FORCED into this position. It’s like I thought the chemo was going to come out of the pharmacy glowing this neon radioactive color, like on the Simpson’s or something, or have some sort of indication that THIS was the BAAAAAAAD stuff, the stuff adults have nightmares about. Getting cancer. Having to go through chemotherapy.

But no.

It was clear, just like the solution they were already infusing. They just hooked it up and let it drip. Again, a bit anticlimactic, but I didn’t know what to expect. I do remember watching the tubing as they hooked it up and thinking it could only take maybe a minute before it actually got from the bag into my husbands heart. So I sat there, a bit on pins and needles, watching the tubing, imagining the chemo solution working its way down the tube, through the loops, slowly, and then up through my husbands lap and finally into his port, just waiting for something bad to happen. But it didnt. Andy just continued working on his computer as he was doing prior to the switch over. Doubtful he even noticed they started the actual chemo solution, lol I was acutely aware.

So that was it. I sat there for about 45 mins (just to be sure nothing bad was going to happen!) then I left to get some food and go home to exercise. By the time I got back, he was done! I had no idea the actual chemo infusion would only take 2 hours! So when I arrived, they were hooking up his chemo box, which he gets to take home with him for a continuous infusion over the next 48 hours. So, for 2 days, his port is connected by tubing to this box which, he lovingly calls, his chemo-sabe box, and he has to carry it around with him like a purse. Of course he LOVES that, lol The chemo will slowly infuse the entire time. If you’re not counting, that is a total of 52 straight hours of chemotherapy. 12 times. This is why they call cancer patients warriors.

So, on our way home, he did mention to me that he had some metallic taste in his mouth and that water, usually his liquid of choice, just tasted “weird.” The first night was okay. He had a bit of jaw pain at dinner and he was pretty restless throughout the over night hours (from the steroids, which they did warn us about) and he had a pretty bad bout of acid reflux around 3am along with some pain at the port site. If I hadn’t been asleep, I would have told him that all that was normal, and to take some antacids and prop himself up with pillows so he can sleep more upright, a little trick I learned from being pregnant and having massive indigestion. But, since I was asleep, he ended up calling the exchange number — and they told him that all that was normal and to take some antacids and sleep in a more upright position. lol

That morning, he had his first twinge of cold sensitivity. Not anything completely awful, but, in the mornings, when he pours his coffee into his to-go cup as he walks out the door for work, he grabs 1-2 ice cubes and plops them in the coffee to cool it down. That morning, he reached into the freezer to grab some ice and thats when he noticed the sensitivity. Sensitivity is really the wrong word here, he said it felt more like shards of glass poking him as he grabbed for the ice cube. Well, okay then. Gloves for him from now on! He went into work and had a normal day! I checked in on him a few times:

Me: How you feeling, my love? 😘🤗🧡

Him: Great.

Great. Okay, I’ll take that as a positive! When he got home, his face and neck were flushed. I asked if he had been in the sun at all and he said no. So we took his temp and it was completely normal, just interesting to see him walking around all rosy cheeked ☺️

Last night was pretty much normal. We went to bed, there was no calls to the exchange, no bouts of reflux. Andy slept well, I slept well (the reprieve I had been waiting for!) and today we get the chemo-sabe box off! He’ll get some IV fluids when they remove the box and that should help him feel a bit better for another couple hours or so. But, they told us to be prepared for his energy to tank tonight or tomorrow. All these “feel-goods” they’ve been giving him will wear off and he’ll be out in the wild on his own at that point with only pill form medication to help. So we’ll see how it goes. I think we’ll both feel much better after we have this first round under our belt and behind us. Onward!

In A Holding Pattern

This week brought some new information. And more waiting. Ughhh, lol We met with the oncologist last week and I requested she test for tumor markers CA125 and CA19-9, which I’ve learned, through my research, are used frequently alongside the CEA number and PCI. Tho not really as predictive in terms of overall survival as the CEA (which seems to be the top dog in prediction stats) it will still give us something to measure. And since I’ve learned that this measurement concept is not really something people are familiar with or take seriously in the cancer world (WTF is right!) I’m going my own way with this one and collecting all data points I can get my hands on.

