Super Bowl Weekend

I got a personal trainer. 

This is like like 9th time I've done this in my lifetime.  But this one's different.  He makes me feel like a BEAST and I love it.  He looks like Hulk Hogan and sounds like Mickey from ROCKY and when I lift weights he tells me, "Don't be average! Be great!" And I spend our  entire session on some endorphin high and am convinced I'll be a fitness model by next year. He's just that good.  This past Saturday I was doing things I'd never done before.  I was bench pressing and doing flys and really watching my form and just putting in some hard work.  "C'mon Jac- gimme 5 more.  I'm sure you been through harder things then this in your life..." Jimmy called out.  I pushed through the last 5.  I finished, put my weights back and said, "a year ago today I was with my Husband at PENN for his first 4 day chemo treatment.  Believe me, this is nothing."

And so it was.  Just a year ago.

We woke up early. Our land line rang - which at that point usually signaled a call from Sallie Mae or Pennsylvania Oncology.  Neither of which we were too fond of at this point.  It was Pennsylvania Oncology and they told us to get in as soon as possible, we had a "long day" ahead so we needed to start the first couple of chemo drugs soon. 
We held hands walking in the bitter cold to the offices overlooking Washington Square Park.  It is a very strange feeling not knowing if you're walking toward the beginning or the ending of your life together.  All I knew of chemo was that it made you die.  You vomited. Lost your hair. You wasted away.  You evaporated.  And I didn't want that for the person I loved more than anything.  But I didn't want this cancer that had quickly whittled him down 20lbs in 2 weeks to overtake him either.  We had no choice.  So with green juice in hand we took our chances.  I packed his toiletry bag with all natural products and brought him a case of his favorite Honest Teas to escape the obligatory IV drip of ginger ale that hospitals love to force on all of their tenants.

After hours and hours of rituximab, prednisone and other concoctions- Mark had a stint placed in his arm and we finally had our room on the 6th floor.  The cancer floor- what our Nurse referred to as, "Hope Hall".  But the man next door to us was dying.  He was old and dying and his church choir would stop by everyday to sing for him while he died.  And I didn't want Mark to die.  "He has a very different cancer than you guys have" another Nurse assured us- "I'm gonna see you two here in June at our survivors picnic and this will be all over with" she smiled and rubbed our backs. It was midnight by the time they were ready to start the major chemo drug.  It was in a glass bottle and glowed bright yellow. It was terrifying and the warmth of June and the end of cancer felt years away. Not months. 

It was the 3 of us.  Mark, our Nurse, and me.   She turned the lights down and told us to take a minute, take a deep breath and make a wish.  My eyes welled up and Mark held my hand tighter.  The nurse pressed start and there we were.  Having chemo.  Eating ice cream.  A few nights later curled up together in his bed watching the Superbowl, sharing our favorite meal from a restaurant down the street that we loved that I'd played the cancer card and guilted the Chef into making past breakfast time.  Mark never let me stay the night on the recliner beside him.  He hated the idea of me sleeping in a hospital.  I cried myself to sleep in our bed every night he wasn't there so afraid this was how I would have to get used to sleeping. Alone.  But the four days passed.  The Giants won the Superbowl and Mark came home.
He didn't evaporate.  He was still there.  And we've fallen asleep in each other's arms every night since.



It's going to be hard for me to ever think of Super Bowl Weekend.  Super Bowl Sunday.  Any of it- without remembering that weekend and all of the awful attached to it.  Even though our ending was bright- we'd both be lying if we said we're over it.   No.  People with cancer and the lymphomaniacs who love them suffer from a very special PTSD. You look around and wonder why out of everyone else who still suffers you and your family don't anymore. And before you know it instead of being riddled with cancer, you're riddled with guilt.  More than anything it's the fear that life could ever return to that day.  That day you found out something was wrong and suddenly you were suffocated by uncertainty and fear.

This past Thursday night we sat side by side in our favorite restaurant enjoying our favorite margaritas and nachos.  We had gone their on our first anniversary. The night we got our marriage license. Valentine's Day.  When we thought we didn't have cancer.  When we beat cancer. And now for restaurant week though it quickly became another 'Cancerver-ssary'.  I'm not gonna lie.  I wanted free Churros -so I let the waitress in on our victory against the big c then before I knew it I was crying into Mark's shoulder.  "It was just so scary, babe" I wept.  "I know, but I'm here.  We're here. And it's over" Mark reminded me calmly.  And still I cried.  Just at the thought that I may not have been able to hear that voice- my favorite voice- every day.  And the thought that there were people out there- some of them I know and love- with that same fear.  A fear nobody should ever have to know.

But Mark is living proof that it will not always be fearful.  Life is uncertain. In fact I recently read the energy forecast for this month and was terrified to hear that was the "theme" of the month.  But what we endured and survived just one short year ago shows me every day how important it is to ground yourself in this moment.  And to be grateful for this moment.  This moment is your life.
 
bisous xox
Jac