The Person Beside the Patient
When someone you love has cancer, people naturally look toward the patient. How are they doing? What did the scan show? What happens next?
Those questions make sense. The patient is the one with the diagnosis, the treatment, the surgery, the side effects, the uncertainty written directly into their body. But there is usually someone standing nearby whose life is changing too.
The person beside the patient.
In our story, that person has often been Patty. She did not wake up one morning and decide to become a caregiver. She was my wife before cancer, and she remained my wife through all of it. The caregiving grew around the relationship because life required it.
Waiting Isn’t Wasted
There’s a special kind of waiting that comes with cancer. It’s not the waiting in line at the grocery store. It’s not the kind you fill with your phone or a podcast. It’s the waiting for scan results, the waiting between treatments, the waiting to see if something is working, and sometimes simply the waiting to exhale.
Early on, we thought these stretches of time were just something to get through. They felt like uncomfortable pauses on a long road, empty spaces between the things that actually mattered. But over time, we’ve learned …
The Day Everything Changed
There are moments in life that divide everything into “before” and “after.” For us, that moment came with three words:
“You have cancer.”
Looking back, we can still remember where we were. We can remember the phone call. We can remember trying to absorb information that seemed to come faster than we could process it. What we remember most, though, is …
The Conversation We Couldn’t Find
There are moments in life when information isn’t enough.
If you’ve recently heard the words, “You have cancer,” you’ve probably discovered that for yourself. There are doctors to meet, tests to schedule, treatment options to understand, articles to read, and statistics to sort through. Information is everywhere. You may also discover that, even surrounded by information, you can still feel completely alone.
Information answers questions like, “What is my diagnosis?” or “What are my treatment options?” It doesn’t answer questions like, “What was surgery really like?” or …