When our son David and I arrived at the hospital room that morning in 2008, Vic sat upright, his bare legs hanging over the side of the bed. He looked exhausted and uncomfortable, but it was the
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Just before our fortieth wedding anniversary in 2008, I drive my husband Vic to Strong Hospital where he’s being treated for lymphoma. The long drive is familiar after two years. Spring-green hillsides shout May vitality and hope,
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“I’m sure it’s cancer,” the oncologist said in an I’m-telling-it-straight voice in 2006. He forced himself to look into Vic’s eyes and then mine. “We don’t know what kind, so we can’t treat you until we figure
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On March 7, 2008 when you turned 67, cancer was winning. We feared it would be your last birthday. At dawn, I heard muffled banging of wood against metal as you loaded the wood stove. Upstairs, I
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What if Vic’s cancer had been caught earlier? What if the diagnosis was a mistake? Maybe he was sick because of foot x-rays in his childhood shoe stores or the irradiation of a scar on his neck
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“They’re all wounded,” I thought as I watched people in the grocery store or on the street, “but I can’t see their scars and they can’t see mine.” While anxiously awaiting my husband Vic’s cancer diagnosis in
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It was only a little flu. After Thanksgiving break, Vic’s students often returned to campus with international viruses. His flu shot wasn’t effective, even though mine was. Just the luck of the draw. Symptoms weren’t severe—runny nose,
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“Congratulations,” Mark said as I packed up my food in the American Cancer Society Hope Lodge kitchen. Mark was the caretaker of the hospitality house where I stayed while Vic had a stem cell transplant at Strong
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