What doesn’t kill you

Cancer played a big part over the last six years of my late husband’s life. Is it the reason Joe isn’t with us today? Maybe. No one knows for sure.

Seven years ago, my husband was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. The cancer was in his colon and lymph nodes. The only symptom he had was being constipated. He’d had food poisoning the month before and took a few too many Imodium trying to slow things down. When he couldn’t go it was time to go for a colonoscopy. He was already a year behind in his first screening anyway.

On September 25, 2017, Joe’s new GI doctor stepped into the room after the procedure. Joe was out like a light, farting up a storm, probably dreaming about the boobs on the nurse he had tried to motorboat just 30 minutes earlier under light sedation. The doctor looked at me and said, “it doesn’t look good”. And then said it again to Joe after he woke up. Shock, tears, and fear ensued. That was the day I became a caregiver, but more importantly the moment I realized there was a chance I could lose him.

But my Joe was having none of that!

For the next two and a half years I watched my beautiful man endure twenty-four rounds of the nastiest chemotherapy. It caused him to have horrendous mouth sores, a cold sensitivity to everything he ate, drank or touched, unexplainable fatigue, and neuropathy pain in his feet and ankles so bad he could barely walk some days. He went through two port surgeries, because one stopped working. Ended up with a blood clot in his arm from said port. Received the additional diagnosis of insulin-dependent diabetes thanks to all the steroids they pumped into him during treatment. When the cancer came back in his liver, he almost died during life-saving resection surgery after losing two-thirds of his blood volume. It was a wild ride to say the least.

Yet through it all he woke up every morning, took a few minutes to scream, yell and bargain with God, and then he moved on with his day encouraging everyone around him.

My Joe had the most amazing attitude. Always positive. Never focusing on the bad. It was the most awe-inspiring thing I had ever witnessed in my life. I knew he was tired. I knew he was in pain. I knew the treatments along with the cancer were killing him a little bit every day. But he made it! A stage four colon cancer survivor!

After treatments, he found his way back to the gym and was working out four days a week. He was the leanest and healthiest he’d ever been. And he remained that way for three plus years. Until the day he suffered sudden cardiac arrest in his recliner in our living room. Twelve days on life support before I had to make the agonizing, heartbreaking decision to let him go.

I say all of that to say this: attitude is everything. Losing your spouse and both of your parents within a 13 month period is devastating and life changing. But Joe’s strength has helped me learn how to navigate this new normal. I owe it to him to live my life to the fullest for both of us. I owe it to him to encourage others just like he did. I owe it to him to be happy.

I’m standing a little taller, my footsteps are a little lighter these days. I have Joe to thank for that. He set the best example.