Handling being support when your partner is battling cancer.

in #life7 years ago

Often the focus of cancer is on the patient, and it should be! However, in the background is a group of people who are now in supporting roles to the patient. Everything in your life gets turned upside down. At first, I was like I got this, no worries I have all the energy, all the strength, we can beat this. As the year wears on though man does it get hard to keep your head up. This sucks mostly because your partner is literally depending on you to keep their emotional head above water.

My wife and I thought we had beaten the beast and were in recovery mode. Three weeks ago it came back, just a little pin prick compared to a 4" tumor, but it was crushing. Both of us have struggled to find that happy place since then. Struggled to see a way we are going to grow old together and have all the fun we want with this life changing beast in our lives too. It sucks. I miss my wife, I miss her vibrancy, her ability to find the silver lining in everything, her smile. But there are mundane challenges too.

We have two kids and we have lost %25 of our income. It hurts and I am trying to not let it effect the kid's lives, so I am sucking in my spending everywhere. The emotional hit of that is bigger than you might think when I was finally getting my forge up and running which has been a 20-year goal of mine. Tools are not a necessity when your family has needs. Add on to that I have very little to no money to invest in crypto and NOW crypto is exploding all over the damned place. the emotional toll is pretty heavy when you have friends who have made 30k in the last month.

All in all, life is good, we are still beating a cancer that has a 4% survival rate. We are still living a full beautiful life, we still have a roof over our heads, vacations we can afford, food in our bellies (which is healthier than it has ever been and we already ate pretty clean) but sometimes you just need to fucking vent... I need some major victories here in the near future to prop up my bruised little emotional ego.