My wife has breast cancer -- the first 48

One day you're traveling through life without any serious cares and then one day you're not. It is nice to find out how many people are there on that day, though I wish we hadn't had to.

Two years ago on my birthday, the Times Square bomber failed to cause mayhem in NYC. One year ago, the President announced that Osama bin Laden was dead. So this year, when my birthday passed without any major disasters I figured the jinx was gone. I was wrong. Something did happen that day. That day my wife went for a mammogram.

Though only 41, my wife has been going for mammograms since she was 35 as her mother had post menopausal breast cancer several years ago. A week after the mammogram, her doctor called her back to have the radiologist take some pictures as they thought they saw something. Nothing unusual as she has fibroids in her breasts, which tend to look "funny" in the mammograms. This time they looked at the pictures and scheduled a biopsy for her. When she told me this I asked how she was doing (I was at work still) and she said she cried on the drive home. I told her she was probably over reacting as its probably just them covering their butts. What she didn't tell me was that she had seen the pictures too and could see it looked different.

On Monday, I drove her to the hospital for moral support. I was in the waiting room for about 90 minutes when they called me in to see my wife and speak to the radiologist. Now before going in my wife said one of the techs told her they can usually tell if there is cancer right away and would give a hint if everything was ok. Instead, while examining the initial results, they stopped the small talk. We waited for the radiologist and when he came, we just engaged in small talk for a few minutes while he explained that the results would be back in two days. As we were leaving my wife commented that he had a very good poker face. Though I was still optimistic, it began to dawn on me that this wasn't going to be another false alarm.

Wednesday came, I was working from home. The phone rang. It was her doctor's office. They wanted to speak to her but don't worry it's not an emergency. I told her I'd get a hold of her and have her call them back. My heart lightened for the first time in days. But, when I spoke to my wife, I found out the doctor I spoke with was just the OBY-GN. She had just spoken to the other doctor. It was cancer. Damm.

I don't remember much of what she said but we did agree we should start telling people. Then the parent instinct kicked in. Our children are 7 and 11. Someone needs to see them off to school, make sure they are here in the afternoon and take care of them otherwise, something I can't do if I'm with my wife in the hospital. One bad thing about getting cancer at such a young age with young children is that your friends and closest relatives are the same age with children of their own (and in our case younger children). Long story short, after a quick email to our rabbi, I discovered our temple's caring committee was still functioning and that by evening he had lined up at least 5 people who could help us (guess I better make copies of our keys). Turns out that was the easy part. Next I had to start telling people.

My first thought was just to do a status update on Facebook. Then I thought better of that and started to call my side of the family -- well actually text or email. The only actual call made from our house was later that evening when my wife called her mother to tell her the news. It took me 20 minutes to send out the first text to my sister and sister-in-law (didn't help I slammed the phone down onto my desk several times). Then I emailed my director (I had let him previously what was going on), to let him know that the results of the test were not as we had hoped and I would take his offer to be a home based employee for the time being (though I actually found going into the office yesterday to be a relief, once the operation is over and I have to care for my wife, my work hours will get a bit strange). After that, for a good period of time I just sat and stared at the computer. 

I tried to do some work while I composed myself (should have called it a day, everything I did after I spoke to my wife sucked). But then the first response to my text came in from my sister-in-law and I texted back details. Then my sister responded, first by text then by phone. I told her what I knew. All we had were the initial results. Lump just under 1 cm and cancerous. I then sent out emails to other family members, including her sister-in-law with a warning to make sure my wife's brother didn't call my mother-in-law until we gave the ok (we told the rest of her family after the call was made). I spoke with one cousin whose mother was diagnosed with breast cancer about the same age my wife is now (left unsaid, is that while her mother successfully survived that first round of cancer, it came back about a dozen years later, about the time my wife and I married,  and she succumbed to it three years later). 

The rest of the day was a blur. I did some initial research, like what to expect. Discovered that the eating and exercise habits my wife had started about 18 months ago are exactly what you should do after breast cancer. I did the grocery shopping like I usually do after work. Picked up the kids while my wife took her evening gym class like she usually does. Ate dinner, mostly because I figured I better eat something. My wife had already told the children she may have something wrong with her and that it may be cancer so, when she came home, we broke the news to our children. Our 7 year old pretty much ignored it -- she is too young to really understand, her tears will come the first night my wife is in the hospital. Our 11 year old, who has Aspergers, was a bit more blunt -- "Well mom I hope you live until i have children because I will need you  to babysit and dad has already said he doesn't want to babysit." Gotta love long term planning.

