Reality Sets In...

It’s been several weeks since we emailed out an update on Kimberly.  I guess you could say neither her or I have really felt like trying to put into words how things have been going, but I’ll give it a shot now.  

Nearly 5 months have passed since she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and it’s easy to say that these months have been the most difficult of our lives.

For me, watching the woman you have loved since high school have her life completely flipped upside down and have to endure constant physical and emotional suffering is horrible.  

Standing beside her while it sinks in that her life and body will never be the same again, even after she slays the big C (which I’m convinced she will)…

Knowing that for the rest of her life, every ache or pain will prompt the thought, “is the cancer back but this time with a vengeance?”…

Still wishing there was something more I could do to help or take some of the pain of the situation away…

The past couple months have been a little like the old Hitchcock movie Rear Window.  Just like Jimmy Stewart’s character, Kim has spent much of the time confined to the house, but instead of watching other people through binoculars (which would be creepy), she can look at their lives through social media.

It's got to be hard to see the lives of everyone around you progressing, while knowing that your next outing will be to yet another doctor appointment, or maybe a walk to the stop sign around the corner and back.

So here's where we're at:

Kimberly is now done with 5 out of the 6 planned chemotherapy treatments.

Each round has proven to be entirely different from each other in terms of how her body reacts to the treatments.  Some are worse than others, and the last one was the worst by far.  

I had hoped her body would acclimate to the treatments and it’d get easier as time went on, but actually the opposite has been true.  It’s like her body doesn’t fully recover between each, so it’s really like they are stacking up on each other. Her energy levels are extremely low, and she is fatigued and tired all of the time.  Even something as simple as a phone call is really taxing on her…

With one chemo treatment remaining, it's time to plan the next stage of attack which is mastectomy.  This week has been packed with consultations with various surgeons and lots of decisions to make… Will it be single or double mastectomy? What type of reconstruction?  When should reconstruction take place? etc…

Tomorrow morning she is getting a breast MRI which will be the first time she has been imaged since chemotherapy began.  This will be the first look into how the tumors have actually changed (and hopefully shrunk) since the beginning.

As you probably remember, Kim is NOT a fan of MRI’s, so there is a lot of anxiety leading up to this. Your prayers for peace and calmness are much appreciated.

After that, we have a meeting with the surgical oncologist early next week to plan the first of many surgeries.

As far as emotionally, that too has been a journey for Kimberly.  Toward the beginning of the process, as the quotes on her website show, it was all about “this is the path chosen for my life and I'm going to charge forward, conquer this, and help others in the process.” While some of that is still true, this process has taken a toll on her emotionally and it’s only human to also develop feelings of “why when I’m so young?” and “this isn't fair.”

I've noticed that most people have no idea how they should act toward or what to say to someone with cancer…heck, I had no idea either and still manage to say the wrong things to her at points…  

Every single person has the best of intentions and overwhelmingly wants to say things that are optimistic or bring hope. This, though, doesn't lessen the constant emotional battle going on inside her.  

Of all the articles and resources she or I have read during this process, the following blog post seems to sum up a lot of how she's been feeling internally:

https://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/11/22/13641292/breast-cancer-what-to-say

I only share this because it was eye opening to me as some of that stuff is definitely not common sense especially for someone who has never personally gone through cancer.

So there you have it.  That's where we're at.  We are well into our journey, and of course it’s great that chemo is almost over.  We’ll be glad when that is over and we can turn our attention to conquering the next phase.

It has been a really rough two weeks and she’s at a really hard place.  Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers.

I’ll keep you updated as we solidify surgery plans…

Thanks,

Kenny