I have a new title. A title that I did not ask to have.
I am a widow.
When I fill out forms I can no longer check the box that says “married”.
For 37 1/2 years I have been married. I have known more of my life as married than not married. I was 18 years old when Mr. B and I were married on October 10, 1975. When I said the words, “in sickness and in health” during the ceremony I never imagined that my husband would die from cancer on April 5, 2013. I’m still finding it very hard to believe that he is gone. And even though it’s been 19 weeks since he passed away, I’m still finding some days very hard to get through.
I sure wasn’t expecting to grieve this hard. I guess I thought I had prepared myself for the possibility that Mr. B would die. From almost the beginning of his journey with cancer, he was very sick. I saw how sick he looked but I still held out hope that he would improve. After all, many others with this cancer have been pulled back from the brink of death so surely Mr. B would improve as they did. Unfortunately, Mr. B had a very aggressive form of Multiple Myeloma. It fought back with every treatment that he was given. By February 2013, his body was so weak that his kidneys started to fail. Mr. B was so worn down both physically and emotionally that he made the choice not to accept the kidney dialysis. Because he made the choice not to have dialysis, his hematologist said that they could no longer give him chemo as it was not working to lower his Lamda Free Light Chains and was causing the kidney failure. For Mr. B, the thought of sitting in the hospital for 3 days a week hooked up to a machine for 4 hours was just too much to bear. And although I do understand why he made that choice, it still broke my heart.
I am a widow.
When I fill out forms I can no longer check the box that says “married”.
For 37 1/2 years I have been married. I have known more of my life as married than not married. I was 18 years old when Mr. B and I were married on October 10, 1975. When I said the words, “in sickness and in health” during the ceremony I never imagined that my husband would die from cancer on April 5, 2013. I’m still finding it very hard to believe that he is gone. And even though it’s been 19 weeks since he passed away, I’m still finding some days very hard to get through.
I sure wasn’t expecting to grieve this hard. I guess I thought I had prepared myself for the possibility that Mr. B would die. From almost the beginning of his journey with cancer, he was very sick. I saw how sick he looked but I still held out hope that he would improve. After all, many others with this cancer have been pulled back from the brink of death so surely Mr. B would improve as they did. Unfortunately, Mr. B had a very aggressive form of Multiple Myeloma. It fought back with every treatment that he was given. By February 2013, his body was so weak that his kidneys started to fail. Mr. B was so worn down both physically and emotionally that he made the choice not to accept the kidney dialysis. Because he made the choice not to have dialysis, his hematologist said that they could no longer give him chemo as it was not working to lower his Lamda Free Light Chains and was causing the kidney failure. For Mr. B, the thought of sitting in the hospital for 3 days a week hooked up to a machine for 4 hours was just too much to bear. And although I do understand why he made that choice, it still broke my heart.
I’ve decided to separate the two blogs because I wanted to keep my main page on the MyelomaBlog.org website. My hope is that when I’m feeling in a better place emotionally I will start doing my part to educate the public about his cancer. And I don’t want to write posts on there about how hard this journey is for me now that I’m a widow. The people with this cancer do not want to hear about how hard it is for those left behind and I totally agree with them. My goal is to encourage them and do what I can to raise more funds for research.
I hope that you will continue to visit my blog and walk this journey with me. It is much easier if I know there are others walking beside me.
God bless you.
I hope that you will continue to visit my blog and walk this journey with me. It is much easier if I know there are others walking beside me.
God bless you.