October 24: Guest Blogger Jennifer Kraus-Dahlgren - Part 2

See October 23rd for Part 1 of Jennifer's guest post on metastatic breast cancer, and what it's like as the partner and caretaker of someone living with MBC.

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I remember that she started receiving care packages very shortly after that. Friends and family of hers stepped up and sent her little things, a card, some money, ginger-based products to stave off the normal nausea that'd come with chemo. Little things to brighten her day. I was almost never sent anything. I was rarely even mentioned as being kept in thoughts, prayers, hopes. Everything was about her. And it should've been, as far as I was concerned. She was the one that was ill. She was the one that needed to fight. She was the one that was loved.

But I started to feel forgotten. I was the one that'd help her get to a trash can or the toilet in time when the nausea hit. I was going to be the one carrying things for her, doing shopping and laundry largely by myself as chemo progressed and she started losing her strength. I was the one that'd have to go through her belongings and decide what to let go of, as if I were letting go of parts of her. I was the one that was going to stand at that grave as the grieving widow.

I never begrudged her the attention. She needed it. She was the one that was ill. And she never forgot me. She held me every day. She reassured me every time she saw me crying that she would beat this, that she wasn't leaving me. But she was the only one. Nobody else even talked to me about it. No one asked how I was doing, if maybe I needed a hug, or a day out to get away from the appointments and the material things I'd have to sort through, the things that I looked at every day and thought who they should go to.

I was braced to be alone, and in so many ways, I was already alone.

My reality had changed, and I didn't want to live there anymore. I desperately wished I could close my eyes, wiggle my nose, and tap my heels together and everything would change back to how they were. Back to her being able to work, to a time when our excursions out of the apartment could be for something silly, before the doctor appointments and chemo took over. Suddenly, leaving the apartment meant leaving my little bubble of denial, it meant looking Death in the face and begging her not to take the woman I loved. Begging for her to be spared. For more time.

I keep hearing stories of people who leave their wives and girlfriends after a Stage IV diagnosis. Leaving when that woman needed them the most. In some ways, I can't blame them. It's terrifying, to watch someone you love slowly die. Being a caretaker can be one of the most thankless jobs in the world. The only one who really seems to get that is the patient herself. It hurts when the people around you ask your wife "how are you doing?" but don't even give a nod to your own pain. I can't say that I blame someone for walking out on that.

But I couldn't personally fathom it. I couldn't imagine Susanne having to go through those treatments alone, having to someday lie in a bed and pass away without the woman she loved holding her hand. I knew what it was like to be alone when you needed someone the most, I loved Susanne too much to be able to do that to her. To even let it cross my mind.

But being a caretaker is a thankless job. Nobody else seems to see how hard the caretaker has it. Nobody but those of us who have been there know what it's like to watch someone die. To watch their time slip away, knowing that there will never, ever be enough time left.

That was the reality I had stepped into with that phone call, late in November. It was a reality I hated. All the dreams we had, the ones we'd been able to continue to hang onto, even after our lives had already been irreversibly changed, they were gone. Time was working against us, suddenly. That black, ugly void where nothing makes sense and everything hurts yanked the rug out from under our feet. That was my new reality.

Just a month before had been Pinktober, with its messages of hope, of cures. Like so many other people, it'd fooled me into thinking that breast cancer was beatable, that it didn't kill people. They told us to hope. They told us to pray, they told us to feel bad when we didn't detect it early, as if it was the patient's fault that her cancer hadn't been diagnosed until too late.

Our dreams were gone. Her career, her chance at becoming a nurse, everything. It was all gone. All that was left for us was doctors and illnesses and an inevitable separation. Behind us, all those pasts, all those what ifs, shoulda coulda wouldas, they were gone. They were torn. They were vandalized and ripped and torn and taken from us and left behind as nothing but a future that we could no longer look for.

My reality had changed. And all I could think that it was my fault. If I'd only gotten her in earlier, if I'd only outstubborned her, maybe we could've caught it before it became Stage IV, could've beaten it. Could've had that hope. If I lost her, I had nobody to blame but myself. That if she died, it was my fault. Not getting her in early had been me giving her a death sentence.

One day, I will be looking up at the urn on my shelf and have to apologize because I'd failed her in the one thing I was supposed to do. One day, I'll be saying "I miss you, I love you, please come back." One day, my own life will be over, and I'll be left behind again.

But I try not to think of that day. It'll come, in the meantime, the best thing I can do is hold onto each and every precious second, to keep taking care of her, to keep loving her. That's all anyone can ever do. Hold on and love.

Hold on and love.