THIS WAS A LOT OF information thrown at us in a very short amount of time and I had a million questions running through my mind. I wondered if I didn’t understand the doctor correctly, if perhaps he didn’t explain it well enough, because with everything he gave us, nothing seemed to have a clear advantage over the other. That was probably the most troubling part of it all. The problem with doctors I’ve learned (at least when it comes to this sort of thing) is that even when they’re trying to outline specific plans of action they’re always vague in their dialect on what can happen and how it can affect you. You would hope that by having all the information you could make an educated decision or at least play the odds, but at this point I felt like we were no better off than flipping a coin.
We opted not to do the Hypo-Chemo. Actually, Gina opted not to do it. We discussed it amongst the three of us and I was trying to be very careful at this point not to push my decision upon her. After all, she sat in the same room I did at MD Anderson. She heard the same information I did but at the end of the day, it was her body and her life. It was hard not to try and be that knight in shining armor again, but I had to.
Looking back, I have a feeling Gina was looking out for us more than she was for her with that decision. Logistically maybe she felt it was too much time away from home as all of the treatment could only be administered at the MD Anderson facility. Instead, she said she felt more comfortable doing the treatment of standard chemo with Taxotere at home in Illinois. Dr. Linden accepted her decision, but he wrote up a plan for us to give to our oncologist back home. As we shook hands with him and said goodbye, I couldn’t help but feel like we were leaving something on the table by not following his lead. I respected her wishes and maybe I should have pushed harder here too, but instead I just thanked him for his time, took hold of Gina’s hand and walked out the door.
As we walked through that big hallway that stretched out over the highway my heart felt like someone had let the air out of the balloon again. “Here we go again,” was all that I could think. I know Gina was dreading more chemo. She loathed the thought and to be honest, so did I. I tried to encourage her but inside I was scared. I’m a betting man but even I know going two for two against cancer isn’t an easy task. It’s not impossible, I knew that then and I know that now, but at the time I was looking at the glass as half empty more than I was looking at it half full.
We stopped at the lounge again before we went on to the room. It was still fairly early in the afternoon at this point and we didn’t leave until the next day. While we were sitting at the bar, we met a woman whose sister was at MD Anderson with cancer. As we talked we learned that her sister’s cancer had spread into the soft tissue. As we told her parts of our story, she adamantly warned Gina (and myself) about keeping it away from the soft tissue (i.e. liver, lungs, brain, etc). You might think after all we’d been through that day, having a stranger giving us advice would be too much, but instead, it encouraged Gina. It gave her fighting spirit a little boost.
That might have been the first time I saw how much support can come from being with one of your own. I used to see these walks against breast cancer but I always thought they were more of a way for corporations and people to feel good about themselves. I never saw them for the support that women and men like myself gain from being around the throngs of other people sharing stories.
We went to a nice restaurant and I noticed as we sat down how beautiful Gina looked. That hurt me more than anything because on the surface, she looked fine. Even she would tell you, she felt good. She felt healthy and strong. She didn’t look or feel like a woman who had a deadly disease running around ravaging her insides. I spent most of the dinner trying to shower her with smiles. I felt so close to her right then, but that’s the roller coaster that cancer becomes. Good news and bad news. Close and alone.
We started to talk some more about her decision to forgo the Hypo-Chemo, but I made a conscious effort to try and make jokes and change the subject. I think I even told her that we could talk about it later but after everything that just happened and knowing what lay in store for us again, I wanted to lighten her load and just make it a nice night out. When we got back to the room it was tense. We made a few calls to my folks and my sister to let them in on the news. Nothing in too much detail but they were concerned and asked us to let them know as soon as we knew anything. After the phone calls, we didn’t talk much. We pretty much changed clothes, crawled into bed, and watched a little television. The emotional exhaustion took a pretty heavy toll on her because she fell right asleep. I, however, didn’t fall asleep very easily. I laid there watching her sleep, my mind racing as I could feel myself gearing back up into battle mode.