October 11th 2020 started just like any other day. In my case it was just another day of dealing with that pesky first-trimester nausea. Ric had been complaining about some back and chest pain for about a week now. His dr had done a chest scan but found nothing, he had however found some abnormalities in Ric's blood test results so recommended we go to the hospital to get it checked out. That was our first time waiting at that ER, I would grow to really hate that waiting room.
Ric was one of those people that never went to the dr, I think in all the years I knew him he only had a cold maybe twice and was otherwise always healthy. So it was a bit strange for him to have to go to the hospital. I'm not really sure what we were expecting, he mainly had chest pain so I guess we were thinking maybe a chest or lung infection or something along those lines.
As we would come to discover the waiting times at the ER are almost always close to the 5-hour mark, so we were there quite a while. He was taken for a couple of scans and then we waited. I'll never forget when 3 or 4 Drs suddenly arrived in the room. They said they had seen something on the scan, a mass or a blockage in the colon. They weren't sure yet exactly what it was but said there was a chance it could be cancer. They left the room and it was just us 2 again. Cancer?! That hadn't even crossed my mind that it could be cancer.. surely he was too young! And there was that cliche thought of cancer isn't something that happens to you, it happens to other people. Safe to say we were both pretty shook. I had never really seen Ric properly upset or scared, but he visibly had tears in his eyes and told me he was scared. I gave him a hug and said I was too, but that it wasn't confirmed yet and we should wait and see what the results of the colonoscopy say tomorrow. He had to stay overnight in the hospital that night for the first time, which wasn't very nice and I hated leaving him there.
I was really holding onto the thought that it might not be cancer, it could still be something else. I wish I had been right, but sadly the tests the following day confirmed it was indeed cancer. Fuck.
We were given an appointment to meet with an oncologist in a weeks time and Ric was sent home with very strong painkillers.
Unfortunately, the pain kept getting worse and resulted in a few more trips to the ER. One of those trips involved another scan where they deducted that the mass in the colon had grown and was now causing a blocage. This was considered an emergency and we were told he would need surgery right away to remove the blocage and to have a colostomy to avoid any future blockages. So things suddenly got serious. Ric was transferred to another hospital about 30 minutes away. I have never driven so fast to try and catch up with the ambulance so I could meet him.
I have yet to mention that all of this was of course going on during the height of the covid pandemic. Which meant hospitals were stretched thin and waiting times for treatment were much longer than usual. Having been told the surgery Ric needed was urgent, imagine our surprise and anger when he then had to wait 3 days before actually getting surgery! 3 days in the hospital unable to eat or drink properly because they had put a tube down his throat to keep the contents of his stomach empty. That was awful, he was so uncomfortable, I felt so helpless. Because of Covid I technically wasn't allowed to stay for visits very long, but I may have broken those rules so that I could keep him company.
Finally the surgery took place, that wait was agonizing to say the least. Things went well thankfully, but things would never quite be the same again. Ric now had a stoma, and a stoma bag. (What is a stoma? - https://www.bladderandbowel.org/bowel/stoma/what-is-a-stoma/ )
Strangely I had previously and unrelatedly started following a girl on Instagram who had a stoma so I actually knew what to expect, Ric did not. I have to say that I will forever be proud of how he handled the whole thing. He barely complained about it, and I can only imagine how strange this change must have been for him.
Of course all of the waiting time meant the start of treatment was delayed. When we did eventually meet with the oncologist that first appointment was pretty grim. She was basically saying she had never seen a cancer so aggressive and that the prognosis did not look good, oh and that we should probably look into assisted suicide if we wanted. What the actual F?! In our first appointment, he hadn't even started treatment yet and basically the gist was there was nothing we could do! I had been trying to stay strong for Ric this whole time, but in that moment I just couldn't hold it all in and I sat in the oncologist's office my head in my hands and I sobbed. But on our drive home I gave Ric some tough love and said we didn't have to listen to only her, we could find other Drs to get 2nd opinions, which we did end up doing. And credit to Ric he did an incredible amount of research on his condition and drastically changed his diet to give him the best fighting chance possible.
Chemo started and boy was that rough. Ric didn't react well at all to the first round and was very ill at first, which resulted in another ER trip. Slowly it got a bit easier as it became routine and I think he did an amazing job at handling it. It did suck though as it was almost like I lost him for a week every 2 weeks because the chemo really took it out of him and he couldn't do much all week. Then he'd have a week of feeling good and rinse and repeat.
We soon came to learn that not only was it shit bad luck that he was diagnosed right off the bat with stage IV, but he also had an extremely rare (like rarer than winning the lottery rare!) combination of mutations. Which basically meant that his cancer would be much more resistant to treatments and we were left with much fewer options for treatment plans.
The liver was the worst of it. Our best hope would have been for Ric to have liver surgery, however sadly we never got there. The cancer cells in his liver were very inconvenient places which meant surgery was pretty impossible.
At first he reacted really really well to the chemo which was amazing! Dr's were astounded and said they'd never seen such a great response. Of course, this was great news! However, it didn't last long and soon we were back to where we started. Right around the time that little J was born Ric started a new experimental treatment of a concoction of drugs. This had an amazingly quick effect and he started feeling almost like his old self! Except this was just giving us a false sense of hope and as quickly as he had started feeling better, he deteriorated just as quickly. Until finally there was nothing left to be done but wait. I had to make the decision to put him in a palliative care home as there was no way he would have been able to come home in his condition, as much as he wanted to.
He was there for just over a week I believe, and the rate at which he deteriorated was quite shocking. I quite literally watched him waste away in front of my eyes. It was heart wrenching.
As much as it was the most painful moment of my life being there when he left this world, I am also extremely grateful I got to experience that with him. Just us 2, there with him until the very end. Quite literally until death do us part.
That's a rather brief overview of our cancer journey, I will most likely be going into more detail about specific parts in other blog posts. Although for now, there is an overview of my experience with being a caregiver to a cancer patient.
I believe that this whole thing is actually harder on the caregiver than the patient, although we are not the ones directly suffering and in pain, at least their pain ends, yet we still have to live on after the loss.
Cancer is evil. I would not wish it on anyone. Sadly the stats at the moment are that every 1 in 2 people will be affected by cancer in their lifetime. How crazy is that?! Every other person.. I hope that by sharing my experience I can help to bring a bit more awareness to colon cancer, as it is quite a taboo topic, who likes to talk about their intestines really? But the number of people diagnosed is on the rise, especially in younger age groups and we really must do something about it! Early screening and knowing the signs quite literally could save your life!
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