We got the results back (and a recap of current state):

CEA: 3.2 (within normal range, tho 3.0 and below is considered completely normal) Looking for 6 or below
CA19-9: 14 (within normal range) Looking for 37 or below
CA125: 57.8 (high) Looking for 30 or below
PCI number: 8 (moderate) Looking for 6 or below
CC score: 0, which is best case scenario

So again, I have to remind myself that the tumor markers are not really predictive in any way, they are just numbers to track. But the fact that one is almost double what it should be, that makes me nervous. Actually, now looking at the overall picture here, its not awful, but it gives me pause. What keeps me up at night is that if I were to take these tests, (and actually, I WANT to! I want to know what my numbers are and then have our goal be to get Andy’s as close as possible to mine) they would likely be sitting at 0. My CEA would be 0, my CA19-9 would be 0, my CA125 would be 0 (I wouldn’t have a PCI or CC score as I do not have a disease to track the coverage of or figure the completeness of removal for.) But it tells me that something is off with my husband, and that just makes me feel uneasy.

In other news, my husband went back to work this week! Yep. Day 15 post-op, he went back to work full time. He’s insane! Ha I’m not sure how he’s keeping a clear head while working, I still feel extremely unfocused and I really have to try SO HARD to get into “work mode.” Tho his work is more get-things-done-right-now type of stuff where he’s constantly putting out fires all day. Whereas mine is more strategic thinking and programmatic overhauls where I have to come up with new program lifecycles and consider governance and implementation. So I really need some focused brain power to get into all that thinking, I’m hoping this long weekend (Memorial Day) will help me clear my mind and allow me to get back into things on Tues when the work week starts again. I really need to start focusing back on my work, I have so much I need to make up for! If only my will to WANT to do good work could tell my mind and my heart to FOCUS on the work that needs to be done!

Andy was accepted into the MD Anderson program in Houston, which is AMAZING news! We also cleared these second opinions with the insurance company who said that they would pay for as many second opinions as we wanted. Also good news. I am awaiting Andy’s acceptance into the Memorial Sloan Kettering program in NY, actually, I just called our case worker who confirmed that they had received some of the paperwork and were reviewing it, but they had not received all the paperwork as of yet, so there has not been a determination. Ughhh More waiting. I am hoping to get these appointments made the same week so we can kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. Currently, our appt in Houston is the last Monday in June. That is a bit later than I wanted, but it was the first avail appt with the team we needed to see, so it is what it is. I am also, kind of, (secretly) hoping to use this as a bit of a little vacation for me and Andy. I know that we will be doing testing and that is terrible, but he will begin chemo, likely, the week after that, so he is going to feel like crap for 6 months. This might be a good way to celebrate us and how far we’ve come through this and just take a moment to have some fun before this new reality sets in again. We’ll see.

MOAS

May 6, 2019 Today’s the day I’ve been dreading. Here I sit, 3:43am. Unable to sleep. Laying next to my husband in bed for what could be the last time in a few weeks. He is sleeping, I am worrying. I can’t sleep, tho I am exhausted already from what I know will be a grueling day. We rented an AirB&B close to the hospital so I could have a “home base” somewhere other than the hospital waiting room. Patience has never really been my thing, so waiting for what could be 12+ hours as my husband is sliced open, laying completely exposed and vulnerable on a cold operating table, is literally my nightmare.

Still, here I sit. Awake.

Today’s the day that everything changes. My husband does not know much about the surgery he’s going into. He knows, however, that I have become an expert, and he looks to me for just a little bit of guidance when he’s curious enough to ask. By now, I know how much info is too much for him and I’m beginning to become really good at figuring out exactly what it is he’s wanting to hear. Not details, nope, he doesn’t want those, he wants to know outcomes. I can’t blame him. I can’t say that going into this completely blind and unaware of what they’re going to do is any more or less a strategy than knowing exactly what each and every phase of the procedure entails. Who knows if I would want to know as much as I do if roles were reversed? Scratch that. I definitely would want to know.

