Roads Untravelled

Roads Untravelled

A memoir on my wife’s battle with cancer

Daniel 3:19-20

“…He spoke and commanded that they heat the furnace seven times more than it was usually heated. …and cast them into the burning fiery furnace.”

I remember buzzing in the background, a sound unlike any I had ever heard.  I felt weightless as I stared at the trembling phone in my hand.  My eyes searched the room and stopped on a cold cup of coffee, a few crumbs there, a piece of paper hanging off the edge of the table.  It’s interesting the things your mind focuses on when it doesn’t want to accept something.  It chooses to wander.  It chooses to lead you astray.

The rest of the afternoon at work went by in a blur.  I remember thinking over and over how helpless I was.  My wife had called me with the results of her biopsy.  The best I could come up with was “I’m so, so sorry Diana.” And, “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.”

My wife just found out she had cancer and that was the best I could come up with?  The same words I use when someone tells me they have a cold, are just as good when my wife tells me she has cancer?  More than anything, I clearly remember wishing I had said something more encouraging.  Something more loving, more personal.  What do you tell someone you love more then anyone in the world when they give you this kind of news?  We were most likely entering the most difficult season in our lives, and I felt completely unprepared.  It was startling how incredibly inadequate I felt.

I spent that Monday afternoon in a daze.  The drive home was spent finally accepting what I had tried so hard to deny the entire last week.  My wife had cancer.

We had found out there was something wrong, possibly seriously wrong, the Thursday before.  Diana had spoken to her primary care physician and requested a referral to have her tonsils removed.  She had mentioned in passing that she had been coughing a bit for a while now.  Her doctor, knowing that tonsils don’t normally make you cough, ordered a chest x-ray.  We received a call the following day saying that there was an odd shadow on the x-ray and they would like to do a CT scan to make sure that everything was alright.  Diana completed the CT scan the next day.  That evening a pulmonologist called us and said although they would need to do more tests, it looked an awful lot like cancer.

It’s interesting how a few words can change so much.  We were on the stairs in our home when we talked to the doctor.  After hanging up the phone, we both just crumpled onto the stairs.  I held my wife as she sobbed.  I held the love of my life in her most difficult moment.  We cried together, our son Noah just a few feet away watching a cartoon, the personification of “ignorance is bliss”.  At some point, Diana turned to me and said, “Beni, I might have cancer.”  That was the first time we put it into words.

There is a certain cloud, a dark fog that can invade your life when your talking about life and death.  For a while I lived in it.  Not long, but for a time.  In between being told that my wife may have cancer, and finding out that it was Hodgkin’s lymphoma was the most difficult few days of my life.  Caught between dealing with my own thoughts, and reassuring Diana that all would be fine, I spent a few days in a very dark place.

It’s not often that your life is completely overturned in the course of just a day or two.  We were not prepared.  We didn’t know how to handle this type of news so we decided to do what any sensible people would do, and deny that anything was happening at all.  We decided to go about our lives as if nothing at all had occurred.  A biopsy of the lymph nodes was scheduled for the next morning, results would come back next week, but until then we didn’t know anything for sure, so life would go on mostly as usual.

It was one of the oddest parts of this entire process.  Knowing that something might be very seriously wrong, but not knowing for sure.  Pretending that all was well, and knowing that most likely it was not.  Pretending to care, I would talk to people about things that were previously important, and feel like they didn’t matter any more.  You realize very quickly that the things you worried about in the past, so much of what you spent your time and energy on was really just, for lack of a better word, filler.

The next morning was spent in the doctor’s office.  The very nice doctor seemed uncomfortable when he started going through the CT scan with us.  It’s not every day that you go over a CT scan with results like that with a coworker.  Diana, being a respiratory therapist, worked very closely with most of the pulmonologists at the hospital.  This one in particular she knew very well.

He showed us a lot of things I’m sure I’ll never understand, and once he finished talking about “masses” and “spots”, I finally got to the point where I couldn’t wait anymore.

