I’ve been here before. As I walk to my car to go to work, my feet are heavy, and my stride is slow. My stare is intensely focused, but all I see is a blur. It’s the same stare you use to find the secret 3-D dinosaur hidden in the mall-bought wall art from the ’90s. My backpack is tugging my giant frame down, and my skin is numb.
The cold Santa Cruz morning air had zero effect on me that day, but a chill shot up my spine and shocked me back to reality. I have been here before. I know this feeling. It’s cancer, and that fucker’s back.
But he wasn’t back, not in the literal sense. In fact, he never left us, no matter what the blood tests stated. He sticks around. He haunts. He’s like a bad friend without a job who won’t leave your house. That day he decided to remind me that he still owned a piece of me. Dick.
You see, ten minutes before, I pulled the blanket up a little higher on my wife Alicia, safely asleep after suffering through an anxiety and pain-induced panic attack. Alicia has Hairy Cell Leukemia (HCL), a very rare, incurable blood cancer. She’s in remission, and as far as the “cancer” goes, she’s doing well. She’s not “cured,” and her life is not normal again. She’s been suffering from crippling migraine headaches for over 15 months. One of those non-side effects (it’s not on the label) post-chemo side effects. Her migraines have become part of her life, part of our lives.
But that day was different. Alicia slept almost 20 hours the day prior. She has not slept like that since recovering from chemo. Her slumber was violently interrupted by a crushing migraine, a harsh reminder that most days begin and end like this now for her. Except for that day, it was one migraine, too many. So the pain brought on despair, which lent itself to hopelessness, which caused her to have a panic attack.
The tears and gasps for air triggered me into action. Heading into work, I dropped my backpack and sat next to her in bed. I’ve done this before. I talked her out of panic and back to reality. I’m pretty good at it. I disrupted the panic and helped her return to the world where the air is plentiful and you can see beyond your nose. I held her hand, or maybe it was her arm, until her breathing slowed, and she fell asleep. I picked up my backpack and quietly exited our bedroom, slowly closing the door behind me.
That’s where he started. Cancer. In an instant, or maybe in parallel, I was transported back 18 months to when 20-hour sleep days and a panic attack were considered Tuesday. The recall was vivid. It was real. And it scared the shit out of me.
That walk to my car took forever. My heart was pounding, and I remember thinking to myself, “I can’t do this again. I just can’t. I have nothing left to give. This isn’t fair.” It was all very real to me, physically and mentally. This incident forced me to see and feel what I worked so hard to bury deep in my gut, my fear of Alicia’s cancer coming back.
At the end of my 7-minute commute, I figured it out. Alicia’s cancer is not back. I know this because we have the bloodwork. But that sequence of her pain and my care brought me right back to our days ruled by surviving cancer. I realized that as scary as they were, those days made sense. These days, the year since remission makes no sense to me. I don’t know what tomorrow will be like, and I don’t know what or who I will be tomorrow.
I’m a decently smart guy. And I’ve done the research. I know that cancer caregivers can develop PTSD, depression, and extreme anxiety. Yet, here I am, sitting in a parking garage, trying to figure out what the hell is going on with me. Here I am, the guy who knows these facts but who did not take action to get the support he needs to manage those impacts.
I didn’t know why I tolerated lying to myself for so long. What I did know was that I didn’t want to feel like that again. What I did know is that there was only one person who could make things better, me.
I lifted the lid of my trunk, slung my backpack over my shoulder, and walked to my desk to make my first therapy appointment. It was a journey of 200 steps that took 18 months to complete.
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