It’s now past Thanksgiving and I had planned on writing this last Saturday morning after Jills chemo but it’s hard leaving my wife side, when you only want to spend every minute you have with the woman you love.
When should I step away, when would you. Do I leave her when the pain is racing through her legs, do you leave when she is finally able to crack a smile again as the television flickers in the background, or do I sneak off when she is sleeping knowing I won’t be there when she awakes.
Do I say no I have more important thing to do when she asks me to stay, would you?
Chemo went as expected, long. We arrived at 7:30 in the morning and didn’t leave until almost 5 that night. The Nurse Practitioner that saw Jill when we first arrived had some crazy thoughts that the long incision up her belly from the small bowel resection was not healing and the only way, she could make that determination would be to drive a cotton swab into the almost completely closed wound on my wife’s belly as she screamed out in pain. Only after fully terrorizing my wife with talk of reopening her wound and filling it with gauze, did her doctor finally come in pretty much say the exact opposite of the nurse practitioner and then send her off to chemo. But my wife is still the only Chemo patient that has a pile of food when she is tied to her IV and it is still surprising the nurses with her appetite even through the drugs nausea. She is even wearing one of her very pretty wigs.
The modest diamond engagement ring that my Grandfather had gotten from Venezuela to propose to my grandmother is once again on my wife’s finger. It was hard decision to take it to the Lewiston pawn shop when we first started our Job working for SAS retail, but we had little choice as we waited for our first paychecks. If it hadn’t been for my brother Fred, I would have been surly lost and found its way to another family or be melted down for its base elements. Once again it is around her finger safe and sound.
We came home from chemo to the stunning news that Maine care had canceled Jills health insurance just after mailing us a letter that they had messed up our records back in April and they were giving us a 40-day extension. So, as we are recovering from Jills emergency surgery and getting the paperwork together that they want, then out of the blue they cut us off less than a week after they had told us we had over a month. Giving us the lovely change in her prescription costs from about 2$ to now over 60$.
Nothing tares at your soul quite so much as Jill turning to me with tears in her eyes that no matter what we were going to have a Christmas with presents this year, with cancer your mortality becomes crystal.
The only present I want is my wife to be healthy once more