“Based on your experience, what you’ve seen in the past, is it your professional opinion that this is some sort of cancer?”  I asked.

Glancing back and forth between Diana and I, I could tell he was very hesitant.  Finally he said that based on the CT scan he would have to say that it is very likely some sort of a cancer.  He continued on something about how Diana is young and strong, but I sort of drifted away for a while.

I remember trying very hard not to cry at that moment.  I held Diana’s hand firmly and blinked away my tears.  Looking at my wife I realized that she had accepted this already somehow.  She was not crying, there were no tears.  She decided to meet this news head on and ask more questions.  I couldn’t tell you what.

I couldn’t look at the doctor anymore.  This man with the kind face and quiet demeanor was giving us the worst news possible.  I felt like he was slowly easing me into the idea that I would lose my wife.  I couldn’t look at him.  I turned away, his words becoming background noise.  The next few moments were spent in my mind.  While Diana asked her questions about something I couldn’t even accept yet, I reflected on how out of place I felt again.  Everything was completely out of my control.  My wife was going through the most difficult moment in her life, and I found myself feeling useless again.

Diana and I had married seven and a half years prior.  And although we were both young at the time, it was clear to me that this was the absolute right choice for us.  Over the years, I came to feel that I understood my place in the world as a husband.

I married a beautiful young girl.  She chose to marry me.  She chose to follow me.  Chose to give me the best years of her life.  She gives me her attention, her love, her care.  She had my child.  She gives me her complete trust.  She is everything a husband could ever want from a wife.  What do I offer?  As husbands, how should we behave towards someone who gives so much of themselves to us?  I often ask myself, what am I doing today that is deserving of that kind of love and trust?  In that moment, with the doctor giving us the worst news we had ever received, I realized there was nothing I could do for my beautiful wife who had given me so much.

It was something that would amaze me over and over in the months ahead.  There was simply nothing at all that I could do for her.  There is only so much a hug and a kiss can cure.  There was no way to make the cancer any less serious, nothing I could do to shorten the treatment.  I was a bystander.

After Diana was done asking her questions we were told that it was possible to have the biopsy done that morning.  We said that would be fine, and were quickly led down the hall into a room just around the corner.  We were told that this test would most likely determine the type of cancer we would be dealing with.

Diana was placed on a hospital bed and sat up as the techs prepared the room around us.  I remember wondering how many people had received horrible news in between those four walls.  With a weak smile I kept reassuring Diana, telling her that she was doing so well.  The room, all stainless steel and white tiles, was brightly lit, and depressingly drab.  Sterile.  Instrument trays were wheeled in all around us.  Just in case I passed out, I was told to take a seat in the corner.  It was a reasonable suggestion I thought, there wouldn’t be as far to fall that way.

When the doctor walked in he informed us of the steps of the procedure.  Using an ultrasound machine he would determine the best place to get a sample of a lymph node.  Then using a needle, he would pull out a piece of the node to find out what type of cells were in it.  He told us that if the sample was good enough, there was a high chance Diana would not need to go in for a surgery to remove an entire lymph node just to determine the type of cancer.

At the last moment an older gentleman walked into the room.  We were told he was the head of pathology.  He would be looking at the sample to make sure it was good enough for a biopsy.  He stood in the corner of the room and gazed at Diana for a long moment.  His sad eyes spoke volumes of his experience. Finally in a quiet voice he said, “You look much too young to be in that chair.”  We were all quiet for a moment.  No one could have said it better.

Diana asked me to video the procedure so she could watch it later.  I reluctantly pulled out my phone.  The procedure started with the doctor injecting lidocaine anesthetic in the site that would be sampled.  It was decided that the left lymph node in the neck would be easiest to access.  The next part was difficult for me to watch.  The doctor gave the anesthetic about one minute to work and then took an incredibly long needle and proceeded to push it into Diana’s neck.

