F* Cancer

The end of last week was really hard, and it's pretty much all cancer's fault.

Let's start with the happy ending story of that statement.  So...as has been frequently documented here, Jacob has struggled all summer with various ailments.  One of the more recent ones was an enlarged lymph node.  The doctor seemed unbothered when she felt it when he had his weird viral thing last month, and I could barely feel it myself.  I kept telling him that, even as he kept mentioning it and asking when it would go away or when we'd go back to the doctor.  Most recently I kept pushing him off knowing we had another appointment coming up this next week, as it really didn't strike me as so enlarged that it would be a problem until then.  BUT...at the same time, it was sticking around.  Normally those things fade after a bit and it seemed like his viral stuff (including the epididymitis) had faded, so why was it still there?  He kept insisting he was still having a few random symptoms--his stomach is still bugging him, his reflux is around, and he was having nervous sweats (which I assured him were different than night sweats and probably not much different than how my nerves instantly send me to the bathroom).  Despite all efforts to reassure him, by midweek he was completely and totally convinced he had lymphoma.  There was no convincing him otherwise.  He was using it as an excuse for everything--why he didn't want to go to school, why he couldn't do anything or plan ahead.  It got so bad that Craig took it upon himself to take him to the doctor Thursday to rule things out--he just couldn't take it anymore, and honestly, neither could I.  I went into the office on Thursday completely spent after not sleeping well at all the prior night--partly because of this and partly for another reason I'll get into in a minute.  I felt like I had been up all night crying--my eyes were tired and cloudy and I felt like I'd run a marathon.  I was exhausted and it was a major struggle just to get through the day.  As I've mentioned before, my medical anxiety is almost as bad as Jacob's sometimes, and while I wasn't exactly spiraling--I think I was too tired to have that kind of nervous energy--I was worried because maybe the lymph node HAD stuck around too long.  There's a slightly elevated risk of lymphoma with Celiac Disease, and while most of his risk factors didn't fit (usually within 5-10 years of diagnosis--he's just past that; he's kept a gluten-free diet all along, and although he did recently gluten himself, I was doubtful that was enough; and it's usually in older people), I guess it was just crazy enough to make sense.  But, in the end, the doctor still wasn't concerned.  He did give them the green light to go to the ER for an ultrasound if it gets any bigger or sticks around much longer, and all of that seemed to give Jacob just enough peace of mind for now.  Thank goodness for that.  All bets are off in a few weeks, I suppose, if the node is still there or it gets more noticeable, but I'm hoping the temporary stress relief is enough to chill the rest of his body out.  I'm pretty sure the stress response alone was making everything worse.  But honestly, the mere fact that my kid has to worry about this stuff (let alone my other fears with Carter) just makes me hate even more that cancer is a thing--never mind how heartbreaking it is to watch someone actually dealing with it with their kid, even just via social media.

On Wednesday night, as all of this was ramping up, I was laying in bed and got a message from my friend Heather who alerted me that a high school classmate of ours had passed away.  He'd been sick with cancer for five years, so I guess it wasn't a shock, but after fighting it this long and not knowing how he was actually doing beyond periodic pictures of him in hats that a couple other friends posted, it still caught me off-guard.  My heart just broke reading the obituary.  This guy was actually a pretty big part of my high school experience.  I don't even really know how we became friends--I think we were in the same Spanish class sophomore year, which might have started it, and somehow I also became friends with his childhood best friend shortly thereafter.  I'll be honest, I had crushes on both of them at various times in high school (shocker).  Pat was an athlete, pretty popular but also in with the smart kids just enough.  We were the only people we each knew in our junior year lunch and spent most of it hanging out in his swim coach's classroom.  There was some flirting but nothing ever came of it.  I did go to a lot of his swim meets with a friend of mine who had a crush on another swimmer.  He was a genuinely nice guy, maybe a little aloof at times, a bit sarcastic, but when it was just us, he was a great guy.  He finished one spot behind me in the class ranking as I recall, and I always thought that was because he ended up partying a bit by senior year, at which point we drifted apart, all while I was becoming better friends with his friend Josh, who I shared senior lunch with along with a bunch of other friends.  

