How It Began...

Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope. — Elizabeth Gilbert

“Did you hear the results of the biopsy?” I asked. The moment he heard the question, his face changed, and eyes widened with sadness.

In a heartbeat, I knew he had cancer.

“They called me with the results yesterday,” he said. “But I didn’t have the heart to tell you. It’s breast cancer,” he said with his voice trailing off.

Shock. Pain started spreading from my ears into my head. Then, my ears began to ring. My chest tightened. I couldn’t breathe. 

Breast cancer in…my husband? I couldn’t understand it. I had read about breast cancer happening to men in medical school textbooks, but this was mainly in men with a lot of relatives with breast cancer. Not to ordinary men in their early 50’s, who exercised and lived a healthy lifestyle.

“Every biopsy was positive”, he said, “including the lymph nodes underneath my armpit.” His eyes were soft and glistening now. More than anything, I could feel his compassion. He was thinking more of me and the girls than of himself.

That he had cancer should not have been a surprise to me. I am a physician at the same hospital where my husband had his biopsy. The moment he told me about the matted appearance of the lymph nodes on ultrasound and rapid biopsy, I knew it was cancer. I couldn’t bring myself to face this certainty. So I pretended that there was a chance it was something else.  

The shock felt like it came out of nowhere. My mind and body no longer felt connected. And around me there was a void, which was slowly growing. A feeling started to develop that I was sinking, like a stone into a lake. A dark, black lake where nothing ever comes up from the bottom.

My world started to crumble. A feeling of permanence and security in the idea of my marriage and family life was ebbing away. The idea that he might have a lot of cancer in the lymph nodes of his armpit, which would indicate an advanced cancer, was too horrible for my mind to allow.

Tears welled up in my eyes and I ran to the bathroom where I could lock the door. I needed to be alone and didn’t want him or the girls to see me cry. My entire world had changed in the span of a few heartbeats. Although our interaction took no more than a few seconds, it felt like an eternity.

I would never be the same.