Dealing with the “Big C”

No I am not talking about Carole, well yes I am, but she isn’t the “Big C”, well maybe she is.  Before I get anymore confused I had better write this and explain what I mean.

This story starts in 1986, 28 years ago.  Life was hectic.  I was a partner in a firm in Birmingham, Carole was working as a counselor at the vocational school in Talladega County, and we had two small boys.  I hated my job!  I was leaving the house at 6:00 in the morning and not getting home until 6:30 or 7:00 at night.  My kids were growing up without me being at home.  Carole was working her ass off to take care of them, cook our dinner and do her job at the school.  I won’t say life wasn’t good, it was just too hectic and we didn’t have time for each other.  

There were four partners in our firm; one of them accused me of not pulling my weight.  I was pissed; I knew where the work was coming from in the office.  I had the secretary pull the records for the past year and give me the total volume of payment received.  I was producing 60% of the revenue for the firm.  I wasn’t getting 60% of the money!  At about the same time there was this new thing on the horizon called CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) that I was total captured by.  The other partners thought it was some weird idea that would pass on one day soon and there was no reason to invest that type of money in something as crazy as that.  I said screw you guys I will buy the system myself.  So I spent about $10,000 on a computer system and software to have a CAD station.  We had two jobs in the office I did the one using the CAD system.  The other was done using our traditional hand drafting system.  At the end of the jobs, the CAD job took much more of my time but the profit on the job was much better.  OK, just so you have the picture, I am doing most of the work for the firm, I have a method where I can make a higher level of profit and I can spend more time with my wife if I quit and work in Pell City.  The first of March, I gave them the KMA award and walked out the door.  I set up my office in our house.  I was home and got hugs and kisses from everyone in the afternoon around 3:00.  I was doing intellectually stimulating work.  At the end of the April I had already made more money that I had the previous year.

In May, ACEC was having a convention at Sea World.  Uncle Sam gives me a big discount on travel and hotel rooms when I go to conventions.  (Statue of limitations has long since closed on this Mr. IRS)  We pack up and fly to the convention.  May have been the best convention ever.  Carole and I, boys in tow, go to all the cocktail parties and we spend the rest of the time at Sea World and Disney with the boys.  Life was good.

But wait, there was something concerning Carole.  She had a lump in her right breast.  The doctor told her it was OK not to worry about it.  She didn’t accept that answer and forced them into doing a biopsy on the place.  The results came back; it was “The Big C”, Cancer.  Our world came apart.  At first I was in denial.  It couldn’t be true.  We got second opinions.  It was true.  The only choice was a radical mastectomy.  The surgery went well but it was hard on her.  Looking back, I wasn’t as much help, as I should have been.  I felt I had to work, because if I didn’t work we weren’t going to have money for house payments and food. 

It was serious, hard surgery.  While she was in the hospital a woman walked in the room and introduced herself.  She was from the “Reach to Recovery” program.  She talked with us about what Carole would have to go thru in the next few months and answered tons of questions she had about what life was like after the operation.  Questions that only a woman who had been thru the surgery could answer.  I don’t know who she was, we never saw her again.  She was an angel that day.

Recovery was hard.  Carole’s sister Julie spent a lot of time with us during and immediately after the surgery taking care of the boys.  The boys later told us they had no idea of the seriousness of the problem and were having a blast with their Aunt Julie.  I watched her cry many mornings as she did her exercise to get mobility back in her arm.  It was devastating to me to see what she was going thru.  She was tough and worked hard at recovery. 

Things had finally stabilized and were beginning to go pretty good when she found another lump in the same area which meant going back to surgery.  My mother was in the waiting room with me when they came out with the news.  She had cancer in her lymph nodes.  I didn’t have a clue what a lymph node was, but every time I had heard of someone having cancer in their lymph nodes they died.  I couldn’t believe the words, it was like I was having a bad dream and couldn’t wake up, the room was spinning, they told us to wait for her back in the room.  I made it to the elevator and passed out.  Until the night she passed away that was “The Worst Moment of my Life”. 

The surgeon told us he wanted her to see this new oncologist who had just come to town.  The surgeon also warned us he was pretty aggressive which was great and exactly what she wanted.  She didn’t want any chance of not seeing her boys grow up. 

Chemo was tough.  She was working, taking care of two small boys and dealing with chemo.  My mother was a saint; she went with Carole to every one of her chemo treatments.  Norma, my secretary (and other mother) and I took care of the boys.  Carole lost her hair and was very sick during most of the treatments.  She kept going!  Never missed work, never missed any of the boys programs or any of my crazy stuff.  I still don’t know how she did it. 

