Cancer always wins

June 30th, 2007; 14 years ago, and five years before she died: Tuesday, April 17, 2012. Nine years ago today. (We were doing a train ride on Tioga Central railroad in central PA.)

—“Don’t forget, you always had what matters: what’s between the ears.”
I said that to my wife as I took her to hospice the first and last time.
Nobody ever gets out of hospice alive.
44&1/2 years, no kids, and many many train chases.
Over those 44&1/2 years there may have been 10 times we didn’t share the same bed.
She’s been gone nine years, but I’m still sorta married. I developed many lady-friends since she died, but all we do is talk. I can’t get physical.
My wife and I fought cancer over 1-2 years — cancer always wins, or at least it did back then. I don’t know about now. (It kills its host, after which it gets killed itself.)
Yrs Trly always thought it lymphoma, but I guess it was breast-cancer. But not from a primary site.
We first noticed a hardening in her abdomen, which was lymph-nodes swelling with cancer.
So first we thought it lymphoma, fairly curable.
But apparently it was breast-cancer metastasized into her lymph-nodes.
She apparently was told that, but she didn’t tell me, perhaps to protect me from the horror.
Back-and-forth we went. Chemo reduced the swelling lymph-nodes, and she also took a breast-cancer medication, an estrogen inhibitor.
We beat the cancer back, enough so she could join me walking our dog.
My brother commented she seemed normal, but her lymph-nodes would swell again, cutting off back-circulation from her legs, which ballooned.
Chemo again, back to fairly normal.
We once drove to Altoona (PA) to train-chase with Phil Faudi, my Altoona railfan friend.
We stayed in a trackside railfan bed-and-breakfast in Cresson. Its called “Station-Inn.”
By now she probably was hurting, but she wouldn’t tell me. She liked seeing me have fun, and chasing trains has always been fun, and still is. (I’m a railfan.)
We drove down to South Fork south of Cresson to photograph trains. Then we would drive back north next to the railroad.
My wife decided she’d get out when we passed Station-Inn. But when we got there she didn’t. She decided she preferred seeing me happy.
Later the lymph-node swelling got so bad it constricted her kidney drains. One kidney was completely dysfunctional.
A urologist installed drain stents, which freed us from outside kidney drains.
She’d also get anemic. Numerous blood-transfusions were required, plus occasional overnight hospitalizations in Canandaigua.
At one of those hospitalizations she was at death’s door. She was so whacked, and her legs so swollen, she was transferred to a hospital in Rochester.
Chemo one more time, which brought her back.
At that hospital she was ornery as Hell. She wanted to get outta bed herself.
I also helped her walk. “She did this for me when I had my stroke,” I’d say; “so now I’m doing it for her.”
I also remember a nurse acting like “I wish my husband cared as much about me.” I was crying.
When I drove her home I decided I’d become a good boy, no longer the jerk I had been.
I crashed mightily in flames — I guess habits die hard.
She had to give up sleeping with me. A medical supply brought a hospital recliner bed we put in our living room. A lady she worked with gave us a sit-up cushion so my wife could share the bed with me.
We had always been very attached, but the sleep-cushion didn’t work. She had to sleep by herself, and fitfully.
By then we were doing pain management, and drugs for that, mainly morphine I guess, made her constipated.
We also were doing stool-softeners and laxatives. Plus we were messing up and missing drug administrations.
Finally a social-worker came and advised hospice.
THE END; a tragic loss!
She tried to hang on because as a stroke-survivor myself I came to depend on her.
It was her making phone calls, and solving life’s various insanities.
I remember her crying once in Thompson Emergency distraught she was being taken from me.
I visited her one last time at HosPeace, taking along our crazy dog.
She was so whacked-out she was unconscious: “asleep” the nurses told me.
I put the dog back in the car, and visited one more time.
“So-long,” I whimpered as I walked out, caressing her shoulder.
Friends tell me she knew I was in the room, but I doubt it.
HosPeace called me later that night to tell me she had “passed.”

• RE: “44&1/2 years……” —My wife’s mother noisily insisted we wouldn’t make three months. (“Look what the cat dragged in!”)
• RE: “Occasional overnight hospitalizations…..” —“Theatrics!” I’d tell her. “They won’t think you’re serious, unless I take you in in a wheelchair.” She refused!
• I had a stroke October 26th, 1993 from an undiagnosed heart-defect long since repaired. I pretty much recovered. Just tiny detriments; I can pass for never having had a stroke. I lost my ability to play piano; even to hold a tune.
• “HosPeace,” near Naples (NY), is the hospice where she died.