When I got home from work tonight at 2am, Wil came out and we sat and talked about today, February 13, 2014. Another date we might not forget. Gosh, here we have been, looking forward and toward this moment...getting back to the fight...and now we are both in knots! He said "this scares the hell out of me but we are going to do this." It was a conversation like we would have had B.C. Wil went back to bed, telling me I should do that same. I'm bad about blogging post-appointment, so I told him I had a few things on my mind to write.
Today is a big kind of small step in our story. So here I am...thinking. Similar thoughts he is having too. The only difference is he can sleep.
What will it be like? Will he tolerate this new chemo cocktail? Will he lose any function again? And the big one...will it cure him? That's our top goal, right? It's what everyone is hoping for, praying for, sending us love about. When Wil titled this blog "fight the big fight" he meant cancer and the goal was to win the battle. Lately, something has changed in him (and I guess me too). He said tonight, "I don't like the word cure. Cancer goes into remission. But it's always with you and can technically come back anytime. But I won't give up." It would have been a sad statement if it wasn't for the loving wisdom and intent behind it. A sort of peace. I keep comparing life to B.C. That is a memory. Wil is absolutely right in his dose of reality. It wasn't a sad moment. It was just...real. He had been so anxious in weeks prior. Now, "scared as hell" Wil seems resolute. Confident.
Today at PT Wil was up to 5lb weights on his arms...but what's more awesome is that he walked into therapy without his walker. Almost strolled in! During reps he pushed himself further than he ever has...he had that weight training "stank face" of a warrior. There is not a depressed person inside of him right now. He's determined. I could see the intention in his eyes and I noticed how his eyes are beginning to soften and give expressions I, at times, felt I had lost forever.
I'm doing my own "weights" by getting serious about minimizing risks, learning about the immunosuppressed diet and how to cook. I feel like people must think I'm being dramatic when I merely quote what the medical staff have told me: a 3 year span of limiting fresh fruits and veggies (cook it until every possible contaminate dies), no eating out is better, staying out of congested public places, washing the dogs paws every time they come in from outside and no licking (poor sweet chihuahua Bella will never be ok with that), and basically limiting anything alive that has dirt or has touched dirt. Not to mention getting tough on people around us to help keep themselves healthy too and not spread germs. Wil says these are the things that scare him the most. Everyday living can start to look like one big risk. Sit with that for a minute and your head will spin...3 years seems hard to conceive. But those are details we will learn to navigate like everything else that's had to change.
Tonight was the first time we had talked about death since the diagnosis. It's been weeks, maybe months, since we thought about the question of cure. And the possibilities on either side of that coin. Wil said he thinks about death all the time now. It was a calm, matter-of-fact statement.
"Curable intent." Those 2 little words get spoken, thrown about, throughout any conversation about his cancer treatment. I know we will hear them again at his appointment in a few hours.
That day he was diagnosed, the words curable intent stuck to me like black tar. There's no certainty there. No promises I thought.
I would think about death when I heard that phrase the first few dozen times. I would sit at the bottom of my tub in the dark bathroom, letting the shower run over my head, and feel the anticipation of emptiness and loss. Over two words.
Those first weeks I thought about life and life without Wil. Would I be able to keep on? Would I run away to Belize and volunteer to hold orphans? Would I be able to ever move forward without him if it came to that? What if this "cureable intention" would hold no power? And then all his complications hit. Luckily it distracted me instead of taking over me. The death thoughts are back now for me too, but not with such raw emotion. More like a quiet companion. Wil and I seem to have taken two roads to the same place.
Lately, and especially tonight after talking with Wil, what's on my heart is the true contrast between goals and intentions. I believe most of us live with the intention of wanting to be happy people. Maybe helpful people. A person who makes a difference. Someone who loves and is loved. Yet we walk around carrying goals...little tidbits of measurable desires that either lead to another goal or fall short. "I'll be happy when ______." Only to find another replacement goal or become devastated when we never reach it at all. Even Wil and I, in all our Hawaii talk..."when we beat cancer, we'll go to Hawaii and celebrate." When he's cancer free we will be happy, right? Hey, there's nothing wrong with that and I think we should! But what we are faced with every day, is that our intention to be happy, is happening all around us...right now...every time we stop to notice it. We may never get to Hawaii. Happiness is sitting right here anyway, patiently waiting to be acknowledged. Happiness is in bicep curls, in snuggles. In watching him sleep. In all the scary, the mundane, the gross, the heartache, the triumphs, the unknowns.
Our journey has created a steady stream of chances to intimately interact with our intentions. It feels out of place to say our intention is no longer a cure. Beating cancer will be the goal, that won't change. But our intention to love life, and each other, with absolute abandon, to the very ends of where it will take us...these are forces that are not moved by the ebb and flow of goals...and that is where our peace, in the middle of our hardest times, has begun to bloom. Chapter One: Let go of expectations. Chapter Two: Stay Tuned.
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