Breast Cancer Blog “Guy’s Gotta Talk About Breast Cancer” – One Year Ago…

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

I was getting ready to talk about how exercise can help in breast cancer recovery when I realized that this is my 52nd blog entry.

I realized that there are 52 weeks in a year.

I realized that I’ve been doing this for a YEAR…

How did that happen?

Hang on, let me focus here, because it doesn’t seem possible that a year has passed since my wife’s breast cancer diagnosis.

How did we get here?

Baby steps. Tiny steps. Setbacks. Leaps ahead. Nightmarishly hard work. Not by me. I was benched. Unable to do a single thing but cheer the team on. Hold my wife’s hand. Talk to doctors.

Be as useless as a third wheel on a unicycle.

This has been a year of standing aside. That sense of being sidelined is what started me writing this blog. I wasn’t necessary for any of the procedures, the administration of meds, the planning – and it certainly wasn’t necessary for me to “endure” or “be strong”. All of those things were required of my wife, the doctors, nurses, the hospital staff, oncology researchers, drug manufacturers, health clinics, insurance companies, companies that pay the health insurance premiums, God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, prayer warriors. These were all essential things in my wife’s struggle against breast cancer.

I was not.

In all my life, this was perhaps the hardest thing I have ever experienced.

I know, you WEEP for me, right? The sarcastic and entirely justified reply – is “Oh, poor you!”

I feel like a little four-year-old standing in a corner, stomping his foot in frustration and crying out, “What about ME?”

Lest you see me in any worse of a third-wheel light, let me say that this blog, talking with others and living a humble, invisible life has grown me into a new person. A better person.

Someone I would never had become had it not been for the past 52 weeks.

I’m going to leave it at that right now, but as I begin to come out of my closet and look at the “new me”, I’ll be writing a few entries about it. So stay tuned. The next 52 weeks should prove to be interesting, too.

Image: http://www.profimedia.com/photo/a-four-year-old-boy-cries-as-he-sits/profimedia-0051866598.jpg