Today is Monday, July 9, 2018. It’s been exactly a week since this agonizing wait for answers began. It ends tomorrow, or so I hope. We see Dr. Clayton Hudnall with Urology San Antonio tomorrow at 1:40 p.m. M is in tremendous pain, and anymore it’s hard to say how much of it is disease-related, and how much of it is the stress and frustration of thinking we know what the diagnosis will be, but not actually having a diagnosis, and so just sitting here with our collective thumb up our butt, unable to action on anything. Our only aim is to walk out of that appointment tomorrow with a definitive answer. We need to be able to name our enemy, devise the battle plan, and then go to war.
Speaking of war, you know how you watch those war movies with those scenes of soldiers in the hours leading up to battle? They joke and give each other shit, it’s like they’ve found a way to wall themselves off from fear, like they create some sort of emotional bunker. But as the clock winds down and the battle approaches, they get quiet, they seem to be turning inward, doing their final mental and emotional preparation in a very deep and somber place. I don’t know if that’s what it’s like in real life, but I have to imagine something like that happens. This is what I was thinking about driving home tonight. Over the last few days, without really realizing it, I’ve been able to carve out a tiny little bunker for my heart and mind. If I try to imagine what the bunker looks like, I see a small, spherical chamber made of concrete with this weird seam around the middle, like an equator, or–this’ll sound weird–like what you see on one of those bath bombs you drop in your tub that get all fizzy. Anyway, it’s a small place, and I can only really curl into a ball to fit, but it’s not uncomfortable. From inside, I can safely look outside and watch this whole situation, see how big and unwieldy and ominous it is, but not be buffeted by it. It’s how I’ve been able to talk about this situation with M without bursting into tears; how I’ve been able to speak cooly and calmly with my parents about what’s going on; how I was able to have a useful, constructive conversation with my cousin Carrie, who JUST went through a version of this with her own husband less than a year ago. It’s how I’ve been able to go to work and set a tone of normalcy with my boss and my direct reports. It’s how I’ve been able to laugh and joke and think rationally. It’s how I’ve been able to do laundry, sweep floors, cook meals, feed dogs…in short, from inside my bunker, I’ve been able to keep shit together.
When I got home from work tonight, M was on our bed, his face contorted in pain, eyes shut. This is largely how it’s been this last week, unless he takes the Tylenol 3 Dr. Scalzi prescribed, which he tries very hard not to do. I went for a run/cry tonight, only two miles, because seeing M like that, I don’t want to be away from the house.
It is a repeated gut punch to see my husband in so much pain. This has been the longest week of my life, and probably his, too. But it’s the final hours before battle. Time to crawl out of the bunker.
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