She was concerned about her looks and believe me there is no sex life during chemo.  I will just leave it at things just don’t work.  It was one of the few times I have seen her insecure.  She wanted to know if I still loved her in the shape she was in.  This was the girl of my dreams.  I assured her I still loved her.  Besides “if I can love you when you are bald with one boob, I will be around for a long time”.  We have shared that line many times with friends. 

If she thought “Reach to Recovery” was hard she hadn’t seen anything yet.  Reconstructive surgery was, well I just can’t tell you how bad it was.  She asked her doctor why he didn’t tell her it was going to be so hard.  And he replied, if I had told you, you wouldn’t have done it.  It wasn’t just one surgery it was multiple surgeries.  Her body kept rejecting the implants and they had to do it again and again.  I think she had four trips to the operating room before they finally got it to work.  All during this time she never slowed down.  The boys and me always came first.  She was their scout leader.  She sewed costumes for the “Full Dress Book Reports”.  She had very little sympathy for women who wouldn’t be involved their children’s lives.  She was nice and encouraging to them but she dog cussed them to me.  She finally lost it one day when this women who didn’t work told her she didn’t have time to help with something in Scouts.  She used a few four letter words and told her she worked every day, took care of the house and fixed a dinner every night for her family and was undergoing chemo therapy, and if by God I can do this, so can you.  Get up off your lazy ass and make something of your life.  She eventually had the other breast removed and reconstructive surgery done on it also, as a preventive measure. 

I won’t tell you we had a perfect relationship during this time.  She was scared, frustrated, tired and generally felt miserable for about 2 years.  I had to learn to be a kinder, gentler person.  She was always a perfect mom to her boys and a perfect family member to our families, but she needed a release and sometime I got the brunt of her frustrations.  It was probably well deserved.  I agreed with and to, a lot of things I didn’t believe to be good or true.  I turned the other cheek.  I walked away from a few conversations.  She needed total and undivided support.  (As a side note never ever tell a red headed woman to calm down.)  My brother-in-law told me he saw a major change take place in me during this time.

Life finally got back to the new normal.  We saw that life was precious and you had to love and enjoy it each day.  We made a vow to always have fun.  We went, we did, we saw, we enjoyed, we hugged and kissed more.  We took “No Tan Lines” cruises to the Virgin Islands and the two of us sailed alone on a 40 foot boat for a couple of weeks each summer. Paul and Michael thought we were disgusting.  (OK Paul and Michael, we did actually wear our swim suits, well most of the time.)  It is pretty amazing that two people who have been married for 20 plus years can spend two weeks alone, love every minute of it and still talk to each other at the end of the trip.  We bought a boat on the coast and then she wanted a bigger boat.  We sailed across the Gulf of Mexico several times.  She loved seeing the Milky Way from the middle of the Gulf.  We watched the moon set in the middle of the night.  Life was good and getting better.

We thought of it as a second chance to do things we hadn’t done.  Carole got more involved in the community.  She retired from her job and ran for the school board.  She got active in the American Cancer Society and worked for reach to recovery.  She became a trainer for volunteers in the program.  She was chair of the United Way Campaign.  She was Citizen of the Year for Pell City.  She took on special projects like not smoking in restaurants in Pell City.  She worked tirelessly.  She told one of our ministers recently that she knew that God must had saved her so she could help other people and she had always tried her best to do be a helper.  She impacted a lot of lives.  So many people have told me of the positive impact she had on them.  She could give hard love advice and people appreciated what she said and didn’t get mad at her.  This was truly a unique ability.

Things went well.  Cancer checkups went from weekly, to monthly, to quarterly, to yearly, to you are cured don’t come back.  We watched the boys grow up, graduate with honors and scholarships, graduate from college, get great jobs, find people they loved and cared about.  I got my credit cards back.  Thank you Jesus!

A few years ago she told me something and looking back it may have been the start of her knowing something was going on.  She told me she had made a pack with God.  “If he would let her see her boys grown and happily married her life would be complete.  As time passed and her request was being fulfilled she was beginning to worry about her deal.”  We laughed about it, shared it with our Sunday School Class and friends.  I told her she should have asked for great grand kids.  She told me she didn’t want to be greedy. 

Then about three years ago it happened again.  We were working in the yard and her back started hurting.  Well hell, you rake leaves for a few hours and you are 63 years old your back is supposed to hurt.  It didn’t stop hurting.  She went to the doctor and they told her that her back was broken.  The only problem was you couldn’t break your back the way it was broken.  The only way you can break your back like that is with cancer.  Oh my God, not again! 

