By Julie

Sorry for dropping a cancer announcement and then falling off the face of the Earth, that was pretty rude!  It has been a surreal, life-changing 5 weeks at our house, but I am happy to say we are doing okay.  Since my husband’s diagnosis on August 11th, he has had colon surgery, a chemo port installed, we have travelled to Houston, Texas to get a second opinion at MD Anderson, and he has endured his first round of chemotherapy.  I am happy to report that as of this week, if you saw him walking down the street (or in his office at work), you would not even know he has cancer (let alone everything else he has been through). 

We are not entirely sure about his prognosis (I hate that word and hate it when people ask the question, even though I know it’s a legitimate one), but we know he has options and is getting the best treatment he can.  The first round of chemo wore him out for a few days and left him a little bit nauseous, but nothing a little Zofran couldn’t remedy (okay, a LOT of Zofran!).  He had chemo on Wednesday, September 8th at the treatment center and then had to wear a portable pump of medication for another 46 hours, but he was able to work and attend soccer practices and pretty much live his life as normal during those couple of days.  On Friday afternoon, he got “unhooked” and Saturday was probably the roughest day – he pretty much slept all day – but he still managed to attend all FOUR of our sons’ soccer games that weekend, because he is just THAT good of a dad!  This week he is doing great, working full-time and feeling good. I know that each successive treatment (he has 3 more before they do another CT scan that I KNOW will show the lesions on his liver are shrinking) may get tougher on him, but on the whole, the first one was not nearly as awful as we feared.

I still feel so strongly that his youth (he’s 37) and his strength (he ran the Chicago Marathon last October and has ran 3 half-marathons since then – heck, he ran 8 miles the day before his colonoscopy that revealed the cancer even though he was FASTING for the procedure), will make all the difference in his battle and ultimate victory.  It has been hard not to be bitter – how can this happen to someone who has always taken such good care of himself? – but I have to believe that despite the unfairness, the fact that he is healthy one of the strongest weapons he has in this fight. 

And that’s how we’re approaching this – as a fight.  We had to tell our boys (one of the hardest things I have ever done, by the way), and for whatever reason the biggest thing my eight year old son took away from the conversation (besides his concern that daddy’s chest hair might fall off – seriously – his first question!), was that we were going to fight this cancer.    The day after we told him, Ben ran up to Andrew on the sidelines during a water break in his soccer practice, took a big swig of water, fist-bumped Andrew and yelled, “You ready to fight that cancer, Dad?” 

You know what?  We ARE ready to fight..

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 16th, 2010 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Blogs, Mommy, Did You Win?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.