AT THIS POINT, WE had settled into a routine. I took Gina to treatment and went to work, Robyn picked her up and brought her home and then Sofia took care of her from there. As time progressed, Gina and Sofia became quite close, so much so that I almost started to feel like a third wheel. They had their own ways about things, their own jokes, things like that. The air around the house got so thick you could cut it with a knife. I know this makes me sound like a nut, but I started to feel so extricated.
I started to wonder if I maybe did too much by deflecting too much. I think that maybe by trying to take so much on, I was actually working us backwards. To be honest things probably would have been a lot better if I would have just relaxed, stepped up, and gone for the ride, instead of trying to alleviate things by bringing in Sofia.
The weekends usually found a way to get back to normal, but I think that was only because Sofia wasn’t around. As the summer wore on, it increasingly became just us. Our friends began to withdraw. They never said why but I’m sure it was because they were just afraid. People deal with cancer in a lot of different ways and a lot of that depends on who has it. I’m sure if it had it been a friend of ours I might have done the same thing in an attempt to respect their space, not knowing how to act, etc, but the fact that I was on the other end of the bridge on this one made it difficult to understand. It bothered me a lot because even though she would never verbalize it, I knew it bothered Gina.
We would go out occasionally. Typically the chemo would get to her on Thursday and Friday but by Saturday or Sunday she would have enough strength and be stir crazy enough that she would want to go out. We didn’t do anything big, but we might grab a bite to eat or go to church or something. I wasn’t really on the lookout for people looking at her strangely because she really didn’t look all that different physically. The hair was really all she had to worry about but she had a wig. Her chest looked normal because the doctor had given her a special breast prosthetic to wear. Much like they make prosthetic arms or legs, they make prosthetic breasts that fit inside the bra for women to wear until their reconstructive surgery.
Even though other people weren’t, I started to find myself looking at her differently. Not with my eyes, but in general. The intimacy in our relationship at this point had gone right out the window. Not that I didn’t expect that and Lord knows I wasn’t pushing the issue. I mean she didn’t feel good and with the state of her body and her hair, she sure as hell didn’t feel feminine and sexy. I think I started sensing then that this had begun the distancing of us. It was not just because of the lack of intimacy, but that contributed to it. We would come back strong, but at this point we were starting to drift a bit. We were becoming teammates, but not much else.
I started to resent Sofia. This woman had truly begun to make me feel like an intrusion in my own house and Gina seemed to almost always agree with her. I began to feel very replaced by her in Gina’s life. Chalk it up to jealousy or whatever but it began to really bother me when Gina turned to her to talk about something instead of me. I never did fire her, because I felt stuck with the verbal agreement that Gina and I had shared. That’s not to say I didn’t self medicate to make it bearable for me. I’ve always enjoyed a couple of pops, but I drank a lot more with Sofia in the picture. After work and even sometimes at home I’d pour myself a drink or three.
It continued this way until the end of the chemo run. When Sofia finally left at that point, nobody was happier than me to see her go. It was a rough adjustment for Gina at first and they kept in contact for a little while. To be completely honest, every time I knew they talked I would get that tinge of jealousy and all those doubts would surface again. One time I brought them up to Gina and that was a mistake. I should have used some better judgment there. You know that saying ‘pick and choose your battles?’ Well, let’s just say that’s one I should have just let sit within myself.
Eventually this would pass because Gina had always been the type of person who usually only gravitates to people who are in her everyday life. She was always somewhat of an out of sight, out of mind person. The stench of Sofia hung around for a while but eventually it faded away and life got back to normal.