How did we get to this point?  I kept wondering how we went from everything being normal two days ago to my wife needing a needle shoved into her neck today.  I looked back up and noticed the doctor was having trouble pushing the needle in.  He said that both her skin and the lymph node were difficult to puncture.  This was evidenced by the fact that his hand was shaking from the pressure needed to push into her neck.

He finally got the needle in.  There was a loud crack as the needle took a sample, and then he retracted it, leaving a stream of bright red to flow down Diana’s chest.  Diana did well.  She looked away and said all she felt was pressure.  I asked if we were done.  I was told no.  The doctor repeated the procedure seven more times.  “Just pressure,” was very good.

This biopsy would be the final say in whether or not Diana had cancer, and what type.  As we left the hospital I clung to the hope that the results would come back as just some sort of oddity, maybe a wrong reading on multiple tests, by multiple doctors.  I started to hope against all evidence staring me in the face, that this was not cancer.  Until we got the final say from the doctors about the biopsy, I would choose to believe that all would be fine.

Diana had no delusions.  She decided that the only thing we weren’t sure of was the type of cancer.  Together we decided that we would continue to go about our daily lives for a few more days without saying anything to anyone.  At least until we knew for sure that either all was well, or we knew exactly what we were dealing with.  I dropped Diana off at her parents house where she would pick up our son Noah, and pretend all was well.  I went to work for the rest of the day.

Our first test at pretending came all too quickly.  A few weeks prior Diana had accepted to host a birthday party for her cousin Emma.  It just so happened that the party was scheduled for the same day as the biopsy.  As much as we didn’t want to host anymore, we felt that we couldn’t cancel without having a great reason.  And although we had an excellent reason we couldn’t tell anyone yet.  So with Diana and I stealing knowing glances all evening, we put on our smiles as over a dozen people showed up at our home.  Everyone seemed ready to celebrate our darkest day yet.

There’s never been a stronger divide between how we felt and how we looked.  As we mingled with our guests I would periodically cast Diana a weak smile across the room, a knowing glance here, a touch there.  Anything to let her know that I was with her, even when doing my best to spend time with everyone else.  It was very hard to not just push everyone out of my way and rush over and hold her.  Finally the party ended, everyone went home, and we fell into each other’s arms.  That night we prayed together.  I prayed that the biopsy would come back negative.  I prayed that all this would be something else.  And finally I prayed for the strength for both of us to deal with this if it was in God’s plan for Diana to have cancer.

That Sunday we went to church.  We always go to church on Sundays, but I felt like this time I had a much deeper need.  Diana and I both serve on the worship team.  She sings and I play guitar, and it just so happened that we had been scheduled for that Sunday morning.  I remember thinking how ironic that on one of the most difficult days of our lives, God saw it fit to ask us to worship him, and to lead others into doing the same.  I felt like it was some kind of a test.  No one else knew what we were going through, so we weren’t there for anyone else.  Soon enough others would know and they would watch to see how we handle ourselves, but not that day.  That Sunday I felt more than ever before that we had an audience of one.

It’s easy to go to church, to sing, to pray, to praise and thank God when your life is going according to plan.  When your life deviates for this plan, however, worship becomes significantly more difficult.   How do you sing and praise a loving God when you wonder how this same God can allow something like this to happen to you.  How do you lead others in song when you feel abandoned.  When it seems like the love of your life may die.

I believe it’s moments like that when God watches us more closely to see what our faith is really made of.

We chose to believe that our God was in control.  That meant that sometimes he would take us in directions we didn’t understand, and sometimes directions we thought were flat out wrong.  But always for our own good.  No one is pretending it was easy.  Far from it.  I wanted to scream, and maybe throw my guitar across the stage more than make it play a song of worship.  I know I had tears in my eyes through a number of the songs.  And although Diana often has tears in her eyes, I’m sure there were a few more that morning.  The next day Diana called me at work to tell me about the official diagnosis.

