My best friend Kelly and her husband, Joey had left only a few minutes before after spending the entire day helping me move boxes from my old apartment and I was starting to feel a little bit lonely. No surprise really. I'd always felt lonely in my tiny, one bedroom apartment, I should have known I'd feel lonelier in a big old house like this one.
I busied myself gathering pizza boxes and paper plates from the patio table and tossing them into the trashcan by the sliding glass doors before laying down on a lounge chair and pulling out my journal.
I still found it hard to believe it had been nearly six months since I'd been diagnosed with cancer. My life had certainly become a worldwind of constant activity that made those six months both fly by and, at the same time, seem like an eternity.
The first month following diagnosis had been spent in and out of the hospital receiving weekly chemotherapy treatments before I underwent surgery to remove as much of the cancer as possible.
Unfortunately that meant removing everything. I lost my ovaries, my fallopian tubes and my uterus... and along with them, a pregnancy I hadn't even known about.
True I was only about five weeks pregnant, but it was a pregnancy none the less, and so along with the knowledge that I could never have children because of the cancer, I had to endure the heartache of knowing the cancer had claimed the child we should have had. I was heartbroken over the loss, but sometimes I still feel that losing that part of our future dream had been more difficult for Nick that it had been for me. Perhaps because once the initial shock wore off I'd had to focus my efforts so hard on just trying to stay alive, or maybe because I'd become so accustomed to pain, that I'd somehow been able to distance myself from the emotion I should have felt from losing what would have been my first and only pregnancy.
Even with the distance created it had easily been the worst month of my entire life, and yet somehow, by the grace of God, and with help from my family and friends, I managed to make it through.
And the months since those first weeks had been such a blur of chemotherapy and radiation treatments, doctor's appointments and specialists visits, and sickness and sickness and more sickness. It was hard to believe... VERY hard to believe, that I was finally nearing the end of it all.
Treatments are never easy. The one question I get asked the most - "What is the chemotherapy like?"
Well, it sucks. I won't lie. Nick and I (or whoever happens to be my chaperone for the day), wake up in the morning and drive the 40 minutes to the hospital where I spend a series of hours - as little as 5, as long as all day - sitting in a small room hooked up to an IV that sends poisions into my body. Poisions whose bags are marked with big yellow caution labels warning that no one but the cancer patient should come into contact with the contents. Warnings that make me cringe. And as if that thought isn't a disturbing enough... well then what comes after those poisons are dripped into my body... that's the worst.
Nick, God love him, will do anything and everything in his power to make those chemo days go by a little faster and more smoothly for me. He'd do anything in his power to keep me feeling as good as possible for as long as possible. He'd read to me or sing to me or just sit there with me and hold my hand as I sleep, and somehow the simple act of him just being there is usually enough to lift my spirits.
When the treatments are over we drive back to my apartment and that's when the toughest part begins. Inevitably, each and every single time I have chemo, I spend the night puking my guts up in our bathroom (if I'm lucky enough to make it there in time) while Nick sits by and rubs my back or strokes my forehead or offers me small sips of water as he reassures me that it will all be over soon. And even though I know he's right, that it will all be over soon, the thought isn't really comforting until it is. When the vomiting finally ends after what always seems like a lifetime, and usually only because there's simply nothing left to vomit, I sleep for hours on end, curled up in his arms. And that's the only time during the whole process when I even allow myself to think that maybe, just maybe I can actually make it through all this.
It's horrible, so if I sound very strong or brave at all during this, don't let my attitude fool you. I'm really not that strong. Actually, I'm rarely very strong at all. There have been several nights when I've felt like I couldn't do it anymore. When I've felt like I couldn't live through another day or another treatment. It's those nights when Nick takes me in his arms and holds me close to him and tells me that he will always be there for me. Tells me that he would take my place if he could. And it's those nights, after despite having to clean up my vomit or listen to my cries of pain when he's still sitting by my side after 100% of the worst... it's those nights when he says it with his heart wide open, that I know he means it the most.
And though I'd like to believe that this struggle has made me a stronger, better person... for Nick, I know it has.
For me, the worst part of the whole experience, second to the after effects of chemo, has been having to be stuck inside so much. I've spent several weeks in the hospital with fevers since my surgery and there have been times when I had to avoid being out in public, or even around my friends because my blood counts were too low. But we've always played the 'better safe than sorry' card and because a low blood count means that my body can't fight off infections, I have to try my best to avoid any sort of illness or infection altogether.
That's been rough. I've hated not being able to go out to the mall or to dinner or to a movie with my friends. I've hated being stuck in my apartment.
And then there was the day I lost my hair.
I will never forget that morning. I woke up from a rough night and reached up to run my fingers through my hair. When I pulled them away my hands were filled with long strands of blonde. I rolled over and looked down to find the clumps all over my pillow and I screamed out loudly into the morning silence. Nick spent the next several hours holding me in his arms and assuring me repeatedly that I was beautiful and that I would always be beautiful to him no matter what.
My hair continued to fall out all day until finally that night I asked Nick to shave my head. He did so with shaking hands and was about to shave his own head when I stopped him. I couldn't bare the thought of not having someone's hair to run my fingers through. It took a long while to get used to the idea that I couldn't wake up in the mornings and throw my hair up in a ponytail, or that I didn't need a curling iron anymore. I tried to joke that I had the easiest hairstyle in the world... but it still hurt. It still does.
We spent the majority of my good days over the summer house hunting. The lease on my apartment was set to end in November and Nick wanted to buy a house -- our house -- by the end of the year.
We'd found this gorgeous plot of land, right outside of Lexington by sheer luck, and with it's beautiful farm house and the lake on the landscape, we had jumped at the chance to purchase it. The former owners had moved out the last week in September and so I had started moving in this week.
The Backstreet Boys had begun touring in early September much to the chagrin of all involved. Nick had tried to convince me on more than one occasion that they needed to cancel the tour so that he could stay home with me but I had told him no. AJ, Brian and Howie had agreed to Nick's plan but I told them all no as well. I told them that they should go on and enjoy themselves, that I would be fine. After months of convincing and with the promise that Kevin and Kristin would check up on me daily they had finally and hesitatingly agreed to go on the six week tour.
I shivered in the night air and sighed, two more weeks and the guys would be home. I missed Nick so much that no amount of talking to him on the phone would suffice. We talked to each other everyday, sometimes 5 or 6 times a day, but it wasn't the same as having him with me.
It was getting cooler now and I knew the last thing I needed was to get chilled and end up in the hospital with a cold or fever. I gathered up my things and headed to the house. I made sure all of the doors were locked and then headed up to the guestroom. I was saving sleeping in the master bedroom for when Nick came home. I really hated being alone in a house that big so I turned on the tv and drifted off to sleep watching the news.
