november

Rob and I had been married for just over a year when he was diagnosed with cancer in the fall of 1992. I remember the doctor telling us that they had found a tumour. I remember thinking, “Ah, a tumour. So it’s not cancer.”

Nothing like a nice bit of denial when the truth seems too much to bear.

The first few days of finding out you or someone you love has cancer pass in a blur. Tests, more tests. Speculation. Questions. Comfort. Fear. It’s strange when someone who you know, who presents as a healthy, active, well person, is found to be, in fact, ill.

He didn’t look sick, after all, or really feel sick until he started treatment.

That was the year that the hospital became familiar. I knew all the corridors of Health Sciences. How to get from one wing to another, even when you had to switch floors because the wings had been built decades apart and didn’t match up very well. I knew the underground tunnels and the best places to park for free. I found out that cancer treatments can cause sterility and if you want to be assured of a chance for biological children, you better bank some sperm. I discovered that some hospital chaplains are pretty good, and some are so bad you should just leave the room.

I divided people into two camps: helpful and unhelpful. If you were unhelpful, I didn’t waste my time trying to be polite. I just didn’t have the reserves to be socially acceptable, understanding or kind. I had a limited amount of emotional energy and if you drained it, you were shut out. Sorry about that. I just didn’t have it in me to let you know that’s how it was.

At one point in time, after we had found out a bit more about his cancer and treatment options and mortality rates, a very kind and caring doctor said something like, “you’re going to have a hard winter, but you will see the spring.”

We carried that with us, all that winter, like a blanket. And we found out that I was pregnant with Joey that spring. (Naturally, I might add…) Joey was born on November 2 and we took him home a few days later, one year to the day that Rob was first diagnosed. I always think of Joey as my son of promise, conceived in hope after a winter of despair.