FAQ #1: Skye's Story

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS: "..and how are you (Skye) doing with all this?"

It is different being the wife than the patient. Obviously I'd rather be me than Jared right now. But it does, nevertheless, pretty much suck to have a husband with cancer. Mostly it's better to be me, of course, because I'm not sick. In one way though, it's worse because I'm afflicted with a terrible powerlessness, and can only stand back and watch while Jared goes through all this. Oh sure, you might think I'd get some satisfaction by doting on him and taking care of him, cooking for him, rubbing his back while he's in bed feeling crummy, eating his unfinished chocolate pudding (that part is true). But the truth is he mostly wants to be left alone. So I mostly have to stand back and watch, and try to be patient with the process (and drown my sorrows in his pudding. Seriously. Trader Joe's Belgian Chocolate pudding. A must try!).

But it's probably not like everyone imagines. Friends have assumed that I spend time crying, moments in sadness, lots of time worrying about our future. My closest friends have wondered at the fact that I don't seem more emotional to them, and maybe I'm not sure there isn't some validity to their thinking I'm "shut down emotionally." But, I think when you hear about someone else having cancer your own first reaction is, "oh my gosh! how awful!" and you immediately feel sad for those affected. But that's not really how it goes when it's actually happening to you (or at least, to me). Finding out your spouse has cancer is a gradual and excruciating process (if you've read much of this blog, you know how much waiting for information there is in the early weeks, and how frustrating it is). It's like the "boiling a frog" story, and so I never had a single moment of high-drama, bomb-dropping news. Someone asked me today when Jared was diagnosed and I fumbled around in my brain trying to figure out what to say. uh... he was diagnosed May 16th to August 10th.

Also, the news, "we have cancer" is very dramatic, and movie-like, and I think people take it that way. There's practically ominous background music during the statement, followed by a cheesy light-pop song about goodbyes and a sudden change of weather to gray, rainy, and cold. But the reality of living it is so much different. I think it must be kind of like being audited by the IRS. If a friend of mine was being audited I would think, "oh my! that sucks! poor them!" and I would feel sad for them. But when you, yourself, are being audited, the news strikes you differently. You are shocked. You feel a sense of dread. You feel much fear and trepidation. But there is also a lot of hope and anxiousness. There are a lot of unanswered questions, lots of work to do, and the constant thought: "maybe things will turn out fine." You become absorbed in the minutia of things you have to do in order to make everything turn out fine, become very busy gathering records and organizing a plan, and you fixate on that hope.

When I first found out about Jared's cancer (or, at least, reached the phase of diagnosis where we knew there was a tumor and were reasonably sure it was cancer of some kind), I was in a constant state of high anxiety and nervousness. I actually laughed when I told people about it on the phone because it sounded so ridiculous coming out of my mouth. I became obsessed with trying to arrange for disability insurance, life insurance, managing doctor appointments, canceling gigs, finding baby-care for surgery, whatever "stuff" had to be done. Don't get me wrong. Given a quiet minute alone I would start to get a deep pit in my stomach that felt like it might be bottomless, and thus I would immediately try to find something to do. It's like it's too unthinkable to think about, so you don't.

Lots of people have kindly thought that I might enjoy talking to someone who has "been through it." Bless their hearts, but I really wouldn't. People who have "been through it" tend to want to tell you their story, and all about what "it" was like. But really, everyone's experience is different, and I don't want to anticipate any horrors. If I cross every possible bridge out there before I have to I just might go out of my head, so I only want to know about things as they arrive, deal with them as they come, learn about them as I need to, cross the bridges when I come to them. It's my way of maintaining my sanity, so I apologize to anyone who wonders why I don't want to talk about cancer or, especially, the future.

So, anyway, all this is to say that you don't need to feel sorry for us in a movie-like drama way. This isn't T.V., it's life, and I really don't spend my time crying. The sun is actually shining. Funny things do happen (with no laugh track, I might add). I don't, unfortunately, look much like Angeline Jolie. And this won't be over in two hours. If I get audited by the IRS, on the other hand, I would sure accept your condolences (and some good background music).