At Death Do Us Part: A Grieving Widower Attains Healing After the Loss of his Wife to Cancer by Frederick Marx

Author:Frederick Marx
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Frederick Marx
Published: 2018-08-23T19:13:10+00:00

Chapter 5

The beginnings of the endings…

Living with cancer means that one key question consistently recurs: “Is this the beginning of the end?” Most people with cancer live through many cycles with this question. Tracy and I both did our best not to invest in thinking about beginnings and endings. We tried not to hold our breath, not to let the fear build every three months when it came time for another round of tests. We’d try not to consult the runes of our intuition, or take as evidence how Tracy had been feeling immediately prior to tests. Certainly we had many months, whole years, when results were good and Tracy motored along. But it felt like a losing battle. The mental pull toward that question is immense.

Certainly February 2006 was the beginning of the end when Tracy’s cancer moved to the bones in her back. She went from Stage I diagnosis to Stage IV. Certainly August 2013 was the beginning of the end when the last of the estrogen suppression drugs stopped working and, since her radiation dosage levels had already been maximized, she had to go back on chemo. Fortunately, they were chemo pills, less toxic in their overall impact on the body. But the cancer had moved to her liver. Certainly October 2015 was the beginning of the end because the chemo pills had proven ineffective. The tumors in her liver were growing. Now she had to get chemo through an IV and was going to lose her hair again. January 2016 was the beginning of the end because the IV chemo drugs were not slowing the progress of the cancer, now spread to her lungs. Certainly May 6 was the beginning of the end when that second, more toxic chemo was not having discernable impact other than making Tracy nauseated and weak. She could hardly keep food down. She went off chemo altogether, and onto painkillers. Certainly that was the final beginning of the end. Or not.

On that May 6 day when we arrived in San Francisco for her appointment she broke down crying in the car. She said she didn’t want to go. I just held her and waited. I was perfectly prepared to turn around and drive home. “I understand,” was all I could say. It’s shocking how little you can say at moments like these. In conversation after conversation “I understand” was the most I could muster. “I don’t want to die,” she’d cry out as I held her. Finally I just stopped saying anything. Fuck words. They’re insufficient or inappropriate.

If only we could have had the penultimate conversation about ending her chemo treatments with Dr. Lopez before she got that final toxic dose. Then she might not have spent the first week of her brief, remaining post-chemo life feeling like shit. But he came round only after she finished the dose.

I took him aside and mentioned that I had upcoming trips planned for Colorado and the UK. “Should I cancel them?” He nodded. “She’s not responding to the chemo positively in a sustained way.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.