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That is the day we found out my husband had cancer. We had a long weekend to wait for the pathology report and despite everyone telling me he would be fine, my gut told me he had cancer. The World According to Garp had a great word—undertoad—which was coined by one of the young characters as a word for dread. I never really knew what that would feel like until I had 4 days to ponder a cancer diagnosis. Ponder telling our daughters who were 6 and 8 that their beloved dad was sick. Consider whether we would get to celebrate a 20th anniversary. Those four days was a mix of fear, false cheer (mostly by those around us) and edgy anticipation. When the report was delayed by three hours, I allowed myself to hope that someone was looking at them again and would say there was no cancer. Obviously, that did not happen.
If you have read this blog before or know me in real life, you know I hate clichés. I am not going to tell you cancer made our family better or we no longer sweat the small stuff and appreciate each moment of every day. Our family certainly knows that if we face a crisis, we can work as a team and have great family and friends to rally around us. There are situations that we handle differently because we have faced a serious health crisis but we don’t glide through life embracing every bad thing that happens to us with television movie-of-the-week sunny ickiness. Our lives did take a turn four years ago today and we each responded. We have all become advocates for colorectal cancer awareness. Both girls have done research projects on the disease and made presentations to their classes. They have persuaded adults to get screened. They have consoled other children whose family members have been diagnosed with cancer. Cancer touched our lives but never dominated it. That is the key—finding a way to live with cancer without excluding every other facet of life.