I wrote about Pat here after my 20th reunion, when he randomly showed up with his adorable pregnant wife and it made my night.  My only previous interaction with him since high school involved a series of instant messages back in 2001 that led to a lunch here in Rochester.  He had told me that he'd had a dream about me at the time that brought him this odd sense of peace.  It apparently made him want to reconnect, and he told me at that lunch that he should have asked me out in high school but let social standing and peer pressure get in the way.  It stung a little as I would have given anything for a little confidence boost back then, but it was also validating that I hadn't just read into things, as I think I probably did a lot back then.  At the time of that lunch, I had just started dating Craig, so it wasn't the best time to explore anything further.  He wasn't a big social media guy and moved to Boston at some point after that, so we predictably drifted back apart.  He moved back to Western New York at some point before that reunion, and it was really nice to see him then. 

Little did I know that a few years later he'd be in the fight of his life.  It was hard to watch from afar, knowing how I'd treasured our friendship and truly loved meeting his wife, but being obviously on the outside of the situation unable to do anything.  I appreciated the photos that a couple different friends would post whenever they'd get together--usually when Josh was in town.  A year or two ago someone posted a GoFundMe explaining that not only was Pat fighting cancer, but then his daughter was diagnosed with leukemia and his wife also was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer.  I have no idea where either of those two things stand aside from them both being seemingly alive and well in the obituary, but suffice it to say everyone--from his family to the couple friends who had been posting things--have been in my thoughts constantly since I heard.  The other friend is one I've known since I was young as we went to the same church and were confirmed together.  She has lost both parents to cancer, seen her sister fight it, lost a couple dogs and a bunch of other folks as well, and I knew this had to hit her hard.  She posted a really emotional blog post over the weekend (she's a published writer in her spare time, so it was good stuff), and my heart broke all over again.  

I feel like I'm taking this harder than I should for someone firmly on the outskirts, but I guess it's understandable.  First, it's a freaking terrible tragedy.  He had a wife and two kids and so much life to live, let alone a best friend he'd just reconnected with in the last handful of years who really wanted to make up for lost time.  Second, I'm not used to losing people my own age.  You just don't expect to lose friends in your mid-40s.  It happens, but I guess it hits differently with people you spent your youth with, because we all felt so invincible then.  It's hard knowing one of those people is now gone.  I probably spent more time than would be advisable pondering that whole crush-reconnection scenario.  I probably asked God at least a couple times why He couldn't just throw me a bone--either to give my high school self some confidence or have the adult timing work out better (if only for closure)--but I guess now I know.  Maybe God was protecting me from anything going further down a path that would have made this time even harder.  I don't know.  But most of all, I think I'm struggling to mourn the hope that someday I'd get to reconnect with him again.  I always hoped there would be another reunion, a chance meeting out in the wild, something where we'd get a few minutes to reconnect and marvel at the grown-ups we'd become.  And now I know that will never happen.  I never got to tell him how sorry I was about his diagnosis, or how I'd been praying, or how much I loved meeting his wife.  Again, it's such a minor thing being on the outside, but it still made me sad.

I realized that I'd actually be in town around the time of the funeral events.  As of now I'm planning on going to Buffalo a day ahead of my family reunion to pay my respects on Friday.  Josh will be there, which helps, although I'm pretty bummed this is the way I'm getting to see him instead of one of the few near-misses at UR events, since he did his undergrad there.  This is definitely NOT the way I wanted that reconnection to happen.  I (and he) are hoping that others come out to the visitation so there's a way to keep Pat's memory alive in new ways and maybe make some good of this terrible thing.  Of course that means that my socially anxious self will spend most of the week obsessing over it and trying to rehearse things and prepare myself for all sorts of awkward scenarios.  But I think it's worth it.

So, cancer really sucks for a million reasons, and now this adds one to it.  I know I'll be able to move on and live my life and this will be a mere blip for me, meaning I'm the lucky one even if it's weighing heavily now.  But I'm not sure I'll ever be able to think of him without my heart breaking for his loved ones who lost him far too soon.  Rest in peace Pat...it was fun while it lasted.