Another Cancer? Must be August.

February 2007 was a major turning point in our lives.  We no longer took things for granted.  We no longer failed to thank God every morning for giving us another day of life.  We enjoyed our lives.

Life quickly returned to normal. Joe went back to work in July of 2007, flying here and there every week.  We  put cancer behind us, well at least we tried.  Every cough, every sore throat, every funny twinge brought the fear very much to the forefront of our minds.  Every 6 month check up was pure torture.  Fear of what they were going to say.  What they were going to find.  One year came and went.  Two years, three, four, five.  Five years that's the biggie - that's CANCER FREE.  How wonderful it felt to reach that mark and begin our now cancer free walk into the sixth year.  It became a little easier to say I HAD cancer.  We were living the life........until

August 2012  Julie caught a horrible cold.  Kaitlin caught a horrible cold.  I caught a horrible cold.  Joe caught a horrible cold, well three out of four.  Joe was in San Jose on an assignment and he started coughing and coughing and coughing.  He was coughing so much that he started coughing up blood.  That's not a cold.

Joe flew home Thursday night and went to the local Urgent Care to get it checked out.  The did an x-ray and told him to go to the ER. Now.  Something in the x-ray scared them.  Could have been the fact that the entire left lung was white and cloudy.  No black showing at all.  Now remember, he has checkups which include various imaging - x-rays, CTScan, PTScan.  He drove across the street to the hospital.  He called me at work and I told him I would meet him there.  I knew what it was.  I knew as sure as I knew my name. 

I hear the ER doctor say the words "metastasized mass" and something  I never wanted to hear again is spoken.  He says your fear of the cancer coming back is accurate.  We need to run tests to see how far this has gone.  When was your last x-ray?  January?  We need to get on top of this.

I stand outside room 487 and pause for a few seconds as I see the layout of a room that I never wanted to set foot in again.

I walk down a long long hallway with my feet feeling like magnets stuck to metal to a place I never wanted to walk to again.

My heart breaks for my husband as he prepares to endure pain that no one should ever have to feel. I am reminded of the year markers that we waited to pass so the we were "disease free".  Now we sit here and wait until 2:15 when DR. S.  will tell us words that we don't want to hear - but already know.

We sit in an office we have sat in too often and wait for the doctor to come in.   He walks in, shakes our hands and sits down with a sigh and a look of understanding and sadness.  He says the words we first heard six years ago this very month - the biopsy is positive for cancer.

Joe shakes his oncologists hand and says "we beat this once, we will do it again".