It’s strange how life can be going so well and then in the blink of an eye it can change. Sometimes the change is good like someone coming out of a coma; sometimes it can be unexpected like winning a lottery; and sometimes when all seems to be going well, it can start to slip away before you as you watch helplessly, like a fire burning your home to the ground. This is the feeling that I have had as I watch Lennie getting weaker, while his hemoglobin continues to drop, despite blood transfusions.
The days now meld into each other as I struggle with sleep deprivation and stress since returning to Hamilton. I have to do almost everything for both Lennie and I as he is too weak to do anything. Nothing has been the same since that damn pineapple incident that I wrote about last. He has had chronic diarrhea for the past 4 months, having to run to the bathroom often 20 times a day. His weight which had stabilized at 215 has dropped to about 200 where it fluctuates between 197 and 203 for the past several weeks. I want to cry, but I don’t have the energy.
Not all is bad though; his white blood cell count, which is typically low in all cancer patients remains at the high end of normal. This means that his body is continuing to fight off the cancer as his immune system is quite strong. After having a ‘dark field blood analysis’ done Lennie was urged to drink Dandelion Root tea to cleanse his overburdened liver. After 2 weeks the yellow pallor to his skin is gone, although he is quite pale from anemia. Despite his weakness he has started swimming again in a salt water pool and does about 12 laps twice a week when possible.
A colonics practitioner from Florida suggested that I add rice bran to his diet to stop the diarrhea. It stopped it almost immediately, but he did not have a bowel movement for 2 1/2 days at which point he started to panic. But the diarrhea started again today.
So what really happens to a relationship that is battling a disease. Does it grow stronger or does it start to decline? In ours, we argue all the time. We argue over big things like me doing everything for him and then finding his pills or vitamins lying on the table because he couldn’t bother to put them into his mouth. We argue over small, insignificant things like who gets control of the TV converter. We are both stressed to the max right now and yet we are in this together. It is not Lennie’s cancer; it is our cancer and our fight although it lives within him. Right now there really is just the two of us together.
Kathryn