We talked a bit about next steps and how we were feeling but didn't really say much -- the shock still warm. I did notice I was getting email replies to my initial messages and reflected on something my mother once told me. I had a younger brother who died in a car accident as a teen. We had a large response at his funeral and the shiva calls that followed. We also received many sympathy cards. Years later, I was driving my mother home from work. A child of one her colleague's had just died and I don't recall how this came up, but she told me she had thrown away many of the sympathy cards we received unopened because she just couldn't deal with it anymore. Looking at all the unopened messages of sympathy I remembered my mother's words and felt like I truly understood them for the first time. Fortunately, I didn't follow my mother's move and, instead read my emails. As the responses have come in, it has been very pleasant to find we had more friends who really do care about us than we realized. I don't think we can do this without them.

I didn't sleep well that night and we were up early as usual. I went into the garage to go on the treadmill while my wife stayed in bed for a bit more. About 10 minutes in I realized I had forgotten to take my water bottle out of the refrigerator and went inside to retrieve it. It was then that I saw my wife sitting on our back deck with her morning tea, something unusual for -- usually she just lets the dog out and goes about her business. Instead of going back to the treadmill (I was going into the office yesterday, so my time was limited) I decided to sit outside and enjoy the peacefulness of the morning with her. There wasn't anything to say. It was if we knew that just as the peacefulness of the morning would soon be taken away by the awakening of our children, the relative peacefulness of our lives would soon also be taken away.

I drove off to work and was amazed to discover how little else was bothering me. Usually the commute is a long, grinding pain, but not yesterday. I didn't care about the trivial things being discussed on the morning radio show. I didn't care about the other drivers on the Garden State Parkway (except for the idiot by exit 137 who almost caused a multi-car pileup). I muddled through my work day, told a few friends what was going on and, fortunately, found myself so busy that I was able to take my mind off of things. Sometimes the routine can be very pleasant. But I also realized I was still in the dark cloud of depression that had fallen on me on Wednesday. Last night my wife and I had a longer discussion about how I was doing. As I said before, she had accepted her fate a week ago, I was still just coming to terms with it and told her that, emotionally, I am still not on the same page as her but that I'm there and will be when the bell rings. She reminded me that she is strong still and not going anywhere soon. Left unsaid is will she still be here tomorrow to see our children grow into adults or next week when she can hold her grandchildren. To think, just a few days ago, our biggest concern was getting estimates to fix our wood floors from a leak (house on a slab, leak in pipes embedded in slab under our food floor, plumber had to chop the floor to get to the pipes). Ha ha.

Today started like yesterday, except I went to the YMCA, as I usually do on days I work from home. I did my cardio, feeling good that I could take some of my frustrations about the events of the last few days out on the machines (my wife mentioned the injustice of her being young, staying fit and getting cancer while passing overweight people, 20 years older, smoking outside her office), I was surprised I didn't destroy the machine when the news got up to the Donna Summer dead from cancer story as it reminded me of what our life was now centered on.

But today I also started feeling a little better. I didn't have to remind myself to breathe in, breathe out. I had a really good conversation with one of my wife's cousins, who also had a health emergency when his children were the age ours now. It was after that conversation that I realized I was definitely in the 7 stages of grief. I am not grieving my wife, who is still alive and well, but I am grieving our old life. There have been several times where I wanted to pull over the car and just cry just as there have been a few occasions where I wanted to put my fist through the PC monitor when I didn't like what a web page was saying.  Just over 48 hours ago we were a young family, healthy, generally in good shape, and planning our vacation. Then we weren't and may never be again. And I am still working on accepting that.

If you've read this far, you are probably wondering why I haven't written about how my wife is feeling, at least not extensively. Well, I started writing this simply to get it out of my system. Then, as I continued, I realized this might be a good historical piece for our children one day -- though they don't realize it yet, this will be a major life event for them for this is the week mommy was diagnosed with cancer and everything changed, and realized I can't speak for my wife, at least not yet. Finally, I'm writing this for the next guy. When I was trying to sort out my feelings the other day I couldn't find the one thing I was looking for: the feelings of a 40 something father of young children whose wife has breast cancer. Greedy that I'm concerned about me at this time? Perhaps, but one thing I don't have is the luxury of time to talk to somebody about what I'm feeling so this is it. As several have told me, and I already know, I need to be strong for my wife and children and the sooner I work through all of this the better for all.