Cavan Reflections

By: Anne Corke

Aug 31 2013

Tags: cancer

Category: Life stories, Rants

5 Comments

Last September, we were informed that my husband’s cancer had returned, that it was terminal and that he had about a year to live. In an effort to prolong his life, he submitted to radiation again and began another round of chemo. The first chemo cocktail did not halt the cancer’s progress, nor did the second. He has been offered a third alternative which is given each week. As anyone who has had chemo knows, it’s a totally unpleasant experience. Nausea, vomiting, weakness, extreme fatigue, general malaise, just kind of takes the fun out of life. Gary has halted chemo. He’s had enough.

Gary’s cancer journey began in 2006 with prostate cancer which was successfully treated with surgery. Around the time that he was declared free of this cancer, he began to have trouble swallowing. This was the beginning of the second cancer, esophageal cancer. The surgeon decided to treat it aggressively as it’s a particularly dangerous form of the disease. Gary had twenty five radiation treatments and two chemo treatments, a short month’s rest, then seven hours of major surgery to remove the cancer. Although he was given a less than ten percent chance of surviving it, the surgery was successful but the recovery was long and arduous. Gary was in Oshawa hospital for eleven weeks, two in critical care, and many of his medical team did not think he would survive. Two days after surgery, he was put on a ventilator, he developed pneumonia and blood clots in his legs. His heart rate was dangerously fast, running as high as 140. But somehow he managed to get through all these crises and finally returned home at the end of May 2011, extremely weak, barely able to walk. Thus began more than a year of recovery, struggling through each day, trying to regain strength. By the summer of 2012, he was feeling quite well and things were finally looking up. In August, he told me he wanted to get a guitar, that he had always wanted to play. He bought a beautiful dark red guitar and began to practice. But more trouble was on the horizon. In September, his right hip began to hurt. We thought he had probably pulled a muscle and that it would take a few weeks to mend. It didn’t get any better and to his surgeon’s surprise, his next CT scan showed that cancer had developed in his hip. The surgeon’s verdict, terminal, a year to live. Despite all he had been through, it seemed that the fates were against us. Which brings us back to today. The predicted year is almost up. Now we wait, wondering each day how Gary will be feeling, wondering how the disease will develop now that chemo has stopped, wondering what will happen next and how we will cope, trying to take a day at a time, trying not to look too far ahead, scared of the unknown, trying to stare death down.

Copyright 2013 Anne Corke