Grab a chair and a couple of root beers...

Last year at this time, I was stumbling around in a numb haze, struggling to hold on to some semblance of competence and trying not to cry at the drop of a hat. I was trying to be strong for my kids, and trying to figure out how to talk my stubborn dying husband into getting treatment, and that giving the ACA marketplace another chance would be worthit. My entire world had literally crumbled around me, and I was facing the reality of losing my husband and facing the rest of my life without him. And there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing.

It was horrible.

He had resigned himself to die, because he didn't want to impoverish his wife and children seeking treatment that might not work. Because we didn't have insurance. And worse, we found that the Central Texas county we live in had no resources for uninsured patients to get cancer treatment. A neighboring county, Travis, did, but we could potentially wait six months to a year before even seeing a doctor. And by that time... the Husbandly One would be dead.

It took a screaming fight to get him to see reason. To get him to see my gastroenterologist, get a colonoscopy that found the rectal tumor that was causing him so much pain. The gastro recommended an oncologist, who at first refused to see us because... we were uninsured. But... we could pay.

We ended up having to physically go to the office of the oncologist and talk to the staff there, face to face. To show that we were real people, that THO was determined to fight for his life. That we could afford to pay for this, and were willing to get insurance, but we needed to know which ones they took because we weren't going to take any risks with this. We'd had enough of not having the right insurance for the doctors we needed to see, or coverage for needed treatments. We needed information and recommendations... and they gave it to us.

We signed up for an ACA gold plan that night. Best move we ever made. They have covered everything as far as THO was concerned.

It's been terrifying. And hard. Gods, it's been hard. He's been in pain, in agony at times. Colorectal cancer is... it's not just the pain. It's what it takes away from you. Your dignity. Your self worth. All the shaming your parents did when they were toilet training you? It comes back. Every horrible, silly, ridiculous, mean, or otherwise thoughtless thing they ever said, don't you want to be a big boy? Big boys don't make messes in their pants or beds! Big boys don't stink! Big boys don't poop in the tub, on the carpet, big boys control themselves and wait until they're on the potty... that's just something parents say to encourage their kids while potty training, right?

Okay, take that to being an adult and having no control over your sphincter, because you've got a tumor there that's messing up the signals to your brain that tell you it's time to pinch the big loaf. Except you can't. And it hurts. Like someone's shoving a red-hot roofing nail into your ass. And when it finally lets go, you can't stop it.

He was... humiliated sometimes. He hated wearing adult diapers. He hated having me clean him up, or change the bed, or having to clean the carpet because he just couldn't get to the bathroom in time. But I did it, because he's my husband, he couldn't help it, I love him and... he'd have done the exact same thing for me.

He couldn't eat, either. He was massively anemic, and dropped down to 106 pounds from a maximum of 165 just a mere six months before. In January, I ended up rushing him to the emergency room in Kyle, after having to listen to him scream in pain while sitting in a bathtub. I thought he'd ruptured something, or had gone septic. Instead, I found he was merely being an over-achiever by having both an anal abscess and a fucking kidney stone all at the same time!

He was in the hospital for 3 days on that alone.

It was lucky he'd had an iron infusion just the week before, because they wouldn't have been able to do the surgery on his abscess otherwise.

When he got home, we had to wait for the drain to be removed from his abscess before he could start chemo. And we were trying Ensure to help him gain weight.

It wasn't working. You know what? Ensure is fucking disgusting. It smells horrible and tastes even worse. I gag just thinking about that stuff. We gave up on them and started him on Bolthouse Farms smoothies, and you know what? That saved him. I really think those smoothies saved his life, because he loved them and drank them all the time. He finally started putting on weight, and they didn't make him sick when he started chemo. It was awesome.

As he started improving, my anxiety eased, and I didn't feel so hopeless. I still, even now, have moments at night when I hold him and feel tears stinging my eyes, because.... I'm still terrified of losing him. Before this, I intellectually knew that one day, one of us would die and the other would be left behind, but it was far away in some nebulous future. Both of us have parents who lived into their eighties, there was no reason to think we'd not be the same way.

But then this happened. And suddenly, that nebulous future is a lot closer. There's an expiration date that is a lot closer than I'm comfortable with, and while the treatment has worked, and the Husbandly One now has more time... I'm very much aware it's not as long as I'd once assumed.

I am grateful we have more time. And I will take every single minute of it. He is the love of my life. My very favorite husband. And... I just don't know how I'll do it without him when that inevitable time comes.

But for now? He's better. He's almost back to his old self. He's almost 140 pounds. And he's beating it.

I'll take it.