A Mirror Cracked
It’s been hard to find the time to write an update recently, but I need to talk today, so I’m going to try and find the words.
On January 25th, my wife had her second surgery. The plan was to remove more breast tissue from around the area of the original lump and to extract some lymph nodes from under my wife’s arm. It doesn’t sound too scary when you put it on paper, but as with everything in life, there can always be complications. Fortunately the operation went well and although my wife was in recovery for longer than we were expecting, there was nothing untoward to worry about.
Her subsequent wound check a week later also went well, with no problems to report, but less than 24hrs later the situation had changed. Although this is common, due to the kind of operation my wife had, she’s now developed a large and very painful fluid build up under her arm. This, combined with a suspected infection in her wound, is making daily life quite painful for her. I’m hoping that the fluid can be drained today and that the weekend will be much more comfortable for her. (*)
Friends have continued to send cards and provide chocolates and cakes to raise my wife’s spirits, all of which are greatly appreciated. She’s managed to venture out of the house once or twice to do some shopping with her mum, but the smallest things are taking it out of her right now, even short visits from her friends. As always it’s a struggle to try and stop her doing too much, and when her mum returns home next Tuesday, I’m expecting one or two battles ahead as she comes to terms with me running the house (or rather not doing everything as and when it needs to be done and by her methods).
If I’m honest, I’m really not looking forward to the next few weeks. My wife runs so much of our lives that it’s going to be a shock to my system to try and take over everything. No doubt I will get a much greater appreciation of not only the work she does, but the work that single parents do day in day out, as I juggle my wife’s needs, the kids, the washing, cleaning, cooking etc. I just hope I manage to find some time to switch off myself. A stressed and grumpy Daddy/Husband isn’t going to be much fun to be around and I have a games backlog a mile high to play through!
Thankfully work continue to be supportive as I duck out left, right and centre to pick up kids, take them to after school activities and my wife to the doctors etc, but there’s surely got to be some limit to the slack they can cut me. While I’m making up any hours I miss, it feels like the quality and quantity of my work is suffering as a result of all the distractions. Which leads me onto the reason behind the title of this post.
Most of the time now I can function as normal, forgetting that this sword is hanging over us, but then there are moments when my mind wanders. Thankfully these moments usually occur when I’m alone, when I have my thoughts to myself, but last night it became too much and I couldn’t hide my feelings.
In case you hadn’t noticed, breast cancer is all over the news today and thanks to the BBC News website, I couldn’t help but read one of their articles where they mentioned survival rates. Now they may well be good for something so serious, but the problem is that they exist at all. When I read approximately two thirds of women live for over twenty years after being diagnosed, I broke down. My wife is 35 years old and the one thing I want more than anything in life is to grow old with her. I’ve never been much good at the whole glass half full thing, so all I read was, one third of women with cancer don’t live longer than twenty years after diagnosis. That would suggest my wife has a 66% chance of making it to 55 years of age. Even typing that now just makes me feel numb. I know there are many other things that can cut a life short, but seeing it visualised as a statistic broke me.
For good or ill, I’ve tried my best to avoid the thousands of websites that contain information about cancer. I’ve chosen not to read any of the accompanying material provided by the NHS either. This isn’t because I want to pretend it’s not happening, but because I know it’s going to be hard. I know my wife is going to struggle to cope with the treatment, that it’s likely to knock her for six etc. Reading the details myself isn’t going to help me and the last thing I want to do is worry myself to death and cry myself to sleep every night. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t help but read that article yesterday and I’m still not quite over it.
Anyway, next week brings the results of my wife’s last surgery. We should know the extent of the damage then and have some idea of the treatment plan my wife will need to follow this year. Regardless of how bad things are, we’ve been led to believe they will hit my wife with everything they have, so in some ways the results aren’t important, but I’m sure they’ll feel it on the day. No doubt my productivity will plummet in the run up to my wife’s appointment.
* The fluid was drained and my wife is feeling much better as a result. We also now have two nurses with opposing views on whether an infection is present. Not an ideal situation, but at least it’s better than two saying there is an infection.