I’m terrified.

How will this recovery be? My husband seems to have his eyes set on a 10-day max hospital stay and a good bill of health to be driving in 2 weeks. (rolls eyes) From the research I’ve done, I know a more realistic stay would be 10-25 days. With fully functional mental capabilities (meaning the ability to be productive at work) in 3-4 mos. His work is being extremely flexible, just as mine is, and they have told him they’ll just continue to pay his full salary until he comes back to work. He has refused to even think about filing for short term disability, which is extremely frustrating for me since I think he is going to be out far longer than he expects. But we don’t know what we don’t know right now, and I guess that’s okay. Who knows? He might prove me wrong and be up and popping about within a few days of this surgery!?

How will his scar be? Is it terrible that I am worried this scar will be disastrous? I look at his chest now and all I see is soft skin. I am nervous that this ugly hard thing slicing down the middle of his chest and stomach will be a constant reminder of cancer, and I hate that. It will ruin a physique that I adore and is completely perfect in my eyes.

How much will our lives change? I’ve been spoiled having Andy as a husband. He has taken on a huge part with raising our youngest. He gets up with him in the mornings, he gets him ready for school and gets breakfast made for him. Mostly just opening a pop tart and grabbing a cup of fruit or a banana and some cheeze its, lol Breakfast of champions! But HE does it and allows me to sleep. He brings him to school on his way to work and also picks him up on his way home. He does it not because I can’t, but because he wants to, and he enjoys it. How will all this effect our little routine-driven 4 year old when daddy can no longer take him to or from school? It’s just so much change all at once and it scares me.

We filed his advance directive and power of attorney paperwork with the lawyer this week. I refuse to go into this naive. I know that everything will be alright, but we need to be prepared for any situation. It’s bad enough having to think about estate planning and end of life planning when you don’t have cancer, but thinking about it knowing that you might need it sooner than later? Awful.

I guess I’m not going back to sleep tonight (this morning?) Too much on my mind.

Plan B

Where I currently find myself, staring at Plan B, which is scheduled for Monday, May 6th. A mere 2 days from today. This plan involves a surgery which has been dubbed MOAS, the Mother Of All Surgeries. It includes a cytoreductive surgery, plus the right colectomy and any debulking that needs to be done, combined with a procedure called HIPEC. It is a 12-16 hour surgery in which the team goes in and removes all (or as much of) the visible tumors as possible. They take each organ and inspect it for tumor nodes and resect (remove) as many as possible. Then they do a targeted chemotherapy treatment directly in the abdomen. Its awful. My husbands body will literally be spread open and his insides exposed for hours. The infection rate is dismal, the opportunity for something to go wrong is high. Its terrifying. But so is having stage IV cancer. What is our other option? Do a traditional chemotherapy treatment, which, I think, through the research I’ve done, I know not to be very effective for this PMP type of cancer.

I have good days and bad days. I am trying to stay as positive as possible but my mind is consumed with this barbaric procedure that my husband will have to endure. I’ve been trying to keep busy with work, but as soon as I start something, my mind immediately comes back to this. I am so lucky to have a job that supports me and is understanding of what I’m going through. I know not everyone is as lucky as I am in terms of flexibility and I cannot imagine having someone hold job performance over your head as you’re dealing with this. Like you don’t have enough to worry about. And me? My job? My P1 team and my opportunity that I had been working for, waiting for? That was on hold. In life you have few chances to choose the right thing. To prove to yourself and to the people who you hold most dear that they are truly your priority. My family is my #1 priority and there was no question in my mind, this wasn’t a choice. When they need me most, I will be there. Everything else gets moved to the back burner. Period.