“Real gold fears no fire.” – Chinese Proverb

It’s difficult to explain what it’s like holding someone you love so much, knowing that your moments are likely numbered.  How many more times would I hold my wife?  How many more times would I get to tuck her hair behind her ear as I tell her I love her?  How many more times would I get to kiss the laugh lines at the corner of her eyes?  There was so much I took for granted, and I realized it.

There were moments when I imagined my life without her.  There was not a lot that I knew about cancer, but what I did know scared me.  How could I live if my wife passed away?  How would I raise our two year old son?  If anyone had to go through this it should be me, not Diana.  She was too good a person, too loving, too caring.  She had so much to offer, not just to us, but to everyone around her.  It was too much.  I shed many tears on my drives home from work, and then made sure I looked alright by the time she greeted me at the door.

In many ways the drives home from work those first few weeks were the hardest.  There was no work to be done to distract me.  No friends to talk to about trivial things.  And of course Diana wasn’t there for me to be strong for.  I had about an hour a day to just think of all that was to come.

One of the first things I realized during those first few weeks is that a little of a good thing, is always worth the pain of possibly never having it again.  Diana and I had seven wonderful years together by this point.  So much joy, adventure, and love shared.  We had a little boy now who was such a blessing, and so many memories.  It was a difficult moment when I finally accepted that it may be God’s plan for me to no longer have Diana.  It was possible that God had decided that seven years of a good thing was enough.

It was incredibly difficult to accept that God may want Diana back now.  I always expected to die long before her.  It’s been a running joke between us that the women in her family basically live forever.  It was on one of those drives home, during one of my talks with God, that I finally realized that I had no say in this, that I may as well accept whatever it was that God was going to do.  This simplified things.  Nothing was easy, but they were somewhat easier to handle.  I accepted that I would have very little control over what was going to happen from here on out.  And, I decided that it would be better that way.  God could take over.

Part of what I learned during this experience was to trust in God more then I ever have before.  I never exactly prided myself in being able to plan ahead for nearly anything, but I certainly thought I was good at it.  I didn’t exactly “lean on my own understanding”, as the Bible instructs us not to do, but I felt that I could if push came to shove.  I think God uses situations like these to change not only the person going through the catastrophe, but also many of those around that person.  I learned that very little is really within my control, and even those things that seemingly are can quickly be taken away.

I was not the only one to be shaken up and moved by all that was happening to Diana, and our family.  Our church, hearing the news, set up a special evening of prayer for us.  We were so moved by the amount and depth of love that our church family had for us.  That evening we truly felt what it meant to be supported, loved, and encouraged by others.  We had never seen so many people who cared so much for us.  So many that were shedding tears for Diana and our situation.  Each person there had a smile for us, a hug, and of course prayer.

To this day we can’t thank everyone enough that took time out of their lives to be there with us.

As hard as Diana tried to put on a strong face, things were not always like that at home.  Certainly the stress of dealing with cancer can have effects on more then just your physical self.  There were times when Diana would get very emotional.  At the beginning of all this she told me that I had to be strong for her, to try and keep her upbeat.  I completely agreed and took my job very seriously.

When she would first tell me her fears and start crying in my arms, I thought it was my job to help her overcome those fears.  I would tell her that everything would be alright, that we would get through it, and I would certainly do my best not to cry along with her.  Until one day she got very upset at me for not crying with her.  She said that she didn’t understand why I wasn’t broken enough about this.  I felt trapped between being what I though was strong for her, and not being sensitive enough.

Another night she wakes me up to tell me that her hip is hurting.  I, of course, came right over and tried to comfort her by “helping” her reason out the fact that there was no way that the cancer could have spread from the lymph nodes in her neck to her hip within a few days.  This seemed very logical to me, and would have made me feel better if the roles were reversed.  Instead her reaction absolutely stunned me.  She turned over and glared at me, “So your saying you don’t believe that my hip hurts and that it might be the cancer?”  I stuttered an apology and said I’m not sure what to think, but that it seems unlikely.  In my mind I knew for a fact that it couldn’t be cancer.  I should have just held her, and said nothing.

