Let me introduce myself. I am the newlywed spouse of a wonderful man diagnosed with cancer. We are through the treatment, but this has been the scariest thing I have ever gone through. This story will probably just be like all the others, but it is mine. My husband had a sore on his tongue that would not heal. Saw family doctor, sent to ENT. We saw the ENT the day after Easter. The ENT wanted biopsy. LONG 10 days to wait for results. I was relieved. If it was serious, they would have called us before the 10 days were up, right? Nope, it was cancer. After that, things moved fast. CT scans, specialists, X-rays, more specialists. They staged it at 3 for the tumor, 4 if you included the two lymph nodes that might be involved. They gave us the option of surgery or rad/chemo. Better long term odds with the surgery, so after much soul searching (and crying) we went with that. He goes in for surgery a week later and the surgeon cancels the surgery 2 hours in. The cancer had spread from the right side to the left in the intervening 2 weeks since the CT scan. He said he could not remove the cancer without removing his tongue, and therefore his voicebox. Suggested we go with rad/chemo route. Hubby was devastated when he woke up. They had already put the trach and feeding tubes in pre-op, so it took a while for all that to heal. Trach was removed a week later and he went through 36 rad treatments, with Cisplatin chemo. Brutal, as you all know. He finished treatment July 13, has had two clean check ups, his hair is growing back, he is back at work, looks and feels great. My question is, how long before you stop worrying every single day that the cancer is going to come back and steal your husband before his time? Oh yeah, he is 34 years old. I know the odds of recurrence and they run through my head every day. Have you changed your priorities in life? How do you re-learn how to care about work? It was so not important while he was sick and I don't know how to make it matter anymore. Any thoughts?
