That was one thing that I never thought I would hear in my lifetime. But on that day it was real...I had cancer.
My wife told me that I had this look of shock all over my face when the doctor told me what the problem was. I mean really... how does one take the news that they now have a disease that could ultimately kill you? Needless to say I was worried, but not overcome with panic. Which in itself may seem weird to people, but at that time I didn't allow myself to get caught up in unneeded emotions. Now don't get me wrong...I was worried. As a matter of fact, the first thing that came to my mind was my wife and daughter. If cancer decided to run it's course and decide to take me down with it, then how would my wife and daughter go on without me around? So after absorbing the news of I now had cancer, it was a matter of accepting it and moving forward. My wife and I cried for a little while and then regained our composure with this pattern repeating itself over the course of that first day.
I remember one of the first questions my wife asked me was...
"How am I going to get through this? How am I going to be strong enough?"
I basically told her...
"There are days when I will be strong and I will lift you up, but there are going to be days when I won't be strong and you are going to have to lift me up. As long as we get through this together, we'll be fine."
So next came the questions of what are we going to do about this, what are we going to do about that, etc. My answer had always been, "We'll cross that bridge when we get there...let's not worry about it now." And as much as it frustrated my wife, I explained to her that this is a stressful enough situation and we shouldn't make it more stressful by worrying about things that were out of our control for the time being.
After that first day of many questions that were met with uncertain answers, I told her her my philosophy during this whole ordeal, which we adopted and shared with our family members. The first thing we did was give the whole situation over to God and allow Him to work his miracles. Next I came up with three phrases that helped my wife and I (and hopefully my family) get through this. They were:
- This is NOT a death sentence...
- This is just a bump in the road that we have to get over...
- From here on in, we fight like hell to get rid of this....
Thankfully we made this our anthem before the oncologist came to see me, because this put us in the right frame of mind for when the oncologist came to see us.
The oncologist came in the room, introduced himself and asked us, "How do you feel about this whole thing?" I told him we were optimistic about it and that we were relying on God to help us get through it and that I was going to be okay. And as much as I know he meant well, I also knew that he was trying to be realistic about the situation and told us in not so many words, "This cancer can kill you!"
To be continued....
No comments:
Post a Comment