Looking back it seems amusing to me.  Almost a lesson in how men and women see things differently, but at the time it was anything but comical.  And, as we were to find out soon after, the cancer had spread to her hip.  I still feel like an idiot about that one.

After the biopsy came back positive for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Diana’s oncologist ordered a series of tests including a PET scan.  The results stunned us.  Not only had the cancer grown in Diana’s chest, but it had spread to her hip, spleen, and spine.  The doctor told us that this was considered a stage four cancer.  It would require six to eight months of chemotherapy and possibly some radiation after.

Honestly we had thought we had caught this fairly early.  Clearly we were wrong.  The oncologist initially said that treatment would likely be three months of chemo, and now this.  We were devastated.  Stage four is just before the curtain call as far as I knew.  Basically thats when they pull out the experimental medication.  But the doctors still seemed optimistic.

I was getting closer to hopeless.

Diana just kept on.

The chemo treatments started soon after the diagnosis.  The first visit we went in for I assumed we would receive lots of info and be thoroughly prepared.  Instead we were seated in a large room with lots of other people, and without much preamble the nurse stuck a needle in Diana’s arm to start an IV.  Just like that Diana started receiving what would soon become her biweekly dose of poisons.  Her best hope of survival, according to her doctors, included injecting her with four different types of potent chemicals delivered over the course of four hours.

The nurse informed us that since Diana was stage four, and would need extended doses, she should get a port placed in her chest.  This would allow the chemo to be delivered closer to the heart where there is more blood flow, and less chance of damage to the veins from the potent drugs.  We accepted the advice and she was scheduled for surgery to have the port placed.

With chemo begun, we started counting down the sessions.  Each one was more brutal for Diana than the last.  She looked so frail to me.  My beautiful wife became so weak, so exhausted after each treatment.  She lost weight.  At her worst point she was ninety seven pounds.  It was difficult to find much joy in anything when my better half seemed to be falling apart before my very eyes and there was nothing I could do about it.  It was difficult not to fall into despair.  Somehow Diana kept pushing on.

I looked through her journal at one point.  Hidden between her lines of thoughts and fears were small, hand-drawn smiley faces.  Beacons of light in a storm that threatened to sink the ship, she found reasons to have joy.  She thanked God for all kinds of little things.  She found comfort in something that she read in the Bible, or something someone said and would draw her smiley down next to it.  Had I not known what was in the journal I would have thought it was some kind of incredibly joyful story, where the author couldn’t help but show her emotions as she wrote.

Clearly whatever this story was, it was one exciting ride filled with joy, and happiness, and rainbows and unicorns at every turn.  If only it were true.

It is humbling to live with someone so close to death and realize that that person is choosing to be joyful beyond reason.  I saw our situation as dire, she saw it as something that God was putting us through to refine us.

We read a book together recently, and she kept going back to a line from it.  It explained how when we go through struggles we are being refined, and how eventually you get to the point where there is nothing left to refine, you’ve become pure, or real, gold.  The fire is then for our benefit and not to be feared.

“Real gold fears no fire,”  she would say very seriously.

If that was the case then I wasn’t quite there yet, because I was deathly afraid.  But certainly after getting through this we would be a lot closer to being “real gold”.  Diana seemed to be well on her way.  I wanted to have my wife more than to be real gold.

The chemo treatments continued.  Treatments on Wednesday, anti nausea medication, and recovery until Sunday.  A week of feeling weak for her and then start again.  Each treatment left her a bit weaker then the last, and me a little more despondent.  After three treatments Diana started losing a disturbing amount of hair.  I would joke that the hair pile on the floor after drying her hair was the size of a small cat.  Unfortunately it wasn’t much of a joke.

One evening as I was working on the computer, she asked me if I would like to shave my head along with her when her hair gets too patchy for her to stand.

Allowing myself to say the first thing that came to mind I said, “What for?  I never understood why people do that.”