What I am yet to understand is how this thing could have spread so uncontrollably with absolutely NO physical symptoms!! I mean, how does that happen? One of the reasons we were so convinced that Plan A was going to be our path was because my husband was completely fine! I mean, if someone had stage 4 cancer, you would think they would be exhibiting some kind of symptoms, right? You see people with stage 4 cancer on their death bed, not up, frolicking around with their 4 year old and living a completely normal life. How did this get so out of control so quickly? And why did they not resect it when they first saw it at the last surgery?? All these questions roll through my head with no time left to ask them before the surgery on Monday. I didn’t even have time to get a second opinion before all this was set into motion. Now, if we pump the breaks, we basically risk the cancer spreading more prolifically and being worse — a risk I am not willing to take. I am convinced enough and have enough evidence from the research I’ve done to know that this HIPEC is our best hope, so the fact that our doctor is using this as a strategy to attack the cancer is good enough for me at this point. But I am worried. I recently connected with a facebook group for people with appendix cancers, PMP and PSM. And the thing that EVERYONE keeps telling me is to get with a specialist who knows about appendix cancers. Our doctor does not, he is not an appendix specialist, but he is the only one in our area who knows how to do HIPEC and if we end our journey with him after the HIPEC and seek out someone who is more experienced with my husbands specific cancer, we do that. But we’re sticking with him through the procedure.

But what happens after that?

I didn’t get a chance to even ask that question. Never in a million years did I think I’d be in this position, but also, never did I think that we’d have to resort to Plan B, so I never asked any of the questions around Plan B — and what comes after it. Is it a round of traditional chemo? Has that recently been found to be effective? I have no idea what’s next.

Say What?

So, how do you tell the people you love that you have cancer? Ummm, we had no idea. I had never known anyone with cancer before. I was lucky enough in my life not to be touched by this terrible disease, until now, when it is literally sleeping in my bed.

But how do you TELL people you have cancer? We decided that it was not something we could send in a text message or through a phone call, it was something we had to tell our family in person. So off we went. Setting meetings with each of our primary family members in one weekend to deliver this terrible news.

We told the kids first. They were shocked but we definitely tempered the information so as not to scare them. We made sure to let them know we had a plan in place to attack this cancer and that everything was going to be fine.

We told the parents next. We decided that we’d take a 2-pronged approach, a 1-2 punch, if you will. Starting off the conversation by saying that we had bad news and good news. I would deliver the bad news and Andy would come in and follow that up with the good news, the plan of attack. I formulated what I wanted to say, I practiced in the shower, I had a flow of how I wanted the information to be heard, I was concise, giving facts and not trying to get too emotional as I delivered the news. I felt as prepared as I could be to ruin the day of quite a few people.

And we did.

We ruined the day (life?) of everyone we saw that weekend. It was meeting after meeting of ruined days. It was hard, but it was the right thing to do.

Interestingly enough, when we asked people why they thought we had setup the family meeting, there was a recurring top 3 reasons:

1. They thought we were getting divorced
2. They thought we were moving
3. They thought one of us had lost our job

I mean, honestly, I would have rather delivered any of the above news before I delivered the cancer diagnosis.

Once everyone in our immediate family knew, we went public with the information on Facebook. I’m a big Facebook fan, it’s how I keep in touch with a lot of my family and I don’t let the political stuff ruin my day. The amount of support you receive after a diagnosis like this is incredible. Its overwhelming and really makes you believe in the good of humanity once again. We were inundated with kindness and well wishes, facebook messages and posts under our announcement. It truly was the best to see how supportive everyone was, it made this whole nightmare just a little bit more tolerable. But we had a long way to go.

It’s Cancer

Wait. What? No. Wait. WHAT?

Staaaaaaapp. It’s not cancer. That’s ridiculous! You’re 38 years old, you have a 4 year old who needs you, you have 2 rowdy teens who are the thorn in our sides right now, you have me, who certainly cannot do life alone without you. You have NO family history of cancer, like NONE. So, this cancer thing? Nope. You don’t have that.

But he did.

