When we received Cassie’s Stage IV cancer diagnosis in July of 2018 the only thing we knew for certain was our lives would never be the same.
Having late-stage cancer means your life is filled with uncertainty. What will a scan show? What will side effects of medications be? How long before the disease progresses? How long will Cassie live? Will our relationship survive the stress? How will our relationships with family and friends change?
After almost two years of living with metastatic breast cancer, we have learned to manage that uncertainty just a little bit. As a couple, we’ve developed coping mechanisms and patterns to help us through. While we haven’t mastered the cancer uncertainty by any means, we have gotten more comfortable with it.
Then along comes coronavirus. Our already uncertain world is rocked with more uncertainty. What happens if one of us gets the virus? How do we stay as safe as possible? Can we see our family and our friends? How do we live our lives to the fullest in this crazy time?
Coronavirus has stripped away some of our traditional coping mechanisms like having dinner with friends, hosting our family at our home, going to a brewery or to a movie. The new uncertainties of the times coupled with the cancer uncertainty has rocked our world. Uncertainty has met uncertainty and it’s disorienting.
We were in California when the first stay at home orders were issued. We remember being in disbelief. This is really serious! One on hand it was difficult to be so far from home and our support network during a pandemic. On the other hand, there were less choices we had to make. No friends or family to see, no restaurants to go to, fewer choices to make which was helpful so we just stayed home.
Now, back in Minnesota, we’re once again faced with lots of uncertainty. As our state opens up, there are so many more choices we’ll have to make and more choices means more uncertainty. It’s scary and once again we feel like we are in a period of transition into some new unknown phase. We imagine that like what happened with cancer, we’ll get better at living in the world of coronavirus uncertainty. But, we also know that it’s likely to take some time.