Needless to say that didn’t go over well.  We did end up shaving our heads soon after that.  I was the guinea pig to see how short she wanted to go.  I ended up with the shortest they could make it, her hair was a bit longer.  She was incredibly beautiful.

That was one of the moments in my life when I realized that Diana isn’t beautiful simply because of one feature or another, but because of who she is.  She radiates a beauty that comes from her attitude, her values, her love for others.  Her smile is more than the curves of her lips.  Her personality is easily as much a part of her beauty as her outward appearance.  It’s not that I didn’t know all this before, but this realization created a depth, a beautiful complexity to my wife that I hadn’t fully appreciated before.  God made her, and the rest of us beautiful long before he formed us physically.

“For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.”

-Henry W. Longfellow

One of the most difficult conversations Diana and I had was one of the nights after we found out the cancer was stage four.  It was dark out as we drove home from dinner one night.  Our windshield wipers were working furiously as they only do in Portland in the winter, when Diana turned to me and said that she needed to tell me something.  By this point I was pretty numb to anything bad so I said go ahead without thinking much of it.

“I know you probably don’t want to hear this,” she started, “so I’ll only say it once, but if things don’t turn out like we hope, I know what dress I want to be buried in.”

I’ve never been punched very hard in the stomach, but if I had been, I’d imagine it would feel very much like what I had felt right then.  My throat went dry, I had to swallow a couple of times before I could speak, and I couldn’t help but be a little angry.

“What are you talking about?”  I asked in horror.

“Well, I’ve just been thinking, the red dress that I wore at our engagement party would be good for…you know.”  She finished turning to stare out the window.

I looked at Diana.  She was engrossed in the rain running down her window.

I swallowed hard.  “I don’t want to talk about this.”  I said.  “There’s no reason to talk about this, this is crazy.”

“I just thought it would be best to tell you.”  She said.  “Please don’t forget.”

“No, it would not be best.”  I said trying to calm down.  “I don’t want to talk about what you would wear if…”

I trailed off.  I couldn’t even say the words.  My wife would not die, she could not.  I blinked the tears out of my eyes.  I couldn’t believe that we were having this conversation.  I couldn’t believe that we had gotten to this point.  This was by far one of the most dismal moments of my life.  Turning to wipe away a tear, I took her hand in mine and just held it.

I hadn’t told her, or anyone, but I had been having nightmares of standing next to her coffin.  Of falling to my knees in the rain and resting my head against it.  This was too close to that.  She was adding details to a nightmare already too vivid for me.  This was too close to the absolute worst thing I could imagine.

We drove in silence for a while.  I was distinctly aware of her hand in mine, the feel of her fingers intertwined with my own.  The way I could run my thumb across the back of her hand just so.  How could this ever end I thought.  Breaking the silence I told her I would promptly burn the dress.  We both smiled weakly, and didn’t speak another word until we got home.

“You will realize God is all you need, but usually only when He is all you have left.”  I put on a thoughtful look, thanked the man and walked away.  Just one of many that had pulled me aside thinking to encourage me that evening at church.  For the most part I had gotten used to all the advice but for some reason that comment really stood out.

I had started getting a little tired of all the attention, the sad smiles.  The, “Let me know if you need anything” comments.  Diana took it all better, but after a while I just felt that it was time for people to give us some room.  You can only relive horrible moments of your life so many times and still retain some grace.  Everyone meant well, and I knew it, but every time someone asked how things were going I couldn’t help but think about everything again.

I learned a few things from those first couple of months.  First was that the words, “Let me know if you need anything” mean very little.  We certainly had needs, but we didn’t want to impose.  We appreciated every kind word and thought, but to hear that same phrase from fifty different people in one Sunday morning, and then not see any of them again for a week until the next Sunday really made it feel pointless.

I decided that if ever I felt the urge to utter that sentence I would make sure to skip saying it, and let them know what I would do for them instead.  A meal brought over, or an offer to babysit while we went to doctor appointments were infinitely more valuable.  I also learned that doing something for someone doesn’t necessarily mean I should stick around to chat.  The reason the person needs something done for them, like a meal, is because they don’t feel up to doing it themselves.  How likely are they to be up for spending an evening together?

