ENCORE #167! – Observations of A Breast Cancer Husband – AND AN UPDATE Ten-and-a-half Years Later!

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer in March of 2011, there was a deafening silence from the men I knew. 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 was the FIRST and appeared on April 9, 2011. Ten years, eight months, and nine days ago…

I wanted to us a blog title that was simple and would pop up on a normal GOOGLE search, but “Breast Cancer Husband” was already taken (http://www.breastcancerhusband.com/ Still around…). So was “Stand By Her” (http://standbyher.org/ Dead link…). I went to those sites, but one has been corrupted by endless spam and the other has been inactive for nearly a year. Another I tried seems full of advertising and another still was a long advertisement for an exercise program developed by a breast cancer husbands’ wife.

So here I am, because I need someone to talk to RIGHT NOW and I want to talk to other husbands, fiancés, and lovers of women with breast cancer.

Our journey is only two weeks old. While my wife Liz knew something was seriously wrong inside of her body, I was clueless. Until two weeks ago, a biopsy at the Breast Care Center at Regions Hospital in Minnesota ( ) confirmed that she had infiltrative ductal carcinoma. It was the most common form of breast cancer. Treatments had been worked out. Research had been done. It is survivable…

A week later, Liz had a bilateral mastectomy.

I’m writing this six days after the surgery.

I’ve searched the internet and I haven’t been able to find an active husband-whose-wife-has-breast-cancer blog that I could chat on. Maybe it’s because their wives have been survivors for years and they can relax, or they can take a step back, or they’re exhausted, or the danger is no longer clear and present.

Not so for me. Based on everything I’ve read so far, this job is only just beginning.

Ah, the name of the blog: I couldn’t call it Breast Cancer Husband, so I went to the thesaurus to look for synonyms and the etymological dictionary for word roots. It all comes down to a “husband” having something to do with farming. Words like cultivate, garden, graze, grow, harvest, landscape, seed, sow, tend and till the soil are all related to “husband”. The word “reap” was in there, too. I finally settled on the most personal title I could find: Guy's Gotta Talk...About...and unfortunately, the blog expanded in subject matter...

At first that didn’t do anything for me, but when I came across “reap”, of course the first thing I thought of was the Grim Reaper. Then my mind went to work, the Reaper’s robe turned pink and I had the image in my head of the Breast Cancer Reaper: cutting down breast cancer, growing hope, harvesting love, creating a new landscape (in more ways that one!), cultivating peace, sowing joy, tending the field, the Garden of Eden, good and healthy eating…

At any rate, this will be a personal blog with medical LINKS – I’m no doctor, though I have been a science teacher for three decades. This blog may wax and wane humorous as well. Humor is how I deal with grief and tragedy (actually, humor is how I deal with just about everything and everyone…)

We’ll see. All I know right now is that my wife has breast cancer, she, my daughter (whose blog links are below), my son & daughter-in-law & grandson and the rest of both of our families and friends, are dealing with this in different ways.

I should be here once a week, probably Saturdays, and my goal will be to provide something that’s short, personal and helpful.

That is all…

But it wasn’t. It never is. Everything changed as we dealt with the disease. I changed and I am not the same man today that I was then. I avoided bitter. I found allies – in my family, my coworkers, and from total strangers.

I would NEVER repeat this again, but once your loved one has been treated and is pronounced cancer-free (and that IS a happy day!!!), BC can and does rear its ugly head again. A man with whom I’d once been in a writer’s group, became one of my most solid anchors as our wives walked through the landscape of this debilitating and hideous disease. His wife is suffering again, now with metastatic breast cancer of the bones (I detail a bit of that here: https://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2021/08/guys-gotta-talk-about-breast-cancer.html).

It is a never-ending battle, a never-ending Sword of Damocles poised over the neck of every person with BC and every one of their loved ones. I pray regularly that a true and lasting cure will be found…

Image: https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5527/10893068965_1d328e8f71_b.jpg