A week after he had his appendix removed, on Thrs, April 4, 2019, the dr who removed the appendix called. He had sent the appendix to pathology, as standard operating procedure, and it came back as mucinous adenocarcinoma. So, not only did he have cancer, but he had a cancer that was so RARE that noone had ever seen a case in our area. AND, as the cherry on that shit cake, it was a bad form of cancer, something that was extremely aggressive and had this mucinous element to it which meant that it’s easily spread.

Meanwhile, I was in San Francisco for another in-person workshop with the P1 group. One of my best friends also lives in San Francisco, so whenever I travel there for work, I always try to make a trip to see her. So I planned to spend the weekend with her and just hang out before coming back to St. Louis on Sunday.

My husband had cancer. He didn’t tell me. He didn’t call me when he found out. He didn’t beg me to come home. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t tell anyone, he just let it process within himself. Until Sunday. I got back from San Francisco in the mid evening, around 8-9pm. I walked in the house and the whole house was quiet. I set my luggage down and started to unpack the Chipotle bag that I picked up to eat on the way home from the airport. I see Andy walk gingerly down the stairs, aggressively holding on to the railing, taking each stair slowly and making sure to place both feet on each step before taking the next step down. I remember feeling like Really? You’re still milking this appendix thing? (roll eyes) I had a whole conversation with my friend in San Francisco (who happens to be just as big of an asshole as I am, lol) about how we are just not empathetic towards certain types of situations! We were commiserating with eachother about how other people are ridiculous when it comes to being sick and neither of us had any type of sympathy for that behavior.

But then something changed. Andy started to ask me what I had going on the next day at work and what my schedule looked like the rest of the week. He offered to take my bag upstairs and told me I needed to eat — which isn’t really too weird, but the way he was saying it, like he had something to tell me and he wanted me to get through the food before saying anything. I asked him what was wrong because he was just acting weird. He continued to tell me that I just needed to eat right now and we’d talk later. Not accepting that as an answer, I poked harder for him to just tell me what was going on. So there he stood, on the other side of our kitchen island. He said “It’s cancer. I have cancer.”

Wait. What? No. Wait. WHAT?

I ran to him, hugged him and we both cried into each others arms. He told me that the dr had called him on Thrs and told him the news. I was so angry that he didn’t call me right away, but I understood why he didn’t. He said that he wanted me to have a good time with my friend and that telling me on Thrs wouldn’t have changed anything, so he made the decision to let me have my weekend of fun and just tell me when I came home. So there we were. He showed me the pathology report, of which I understood nothing. He told me the name of the cancer type, of which I couldn’t pronounce. He told me that I was the first person whom he had shared this news with. So, like any sane human, I went immediately to Google. I typed in appendix cancer, I typed in mucinous adenocarcinoma, I typed in anything I could think of that would yield some sort of information on what we were dealing with.

Nothing.

This thing was SO RARE, not even Google knew much about it. Possibly for the best, but infuriating nonetheless. The dr who did the original appendectomy said that he had done some asking around because this thing was so rare — even the DOCTOR (who removes appendix’s for a living) didn’t know where to turn to for help!? However, his research kept coming up with one name, Dr. Glasgow at the Center for Advanced Medicine within Siteman Cancer Center in Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. He is the only surgeon in the area who does an extremely specialized procedure called HIPEC, if needed. So Andy had made an appointment with him for the following Thursday morning.

Since our attempts to research this thing were proving to be futile, we decided that we were just going to keep this to ourselves until we knew more and had more information. So we spent the rest of that week pretending like everything was fine. But I was terrified.

Appendicitis

At urgent care, they gave my husband a CT scan (which, again, I was initially pissy about because of the cost) and immediately identified the problem. Appendicitis. They recommended he go straight to the ER to have his appendix looked at more closely.

Meanwhile, I had the P1 team at my house. We were having a great workshop! We got a lot accomplished and while we were breaking for lunch, my husband came home. He told me the news and that he was heading to the ER. Still peeved, but now a bit concerned that he might actually have something wrong with him, I ask him if he needed me to drive him or if he needed anything from me? He says no, that he is totally fine to drive himself and who knows what the ER will recommend or how long it will take. So I let him go and me and the P1 team went back to working on the project.

