While the drug trial has been starting, I was thinking about one thing in our lives that no one dare talk about. We have had 4 years of pressure and strain, and my natural thought at low points is to wish that this was all over. However, that means only one realistic outcome in our situation (unless by a miracle medicine has a major breakthrough). So the one thing I wish for, would mean the one thing I don’t want to happen – the loss of my wife.
And this is something we don’t talk about. We never talk about the unthinkable trade off. Often times, when someone is ill, we hope it will be a for only a short period, but there are plenty of people out there living with a partner with a long term illness who know that partner is only going to progress in one direction. Sometimes there will not be a happy ending, however much we hope and wish and pray.
It is horrible. We are sick of trips to hospitals, of not knowing if a slight ache or cough is the onset of further pain, and want to have a normal life back, without the worry and limitations that cancer puts on you. We want to move past this great big road block in our lives, and get onto the next stage of our journey together. But I know (we know?) that that next stage is not together, and that the massive road block to get past will keep changing and growing and evolving and constantly throwing up something new.
Four years ago, our hopes and dreams were destroyed during one conversation with a doctor, never to be returned. And whenever we try to regain some semblance of control, and to reassert those hopes, cancer seems to find a way to come back at you, like the evil baddie in a horror film, refusing to die, despite whatever you throw at it.
So, the unspeakable truth is that. We wish for this to be all over, but don’t want the losses that means. And plainly, that just sucks. That knowledge destroys your mind, pervades into every living thought, and holds you back from accomplishing what you should.