When I realized that Mario had cancer it was in a series of moments, not all at once. Maybe everyone else knew after the first where the series of tests that followed would lead us, but unlike my husband, in my family there is no history of cancer – at least not until 60, 80, 90 years of age – so my experience up to that moment dictated that my 35-year-old husband would be fine. Sure, they found something abnormal, but it wouldn’t be anything serious. I couldn’t imagine in that first moment that at the end of the process that began with that first test we would find ourselves in a chemotherapy room.
The second moment was when Mario called me after an appointment with the doctor – I was in Washington, DC where I was still living after the year we had spent there together for his LLM – and he told me, “it’s a tumor.”
“Ok,” I thought, “it’s a tumor, but we don’t know anything else about it yet. Maybe it’s not malignant. Maybe it’s nothing.” Mario told me later that at that moment he knew what was coming, but I hadn’t yet realized it.
When I did realize it was on a Thursday two weeks later. It was in the afternoon and Mario was leaving his last test. He called me and said, “I have the diagnosis. It’s cancer, stage IIA.” That was the moment when it became real for me. Up until that moment, I had not accepted that it could be something so serious. I closed my office door, and I sat at my desk while we spoke via Facetime for the few minutes he had free, and afterwards I frantically searched Google to find out what “stage IIA” means.
On Thursdays in DC I always went to an ashtanga yoga class after work. Ashtanga classes follow the same series of postures. With time, the class becomes a constant friend – a measuring stick of your progress and state of mind that reassures you: “I’m here, at least for the next hour and a half there will be no surprises.” That Thursday I arrived with a pain in my chest like I had never felt before, and during the course of the class I felt it break loose and move around, as my consciousness began to absorb all of the implications of the diagnosis that we had just received. During the back bends section I couldn’t contain it any more, and I laid on my back on my mat and sobbed silently, hoping not to interrupt my classmates’ practice.
That Thursday was the moment when for me, everything changed. I would not stay in DC until mid-February – I would return to Mexico sooner to be there for the treatments that began the last day of January. We would no longer move as soon as I got back – how could we in the middle of the radiation and chemotherapy sessions? We had no idea how he would react to the treatment, so we would stay with my mother-in-law until he recovered. Once back in Mexico City, my days would no longer consist only in walking our dog, making lunch and looking for an accountant. Additionally, I would cross the city each day to be at the radiation appointments and weekly chemotherapy sessions.
Now that I am back in Mexico City, my free time does not only consist in lunch with friends, Thursday date night, and weekend trips. Even if these things also happen, the current running under every activity is worry for my husband. How does he feel? Can I do anything to help him feel better? At lunch, what can he eat and drink that will not make him feel worse? When he wakes up in pain in the middle of the night, what can I do to make it better? What can I make to eat that won’t make him nauseous? I generally avoid eating milk products, sugar and bread and since I cook, we follow the same diet, but now I tell him, “it doesn’t matter what you eat; have ice cream for dinner if you want, but have dinner.”
Rose
Mexico City
February 2017