My mind was racing tho. Here I was, hosting this group, literally in my home, and my husband was heading to the hospital! What was the right move here? Do I send the P1 team away? If so, where were they to go? Do I go with my husband and sit in the ER just to wait for God only knows how long? I didn’t know what to do. So I went with status quo. I remained with the P1 group. But by 3pm, my husband had been seen in the ER and they told him that he needed surgery to have his appendix removed ASAP. His surgery was scheduled for 5:30pm. I could no longer focus on the P1 project, and my team could tell. They had asked me no less that 30 times if I wanted to go be with my husband at the hospital, each time I declined. But by 4pm, it was clear I could no longer stay at home. I apologized and sent the P1 team out the door. (Note, they were SO understanding and completely okay with leaving! It was really more my stubbornness that was keeping everyone at the house, not my P1 team.)

So onto to the hospital I go. I get there, find my husbands room, and see him just long enough for him to detect the aggravation on my face and in my body language. I was aggravated. Here I was, trying to be a female in the tech industry and waiting YEARS for this opportunity, and THIS! This had to happen now. Right. Fucking. Now. Aggravated was an understatement.

He went into surgery around 7pm, not 20 mins after I got there, and around 8pm the dr came out and talked to me. He said that he had successfully removed the appendix, but it had perforated prior to removal. I remember him saying that his appendix was the gnarliest looking appendix he may have ever seen, and thinking Whoa, really? I mean, this was an older dr who had clearly been around the block with an appendix or two, and MY husbands was the gnarliest he’d ever seen? Huh.

The surgery was laparoscopic. So all that was left of the whole ordeal was 3 itty bitty scars on my husbands belly. He came out of surgery and ended up spending the night in the hospital because they wanted to administer IV antibiotics. The next morning I went back to the hospital and was (again) peeved to learn that they wanted to keep him ANOTHER night, possibly 2!? I couldn’t imagine how much this was costing us and since I’m the one in charge of finances in the house, all I could think about was how much shuffling around of money I was going to have to do to cover this ridiculous ordeal … and now they wanted to keep him another 24 maybe 48 hours??? Aw HELL NO.

It’s so ridiculous looking back and thinking about how I was so pissed off at all of this. I was pissed at my husband (who clearly was not at fault here, but I kept thinking that if only he had eaten less McDonald’s or something, this would not have happened.) I was pissed that the nurses (who, again, not their fault, but kept coming in and telling me that they needed to keep him there because of the perforation in the appendix, which put him at a higher risk of infection.) I was pissed at the dr who operated (who, I rationalized, clearly didn’t do a good job of cleaning it all up or else they wouldn’t be so worried about infection.) I was SO pissed that we decided to go with the stupid high deductible insurance plan thru work to save money because we rarely got sick or need to see a doctor. I was trying to place blame, I NEEDED someone to blame.

There was no one to blame.

He was sent home on Sunday, March 31st. By this time I had resolved myself to paying the entire max exposure for our insurance (ughh) and was sort of, in jest, but kind of serious, planning all the other surgeries he could have now that we were already in this deep! He needed sinus surgery and to get snippy-snipped, if you know what I mean, he had a situation with his lower back that needed attention and … what else could I pile on here since we’re already paying anyway! It was a fun game.

The work week started and my husband’s driving was restricted, so he decided to work from home that week. It’s important to restate that I also work from home, so having him at the house was a complete distraction. He decided to setup shop in the basement, he had his laptop, his PlayStation, and all the streaming TV services at his disposal. And he used them all. so. much. of. The Office. Recall that I have a bit of a problem with empathy. He had surgery to remove his appendix and had 3 tiny little holes from the laparoscopy that were healing. I had birthed 3 babies via c-section. I win that pain fight. I could not stand to have him hobbling around the house hunched over, taking Norco pain meds 4-5-6 days after the surgery. Are you kidding me? I switched over to over-the-counter Advil the second I came home from the hospital WITH a newborn. Get over yourself, dude, man up. You are NOT in that much pain. In my mind, I constantly compared my c-section with his surgery. I would think to myself that mine was WAY worse in terms of what they did, the incision, the recovery, basically everything, and I had done that 3 times! I thought he was being so ridiculous.