I understand people going through pain, and hard times so much more than I ever did.  It has more to do with truly feeling with them, than telling them how sorry I am.  There is a difference between empathy and sympathy that is often lost on those who have not gone through difficulties.  I certainly didn’t appreciate the difference.

Romans 8:28

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

Christmas came and went.  We spent the next day at the hospital getting another dose of chemo.  As hard as that was we were happy to get another chemo out of the way and to be a bit closer to the check up that was scheduled very soon.  Because Diana’s cancer was so progressed, our doctor had ordered a CT scan just two months after the first treatment started.  We were very anxious to see how things were going.

Diana was convinced that it wasn’t working.  I did my best to encourage her and to tell her to trust that God would take care of her.  That He would do so through the doctors, and through the chemo drugs she was receiving.

Almost exactly two months after the chemo treatments started Diana went in for the test.  She was injected with the drugs, put through the machine, and told to stay away from children under 15 for twenty four hours as she would be giving off radiation for that long.  And then we waited.

We each waited for something different it seemed.  Diana hoped that the cancer had not grown or spread to anywhere new.  I wanted to see extravagant progress.  I had no idea what was considered drastic progress, but I wanted it.  I was hoping for a fifty percent reduction in the masses.  The doctors didn’t tell us what to expect, other than not much since it had only been two months.

A couple of days passed between the test and the phone call from the doctor.  They were difficult days, knowing there was an answer out there to how Diana was doing, but not knowing what that answer was.

Finally the doctor called.  Between a lot of big words, and fancy descriptors we finally pieced together that the scan could not find any trace of cancer in Diana.  Nothing in her lymph nodes, nothing in her chest, nothing in her hip, or spine, or anywhere.  After two months of chemo, Diana was cancer free!  I decided that our God was a God of extravagant progress.

How do I describe what I felt at hearing that kind of news?  How do you explain the overwhelming feeling of joy?  What can you compare it to to express it to someone who hasn’t gone through something like this?  The person you loved more than anything else in the world was going to be taken away from you, you could already see it happening, and then everything changes.

It’s like waking up from the most vivid nightmare imaginable.  Like taking the first sweet breath of air after being underwater long enough for panic to set in, for your vision to go dark around the edges.  The world had color again.  Vibrant color, and life everywhere.  Nothing could be better.

I held on to my wife that evening.  I held on as if to never let go.  Something that was nearly lost was restored to me.  My wife, my hope for a future together.  Noah would have a mother.  We would have more years together, more smiles, more kisses.  More sunrises.  I would be able to count each laugh line on her face and tell her how it came to be.  It was a gift beyond reason.  We thanked God that night in our prayers.  We thanked Him for the strength he gave us to get to this point.  For the unbelievable gift of the chemo working.  And for the fact that we could grow old together.

Nothing could bring us down.  Even the fact that the chemo had to continue.  Although they couldn’t find any trace of cancer, it didn’t mean we could stop the treatment.  The doctors said that regardless of how things looked now, the treatment must continue to ensure that the cancer doesn’t return.  Moreover Diana may still need radiation at the end of her treatment.

Regardless we were ecstatic.  The chemo treatments continued.  And although each one was more difficult than the last, we could see the silver lining.  We knew that we were that much closer to being done with this difficult chapter in our lives.  Four more months of chemo and we could move on.

During this time we started to see changes in our lives.  We became more aware of other peoples pain.  Their struggles seemed to affect us more.  Especially those that were going through cancer.  A friend of ours, Johnny, was also diagnosed with cancer about the same time as Diana.  We felt so close to him and his family.  Every joy and reason for celebration for him became the same for us.  And when his cancer returned I remember crying as I read about it on Facebook.  I also remember the joy at hearing the good news when he was cancer free again.

