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…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for
answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The
following entry appeared in September of 2012.
Following Labor
Day [2012], school started in Minnesota this week and that means that my wife
and I are back into the swing of things again full time. Not that I haven’t
been there since the second week of August; not that she hasn’t been training
up on new and updated classroom management and methodology…
But this past week
was the first week with KIDS!
Two miles of
walking a day is pretty much a regular form of exercise for her. But the
beginning of the year is ALWAYS harder after a long summer of NOT walking two
miles a day!
This fall was no
exception – except that it was harder than ever.
Maybe it’s natural
aging – even for me, my knees aren’t what they used to be and I have a knuckle
or two that feel like they may have a touch of arthritis every once in a while.
I can’t stand up without grunting a bit and I have to tell my two-year-old grandson
to “slow down! Grandpa can’t keep up with you!” That seems pretty normal for
me.
But the first two
days of school were murder on my wife! Not joint pains like with me, but muscle
aches and pains to a point where she had to take an unnatural number of
over-the-counter pain killers. Not that she hasn’t had aches after a day’s hard
work. She chases kindergartners from here to eternity and has been doing it for
several years. Before that, she did daycare for 17 years. Certainly lots of
aches and pains.
HOWEVER…I was
talking to another friend of mine, a long-term survivor of breast cancer and
she pointed out that while she was pretty sure she was all set to get right
back into life and start swinging again, she discovered that while she felt
better than she’d remembered feeling in a long time, the FACT was that she was
recovering from a recent bout with cancer, surgery and chemotherapy.
The FACT, she
discovered, is that a Human body doesn’t bounce back from an ordeal like that
quickly. We’re not talking about a bad cold. We’re not talking about walking
pneumonia. We’re not even talking about flat-out-on-your-back pneumonia.
We’re talking
about a disease so invasive, it can grow to lethal proportions in less than
twelve months. We’re talking about surgery as radical as the amputation of a
limb. We’re talking about being injected with chemicals so dangerous the
handlers must wear goggles, gloves, masks, booties, and dressing gowns lest any
get on their skin and cause profound BLISTERING!
No one in their right
mind would expect such a victim to recover from such treatment in less than a
year. Yet your average breast cancer survivor EXPECTS THAT OF THEMSELVES! They
fully expect to go back to a full training regimen training for the Olympics or
the Tour de France; they expect to return to caring for children and home
without missing a beat; they expect to take up the reigns at whatever career
they had to slow down for, snap them and get back up to full speed yesterday!
So – to those of
you supporting a wife, girlfriend, mother, grandmother or partner through
breast cancer – stand tight beside them, ready to offer an elbow lift if they
stumble or slow down and to continue to work beside them toward as complete a
recovery as EACH PERSON is capable of. It’s hardly easy, but has proven to be
another, newer role I’m growing into.
No comments:
Post a Comment