Yes, I’m an asshole.

The Awful Journey Begins

If you’re going through hell, keep going. — Winston Churchill

It all started on a random Tuesday. It was a completely normal day. My husband, Andy, went to work that morning, dropped our 4 year old off at preschool. The big kids went to school. Nothing weird, nothing out of the ordinary. We had been bickering a bit the past week or so, as normal married couples do, he probably loaded the dishwasher wrong again and I got all pissy (I cannot be the only one who demands the dishwasher be loaded in the most space-efficient and wash-efficient way possible!?) Either way, he got home from work that Tuesday evening on March 26, 2019 and told me he didn’t feel well and went immediately upstairs to bed. I was a bit thrown off when he said this since he was completely fine when he left for work, but, whatever. He was going to be sick.

A thing you need to know about me — I am not what you would call empathetic in certain situations. I have a TON of empathy for a lot of things, but for adults who “claim” their sick, nope. None. Put on your big boy pants, throw some pills down your throat, be an adult and move on. That’s my exact thought process when I hear the phrase “I’m sick” muttered from the mouth of an adult. I’m not entirely sure why I feel this way? Maybe its because I don’t really get the luxury of laying in bed being “sick” for a few days (which sounds like a vacation to me!) I have to get things done, like care for the kids and make them food, pick them up from school, take them to practices and games, and do baths and put them to bed. All things I don’t just get to opt-out of because I’m “sick.” So, boo-hoo, you’re sick. So what, suck it up buttercup and do your part.

So you can imagine how I felt when he stayed in bed for a full 36 hours. Didn’t get up to eat, didn’t get up to check his phone, maybe got up to pee, but I never witnessed that.

I had just been given a HUGE opportunity with my company, to be included in what they were terming our #1 Priority (P1) item for the next quarter. They wanted ME to be a part of a 3 person team to help lead the effort to define, solve for and implement the strategy to address our P1 item. I had been positioning myself over the course of the past 4 years with my company to be ready for this amazing leadership opportunity once it happened … and it was finally happening! I was AMAZINGLY excited! I had FINALLY been given a seat at the table and all I needed to do was to seize the moment! Why am I telling you this? Because, as luck would have it, our little P1 3-person team had decided to do an in-person workshop (we all work remotely from our home offices, so actually seeing my colleagues in-person was a pretty rare occurance) where we could more effectively strategize on how we were going to approach the problem. We decided on 2 workshop locations, one in St. Louis (my home base) and one in San Francisco (the home base of one of the team members.) The St. Louis workshop was to be held on March 28th and the San Francisco workshop was the following week.

March 28th, a Thursday. I was having the team over to my house for the workshop. I NEEDED this to be a success. I could NOT have my “sick” husband disrupt this opportunity for me, and I told him so. Since I had not actually seen him in any form of an awake state since that Tues evening when he came home from work, I sent him a text message:

Don’t forget, tomorrow is the day I have one of my company executives and another very high level coworker coming over to work on this Account Success planning project. This is extremely important to me that everything go smoothly tomorrow. So if for some reason you are still feeling sick, I need you to put on your big boy pants, take some meds and deal with it. Ok?? Love u!

That’s what I said. That’s exactly what I sent. Looking back, I’m an asshole. But how was I to know?

Thursday morning came, and my husband finally got out of bed. He was hunched over, I knew immediately that something wasn’t quite right. But he looked at me as he was rolling out of bed and said that he had promised to help that day, regardless of being sick, so he was making good on that promise. He took our 4 year old to preschool and when he came back home, he told me that he was going to urgent care because something wasn’t right. Again, I was a bit peeved that he was making such a big deal about what I thought to be nothing, and I was also peeved because we had HDP (high-deductible plan) insurance and we would have to pay out of pocket this entire episode he was having. But, ughhh. Fine. Go to urgent care.