Just coming up with a title for the post, Introduce Yourself, hard to even know who I am now without her.
We were married in 2011, and just 2 years later she had her first diagnosis of brain cancer. Surgery, chemo, radiation and a prognosis of 18 – 36 months. Somehow we were making it through and were processing and dealing with our new life. Along the way, the months kept piling up, then years, with no new growth. MRIs went from 3 months to 6 months to yearly. There's always that small group that do better than they should, and Maggie was part of it, going on long past what we eventually joked was her "expiration date". Even though, statistically, the longer she lived the likelier that she was someone that would keep living, it all caught up with us.
September 2023, almost 10 years exactly after her first surgery, she seizured and fell over while we were out to dinner. Back to surgery, a new diagnosis of a more aggressive type of brain tumor, a shortened prognosis of 6 month to 2 years. We'd grown complacent I guess. We'd adapted to her deficiencies from the first go-round and were living life as best we could.
Two weeks into radiation, and she was deteriorating so fast, losing her ability to walk and having increasing difficulty in talking. She opted out of treatment, went into home hospice, and was gone in less than 2 weeks.
This round was brutal and cruel, stealing her movement, and almost overnight taking away her voice. We never really got to talk again, everything was such a whirlwind of diagnosis, surgery, treatment, getting set up in hospice, then no voice and then no Maggie.
I don't have to explain the sense of grief, loss, regret. And on top of that the horrors of watching your one and only deteriorate so quickly and cruelly, having to take care of her every need.
I'm lost, sad, grief-stricken, broken-hearted, confused. Even in the "good" years I was her care-taker, and after a decade of us being almost one, I'm cut in half and in so much pain.
I ramble, and I've more than introduced myself.
MzKreant says
Posted on January 20, 2024 1
We are here and we care…{{hugs}}
Christophert says
Posted on January 19, 2024 1
Jim,
I’m so very sorry. To see it all taken so quickly is a shock that many of us here understand all too well.
Please try to attend the newly widowed zoom meetings that happen every Tuesday. Many have found it helpful to talk with people who get it.
Also be sure to check regional groups and all the other resources here.
Take good care of yourself,
Chris T.