Oct 20 2008
Life.Love.Cancer: Part III
Editor’s Note: This is part of a ten-part series written by The Butterfly Temptress.
For information on how you can help, please the introductory post or go directly to the http://thebutterflytemptress.com.
Click to read Life.Love.Cancer: Part 1
Click to read Life.Love.Cancer: Part II
Long before the diagnosis, long before the seizures and the struggles within my marriage, cancer had completely taken my body over. I was tired and lethargic. I’d gone from working hours upon hours as a nurse to being unable to fix a full meal for our family. Exhaustion had taken hold.
As with many female issues, a common first sign of trouble is bleeding during or after intercourse. It was definitely the case with me, but one day it started and it never stopped. Week after week, pad after pad, I bled. After six weeks I scheduled an appointment with my family physician who promptly referred me to a gynecologist.
My first exam was impossible to do because the bleeding was so bad. The doctor told me that he wanted to prescribe birth control pills for six weeks just to see if they made a difference. So I sucked down a pill every single day for six weeks and went through a super-size packs of sanitary napkins weekly. Still, I bled.
My next appointment came and he said that he was going to try to do an exam, even though the bleeding was profuse. So I endured what had to be one of the most painful exams ever. While he was doing the exam he also decided to do a biopsy, just in case. When I left, I left with a handful of pamphlets and lots of questions.
Ultimately, the tests came back and they did some minor surgeries. We thought that was it. Just some abnormal cells, nothing to be worried about. Life goes on.
Except it didn’t. The bleeding got worse. My skin looked like that of a person who had been dead and embalmed and even felt that way.
Add all of that to the fact that I am fat and well, I guess it comes as no surprise that sex wasn’t happening. I didn’t even want it. My husband didn’t ask for it, I didn’t ask for it, so we just kept floating along, content to have yet one more item off our checklist.
My body had betrayed me. That was what I felt. Instead of working through it, I began to feel sorry for myself. I got out of bed long enough to do the basics, like see the kids off to school and fix dinner. I had no desire to do anything other than that, so I didn’t.
The turning point came only after the diagnosis was made. They had started chemo and radiation and over time the bleeding slowed. Thanks to injections and specific dietary guidelines I was able to regain some energy. I was fat but at least I was able to function a little better than before.
I knew we were on the right path when one afternoon before my husband got home I took a shower and did my make-up. When I met him at the door with a hug and a kiss, no doubt he wondered what I’d done with his wife. Instead of asking, he took me to bed.
From then on we were at it like two teenagers. Quickies in the bathroom. Anal in the shower. A quickie in the office on the floor, then a long slow session before we went to bed. There were weekends when our kids were gone that we didn’t leave our bed. We made love, slept, then woke up and did it all again.
There was an urgency to our lovemaking that had never existed before. I wanted to fit as many positions and experimentations into every second. Memories of a million lives squeezed into one.
That urgency is still there. With sex, with the laughter, and with the moments that can’t be categorized, I am desperate to fill the time with something meaningful. If I can’t leave a part of us behind in a child that we’ve created, then I am bound and determined to leave behind enough memories to last him the rest of his life.
But it’s not just for him.
For that moment when there is no more fight left in my body. For that moment when I can’t speak to my family, to my love. For that moment when I have no idea where I’m going and no idea where I have been.
I will close my eyes and let the memories play like my own home movie. The highs and the lows, the times when we were strong and the times when we could have been a little kinder to one another. Those are the moments that will have made us the couple that made it through with the love that endured.