We grew closer to each other.  The near tragedy of losing my wife helps me to better appreciate her.  And not only her, but everyone around me, family and friends.  There is a value in each life that is hard to describe.  It seems to me that you only get a glimpse of that value when you’re on the brink of losing someone.

Spiritually we grew like never before.  It’s unfortunate that a trial like this is what it took, but Diana and I agree that it was worth it for the outcome.  We better realize that we live on borrowed time.  That we are not guaranteed our next breath.  And that we need to live right now, and not just for ourselves.

The final chemo session arrived.  I took the day off work so I could be with Diana.  She happily received her last treatment.  We took lots of pictures, thanked the nurses we had come to know, and left without looking back.  If we never see that room again it will truly be too soon.

The last scan after the treatment was done soon after.  We waited anxiously for the results.  It was a Friday when the doctor finally called.  Diana was cancer free and officially in remission, and according to our doctor she did not need any radiation.

We called everyone we knew, family, friends, everyone.  We posted on Facebook and received congratulations from even more people.  We had finally reached the finish line, and everyone was so happy for Diana and our family.  That weekend was one of the best in our lives.

Monday we received another call from our doctor saying that when the panel of doctors had reviewed Diana’s case, one of the doctors was not there.  A specialist in oncological radiology.  It was his opinion that it was a mistake to say Diana did not need radiation and that she would need it after all.

We were devastated.  It is so hard to have so many ups and downs.  And harder still to have to share them with everyone.  We felt very foolish for having told everyone we knew that Diana was finally done, only to find out that she would need radiation after all.  We decided not to tell anyone about this until we knew for sure, without any doubt that Diana did have to get radiation.

We were told that someone would call us to set up an appointment with this doctor and talk about options.  The next day we received another call from our doctor.  She said that she had presented our case to a board of six different specialists again, including the one who thought maybe Diana should receive the radiation, and together they had all decided Diana did not need it after all.  We were finally done.  This time it was official.  We could move on.  The final hurdle was behind us.

“Yesterday is gone.  Tomorrow has not yet come.  We have only today.  Let us begin.”

-Mother Teresa

How does life move on after going through something like this?  Differently than before.  I feel that many things have changed in me.  Most prominently is that I truly realize how short, fickle, frail, and uncertain life and circumstances can be.  Live in and enjoy the moment God gives you right now.  I’ve learned to love my wife, my son, and my life as much as I can each moment that those things are still there.

Love the people around you.  See the good that is always there, even if you have to dig a bit to find it.  Choose to see criticism as something that comes from those who do not yet appreciate how short life is.  Don’t settle for things that don’t make you happy, and stop waiting for that moment that tells you you’ve arrived and now you can live.

At the end of this life, and that may be sooner than we think, I think we’ll all realize that we had the opportunity to live an amazing life.  If only we had focused more on the the beautiful things in life, and less on those that brought us down.  It doesn’t take incredibly expensive things, or trips to be happy.

What is more amazing then a moment spent hugging your child?  Or watching him laugh with all his heart in a way only children can.  Or a touch and a smile from your spouse that says more than words ever could?  Or an intimate moment shared that no one else will ever know about.  There is so much beauty in each moment and there will never be another exactly like it.  It’s those things that are most rare that have the most value, and there are only so many moments that we get.  Choose to believe that you can’t waste time with your spouse, because no moment with them can be a waste.  There is value in every second together.

I heard something recently that seemed very profound after having gone through all that Diana and I have.

Life is a boat that sets out on a journey.  And then it sinks.

At first I found that sad, and not just a bit depressing.  But after thinking about it for a while I realized it’s neither of those things.  It’s just true.  Life is for the living.  We all know that we will not live forever.  There’s no secret there.  It’s just a matter of how long, and what we do with the few moments we have.  Diana and I have learned to live while our boat is still on its journey.  To fear no fire or furnace.  And when we’re finally called home, having trusted that every wave, every storm was meant to be, we’ll have no regrets.