MF Brain Cancer Fighting Ninja Warrior: May 2016

I’ve Warning: Not completely proofread!

had on my To Do List for a long time to attend a support group(Not surprisingly cancer warriors do better if they reach out for support not only from family and friends, but also people who can completely relate with them about what they are experiencing.I finally made it to one last week and one of the topics* that came up was anger – are you angry about anything? and how are we dealing with our anger?Throughout the group, There was a lot anger expressed about treatment by medical professionals during treatments. I didn’t have much to add to that area. I’ve been lucky (apparently), not to have the same experiences. I talked about THIS (see below) a little in the group, but it keeps bubbling up in my thoughts since:

Let’s back up, first though… to put things in context.in fall 2014, just before my diagnosis, Steven & I seemed to had hit a wonderful stride in our marriage. When we were both working, we would send each other the kind of texts that you would expect from honeymooners….NO! Not THAT kind of texts…Get your minds out of the gutter! More like, “I love you!’ <emoticons of sparkly hearts and kissy faces> Or a standard exchange between each other, “I love you!” “I love you, too!” “No, I mean I REALLY love you” If you’ve been reading my blog for a long time, you know already that my diagnosis happened in the middle of the 2014 harvest season.

What I’ve never wrote before though, was that this harvest was different for me than harvests before - from the beginning. Not much differently for Steven as far as what he had to do in the beginning: he was driving back and forth from San Jose to Livermore for so many years to make "Magic happen" (turning those grapes into delicious wines) while we lived and I worked in San Jose. All the kids were old enough at that point – and done with school (except college), so I made a decision that I was going to make the effort to do anything I could do to make this harvest season less difficult for Steven, while I could learn more about how it works. We had the gift of potential time together if we were , I was committed to make it happen.

I brought an inflatable mattress for his Livermore office…pillows and blankies…(One amart alek wanted to know where his teddy bear was...)so he could sneak in a nap at times and didn’t have to drive home every night and he could roll out of bed around - by 5 a.m. and be the first one in the production area, greeting new bins of freshly picked fruit as they were rolling in from the vineyards.

He was in his element. What a joy to watch him when I could see him in those moments!

A few times, I drove up to Livermore in the middle of the week. (after my work day ended) to share dinner together and, I’d get up the same time as Steven and battle of traffic towards the South Bay to get home and get to work on time myself. Sounds crazy, I know, but it was worth it. And it seemed only fair after so many harvest seasons when Steven was carrying the burden of commuting.

I refer to this time as a “sweet spot” in our marriage. And…. Yes. I have been angry that that was abruptly interrupted by the shocking discovery of my health condition.

Steven and I have talked about this during our ritual walks through the vineyard with the doggies.

More than once, he’s pointed out how he is even more proud about our marriage as a result of how we’ve handled our situation. Smart man that I married, huh? He’s always been a Smartypants, but he impresses me more and more daily. How can I be angry about that? I’m so lucky now – and really, if I think about it, I have to recognize how lucky we have had that “sweet spot”. I have a feeling that not all married couples have that ever.I wish that for you all.

[Kiddies - if there reading this and engaged to be married, I hope you are thinking that this is what it looks like when you say, "in sickness and health..." You better mean it.]

And don’t get me wrong. This hasn't all gone away.We still have aspects of that time that this - mother fucking brain cancer HASN’T robbed it all from us. It's can be still so sweet.We still send each other those “sweet nothings texts” and more than ever, I TRY to express to my best friend, love of my life, how lucky I feel to have him in my life – how proud to call him my husband.

KIddies some more truth here: It’s hard having to rely on his support morethan I can it seems that in anyway I can reciprocate, but I HOPE I can some day in our future that we’ll have another ‘Sweet Spot Harvest” on our horizon. One beautiful thing is: that I will recognize it because I already know what it looks and feels like. And I’ll treasure it, too, like what I do right now.