There is life after cancer...the picture is part of the picnic basket I put together for my wife's 53 birthday...love ya babes!
Happy Anniversary...my wife and I have made it through one of the more difficult years of marriage, if not our collective lives. Last year, late February my wife went in for her yearly Mammogram (if any women are reading this, PLEASE get your yearly breast exam...if not for yourselves, for those that you love). The next day we got that call no one wants to hear..."nothing to worry about, but we think we might have seen a little something and could you come in for a second test?"
Imagine getting this call, then having them schedule the appointment for a week later. You might have breast cancer, but try not to think about it, and we'll see you next week. Imagine how bad it is going to get if President Obama is successful in pushing Socialized Medicine through the Congress. Life and medicine is what it is, and the hospital was not really concerned about our pins and needles.
Week goes by and we go in for her Mammogram...already life has changed, men just don't go with their wives when they get their Mammograms. They want to be left alone after having their boobs smashed and pressed into sandwich meat. Mammogram day usually calls for a trip to Border's Books afterward, the reading of a magazine at Starbucks, maybe even some shopping at the mall. You are not allowed to go in with your wife, not allowed to hold her hand. Instead you sit in the waiting room of the X Ray department at the local hospital feeling like little worry germs are crawling all over your skin. At what they charge you, cannot waiting rooms afford some DECENT and recent magazines from which we can chose from.
After almost two hours of waiting a nurse practitioner comes out with my wife and tells the two of us too go home and rest, that they'll be in touch after a radiologist takes a look at everything. I was not HAPPY..."Excuse me, just when is this radiologist going to LOOK AT EVERYTHING, my wife might have cancer?"
"Normally, we get back to you within 48 hours"
I wanted to smack that smirk right off the nurse's face...HELLO, this is NOT Jeopardy. My wife was getting one of THOSE LOOKS, so I kept quiet as we left the building.
Holding my wife's hand we headed towards the car when she said, "Honey I'm scared."
You have to be strong, you're her rock, she's counting on you to be strong so you push back the tears trying to well out; taking her into your arms you lie and say, "It's probably nothing, we are going to be fine, now I don't want you worrying about this."
Another phone call, "We'd like to do a biopsy."
They say it so FUCKING CASUALLY.
Let me tell you something, big boys do cry. Usually not in front of people, even our wives, but we do cry. This is not funny any more, this is getting serious...they are wanting to cut open my wife, my Sweet Pea.
If you think they squeezed my wife right in, you would be wrong. It's like, "hurry up and wait", as if I was suddenly back in the Navy again standing online waiting for orders. It was going to be like two weeks before they did the biopsy.
I am freaking out, but all on the inside, because if you think I am freaking out, you need to see my wife. First, lets have some background information.
We have no kids, not because we didn't want them, it just was not in the cards for us. Wife has had serious FEMALE issues her whole life. She went through the whole invitro thing, could give you a whole litany of the misery she went through trying to get pregnant...one almost that she miscarried. Now over lay this with some serious endometriosis, and top it off with fibromyalgia. Toss in a few other health issues on top of that for garnish, and think you get the picture...or most of it.
Now, every cake has to have frosting. My wife's mother died early (age 53), diagnosed with cancer at 52. Sure the light bulb just went off for many of you. Here is my beautiful wife facing MAYBE CANCER at the exact age her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Let's just say that carryout quickly became our nightly routine as neither of us really felt like eating, let alone cooking.
Two biopsies and a Ultrasound later we had the diagnosis...why wife had breast cancer. The good news, "We had caught it early, stage zero." They scheduled us in for surgery in early April, then reschedule for April 11th...today...Happy Anniversary.
There's the initial healing after her surgery. (She had a partial lumpectomy on one breast.) Think two months. During that time, there are way too many doctors appointments. Then comes radiation treatments. For those that have never been through this, imagine yourselves sitting there in the office at Sloan Kettering having everything explained to you, trying to be strong when you suddenly hear the doctor say, "Once we have everything figured out, have marked out our points of entry with a marker we'll tattoo you.)
That FREAKED ME OUT.
We were lucky, my wife did not require chemo, only radiation. Five weeks... each and every day for five days, Saturday and Sunday used for her recuperation as radiation exhausts you. They originally wanted to stretch it out to six weeks, but because of her fibromyalgia, they pushed it all into five weeks instead.
During all the poking, prodding and and testing, they determined my wife had some serious fibroid attached to one of her ovary, and she was estrogen dominant. Translated for simplicity. She was scheduled in for surgery this past December to have ALL HER WOMAN PARTS OUT. Another anniversary to look forward to, her official one year into menopause milestone. The fibroid turned out to be a knotted ball of pain the size of a grapefruit, and they took literally everything including her uterus during the surgery which took hours.
Been quite the year, and our fun is still not over. My wife still has her fibromyalgia and endometriosis with all that entails including the pain. We have to get her a Mammogram every six months for the rest of her life, and are marking the days on the calendar as we shoot for that big Blue Ribbon known as cancer free for five years.
It's this Reader's Digest saga that has seen me weigh in on the Medical Marijuana debate. My wife is one of those straight as an arrow, play by the rules goody two shoes. She sometimes thinks about being naughty, but toes the red letter of the law even when it hurts. Could marijuana help her with her pain, that pain that is with her 24/7, 365 days of the year? I think it could, and she's prone to agree with me. However, neither of us will ever know if the Federal Government does not legalize Medical Marijuana.
I'd like to see every member of Congress who opposes Medical Marijuana to spend say 48 hours sitting in the lounge of Sloan Kettering's cancer wards. My wife's medical team now is all Sloan Kettering, so we had her hysterectomy done there. I sat in a large waiting room with maybe 70 other people who had loved ones in surgery. I got to know the members of three different families the day my wife was operated on who received bad news, were told their loved one was dying, had X AMOUNT OF TIME left to live. I held one crying man as he tried to figure out how he was going to tell his children.
If Medical Marijuana did nothing more than help these people escape their pain (physical, emotional and mental)for a few hours, how can you deny them that? Do they not deserve to live out their waning days in a manner that suits them without government interference, without the morality of others interfering in their last days. There is so much more, but this was enough for me to make up my own mind. It is time for us as a nation to accept the fact that Prohibition has not and will not work. It is time for us as a nation to realize the incredible contributions that hemp and cannabis have to offer humanity. Hemp Bio fuels, green hemp building materials helping to solve global warming, and cannabis research leading to new cures for old diseases. The time has come for us to Legalize Medical Marijuana, the time has come to decriminalize recreational marijuana, and unshackle commercial industrial hemp production.
Before you make up your mind to "Just Say No", do my wife a favor, and go spend a few hours in the surgical waiting room of a cancer center.