They repaired her back and samples confirmed the doctor’s first impression.  It was Breast Cancer, stage four.  The orthopedic doctor and our niece Beth, who works in the cancer center at St V East, recommend an oncologist.  We had our initial meeting with him, he was great but Carole wanted to use her oncologist that she had used years before.  About two days later Jimmy Harvey her original oncologist called, he was a partner of the doctor we saw, and told her that she was his patient.  He had got her thru this one time and he would do it again. 

We went into hyper mode on the bucket list.  While we had crossed the equator, the International Date Line there was still places to see and things to do.  We worked treatments around trips to Maine, Equator, Europe, and Virgin Islands.  I am not talking long weekend trips we were gone six or seven weeks at a time.  We had fun.  We met new best friends; we took old friends with us.  Last year she was got on to me for working too much, I am supposed to be retired, and we need to do more things together.  I pointed out to her we had been gone 16 weeks that year not including long weekends at the boat every other weekend.  We laughed and vowed to do more next year. 

We had been getting positive results from her treatment, Dr. Harvey was positive for the next couple of years. We got back from France last June for her check up.  New scans showed places in her liver.  I didn’t want to read what Google told me about liver cancer.  I am sure she read the same thing.  Her family insisted we go to Anderson in Houston for more opinions.  We did, their opinion was do what your Doctor in Birmingham is telling you to do.  She started treatments.  The thought of loosing her hair was devastating.  I am sure I helped when I told her that at least this time she would be “bald with two boobs”.  She did well with the treatment.  They would zap her for a couple of days and she would spend most of her time on the sofa.  After that she was up and off to the boat or some other adventure.  January came and time for new scans.  Things were good, places in the back had cleared up and places on her liver were much smaller.  Only four more treatments to go and chemo would be finished, although we knew there would probably be more for the rest of her life.

We were off to the Leeward Islands on a 485 ft. sailboat with the boys and their partners.  She was amazing to everyone on the boat.  Her cute little hats and red wig never slowed her down.  Many of the people on the ship came up to the boys and me and told us how impressed they were with her attitude.

At the end of March she was scheduled for new round of scans.  They weren’t good.  They showed new places in her bones and the places in her liver were much larger.  The chemo wasn’t working.  The doctor told us he didn’t have any other chemo options for her.  All three of us cried.  We knew of some advanced studies in Nashville.  It took a while to set up the appointments and by the time we got to see them her liver numbers were way out of the range of acceptability.  Ten times normal values.  Her doctor went all the way to Director of FDA to see if she could get the medicine under a “Compassionate Care” program.  No luck.  In May Dr. Harvey tried one other form of treatment.  He told her it was going to be bad. 

We spent most of the month of May visiting with some friends and spending time on the boat.  We anchored out several times but it was obvious that she was struggling.  The last couple of days we were there she had to hold my arm as to stabilize her self as we walked down the dock.  The last day she couldn’t get on the boat.  Michael and I had to push and tug on her.  It was time to go home.

Each day was a steady decline which meant more doctor appointments.  She couldn’t tolerate the chemo.  She had sores all over her body, she was miserable and the doctor had to stop the treatment.

The day she passed away, she got up that morning, had breakfast and took a bath on her own.  Paul came for a visit at 10:00 they laughed and talked about his new job for an hour and she wanted to rest.  I checked on her at noon, she was sleeping soundly; at 2:00 Alain and Sandy came for a visit.  We couldn’t get her up.  Home health nurse came and said she has to go to the hospital now.  The evaluation at the hospital told the doctors her liver had completely stopped functioning.  It is hard to maintain composure when the doctor tells you the girl of your dreams has less than 24 hours to live. 

She was in a lot of pain and told them to give her something to make it go away.  They moved her in a room and I don’t know if she ever recognized anyone after they moved her.  A little before midnight we were alone in the room.  Of course I was crying like a baby.  I looked up and she had a tear in her eye, I wiped it away, told her I loved her and always would, she took one final breath. 

I probably should end the story there, but I have to add the moral to the story.  Of course I would have loved for her to have never gone thru dealing with cancer and I would have given anything to have enjoyed a 70^th wedding anniversary with her.  We had a great life together.  I think we were granted a lot of years we wouldn’t have had, if it hadn’t been for modern medicine and good doctors.  She, me and we made the most of those years.  She seized the moment and made the best of each day.  Her passion was helping people.  She did that.  I hope everyone uses her as model to live their life.