“Tomorrow will be like today and the day before that no matter what we hear.  You will still have the same dreams, hopes and fears.”

Tomorrow is the day we’ve been waiting for for 5 days.  We will visit with the oncologist and hear a preliminary prognosis for treatment.  I can feel all the anxiety and anticipation that my wife feels.  If they give us REALLY bad news, the question is why did we have to wait 5 days?  If it is within the realm of what we’ve been expecting, then the wait and anticipation will still heighten.

I’m just trying to keeep my wife calm and distracted.  Trying to do everday things as well as things that she’d like to do.  She’s had some anxiety and her doctor prescribed some anxiety medicine.  She keeps saying she hopes it hasn’t spread to her lungs because she’s feeking short of breath and I keep telling her that she’s just being nervous (I hope I’m right).

A bon voyage party for a friend, brunch with my mother and the kids and lots of activities seemed to wear her out today.  She did confide in me that she is going to dream harder and start to express desires about what she really wants for herself.  I told her that dreaming is free and fun.  Don’t stop anyone from dreaming.  We’ll start talking about them soon. 

Today we went through an exercise I created.  I think it did the right thing.  I had her tell me the top 10 outcomes or benefits of this life event.  I also told her to name 10 fears or negative outcomes.  I did the same as I wanted to see how she and I were either in sync or differed.  After 10 minutes she came to me and said, “I can’t name 10 negatives.  I guess that is a good thing”.  She smiled and I hugged her.  That is what I was thinking.  I told her the positives outweighed the negatives by far.  Secondly, we discussed the negatives and the reasons why those fears and negatives could be easily dealth with.  I gave her some good thoughts to laugh at. 

Below are the results of our survey.  I’m so glad I was able to help her realize that we were not only in this together and that I cared, but that there was a lot of upside:

Her Positives:

1. Appreciate life more
2. Appreciate and do more with kids and spouse
3. get more proportinate and perky breasts
4. Prevent a recurrence of canter
5. Get a better handle of life’s obstacels
6. Learn more about self that will benefit others
7. Will develop knowledge to help others with adversity
8. Hopefully be able to help our dauughter some day with a cure
9. My kids will become dtronger people
10. I can do things in my life I wouldn’t have done because of this (travel, etc.)

My positives:

1. No more complaints about back pain or heavy chest feeling
2. I might gain a golf partner or running partner
3. kids become stronger and more aware of things
4. Easier to buy her clothes
5. She’ll embrace life and be even more fiercely stronger about life
6. Greater physical self confidence
7. We will have a tighter and stronger overall family bond
8. We”ll truly kow who our firends are
9. We’re attacking cancer now while we are strong and not weak
10. Looks like no more big family travel during the holidays

Her Negatives:

1. This could be more complicated than we think
2. Still a chance of recurrence
3. Difficult to deal with everyday life while getting treatment
4. Cannot get optimal breast reconstruction to look normal
5. Like #2 I get a life-threatening recurrence

His Negatives:

1. Short term depression
2. Painful recovery
3. Possible hair loss
4. Loss of drive in life
5. Children are negatively impacted
6. Some plans are missed or interrupted
7. Fear of death
8. Insurance rejection or complications
9. Concern leaving her alone
10. Physical scarring that she is not happy with

Again, all these positives and negatives will still be there tomorrow,