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Recently we learned that Cassie’s cancer has started to progress. Not a lot at this point but definitely the wrong direction. Upon hearing that news, we felt like we had been punched in the gut all over again even though we both know that this is just the deal with Metastatic Breast Cancer. It’s unrelenting. 

We realized right away that it would be easy to fall back into a complete sense of sadness and grief for what we are going through. Not surprisingly perhaps, in Cassie’s metastatic cancer support group that week the subject turned to all that the women in the group have lost and all the ways their lives have changed. One woman spoke up and said at this stage of her illness, she is more focused on what her cancer can’t take away.

We decided that might be a good exercise for us, too. . . . . 

What cancer can’t take away

Craft cocktails 

Stylish shoes 

Delicious wine

Corny jokes and laughter (“Woman walks into a bar. Bartender says what are you having? She says — A Corona and Two Hurricanes. Bartender replies: That’s 2020!”)

Playing games

Time with our friends (even if six feet apart)

Walks with Doc the dog

Grilling good food

Zoom poker

Celebrating milestones 

Bloedows donuts (go to Winona and check them out they are seriously the best)

Sunsets over the river 

Family zooms

22 years of marriage full of love

Recently, one of the other guys in my caregiver support group (Jack’s Caregiver Coalition) emailed me and asked what being a caregiver means to me. Here is what I wrote back.

The person I love most in the world has late stage cancer. Being a caregiver to her is the hardest and most important thing I have ever done in my life. I hate that I have to do it and I wish more than anything that Cassie didn’t have cancer but I am grateful that I feel equipped to play this role. More than anything else, being a caregiver to me means being present. Being around. Listening. Loving. Being there with Cassie, not always to help with something (though that is part of it) but just being in it with her. It’s hard but it’s beautiful too in a way I can’t really describe. It’s also unrelenting. There is never a day she doesn’t have metastatic breast cancer so there is never a day off from being a caregiver. I don’t say that because I am looking for sympathy just to state that’s the reality. You are always on (even when there’s down time you are still on heightened alert). You are always scared. I worry all of the time about Cassie and while I don’t actively think about it I know that somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind I am scared about what will happen when she dies. I can’t imagine my life without her so I choose to focus right now on our life together for whatever time we have left. It’s hard and it’s sad and it’s loaded with grief for what we have lost but we are in it together. Caregiver and caregetter loving as fiercely (if not more fiercely) than ever.