WHEN WE GOT BACK and settled into our life again, it was kind of a mix between a new start and a break from the normal that we had come to know. I guess you could liken it to a newly married couple that had already lived together. Things were different for us again. I was more in tune with her and she was more in tune with me. We both paid much more attention to the other’s physical and emotional needs.
Sex had even started to seep back into our relationship. It was hard for her and I was well aware of that. She was taking Tamoxifen and that affected her a bit. Tamoxifen is an antagonist of the estrogen receptor in breast tissue. One of the side effects is a severe reduction in the libido. She also had issues with her physical appearance and to be honest, and even though I NEVER let her know, at times it would bother me too. She put on some weight, her breasts were different, and there were scars that were not exactly appealing. Things like that make a woman look different, but I loved her so it wasn’t too much of a struggle. All I’m saying here is there were definitely things that I had to work on in my mind. All the same, I never let her know these thoughts of mine.
For the most part, other than sex returning to our bedroom, life became pretty uneventful and normal and believe it or not, that is what I craved. It was nice getting back to a routine in which my life (and wife) were not dictated by treatments, appointments, surgeries, etc. At this point all we had on the docket were some follow-ups with Dr. Smith once a month, and Gina started to handle those on her own. She didn’t even really keep me up to date on the time of her appointments. I would ask her occasionally when her next appointment was and she’d tell me, but that was about it. After all, it wasn’t much more than monitoring her. He kept an eye on her blood work and would do a digital check of her left breast to make sure that everything was okay. Her next full-body scan was set for six months later.
This is one of those lessons you don’t really learn until you go through it but at this point, all you can do is learn to live with it…and that’s what we did. We spent the summer like we had countless summers before. We took the kids to the pool, had cookouts, and went to the girls softball games. Jackson was working at UPS and going to Harper College, so he continued on his path with that. There was no more hovering around Mom.
My outlook on things had drastically changed as well. I wasn’t looking at every day and every moment together as a gift. I didn’t look at it as any sort of second chance or rebirth either. Sure, I could feel cancer constantly looking over my shoulder, but all I could do was pray every day and go about my business.
It’s ironic I say I would pray because that’s when faith became a real focal point in our relationship – so much more than even before. A new problem developed from all of this. Now that Gina saw herself as healed by the hand of God, she was a full on “born again.” I was partially into my religion and I certainly recognized God had something to do with her recovery, but I wasn’t as hell bent (no pun intended) on the idea that God saved her. In my eyes, God played a role, but without the help of those amazing doctors and their knowledge of science, we would be in a very different place.