Life After Diagnosis

Since Mike’s diagnosis our whole world was turned upside down. His body has taken a toll on him. He’s lost a lot of weight and struggles to find things to do that he still enjoys. I myself still have been dealing with debilitating medical issues for the past 6 months but still have not had any results. It’s crazy to think I have gone from me being the one he has been taking care of to me now caring for him. We help take care of each other and get through the days together. Our financial income has slowed down. I have resigned from my job. Mike went from working 5-6 days a week to 1-2 days every other week in between treatments. When he does work, we work together. Mike and I were so proud of our photo booth business venture we started together. We loved going to events and making guests smile and have a good time. In fact we were a great team and we were damn good at it. Since his diagnosis Mike has lost his passion for the photo booth business and now I am hanging on to our past dream to keep it going. I’ve given up so much that I needed something familiar to hold onto.

We don’t know why he got this cancer…. It doesn’t run in his family, he doesn’t drink or smoke, and he’s very young for this type of cancer. We’ve sacrificed a lot this past month. We are newlyweds. We just started our lives together but yet it feels like the end. We had to give up going on our beautiful honeymoon. Our visions of sitting on the tropical island of Antigua were replaced with hospital visits, chemo treatments and recovering. I am only 25... We had dreams together of buying a home after our wedding and having a baby. Now a house and a baby are not options for us and it hurts...Mike says he wants to be in a home when he passes… as if knowing what the future of his disease is isn’t hard enough I can’t even grant him his only wish besides life which is a… home. Talk about feeling helpless...

Mike receiving his weekly fluids

Now we are left picking up the pieces of our shattered life trying to make sense of it all. It’s an awful disease that we both wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy. We feel robbed…robbed of his life, robbed of our wedding, and robbed of our future. We hold each other a lot, we cry and I try to get him to smile at any chance I get. His smiles and laughs are few and far between these days. We spend our days sleeping in because it hurts physically and mentally to get out of bed. We lay around the house watch TV. I have the normal battles of fighting with him to drink fluids, eat and take his meds. He carries around a bag of drugs like a mini pharmacy. He has over 15 prescriptions that I keep track of for him. He goes to the local hospital to get weekly fluids these help him feel better. We do our best living each day in the moment praying for a miracle. We have amazing friends, family, a great team of doctors and a support system that is out of this world. We’ve both given up a lot. It wasn’t easy for me to give up my job but I know it’s harder for Mike. He’s always been a very energetic, get out there and do things kind of guy. Now he’s forced to be on the side lines, while his body breaks down. For anyone who knows Mike they know he’s a very stubborn guy and that he is also a fighter. He won’t give up even when his body is tired, weak and he feels like he wants to quit. When he does feel like quitting I am there to push him right back up and remind him that he is in the fight for his life. I often remind him “You don’t have to win every battle to win the war”. 

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