Because no else should have to walk in these shoes

I am participating in Strides for Melanoma Walk for Awareness to help raise funds towards melanoma patient support, prevention efforts and education. Melanoma is a serious and potentially deadly form of skin cancer. In North America, one person dies from melanoma every hour. But, it doesn’t have to be this way.

My husband, James, was initially diagnosed with melanoma in June 2014. By the time it was diagnosed, it was Stage III and already traveling outside the primary site. Surgery removed the tumour on his face and 42 lymph nodes in his neck. By August 2016, it had metastasized to his brain, liver and bowel with a terminal prognosis. In an effort to buy time, James suffered multiple hospital stays, surgeries, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation treatments, post-seizure ambulance trips, and multiple blood transfusions. Our last (and last) anniversary together was spent in a hospital room. All this, James did with his typical positive attitude and jokes. James, succumbed to this dreadful disease in January this year, just 2 weeks before his 40th birthday.

He left us to carry on without him and I struggle every day with this profound loss. As part of my grieving and healing process, I work to raise awareness around the prevention and diagnosis of melanoma. If James’s primary lesion had been caught sooner, if the metastatic tumours had been caught sooner, he might still be here or at least have had a better chance.

I was witness to James’s cancer journey from the beginning in 2014 to his very last breath. I would never wish this suffering, his or mine, on anyone. If I can play a small part in the fight against melanoma then it I must do it. It is what James wanted.

We hold on (posted Oct 9, 2016)

For more information visit (and support!) one or all of the following:

Melanoma Network of Canada

Melanoma Research Foundation

AIM at Melanoma

We hold on

I have been absent from my blog for a while – 10 months according to WordPress.

I’ve had a busy year. I was hired at a great job in April and learning the ropes and getting back on a workday schedule took much of my time and concentration. Basically, I was at the top of my game – a new job perfect for me working with databases, married to an amazing, loving man, and a cute, little house for two. With two solid jobs, we started planning for trips and adventures to celebrate our milestone birthdays next year. We got ourselves on a new healthy regime of exercise and simple, organic foods. We couldn’t be happier. And we held on to dreams.

In August of this year, my husband started getting headaches. We attributed it to the humid summer that Eastern Canada was experiencing at the time. While asking our pharmacist what to do about the persistent pain, he got physically sick in the store. I drove him to the local ER. They treated him for the pain and nausea and sent him home. The next day his regular doctor sent him for a CT scan of his head. With my husband’s history of melanoma in 2014, his doctor just wanted to rule it out. I was at work when my husband called. “They found a lesion on my brain. I need you.” And we held on to hope.

Our world since has been a blurry whirlwind of scans, x-rays, surgery, and more bad news of cancer in the liver and bowel. The tumour in the liver is inoperable. It is just too large and in a delicate spot. When the doctor said to my husband, “This WILL take your life in 6 months to a year,” my heart froze, then it broke. It shattered like a rose fresh from a liquid nitrogen bath that has been dropped to the floor. The doctor quietly dismissed himself from the room. We held each other so tight and sobbed. We whispered our love and promises between moist, gasping breaths. And we held on to strength.

Since that day, there have been hospital stays to combat nausea, too thin blood and pain, doctor appointments, blood transfusions when his hemoglobin dropped too low, more surgery, then chemo, immunotherapy and radiation in an effort to buy a couple extra months or even just one more day. And we held on to love.

Today is the 11th anniversary of the day we met. I felt that meeting coming in my solar plexus for months, like the wild excitement before a big vacation away. We met at Christmas time at a bar. At the end of the night, we were slow dancing, oblivious that the music had stopped and the lights had come up. My friend gently pulled us apart and held up my phone number for him. On Boxing Day we had our first date. The rest, as they say, is history. I have told my love that, for the rest of our life together, he never has to buy me a present. There is no way he could ever top the first present. Him – Best. Present. Ever. And we held on to each other.

And we hold on. We will keep holding on until he let’s go. And then I will hold on to memory.

Update: My beautiful, funny James passed away with his loving family by his side on January 21, 2017. He will be missed. He will be loved. He will be remembered.

Choose the Pebble

It was June when I was first heard, “Your husband has advanced melanoma.”

After receiving this news, my husband and I cried together while we absorbed this information. We kept saying, “We can beat this,” but my mind rushed to all the worst places it could go and, as an administrative assistant, I immediately started planning for worst case scenarios. Then, after a few days of planning his funeral in my mind, I realized, “Gee, he’s taking this quite well.” And I started to watch him. I looked for signs that my alpha-male husband was cracking under the pressure; that he was just hiding his true thoughts and feelings to spare me. I slowly realized that he wasn’t. In his mind, he had already beaten cancer.

Now, I have worked in the healthcare industry and I had done my research so I was well aware that, since he also has lupus and a blood-clotting disorder, he has a less than 40% chance of survival. I started thinking he was living in a fantasy world and I was angry with him for not facing this situation with me. I became like a pebble in his shoe, nagging him to do this or think that or read this research that explains how likely he is to die from this type of aggressive cancer. But he would crack a joke or just ignore me, which made me angrier. I felt like I was fighting for his life on my own.

Then I noticed that, emotionally, he was starting to pull away from me, and it occurred to me that I could lose him before cancer even has a chance to take him from me. I knew something had to change and it wasn’t him. Who was I to tell him he’s wrong in having a positive attitude? So I changed MY attitude. It’s a struggle and I’m certainly not a constant ray of sunshine.

After all, I have read the research and cancer websites and I am aware that my husband’s chances aren’t great. But, there is a chance. And soon, instead of seeing this as my husband’s final months on earth, I started seeing this as, just an awful situation that we have to get through, but that we would get through it…together.

The doctors are amazed that we joke around while we wait for our appointments. They don’t usually hear laughter coming from waiting rooms filled with cancer patients. These doctors also seem relieved to work with people who are not angry with them or panicking. And they start to smile and spend a little more time with us to discuss options and answer our questions. One doctor even joined in when we were coming up with cool and funny stories to tell people about where my husband’s scar came from. “Tell them you tried to stop a bank robbery and got stabbed! Or you got hit by a car while saving a baby in a runaway carriage!” Not to mention the great Halloween costume ideas we started coming up with: Frankenstein, Phantom of the Opera, a zombie…including a built in scar on his face and neck.

I like to think that, for these doctors who deal with frightened, angry people and death each day, we are a bright spot in their day. Perhaps they talk to colleagues over coffee or to their family over dinner about this hopeful and goofy couple.

Like a pebble in a pond, perhaps our hope and laughter will continue to ripple outward and inspire someone else, and their ripples will reach out to more people. We may not change the world, but, our ripple may, eventually, inspire someone who will. Maybe someday the ripple will even make its way back to us again when we need a reminder to keep going.

I told you all that so I could say to you: Life and work will not always be easy. However, you will find that you can get a lot farther, and it will be much less painful for everyone if you choose to be a pebble in a pond, not a pebble in a shoe.

[Written Oct 3, 2014]