This photo was take Monday, October 18, 2021. We were celebrating life! As well as the fact that I had finally finished tiling this table that I had been working on for months! Jimmy was still feeling pretty good! What follows is an excerpt (edited) from the cancer diary I started in January 2022. Things had changed quite a bit.
February 2022
“I’m trying to think of why I started this diary, what the point was. Obviously if there was going to be some point it would have to be to help somebody else who was going through the same thing. To give them some sort of sense of; “If you’re feeling like this it’s okay, other people have felt like this too.” But even writing this I am aware that it’s probably never going to be seen by anybody except for me. Still it’s hard to write everything down that I am feeling. I guess that’s because we’re also used to just having an answer, but I don’t have any answers right now! I have friends I can talk to, (see photo above) but there are so many emotions, there are so many things to think about! And it’s really hard to even think all of them at once, much less put them into words.
The fact is I’m scared for Jim. He’s scared for me. I’m worried for our kids, only in the sense that they’re far away. He’s been doing a good job of letting them know where he is as much mentally as he can and certainly physically. He’s trying to be honest, but he always puts a happier spin on it than I see in reality.
I’m not going to fault him for that at all because, I’m sorry, if you think about it, what he says out loud and what he might be thinking are probably two different things. That’s a certainty! If I say out loud what I might be thinking then I would be admitting, I don’t know, it’s like admitting what is actually going on. Not admitting defeat or anything like that because, of course, he’s going to keep fighting etc. and he does have a positive attitude, but you’re admitting the reality of the situation if you say it out loud.
I mean my husband has stage 4 lung cancer. He’s not going to get better. We both know that. He’s going to continue to have treatments. What I think the hardest part is, well let me just list the hardest parts! Let’s just start out with stage 4 lung cancer which Dr Ganti said, I think 45 times last week when we were in his office. And he is exhausted, just so tired! And he is tired of being tired, as you can well imagine. We talked about that. Dr Ganti said well that’s because you have stage 4 lung cancer and there’s nothing we can do about that. He said it in a more refined way than that, but that was the message we received.
What do you say to people when they sincerely ask how you’re doing and you can’t tell them all these things. It’s easier to say “fine”. Or do what he’s doing right now, he’s got a spiel. He relays all of the positive things the doctor says and leaves out the negative.
I have no intention of taking that spiel away from him, whether I agree with it or not. Or whether I see factual differences in what he’s heard, or what he’s telling people. It is sometimes quite different from what I’ve heard or what I might tell people. It is his spiel and it gives him something to actually say to the people who are concerned. And as I said his spiel right now is positive. He’s just telling people that Dr Ganti has recommended a chemotherapy treatment that will treat both the prostate and the lung cancer and that he is very positive that it will work. And all those things are true.
My problem is that it makes people think he’s going to get better and maybe that’s a good thing for people to think. I don’t know. I’m certainly not going to argue with what he is telling people because it’s working for him. So I’m going to go along with it. In fact, I’ve decided for the most part I’m just going to go along with whatever he wants to tell people about his own cancer. That is certainly up to him. There I’ve got it down in writing so I have to be good.”
No wonder I was drinking so much wine!